1/ Regarding infections in schools, a colleague has pointed out that it is Department for Education directives that require schools to stay open, not PHE advice.

I am aware of this.
2/ Before I retired in January a complaint was made against me by the education sector for refusing to change my advice that a school or section of a school should close because of an outbreak of Covid-19 that was putting staff, other students, and their families at risk.
3/ The complaint went nowhere - I was giving the right public health advice, no matter how awkward it was.
4/ I do hope that PHE staff are not giving up on giving the right public health advice because they know it is unwelcome (and complaints are stressful, no matter how vexatious they are).
5/ Public health colleagues must continue to say:
6/ "This is my public health advice… I understand that you are not obliged to follow it, and indeed may be required not to do so by DfE policy; but I do nevertheless expect to document that you have received and decided to go against my advice."

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More from @petermbenglish

21 Sep
Gross incompetence on behalf of BBC?

Bad legal advice?

Surely it wasn't impossible to make full vaccination a condition of employment eg on H&S grounds?

"Strictly chaos as 'third professional dancer refuses vaccine'" metro.co.uk/2021/09/21/str… via @MetroUK
@MetroUK who are the three vaccine refuseniks?

If the BBC won't replace them now, the public should know, so we can vote them off ASAP.
@MetroUK is there anything that would prevent it being a condition of employment that Strictly Come Dancing #SCD competitors are fully vaccinated?
@AdamWagner1 @BarristerSecret @davidallengreen
Read 4 tweets
5 Sep
Maybe the JCVI decision does make sense. Thread.

I've revisited their terms of reference. They're all about cost-effectiveness.

gov.uk/government/gro…
They appear to have framed the benefits of vaccinating 12-15-yos exclusively in terms of the short term healthcare costs that would be avoided.

They appear not to have considered the wider benefits to children's.

Such as a reduction in disruption to education.
Such as distress when parents or grandparents get ill, can't work/earn due to Long Covid, or die.

Or the harm to the 1 in 7 children who get Long Covid, or the minority with permanent organ damage.
Read 13 tweets
30 Aug
We know SARS-CoV-2 can infect the brain.

So can measles, which occasionally causes SSPE - a progressive and invariably fatal brain disease, which typically becomes apparent years after measles infection. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subacute_…
About a century ago something - almost certainly virus - caused an epidemic of encephalitis lethargica. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encephali…

How do we know that SARS-CoV-2 won't do something similar, possibly years after infection?

The answer is that we don't. It might do this.
That's one reason why I worry so much about the "children aren't at risk" messaging. It will be years before we will be able to say this with confidence.
Read 4 tweets
21 Aug
1/ Like so many of us, I have been watching, aghast, as evil forces take over Afghanistan, and wondering "how can this be happening?"

It's not my area of expertise.

I think it's a proxy war.
2/ I think many of the Taliban fighters (and financial backers) are not Afghans, but extremists from other countries, who want to impose a misogynistic, illiberal culture on Afghanistan (initially). Probably ultimately on the world; but Afghanistan is weak and susceptible.
3/ But what do I know?

I hear people saying - "we cannot, indefinitely, hold the line with our military - eventually the local government must do this, and we must withdraw. We cannot continue to lose our own people's lives, and pay the vast costs."
Read 34 tweets
11 Aug
1/ Are we still at the point [genuine question] where a dose of Covid vaccine given in eg UK or USA deprives somebody in a poorer country from a dose?

And if so - is that because we haven't done enough to ramp up production?

What should be our priority now?
2/ Should we be boosting production in Africa, Asia, South America, and elsewhere?
3/ Will there come a point where the argument that we shouldn't vaccinate [lower risk groups] in rich countries until higher risk groups in poorer countries have been vaccinated becomes irrelevant, because there's enough manufacturing capacity everywhere?
Read 4 tweets
28 Jul
I was just told "my son went to the Latitude festival, and he and all the people he went with have Covid".

This begs so many questions!
Transmission is predominantly airborne, and mainly occurs when aerosolised respiratory droplets can accumulate, and you spend enough time in the space to breathe in an infectious dose.

That's what most of us believe.
An anecdote like this suggests so many hypotheses that could be tested by investigating transmission patterns at events like Latitude.

Who are the people the son went with? What did they do together? Can you identify clusters or chains of transmission?
Read 10 tweets

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