This is our local hospital. I've had to go there many times in the middle of the night to access urgent care for myself or my family. Terrifying to see people who come into A&E not even being able to get into the building - waiting outside in the cold.
It's not even winter yet.
Just want to say this issue isn't just limited to our local hospital- this is being reported in hospitals across the UK, but not getting much media attention. Here are a few more stories:
All of this. The rhetoric around immigrants in the UK media is dehumanising. We're treated as if we don't contribute, take up resources, and are unwanted. Despite bringing vital skills to meet shortages, contributing actively to the economy and society. 🧵
It's devaluing to see how we are depicted in the media. The immigration system in the UK is hostile- anyone who has been through it knows that. The Windrush scandal wasn't an exception in home office policy- it's very much the rule as to how the home office treats migrants.
Every aspect of home office policy is hostile
-This includes the NHS surcharge, no recourse to public funds while paying full tax, NI.
-paying £2000/visa
-'deport first, appeal later' policies
Home Office has lost 75% of their appeals against applicants for refugee status
When do we say a nation has failed?
-policies deliberately put children at risk - & penalise parents who try to safeguard children against govt policy
-lack of access to routine & emergent healthcare
-lack of social nets for the poorest
-4 million children living in poverty
🧵
-reduction in life expectance from preventable disease
-Fuel & energy shortages
-food supply shortages
-increased reliance on foodbanks
-government corruption with minimal consequence
-non-independence of state media
-non-independence of public health institutions in a pandemic
-lack of basic protections for frontline workers
-infiltration of scientific discourse by disinformation and misinformation lobby groups and pseudoscience
-lack of accountability for a media promoting misinformation
-gagging and victimisation of whistleblowers (e.g. NHS)
Study published in Science on 500K parents where mitigation measures, most of which were *inside* classrooms correlated with risk of infection in their parents. So transmission in classrooms not only leads to infected kids, but infected parents. science.org/doi/full/10.11…
CDC study on masks and ventilation *inside* classrooms reducing transmission: cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/7…
But don't even believe these. How about genome sequencing? Where the same virus is found in a cluster in school among people who never came into contact outside school? Hard to explain that through transmission outside, isn't it?
It's 'inevitable' we'll import new variants,
It's 'inevitable' many more people will lose loved ones
It's 'inevitable' children will get infected
It's NOT inevitable.
It's only inevitable if you don't even bother putting in the most basic public health measures in a pandemic.
How on earth can they stand up and say it's inevitable, when so many countries have managed to protect their public from all of this. And their children. After 18 months we have almost no mitigations in schools. We're keeping infected children in classrooms fuelling spread.
And we could've at the very very least offered vaccines to adolescents when they became available. Did we?
No, we didn't- we decided to do this after almost every other country in Europe, and much of the rest of the world.
Very glad to see @bmj_latest correct their previous piece to highlight the problems with the Hoeg preprint on vaccine myocarditis. The methods of the study- using vaccine adverse event reporting data in the way they have make the results invalid.
All global data suggest vaccine associated myocarditis is a rare and typically mild side effect of vaccines in adolescents, and benefits from vaccines *far* outweigh risks even at much lower incidence rates than we have currently in the UK.
Lot's of data now to suggest myocarditis is strongly associated with SARS-CoV-2 infection, and recent work also suggesting COVID-19 related myocarditis is far more common than vaccine associated myocarditis (in 16+ adults at least).
No, it doesn't say that- it says VAERS data isn't meant to be used this way, and this msg is being co-opted by anti-vaxx groups. Which it is - and has done *huge* damage. Many have gone through the reports in detail & pointed out issues. Can the authors correct what they said?
Given the *huge* influence the platforming of this problematic study on media has had - putting out messaging that is incorrect, and encouraging vaccine hesitancy, I think the authors have a responsibility to correct this.
There are detailed rebuttals: sciencebasedmedicine.org/dumpster-divin…
The authors need to read and respond to this. It's unacceptable to put out a study based on cases that clearly weren't vaccine associated myocarditis and make claims about risks.