Thread by @NeilDotObrien

How to handle the Covid pandemic is the most important issue facing MPs right now.

So I wonder why Julia objects to me questioning the claims of her fellow covid-sceptics?

Here's a thread on some of the things *she* has claimed:

https://twitter.com/JuliaHB1/status/1349804968270827520

"Every journalist and MP should be asking the PM & Health Secretary: why are we using a Covid-19 test that has 90% false positives?"

Twitter, 20 September 2020

"THIS IS VERY IMPORTANT: Matt Hancock told me on @talkRADIO that the False Positive Rate of Covid tests in the community is "under 1%". Sounds good, doesn't it? WRONG!An FPR of 0.8% when the virus prevalence is so low means that at least 91% of "Covid cases" are FALSE POSITIVES."

"We’re told that infections are rising out of control (they’re not – they’re rising, but at a slower rate); that our hospital ICUs are close to capacity (they’re not – they are at about the same capacity they always are at this time of year)"

Telegraph, 27 October

"We don't have 200 deaths from coronavirus a day. There are no excess deaths. Anyone in hospital with a respiratory disease gets tested for Covid... All the usual deaths from flu, pneumonia etc are now "Covid deaths".

Twitter, 21 October 2020

"Eminent experts such as Carl Heneghan, the professor of evidence based medicine at Oxford University, argue that a second wave is highly unlikely, that the uptick in infections due to increased testing will not lead to many thousands more dying"

Telegraph, 15 September

"despite the rising numbers, all the evidence points not to a second wave of the pandemic but to a second wave of panic by No 10."

"The public needs more than Project Fear", Telegraph, 22 September 2020

"locking down is at best a delaying tactic and at worst a mortal wound to our faltering economy... Despite their best efforts, there was nothing in what Whitty and Vallance had to say, or in any of their doom-laden graphics, to justify a second assault on our liberties." (ibid)

"The Government is planning to lockdown our country again when there is no evidence of a second wave. We cannot allow this to happen."

Twitter, 18 September

"The Science also tells us that the vast majority of very elderly people who get the virus will also survive."

Telegraph, 15 September

"The virus kills. It just isn’t causing excess deaths anymore."

Twitter, 4 January 2021