Thread by @karamballes

🧵As other countries are ramping up use of LFTs while UK gov want to go the other way

Going to guess this comes alongside end of mandatory isolation if you have covid, as current release policy won't work without them

UK Gov thinks its got an "Endgame" plan...

https://twitter.com/0bj3ctivity/status/1479899238851088388

2/ Scrapping testing has been pushed by GBD advocates for over a year, gov has been considering ending free LFTs for some time with "operation ramp down" and scaling back test and trace, if Omicron hadn't arrived they'd probably already have announced this.

3/ Are they embracing "The pandemic stops when we stop testing" flawed stance?

Is it the idea that this kind of health spending damages wealth?

It does suggest they are seeing Omicron as the last variant they'll have to react to

4/ Yet this kind of thinking also seems to go alongside "There will be lots more variants, we can't keep locking down all the time"

Yet there have been other variants like Delta Plus that haven't triggered a reaction like Omicron has, and we haven't lockdowned for that

5/ But we can't predict what variants we will get and when, we could be really unprepared for a future variant

Listening to @bbc5live atm, presenter and both guests all agreeing they think covid will be like a cold or flu by Spring...

The joys of pundits

6/ As with Freedom Day I think the UK government wants to claim they are the the first country to beat the virus and "transition into an endemic state"

Doesn't matter if its true, or that "endemic" covers a broad range of outcomes which might not be necessarily benign

7/ We see this with Johnson's recent performances in Parliament
"We kept the economy going while other countries faced restrictions and that's why we have highest growth in G7"

Due to failing to control the virus we took the greatest economic hit, so starting from a lower ...

8/ base our % growth looks good but we haven't recovered the damage of mismanagement so other countries with smaller bounce back growth are actually in a stronger position.

The narrative they want seems clear, vaccines and Tory "boldness" got us out faster than others

9/ Tories will claim they have saved the economy "vaccines were a brexit bonus that rejoiner Labour would have prevented.

They are trying to portray Labour as "lockdown fanatics" using false equivalence of protective measures like filtration to lockdown

10/ This will allow them to continue beating the Brexit drum at the next election, they think they can maintain their false image as the party thats good for the economy
"So what if they are corrupt, Labour will wreck the economy with lockdowns at first whiff of a new variant"

11/ And they know a large section of the media will help them build this narrative

"Labour would have us beholden to the doomongers on SAGE"
Spectator busy working on this with their selective use of SAGE modelling

12/ Spectator have their SAGE tracker

First rule is always compare to worst case scenario, then ignore the changes in behaviour and measures that come after the modelling

Better still claim this means the measures weren't necessary

13/ The "fearmongering" made ppl change behaviour and reduce contacts, masks reintroduced in places, more use of LFTs, some WFH,

Now look at the other scenarios the Spectator skipped over

🤔

14/ Those in glass houses...

Let's look at the Spectators track record

Thomas who produced a report Spring 2020 the original UK "lockdowns would kill more than covid" report started writing for Spectator later that year...

15/ Let's see how he got on

https://twitter.com/karamballes/status/1428288659799826436?t=9FPnGuzXvSu1S4Wh8iDqXg&s=19

16/ The Spectator was also where a precursor letter to the GBD in late September was published

Heneghan also writes for the Spectator

https://twitter.com/karamballes/status/1462548831262818308?t=9FPnGuzXvSu1S4Wh8iDqXg&s=19

17/ @GYamey and @gorskon wrote a great piece on the Great Barrington Declaration and its links to the AIER
blogs.bmj.com/bmj/2021/09/13…

18/ It took a month for the GBD to respond, when Kulldorff did respond was it via a journal? No it was the Spectator that published a weak defence claiming no links to AIER and that they were being silenced
Spectator has constantly minimised and supported a herd immunity strategy

19/ I don't understand why Fraser Nelson and the rest of the Spectator crowd get platformed by rest of the media as serious commentators when their output seems intentionally dishonest

https://twitter.com/AdamJKucharski/status/1473575940932448256?t=RE-AUNxvyW_DdD9zvevT-Q&s=19

20/ Heneghans costs of Lockdown article, turns out 92% of the deaths he counted were actually covid

Could he make such a basic mistake on accident?

Fool or fraud, either way he's wrong, but the Spectator will never apologise for its output

https://twitter.com/_johnbye/status/1380573201500147714?t=RE-AUNxvyW_DdD9zvevT-Q&s=19

21/ Spectator also platforms David Paton , member of antivax conspiracy theorists that includes Michael "vaccines are global depopulation" Yeadon as a member
Paton also involved in the Collateral Global sponsored APPG, here he is arguing against child vax

https://twitter.com/karamballes/status/1451439991234703365?t=nsF_jr9hAhhInvkQCtHetA&s=19

22/ Spectator is currently promoting an article by Heneghan and his Cochrane colleague Jefferson that focuses on one bad DfE study to claim masks don't work in classrooms

Heneghan also responsible for pushing the "Danish study" claiming masks don't work at all

23/ Turn on @LBC and @TomSwarbrick1 is asking @nadhimzahawi "Now covid is becoming endemic when will students no longer have to wear masks"

There is a review in a couple of weeks, Zahawi also says they will still be sending out LFTs through January, denies they'll stop.

24/ I suspect they'll wait until Spring before scrapping LFTs, as they are desperate to scrap masks first as it wins Johnson more support from CRG and RW media, they will use keeping LFTs as the reason they can get rid of masks

Zahawi again talks about protecting the economy

25/ Here is Zahawi doing the rounds, he thinks the UK will be one of the first major economies to transition to endemic, id suggest Japan with their focus on clean air are doing much better at living with it

26/ So we can expect the "Endgame" to scale back testing and look to scrap isolation, ignoring asymptomatic cases.

What about vaccination?
"We can't keep boosting ppl each year"

https://twitter.com/0bj3ctivity/status/1479918098035707907?t=Mlk_vlrO9dUGxHTv5lWcBQ&s=19

27/ JCVI has decided there's no need for 4th boosters at the moment, not going to question that however I wonder if the direction of travel is suggesting that they might be seeking to wind up the vax programme

Only boosters for those in the most at risk groups, like the flu?

28/ Except we off flu vaccination to an increasing number of people each winter including children, are they suggesting covid vax boosters would be offered to less people than the flu vax is?

Would be an odd decision

29/ Reminded of this section of JCVI minutes when they discussed 12-15 vaccination

"In the absence of vaccination future generations would be exposed to covid in children with relatively mild disease"

30/ At the time I thought it sounded odd, wondered if this showed the long turn plan was for covid to become another "childhood" disease like chicken pox, which unlike other countries we don't bother to vaccinate against.

It also shows they expect most kids to get infected

31/ So is this the Government's vision of what endemic looks like?
Boosters for vulnerable while just letting it permanently circulate in children who provide "booster infections" to adults?
No wonder they don't want to invest in ventilation and filtration, infections the plan?

32/ This seems fundamentally flawed, putting way too much faith in natural immunity, assuming future variants won't be problematic, ignoring potential harms of covid, be it immediate, long covid or longer term impacts the data is hinting at

Ignoring a lot of inconvenient facts

33/ Minutes of the JCVI makes more sense if this is the planned strategy

https://twitter.com/karamballes/status/1454235882400145414?t=0TG-JXGQsXhh3QxeZFJSzg&s=19

34/ 5-11 JCVI notes said they didn't want to make a decision yet as they wanted to see how many children had already acquired natural immunity

How do you feel about government choosing to make covid a new permanent children's disease?

https://twitter.com/karamballes/status/1475824437362675712?t=0xwgCtpipTtAFkzEB45xlQ&s=19

35/ As @chrischirp says, we didn't take this approach to TB, measles, smallpox, polio and many other diseases, so why is gov considering this now?

To claim victory over covid by next election? Internal party politics or just a shift in ideology on health?

https://twitter.com/chrischirp/status/1480108658260389888?t=czeMf5WgXBaJguBExsbQfw&s=19

36/ And where did this vision come from? Because it looks a lot like we are being softened up by relentless media messaging to accept what looks a lot like the GBDs vision for managing ( or more accurately, not managing) covid in the long term

https://twitter.com/MarvinH2_G2/status/1480178410060193797?t=czeMf5WgXBaJguBExsbQfw&s=19

37/ Without an enforced clean air act this vision of what endemic looks like seems destined to increase inequality
How are the immunicompromised supposed to live normal lives in this vision?
The disadvantaged will struggle to afford LFTs so will face higher risks,

38/ More children will face avoidable damage to their health, JCVI did suggest children could be vaccinated privately in the future (for purpose of foreign holidays), so I get a feeling of a return to the entrenched health inequality that we saw during the Victorian age

39/ Of course long covid would throw a real spanner into the Government's plans, so its fortunate the have experts willing to claim long covid is imaginary, bet that's a relief to the thousands apon thousands of sufferers...

https://twitter.com/karamballes/status/1479002434164953088?t=ncYO5FHZtnfEWr9bEesZ7A&s=19