1/ No suprise Robert Dingwall signed the latest GBD letter, what is shocking is that he's on NERVETAG.
This are some of his zinger insights from spring last year. He's always been very keen on natural herd immunity.
2/ If you thought the last comment sounds a bit like suggesting a "humane cull" here's the full section where he describes a cull but then says its not a cull, but that government should encourage families to volunteer to cull elderly family members.
3/ Here he is claiming masks in Scottish schools is just a political stunt while claiming masks do nothing along with other typical skeptic lines. express.co.uk/news/politics/…
4/ For the past year he pops up regularly in the media to make very questionable statements but because of his positions interviewers don't challenge him properly.
So what are the harms of handwashing? Same line UfT were using.
5/Here's the chair of the education select committee praising Dingwalls call to fully reopen schools without masks in early February this year.
Have to also question Woodhouse considering school age students had the highest positivity of all ages in December.
6/ His websites here, articles include
"Medical imperialist and the fate of Christmas" In December he called for no restrictions over Christmas
And
"How we must learn to love with Covid like Samuel peeps did the great plague."
1/ Documents coming out of Netherlands shows they pursued natural herd immunity by stealth, making decisions that would allow infections to spread whilst telling the media their strategy was "maximum control"
1/🧵So we enter another cycle of the covid news narrative.
GBD group put out another letter
Typical RW outlets amplify it to top of the news agenda
GBD representatives cover the broadcast media with interviews
Much of the scientific community calls it out
2/ Worth considering how the organised well funded and well connected GBD and the skeptic network uses the techniques of science denial. See how many you can spot in the various threads ill link into this
3/The false binary argument they make between remove all measures and permanent lockdown misrepresents their critics and allows Johnson to claim he's the sensible middle ground no matter how much of a gamble he takes.
@UsforThemUK and @lensiseethrough we may disagree on what safety measures are needed in education, but surely your horrified at the government failing to provide funding for the most disadvantaged students in society?
Pilots for Daily Testing to replace isolation are starting.
Finally got a copy of the operational handbook and official FAQs
Government isn't following the science
2/ Basics: Close contacts take a LFD at the start of school for 7 days to avoid isolation.
All the experts I know say these tests aren't reliable enough for this purpose.
Book says LFDs will catch the majority of cases, this is a bit of an assumption, but it will miss cases
3/ Close contacts doing DCT can only go to school, they must isolate when not in school. This is because they know this does carry a risk. So why are they doing this, seems like the DfE are balancing risk of higher transmission with reducing isolation.They'e trying to be clever🤦♂️