I've heard three serious examples of misinformation on BBC programmes in the past 24 hours from Professor Robert Dingwall of JCVI, Lord Sumption and Sir Charles Walker MP. (1)
Dingwall, social science private consultant, who sits on JCVI (why?), was asked about Long Covid. He said the evidence was just 'anecdotal', the numbers of cases causally related to Covid was 'very small' and symptoms were due to people's 'minds' and 'stress'. He is wrong.(2)
Lord Sumption said deaths from Covid outside highly vulnerable groups is very small, 'in the hundreds'. Prof Spiegelhalter has since said he is wrong. (In India 2.2 million people are estimated to have died from Covid). Sumption should not be invited onto BBC to mislead.(3)
Sir Charles Walker MP on today's World at One said that children are "not at risk from Covid at all", and that there is scientific evidence that children are better off getting the infection than being vaccinated. None of this is true. No challenge by interviewer.
The BBC has an editorial duty to challenge and correct statements that are false. The media also report that PM Johnson said almost all deaths from Covid in the first wave were over 80. Again Prof Spiegelhalter said this is wrong, that 40% of people were in younger age groups.

• • •

Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to force a refresh
 

Keep Current with Anthony Costello

Anthony Costello Profile picture

Stay in touch and get notified when new unrolls are available from this author!

Read all threads

This Thread may be Removed Anytime!

PDF

Twitter may remove this content at anytime! Save it as PDF for later use!

Try unrolling a thread yourself!

how to unroll video
  1. Follow @ThreadReaderApp to mention us!

  2. From a Twitter thread mention us with a keyword "unroll"
@threadreaderapp unroll

Practice here first or read more on our help page!

More from @globalhlthtwit

18 Jul
I don't mind public criticism but I do object to being misrepresented, in a major paper like @thesundaytimes without being consulted. Their leader writer Dominic Lawson has taken a pop at me so let me correct his accusations. (1)
He says I am not 'an epidemiologist', unlike Chris Whitty. He might have checked my publication record iris.ucl.ac.uk/iris/browse/pr… I would guess 80% of my 403 research papers are 'epidemiological', including numerous population trials.(2)
He takes a 2019 twitter quote from me about being "to the left of Jeremy Corbyn on economics and environmental issues." If you look at the context you'll see I was actually defending @campbellclaret from being expelled from the Labour party. (3)
Read 9 tweets
15 Jul
Seven excellent reports in the FT from UNICEF and Children in All Policies-2030 (cap-2030.org) on what governments + companies should pursue to help the next generation overcome the Covid-19 pandemic, climate change, and economic inequity.(1) ft.com/reports/unicef…
Why investing in children is the most important economic imperative. ft.com/content/01eb69… (2)
Why cutting UK aid damages families, children and also our own international reputation.(3) ft.com/content/137490…
Read 9 tweets
9 Jul
On vaccinating children. UK data released today reports that over ONE Year 5,800 children were admitted with Covid19, 690 children admitted with a linked paediatric inflammatory multisystem syndrome(PIMS-TS) of whom 251 required intensive care. 25 children died from Covid19. (1)
For those who want to look at the US figures and an excellent review of the risks and benefits, see this article: (2) sciencebasedmedicine.org/covid-19-and-b…
What about Long Covid? ONS figures: 14.5% (of children aged 12-16 have symptoms lasting longer than 5 weeks, and 5.7% (4.1-8.1) lose taste and smell. If half of all children aged 12-16 became infected we might expect >100,000 to lose taste +smell. (3) ons.gov.uk/releases/preva…
Read 13 tweets
6 Jul
The story so far. About the failure of public health. Not masks. Look at the death rates in China (pop 1.4bn), Vietnam (100m), USA (340m) and UK (68m). Yes, you cannot see the death curves in the first two because they are so low. (1)
Our leaders/advisers said you cannot suppress this virus. China and Vietnam did. Then they said these countries will inevitably face a huge second wave. They haven't - just smaller outbreaks that they jump on with good public health implemented by people on the ground. (2)
We were forced into prolonged national lockdowns. Hugely damaging to livelihoods, the economy and mental health. None of the Asian states had national lockdowns, only local ones. Their economies had ten times less damage. (3)
Read 20 tweets
4 Jul
On Children and Long Covid.
No. You are being disingenuous with these studies. We agree the Swiss study is worthless because of type 2 error. Let us now look at the Zoe and the Australia studies...(1)
People are rightly worried about Long Covid and possible effects on children's developing brains. The Zoe study shows 4.4% of 1,734 infected children (588 younger 1,146 older children) get headache, fatigue and anosmia (three neurological signs) lasting more than one month. (2)
Worrying. If children are now to be exposed to infection by the UK government failure with public health/vaccination measures, + say another 50% of children up to 16 become infected, we're looking at 8.8 million x 0.5 x 0.044 = 193,600 kids facing prolonged symptoms. (3)
Read 15 tweets
4 Jul
Several scientists are referring to an unreviewed short Swiss paper to support the idea that Long Covid in children is minimal. medrxiv.org/content/10.110… (1)
The authors correctly point out "limitations include the relatively small number of seropositive children, possible misclassification of some false seropositive children, potential recall bias, parental report of child’s symptoms, and lack of information on symptom severity" (2)
The paper reports on just 109 children picked up as seropositive compared with 1246 negatives. No conclusions can be drawn because of classic type 2 error: failure to reject a false null hypothesis because of an underpowered study. (3)
Read 6 tweets

Did Thread Reader help you today?

Support us! We are indie developers!


This site is made by just two indie developers on a laptop doing marketing, support and development! Read more about the story.

Become a Premium Member ($3/month or $30/year) and get exclusive features!

Become Premium

Too expensive? Make a small donation by buying us coffee ($5) or help with server cost ($10)

Donate via Paypal Become our Patreon

Thank you for your support!

Follow Us on Twitter!

:(