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Deepti Gurdasani Profile picture
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19 Sep, 17 tweets, 6 min read
The last few days have revealed connections UsForThem have with HART & with prominent media hosts. They've threatened govt with legal action to remove masks from schools & have explored action against the MHRA on vaccination, with a member of JCVI recently quote-tweeting them!
The question is how much influence UFT have had on policy through the backdoor? There are clearly UFT sympathisers within govt. How has a so-called parent group had such reach across the media, been able to threaten legal action against entities to remove protections for kids?
Who are they, really? And who funds them? The HART logs show UFT signatories actively trying to promote anti-vaxx messaging (e.g. 'vaccines cause covid'), and even hoping that vaccines cause serious side effects (ADE) so they can promote negative messaging on these.
These are not the actions of compassionate parents. These are the words of people who want to deny kids protections at any cost. Even if it means making up false narratives, and children being harmed.
Here's @ClareCraigPath, an UFT signatory, speaking abhorrently about seeding false narratives on vaccines causing COVID- it's impossible to interpret this any other way:

Here is Ros Jones, one of their members trying to find an 'expert witness' to put in a case against MHRA authorisation of vaccines in adolescents:
Here is their founder re-tweeting an anti-vaxx message, suggesting vaccines are a way to 'tag children':

And here is investigative journalism that's uncovered very concerning links - it appears that UFT receives PR support from a former Conservative parliamentary candidate and communications advisor to BJs leadership campaign. Clear links with the CRG.

bylinetimes.com/2021/01/21/par…
Here is Val Fraser working on the 'Safer to Wait' campaign speaking about 'thwarting vaccination in children'

And here is Ros Jones trying to put pressure on a 17 yr old hospitalised *with COVID-19* to ask he to use her experience to advise others not to get vaccinated!

More about the 'Safer to Wait' campaign, it's supporters, and the misinformation it's putting out:

Here is one of their members hoping 'ADE' (a side effect that is not associated with COVID-19 vaccines) 'kicks in fast and soon' following vaccination, so they can use this to support their anti-vaxx campaigning. The rhetoric of a compassionate parent?

The interesting part is that unlike other parents groups this particular group, despite their really dodgy links and anti-mask, anti-mitigation slant has been widely platformed in the media. They have been platformed on the BBC, by @JuliaHB1, @GMB and link with @bobscartoons
They clearly have access to MPs, having briefed them and met with them on multiple occasions (unlike almost any other parent group I know of). Their PR person is the same as that for the CRG. Steve Baker has promoted their messaging repeatedly
Logs that have been made public also clearly show that they have worked hard to influence the JCVI through sending individual letters. There are links between Dingwall (former JCVI) and HART, where he's referred to as being sympathetic & trying to influence from the inside.
And here is a recent tweet from Adam Finn, JCVI member, sharing supportive messaging from UsForThem asking parents to wait before vaccinating kids (at a point in time when 1 in 37 adolescents are infected). This should be a scandal.

If you want to know more about these groups, their links, and the influence they've had on pandemic response, would recommend following & reading @NafeezAhmed @karamballes @_johnbye @GYamey @jneill

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More from @dgurdasani1

Deepti Gurdasani Profile picture
21 Sep
It's incredibly painful listening to people talking about 'toxicity on both sides of the debate' or 'scientific disagreements that are undermining pubic trust' when my experience on this platform is largely being bullied by, not 'disagreed' with on evidence by other scientists.🧵
Most people I challenge on the evidence don't respond to me on arguments I make at all. They attack me personally with sarcastic or snide remarks or subtweets - almost never clear and evidenced arguments. They never accept or acknowledge errors. This is not 'academic debate'.
This 'both siding' creates a sense of false equivalence between scientists who are being subjected to coordinated bullying just putting out well-evidenced information and those who are either putting out damaging misinformation in a pandemic, and/or bullying other scientists.
Read 9 tweets
Deepti Gurdasani Profile picture
20 Sep
Important point here- given JCVI has said the benefits of vaccinating 'healthy' adolescents was 'marginal'. We've had ~9000 hospitalisations with COVID-19 in children so far. These docs show 80% of hosp were directly *due to* COVID-19 with the *majority* in 'healthy' children.
There have been 3,400 COVID-19 hospitalisations in under 18s since 4th June, when MHRA authorised Pfizer for adolescents- 1700 of these have been in 6-17 yr olds. Based on recent docs, the majority of these would've been in 'healthy children'.
Of course we didn't even offer vaccines to children with 'pre-existing conditions, who JCVI say have 50x the risk of ICU admission until 19th July, *6 weeks later*. How many were preventable had we started vaccinating all kids earlier? And who is accountable for these delays?
Read 5 tweets
Deepti Gurdasani Profile picture
20 Sep
Myth busting thread on naturally immunity from infection in children. One of the arguments used some, including members of JCVI have been high exposure in kids, which means 1 dose may be adequate. The evidence actually suggest poor neutralisation in kids & rapid waning of Abs 🧵
First, many people don't seroconvert after infection, and with young people this proportion can be even higher. This means that they may not have detectable Abs after infection. Ab levels generally do correlate with protection, so absent antibodies are problematic.
Of course, we cannot rule out T cell responses in these children, but in the absence of clear evidence showing these are present, we cannot assume this, as some appear to have done.
Read 15 tweets
Deepti Gurdasani Profile picture
20 Sep
Worth noting that the UK 'experts' talking up 'long-term impacts of vaccines' in adolescents have 0 real experience with vaccine-associated myocarditis vs experts in most other countries- all of whom have come to the conclusion that COVID-19 is *much* more of a risk than vaccines
Please follow reliable experts who have studied this far more than members of JCVI who're busy quote-tweeting anti-vaxx groups like UFT & promoting vaccine hesitancy.
Here are some:
@PeterHotez @KatharineSmart @muirtheimhne
And unlike JCVI which *still* has not published it's assumptions for the numbers provided, other countries, and researchers have done the analysis with transparent, published models that can be run and replicated by anyone.
Read 4 tweets
Deepti Gurdasani Profile picture
18 Sep
Where to start with the evidence? Would suggest reading these excellent pieces by @NafeezAhmed
But I guess you probably know all this, given you've been working with them for while? And platforming them.

bylinetimes.com/2021/03/30/gav…

bylinetimes.com/2021/04/01/dis…
I'm sure many others would be keen to show Julia evidence of the above... please do feel free to add here... I'll start with this:

And here;
Read 6 tweets
Deepti Gurdasani Profile picture
17 Sep
There are 2 questions here:
1. Is it real? It is, & case-control studies have shown this
2. What is it? We need to listen to those with lived experience to understand this.
We should all be worried about 11,000 kids reporting persistent symptoms for a yr regardless of 'controls'.
I disagree that we need a control to study every syndrome in every study. Once we've established the syndrome exists, we need to listen to those with lived experience, investigate it carefully to understand what it is. This is how clinical medicine described new syndromes.
Important not to dismiss people's lived experience. Or trivialise it because we cannot prove a counterfactual scenario for children who have been suffering for over a year after they got infected. If you have a control group, fine. If you don't, it's still very important.
Read 4 tweets

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