Thread by @EmporersNewC

1. Hi @BBCChrisMorris, I’ve been looking over this @BBCRealityCheck and I was wondering if you could help me with two questions I have?

(Thread)

bbc.co.uk/news/5282807

2. Dominic made it apparent that he believed that the guidance was flexible enough to act as he did.

3. What guidance specifically? Thankfully, he read that out.

4. To be honest, when someone writes in an exception saying that they are aware not all measures will be possible, they are not usually referring to the guidance they say is the most important.

5. In fact, in this instance, there is specific advice that says that people should contact friends, relatives and their employers to help resolve the problems they have staying at home.

6. When Dominic was asked what he had done in relation to this, he freely admitted that he hadn’t tried to sort out his problem because he had the option of driving across the country, contrary to the advice.

7. Even if people want to agree over the spirit of the exception clause Dominic cites, he now cannot claim to have followed the advice to try and resolve his issue, because having a child is not an excuse to not pick up a phone.

8. But it’s not his first justification that should be interesting, but his other two. His next argument involved the possibility of being included in a testing program at work which would allow him to continue working.

9. While his third argument is more involved, and is seemingly used to attack the @ShippersUnbound article about his views, published in March and apparently, the media in general.

10. This allows him make a claim that his house under attack, followed by the logic that if he is added to the aforementioned testing programme, he is worried about leaving Mary alone.

11. He sums this up in a single paragraph where he suggests that if he doesn’t develop symptoms and there is a testing regime at work, he can return to work if he tested negative, and leave his wife in safety.

12. And so, being the loving father that he is, he checked the medical advice, and then took his family on a four hour drive to an isolated spot where he felt able to abandon his sick wife and child the second he got the all clear.

13. That is all very well, but these two arguments are based entirely on a single piece of logic: “I can return to work if I tested negative”.

14. The problem is, the test isn’t reliable enough to use on someone who doesn’t have symptoms, and so when a key worker is isolating it is only the person who has the symptoms who is actually tested.

15. If Dominic had symptoms, then he would be tested and if that came back clear and nobody else had the symptoms, then he could return to work.

16. If it is his wife, and/or son, then they are the ones who are tested, not Dominic. If they come back negative, Dominic is not living with someone with Coronavirus and is assumed safe. If it comes back positive, Dominic stays in isolation.

17. And it is more complex than that, because there is an optimum time when the test is reliable. Key workers are advised to” act quickly” because, for optimum results, the test should be administered in the first 3 days.

18. Depending on which guidance you read, the government are prepared to continue testing until the end of the isolation period, or a maximum of 5 days.

19. Meaning if Dominic really wanted to be working, he wouldn’t have returned to work on the 27th and instead he would have spent his day trying to ensure that his wife was tested by Sunday.

20. Ultimately this means that this part of the story is a fairy-tale. There is no testing mechanism where he continues to work while Mary has coronavirus.

21. And since the third part of his argument is entirely dependent on him being at work, Mary is never alone with Coronavirus. She either has it, and Dominic is in the house, or she doesn't, and there is no risk in for anyone providing care.

22. When you know that this testing process is a figment of Dominic Cummings imagination, the next question is, if there people coming to his house shouting threats, where was his fairy godsource?

23. Did the source decide to allow the Cummings family to be subjected to this, so called, abuse? Or were they unable to refer to what he wrote “about a year ago” until April when Dominic modified an article he wrote 'about a year ago'?

24. The date of the modified article and the lack of action when faced with death threats and abuse seems a bit strange, and without proof, this statement is questionable at best.

25. So the first question I have is, why only refer to the guidelines Dominic brought up, and ignore the weight of the guideline he ignored, the guidelines on meeting that requirement, or Dominic’s remarks about what he did to adhere to them?

26. But the main thing I wanted to know was, since he clearly did not contact anyone to try and resolve his issues of staying at home.

27. Then introduced a fairy-tale scenario.

28. Cited a questionable fact

29. Created another fantasy scenario based on the fairy-tale he introduced.

30. Leaving us with a scenario so fantastic, one that runs so contrary to our frontline testing regime, that it is more worthy of @jk_rowling than Dominic Cummings.

A novella set in a fantasy world where the Coronavirus test is reliable on people without symptoms.

31. The best he could hope for with a 14 day incubation period was to isolate immediately and then test 11 days later to get his results back in 2 days. (That is based on information published after he left.)

32. But the two day limitation to testing I can find in the press over a week before he made that decision, and as a member of SAGE, he knew this.

(Is this testing story the same story he gave to the Prime minister, or was that a different story I wonder?)

33. Leaving me with my final question:

What then, is the point of doing a fact check just on the guidance, when two thirds of his reasoning is based on pseudoscience?

Especially when it doesn’t get the reader any closer to the truth.

/End

(Apparently the link on the first tweet isn't working, so here is the page)

bbc.co.uk/news/52828076