He says it's "hard to imagine, let alone measure, the side effects of lockdowns", and kind of proves that by listing lots of deaths that mostly have nothing to do with lockdown.
Claim 1) "28,200 more deaths among diabetics than we'd normally expect".
This is true, but very misleading. Because 23,667 of those "diabetes" deaths actually listed covid as the underlying cause of death!
So most of them definitely aren't lockdown deaths. They're covid deaths!
Also, almost all the excess diabetes deaths that *weren't* listed as being directly caused by covid happened around the first wave peak.
It seems highly unlikely that the first lockdown somehow killed about 500 diabetics a week almost instantly .. but later ones didn't kill any.
Claim 2) "For people with heart disease, it’s 17,100".
Again, technically this is true, but what he's not telling you is that 16,200 of those were people with heart disease who died from covid.
So again, almost all of these are categorically NOT lockdown deaths.
Claim 3) "For dementia and Alzheimer’s, it’s 22,800."
This one's a bit more complex. But the short answer is that there were 27,000 deaths involving dementia and Alzheimer’s where covid was the underlying cause of death.
So non-covid dementia deaths are actually BELOW average!
The long answer is there were some excess dementia deaths in the first wave that weren't attributed to covid.
But since then non-covid dementia deaths have been at or below average, despite months of continuing restrictions on care home visits, which Heneghan cites as a concern.
Also, it's now thought that many of those first wave dementia deaths were actually undiagnosed covid.
There was little or no testing in care homes at the time, and we now know covid symptoms in elderly people can look a lot like dementia.
So far then Carl Heneghan has listed 68,000 excess deaths, but a quick look at the data shows almost 63,000 of those (92%!) listed covid as the underlying cause of death.
As sceptics would put it, they died "with" heart disease, diabetes or dementia, but they died "from" covid.
Given that the article is titled "the hidden death toll of lockdown", you would be forgiven for thinking that the excess deaths he lists are in some way related to lockdown.
But almost all of them were directly caused by covid!
They're NOT lockdown deaths, hidden or otherwise.
Either he doesn't understand the data he's using or he's deliberately misleading readers. Neither is a good look for a professor of Evidence Based Medicine.
He's implying lockdown killed tens of thousands of people. But there's no evidence to support it.
The only area that's not so clear cut is his claim that there's been a "big rise in at-home deaths".
This is true. But it's continued all year largely regardless of the level of lockdown restrictions, and is fairly closely mirrored by below average non-covid deaths in hospital.
It seems likely that due to changes in palliative care and people being unable or unwilling to go to hospital, at least some excess home deaths are people who would otherwise have died in hospital or hospice.
But Heneghan tries to link them to his phony lockdown deaths.
The whole article seems more like random rambling than a coherent argument about how many deaths may have been caused by lockdown measures.
After listing the misleading excess death figures, he has nothing more to say about lockdown, but instead has a jab at Neil Ferguson. 🙄
Casual readers are likely to go away thinking that lockdown has killed tens of thousands of people.
It certainly seems to be the narrative Heneghan and The Spectator are pushing.
But it simply isn't true, and the deaths the article lists are almost all directly caused by covid!
Update: It looks like even Heneghan and the Spectator have realised how wildly misleading the article was, and quietly reworded it today to admit that "most were categorised as Covid deaths". Which somehow still implies maybe they weren't.
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Last week Andrew Bridgen claimed Ukraine might be working on a dirty bomb to use in a "false flag" attack in Europe. Unsurprisingly his comments have now been amplified by the Russian military and state media, and echoed back by Russian assets and useful idiots here in the UK. 🧵
Andrew Bridgen had an "incredibly productive" meeting with the Russian ambassador in London earlier this year.
Since then he's claimed Rishi Sunak called the election to avoid being a wartime PM, and that Ukraine's planning a "false flag" nuclear attack in Europe "like 9/11". 😳
Meanwhile Russian assets and useful idiots here in the UK have been amplifying these claims of false flag attacks and dirty bombs.
John and Irina Mappin at least are known to have visited the Russian embassy recently, and all frequently share Russian propaganda on social media.
Reform's manifesto (or "contract") panders to conspiracy theorists, falsely linking covid vaccines to excess deaths and pledging to "reject" the WEF, WHO and digital currencies.
Unsurprising, given many of their supporters and candidates have rather odd views on these topics. 🧵
Nigel Farage and his Reform Party recently got an endorsement from Laurence Fox of the similarly named Reclaim Party.
Farage even recorded a video with Fox, who has repeatedly compared the Pride flag to the Swastika and promoted Islamophobia.
With friends like these...
Laurence Fox's fiancée also took selfies with Farage while out supporting him in Clacton.
She's recently claimed (amongst many other things) that the pandemic didn't happen and that "they" manipulate the weather to rob us of vital Vitamin D. Right before a heat wave started. 🤦♂️
Reform's candidate in Edinburgh South West, Ian Harper, was a vocal backer of ivermectin, and the grifters and frauds who promoted it as a cure for covid. In his bio for Reform, he talks about a "globalist agenda" seeking to "collapse society".
Not the worst thing he's said. 🧵
Ian Harper's first Twitter account was suspended, and he's now locked his second (presumably to stop voters seeing it). Luckily the internet (and its archives) remembers.
Most of his pandemic posts seem to consist of vastly exaggerated claims about the wonders of ivermectin. 🙄
Unsurprisingly Reform's Ian Harper was an enthusiastic supporter of Tess Lawrie, founder of a British group called BIRD which promoted the dewormer ivermectin as a miracle "cure" for covid, much of it based on flawed or outright fraudulent studies.
Reform's candidate in Twickenham is a member of anti-vax misinformation group HART. In leaked chat logs, Alex Starling called vaccinating children "a perverted abomination", and talked about sneaking HART content and campaigns into articles he wrote for UK news site Reaction. 🧵
If you've not come across them before, HART identify as "a group of highly qualified doctors, scientists and other experts" who just "question the narrative". But many of their members believe covid vaccines were designed to depopulate the Earth! 😳
Alex Starling fit right in at HART, calling wearing masks at school "depraved cruelty" and vaccinating children against covid "a perverted abomination". He also repeatedly suggested covid vaccines work in the same way lions "work" on a herd of zebras, "by taking out the weakest".
John Mappin appeared on Russian TV at the weekend, claiming the British public doesn't support Ukraine. Because he spoke to a few friends, and they all love Russia too. 🤷♂️
Mappin often retweets Putin's propaganda, and last year claimed he could instantly end the Ukraine war. 🤔
Russian asset / useful idiot John Mappin has also been out campaigning for Nigel Farage in Clacton-on-Sea. Haven't they suffered enough already?
Mappin previously backed Andrew Bridgen, after the MP compared covid vaccines to the Holocaust. Just the man you want on your side. 🤦♂️
John Mappin rather optimistically claimed afterwards that Nigel Farage is going to be Prime Minister, hailing him for "one of the most brilliant and sanest speeches in this island's history". 🤪
But then he's already fallen for Scientology, QAnon, and covid conspiracy theories.
The BMJ has had to issue a statement after everyone from The Telegraph and former Brexit Minister David Davis to anti-vaxxers and conspiracy theorists claimed that covid vaccines may be responsible for excess deaths, based on a dubious study published in @BMJPublicHealth. 🧵
The Telegraph's @sarahknapton has a history of this. Two years ago she tried to blame excess deaths (including some covid deaths!) on lockdowns, with a clickbait headline that the article (behind a paywall) failed to support. This is more of the same.
As for the BMJ article that inspired all of this, it simply takes excess death data from 47 "western" countries (ranging from the US and UK to Australia and New Zealand to Bulgaria and Moldova), adds them all up, then engages in a lot of vague arm waving.