Thread by @andrewflood

Thats a fairly disgraceful piece from Diarmaid Ferriter in the @IrishTimes where he uses his platform to throw a load of misleading & incorrect claims above #Covid19 into the public sphere before hiding under a 'I'm just a historian' at the end. Start to finish its clueless /1

Firstly the 20k deaths prediction was a 'If we do nothing' one - we had a lockdown & rearranged society to avoid those 20k deaths and so are heading for 10% of that figure. The 20k & indeed above it are still possible as has been seen elsewhere, Peru has 3 times our deaths /2

Secondly Levitt is speaking outside his field & his Gompertz curve predictions have been consistently wrong, they are not tenable. Detail in this subthread and on the worrying attempt to push him as an alternative expert when he's nothing for the sort /3

https://twitter.com/andrewflood/status/1298648756200636416

Thirdly piece revolves around a letter by Dr Alan Farrell. Who? It seems he is one of our 2500 GPs but why is he singled out as important & how come Diarmaid has his letter to the Taoiseach? The letter appears to repeat misleading points in Dail /4

https://twitter.com/andrewflood/status/1298659235350351877?s=20

Fourth - Sweden has not had a 'similar death rate to other countries'. It has the 13th highest death rate in the world (out of 200+), a rate 10 times that of some of its neighbours & 5 times that of most of them /5

https://twitter.com/andrewflood/status/1295358286372524032

Fifth - the theory that 'herd immunity' might kick in at 20% was a cute hope early on, its now clearly rubbish. Multiple cities & towns have infections rates above 40%. San Quintin prison is close to 70%. Does the @IrishTimes do no basic fact checking? /6

Sixth - false positive rate of PCR due to viral fragments is a technically possible but mostly irrelevant conspiracy theory used to undermine & discourage people getting tested. Huge differential between serial testing positivity in meat plants & detected clusters shows this /7

In the last paragraph he tries to wash his hands of the disinformation he has just sown under 'I'm not an expert'. But those whose views he has just boosted are not alternative experts, they are also people speaking well outside their field who are not experts /8

Seropositivity studies from around the world have revealed that the wealthy have been infected at a much lower rate than the poor. 'Herd immunity' at times of plague means the rich hide away in their mansions while the plague sweeps through those too poor to shelter. /9

Here for instance is Maranhao with a large difference in infection rate based on wealth, note 40% infection rate is also double 20% Ferriter cites in his article without question because he's not an expert but also can't google to check what's he's fed

https://twitter.com/andrewflood/status/1302902362428891136?s=20

Here is Ferriters expert Levitt with his prediction for Ireland in May of virus burning out. Here on March 23rd suggesting the worst was over & that Iran had peaked!
He has a Noble prize but its in Chemistry not any medical one. You might think that should be pointed out /11

There are a LOT of epidemiologists in the world, & a lot of virologists. If you are running off to find an expert who is in Chemistry it's not expertise you are really seeking. It's like a linguist taking over Ferriter's history course, perhaps interesting but hardly expert

I'm clearly annoyed at Ferriter here but really the disturbing thing is that there are very well resourced people in the background pushing this junk science using people in positions of influence including the chair of the Dail Covid committee /13

https://twitter.com/andrewflood/status/1299016665590628352?s=20

Just so we are clear on how far Levitt's predictions have been off, when he said it was nearly over to LA times 693 people had died in the USA, its now 196,327. And in Iran 1,812 had died, its now 22,798. Both official counts are underestimates /14

https://twitter.com/andrewflood/status/1304434931439935489?s=20

If we wait for more deaths to happen then a huge number will already be built in. When St Particks day was cancelled no one had died in Ireland, when we locked down we had 2,121 cases & only 22 had died but 1500+ deaths were built into the trajectory at that point /15

We have a very strong warning in terms of what happened in Israel when you get a toxic mixture of political opportunism, religious right denialism & bad science . Or from Florida & Texas back in June. No need to repeat mistakes made elsewhere /16

https://twitter.com/erlichya/status/1301637520699068422

To be clear we are not facing same trajectory as we were in March -30% a day increase in cases - because now we all know how to reduced transmission. 4-5% is a doubling every two weeks rather than every 3 days that should apply to deaths as well as cases. And NH are prepared /17

But long delay between infection & death, and often the long delay before a death is reported means we can't wait & see on the chance that Levitt who has been consistently wrong is somehow now right. Again he's a chemist not a epidemiologist & a lone voice not consensus /18

Business owners have turned to him not because of relevant expertise or accurate predictions but because he says what they want to hear, that Covid is going to go away of its own accord anytime now. So they can get back to making profits whether in meat plants or superpubs /19

This story just got a whole lot worse, it turns out the letter whose bad science talking points Diarmaid Ferriter & the @IrishTimes boosted was crafted by this guy who on Sept 6th was advising people on how to secretly sabotage their masks to make them less effective /20

Source of that tweet which was still up at time of posting is https://twitter. com/FatEmperor/status/1302616674970095616

Ivor blocked me a couple of weeks back after I started to point out where he was cherry picking data to fool his followers. But turns out he’s still keeping an eye on my feed from a second account & even setting his fan base on me. Coward.

For the curious here is me dismantling the first 90 seconds of his latest video - you can see why he blocked me as he doesn’t have answers

https://twitter.com/andrewflood/status/1304772399188135937