This is a disingenuous claim. Cases in England peaked a few days BEFORE the last stage of opening, and mobility data shows the biggest changes in people's behaviour came after Step 2 in April and Step 3 in May, since when average cases rose from under 2,000 to over 40,000 a day. Image
Visits to Retail & Recreation (covering everything from restaurants and non-essential shops to museums and theme parks) rose after Step 2 in April, as shops reopened and outdoor hospitality returned.

And again after Step 3 in May, when indoor entertainment reopened. Image
Usage of public transport follows a similar pattern - a rise at Step 2 in mid-April and another smaller, slower rise after Step 3 in mid-May.

As with recreation, there's little or no immediate change visible in people's behaviour in the first few days after Step 4 on July 19th. Image
And visits to workplaces actually FELL over the last month, as case numbers surged and (in the most recent week we have data for) over a million people were told to self-isolate by Test & Trace or the NHS Covid App.

Google Mobility Data can be found here:
google.com/covid19/mobili… Image
Meanwhile about one in six secondary school children and one in eight primary school children have been at home due to covid outbreaks as the school year limps to an end.

This in turn seems to have caused a big drop in regular lateral flow testing.

…e-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/find-statistic… Image
So the recent drop in cases is obviously good news, but the idea that it has anything to do with lifting restrictions .. 4 days later is clearly nonsense.

And the last stage of reopening in May let Delta run wild, resulting in 1,000,000 more cases and 1,000 more deaths, so far. Image

• • •

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

Keep Current with John Bye

John Bye 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 @_johnbye

27 Jul
This is quite an exposé of HART, who try to look respectable in public but behind closed doors are working with cranks like Michael Yeadon and Anna Rayner, seriously discussing crazy conspiracy theories, and describing MPs they were lobbying as "lemmings" and "not too bright"! 😆
In one exchange, HART member Liz Evans says she doesn't want to "sound like a conspiracy theorist", but she believes the government is "very happy as things are" because it has "nefarious plans" to use covid to further some "malign agenda".

Sounds like a conspiracy theory to me! Image
Elsewhere members discuss recruiting a Swiss cardiologist / serial conspiracy theorist who had been sectioned over mental health concerns.

They were worried about how it would look but admitted "some of us may have those views as well", apparently referring to the "Great Reset". Image
Read 5 tweets
25 Jul
After covering the pandemic for more than a year, apparently Robert Peston has just discovered the UK definition of a case. 🙄

I mean, it's right there on the dashboard, just above the graph.

coronavirus.data.gov.uk/details/cases
Whether this means the daily case count "seriously understates" infections seems doubtful though.

An ONS study shows (up to June 5th) less than 1% of participants had been reinfected. Most cases detected at a high Ct, suggesting fairly mild infections.

ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulati…
Of course, this data is from before the current surge in cases.

But even with 3.7 million people who first tested positive for covid over 6 months ago, it's unlikely that any reinfections would make a significant difference to the 1 million new cases counted in the last month.
Read 4 tweets
24 Jul
"At the Nuremberg Trials the doctors and nurses stood trial. And they hung. If you're a doctor or a nurse, get off that bus."

Just a normal day for conspiracy nut Kate Shemirani, as a crowd of anti-vaxxers cheers her comparison of hardworking NHS staff to Nazi war criminals. 😳
Her Wikipedia entry is eye opening, displaying pretty much an A to Z of far right conspiracy theories and anti-semitic tropes.

Scary to think this woman used to be a nurse, until she was suspended for spouting nonsense about covid and 5G last year.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kate_Shem…
Perhaps unsurprisingly then, her comment about hanging doctors and nurses apparently wasn't even the craziest thing she said today:

Read 4 tweets
24 Jul
Clare Craig claims that 10% of all respiratory samples in England are positive for RSV, more than covid.

Needless to say she's wrong on every count, because she didn't understand or sanity check the data she was looking at before posting. As usual.
For starters it's 8.9%, not 10%. And that's of samples that were tested for RSV, not all the samples logged by Respiratory Datamart.

The vast majority of the 100,000 samples will have been tests done for covid. Only a handful would be from RSV tests.

That's because hospitals routinely screen all admissions for covid, whereas patients (mostly infants) are only tested for RSV if a doctor specifically asks for it.

Hardly surprising then that positivity is much higher for RSV tests than for covid tests.

Read 7 tweets
23 Jul
The latest anti-vax article from Daily Sceptic is absolute nonsense even by their low standards.

The writer compares daily cases to total patients in hospital (not admissions), and assumes ALL patients are over 60.

Which was never true, and even less so now. Thanks to vaccines.
In fact, the Herald article he links to clearly says that only 40% of recent hospital admissions were over 60. Did he even read it?

His entire "essay" is based on a lie. And @toadmeister published this blatant misinformation, because he either didn't notice or didn't care.
As if that's not bad enough, the writer then plots all hospital patients vs test positivity in over 60s (conjured up using unspecified "statistical tricks").

Which is even more meaningless.

Based on this utter gibberish he falsely claims that the vaccines aren't working.
Read 5 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!

:(