Thread by @dgurdasani1

There's nothing remotely superior/developed about trying to 'tech' our way out of the pandemic with vaccines, therapeutics & testing while ignoring basic public health measures. Masks, ventilation, good contact tracing, support with isolation all important. Every layer matters.🧵

Vaccination and therapies don't mean other measures for prevention are superseded. Testing doesn't mean mitigations in schools not needed. I really don't understand how govt and even many scientists don't get this. It's an airborne virus - we need mitigations that address this.

And prevention is always better than treating thousands of people in hospital, and letting hundreds of thousands get long COVID. Better in terms of overall public health, long term health and life expectancy, pressures on the NHS, and even costs to health services.

The pandemic isn't going to magically disappear. This virus has a large evolutionary space and we've seen multiple large evolutionary jumps. It's not possible to predict them, but we can reduce uncertainty by suppressing transmission. This needs to be globally coordinated.

I know many have predicted the pandemic would end and become endemic multiple times over the past years. It hasn't happened, and we don't know if/when it will. I feel there is a level of privilege with thinking that just because we feel it should be over, it will be.

Nature doesn't work like that. We have to adapt. We can't hope and wish it away. Minimisation and unevidenced claims about it all ending soon only normalise inaction & prolong suffering. We need to face the problem, not deny it. Denial is costing lives, and causing suffering

I feel that many people have an idea that bad things don't happen or can't last very long. But they can and do. As a medic, I learned this very early in my work. Pathogens don't adapt to your needs - people die, and our history tells us that mass death happens.

We see signatures of this in the human genome- to many infectious diseases in different parts of the world. Because some who had an advantage survived, but so many others didn't. It's a shame to let this happen when we have the means to prevent it.

People also have a sort of belief that 'if things were so bad, surely the govt would be doing something'. I often hear this rhetoric when discussing risks to children. Many feel that if children were really at risk, our govt, and scientific advisors wouldn't allow this to happen.

But we are living in a system, where our govt corruption in a pandemic has cost people's lives. Where their prioritisation of short term gains for their own allies and ideologies have cost thousands of lives, and led to chronic disabling illness in many.

They've engaged in suppressing data, and evidence behind policy repeatedly (leaning on PHE leadership to suppress data on delta, not releasing evidence for removing masks from schools etc.). They've repeatedly ignored warnings from advisors & action that would've saved lives.

And many scientists have embraced pseudoscience, and minimisation rhetoric, and rejected the basic principles of public health- applied by many countries considered less 'developed' - successfully protecting public health, economy, education & leading far more normal lives.

JCVI literally wrote in their minutes that they thought it was advantageous for children to get infected- with a virus that has a higher mortality than most childhood illnesses and causes long-term disease in tens of thousands of children.

So this trust is rather misplaced. The fact is our children are being exposed to a virus with unknown long-term impacts. And what's known is extremely worrying- long-term persistence in tissues, neuro-degeneration, auto-immunity, renal, cardiac dysfunction and vascular disease.

It's quite hard to believe that 77,000 children and rising with long COVID have been normalised with 14,000 with chronic illness lasting more than a year. I can't think any other illness that affects children like this. Death rates higher than almost all other childhood illnesses

So, sadly no- govt, JCVI, many scientists aren't looking out for the best interests of children, and are also in denial. It doesn't matter how much of this is in good faith or bad faith, because the impact on those affected will be the same.

The pandemic impact is disproportionately among the vulnerable and disabled. So denial and pushing a normalisation narrative disproportionately impacts those who do not have the privilege to deny what's happening around them - because it affects them very directly.

Many don't have a choice - they can't engage in this hopium, because the impact on their families is massive and very real. Many have lost loved ones, many suffer from chronic illness, or care for someone who does.

Many go into work every day lacking protections. Many fear for their children and families. Many face yet another overwhelming day of looking after the sick and dying - it seems relentless and never ending. But their pain doesn't seem to be heard or acknowledged anywhere.

All they hear is that the 'NHS is not under unsustainable pressure' although no one ever seems to define what that would look like or mean. And to them it feels like they've been struggling for months and years dealing with overwhelming pain and suffering. No one seems to care.

The media is full of talk of nightclubs/pubs needing to stay open for people's mental health and business, how wearing a mask is such a huge inconvenience, how kids don't suffer, how the pandemic is going to end. Dystopian. Completely dissonant from their day to day reality.

And so many now live each day knowing their lives have been devalued by govt, many in the scientific community, and perhaps even by society. These are people who are disabled, have 'pre-existing conditions', immunocompromised, vulnerable.

So if you can afford to engage in minimisation, and hopium, do remember it's a privilege - one that many don't have. It's a privilege, with costs- to others.