🧵The Swedish Deception

Extensive study on Sweden's covid strategy has been published in Nature. Contains extensive official documents and internal emails.

Very informative, let's take a look and compare to the UK

nature.com/articles/s4159…
2/ Sweden never officially admitted following herd immunity as a strategy, but internal docs show this was a significant consideration in policy decisions
3/ Internally Sweden saw children and schools as a way of facilitating herd immunity whole publicity claiming children didn't play a role in transmission
4/ Remember Viners April systematic review?
"Schools don't play a significant role in transmission"
We had less likely to be infected, then less likely to infect, then "community transmission" then it was no need for measures as all the kids have been infected already
5/ Viners report is still quoted in the Green Book for LA, its also quoted in some of the Swedish documents
PHEs tame paediatricians still claiming its just "community transmission"
After writing this report Viner was brought into SAGE meetings
6/ FOI requests regularly denied and redacted
Plan focused on "not spreading fear" they persuaded themselves not telling the truth was in the public interest

Protecting the economy prioritised
6/ Very much like the "stop living in fear" "end of lockdown anxiety" articles we were flooded with by media.

This was the same time as eat out to help out...
7/Sweden relied almost entirely on their own studies ignoring international evidence just like the UK, eg

DfE on school transmission, their masks survey, air filters. Despite large amounts of evidence DfE only looks at their own often underpowered studies, often poor methods
8/ The sentence above

"Elderly people were administered morphine instead of oxygen despite available supplies"🤯
Horrific, sounds like a lot like a cull

UK care home home scandal⬇️
9/ Sweden saw keeping any measures out of schools as an important part of the strategy, withholding testing means they could deny having any evidence of transmission, however now data on longcovid and harms of losing relatives is mounting

Took ages to get testing into UK schools
10/ Unlike most other countries school attendance remained mandatory, parents were fined for keeping children off to protect CEV kids/ family

This is exactly UK policy, see @Sandyboots2020 @SafeEdForAll_UK @Parents_Utd @_f4vl @OneVoice_Group @cv_cev for many examples
11/ Swedish authorities misrepresented and manipulated the data they did have on children's role in transmission, so those using Swedish data to argue against measures in schools were using unreliable evidence
12/ Previously released internal emails show Ludvigsson and Tegnell finding an increase in child mortality and then deciding how to make this inconvenient fact go away
13/ Lack of transparency on data

Schools not informing parents of outbreaks like UK
Outbreaks not reported, remember the UK cases vs outbreak reporting that fudged the scale of the problem particularly autumn/winter 2020
14/ Care home deaths cover up
15/ As I said earlier, lying to prevent fear and worry was considered to be for the greater good.

Thou shall not question your Government
16/ No gov evidence provided until April, like UK, lots of redactions and issues with FOI requests, hard to see how guidence was produced
17/ Hmm refusal to answer FOIs, I think Swedish journalists have now gotten a lot more information out of their government than we have in the UK
18/
19/ In Sweden they deleted emails requested, in the UK the main deleting has been over contracts to chums, when it comes to pandemic strategy the UK just refuse
20/ In April Sweden set up a new committee that would oversee decisions in secrecy
21/ The UK did this in July
Remember the Joint Biosecurity Centre?They were apparently responsible for the chilli peppers alert levels

Costs a lot of money but we never hear about them
22/ Sweden were very selective with which experts they conferred with

Those academics who disagreed found themselves in difficult situations
Need to go pretend to be a responsible adult, will go back to do the rest of this later in the evening
23/ "Don't be alarmist"
"Fear monger"
"Lockdown lovers"

Government gaslighting in Sweden as in UK was aided by media compliance, and gov experts

Thinking schools again
24/ Critics of the government were attacked by the media

I'm thinking how @IndependentSage and @dgurdasani1 have been treated at times by media and other academics

Debate occurred via newspaper opinion pieces, like the UK
25/ Expert advice was ignored

Didn't deal with air filtration, transmission in schools or variants
26/ If you haven't read recent SAGE papers, this is exactly what the UK government is currently doing and has done since mid 2020

SAGE have been recommending ventilation and filtration in schools for over a year and a half
27/ The UK has repeatedly been an outlier for similar reasons
28/ Media give a disproportionate sized platform to pro infection experts
29/ Sweden started with an influenza plan, assuming there was no way to stop the spread

A small group had a disproportionate influence on policy
30/ In August 2020 the UK government ignored SAGE after meeting with Tegnell, Heneghan, Gupta, Dingwall

No circuit breakers, they tried to keep everything open, gaslighted us, and a lot of ppl died as a result
31/ Full strategy developed behind closed doors, never properly communicated to the public, Sweden continue with misleading information, talking points not followed up with action

"Doing all we can to..."
32/ The report has a certain repetitiveness regarding asymptomatic spread,masks,and schools
Also they downplayed scale of spread repeatedly while claiming herd immunity was close,which surely requires lots of infections?🤷‍♂️

UK has had Freedom day and living with the virus day now
33/ How many press briefings have we seen in the UK where we couldn’t get straight answers, when the advisors diplomatically talked around the facts
34/ Lack of meaningful political opposition means that citizens cannot change the pandemic strategy through their voting choices at the next election

Wake up @LabourParty!
35/ Intentional misinformation facilitated the spread of the virus, refusal to make changes to the influenza plan despite the evidence
36/ Authorities didn't trust the Public enough to be straight with the public

Recommendations makes legal protections more difficult
37/ Consequence of letting it rip was increased inequality of social justice
38/ Sweden knew about the inequality, they blamed foreigners

How many UK pundits have been overly focused on weight in regards to covid?
39/ In Sweden people were expected to take personal responsibility for their own risk, ignoring asymptomatic cases, if vulnerable ppl get sick its likely their fault

Bit like current UK thinking offering LFTs just to the vulnerable
40/ Essentially the Swedish strategy is one which accommodates middle/upper class
41/ That's the report, now a few extra considerations

Mid March Tegnell and UK were trying to persuade others to adopt herd immunity

From Italian ministers⬇️
42/ There is a pre pandemic link with Tegnell and Giesecke to the UK, both studies at London school of tropical medicine, Whitty was also there
43/ UK was also in talks with Netherlands about Herd immunity in mid March
44/ Once again the parallels with Netherlands and Sweden and UK are clear to see

Here's a thread like mine from a Dutch perspective
45/ Whilst writing I'm seeing this is being retweeted in lots of different countries

Policy convergence, particularly in Western world isn't coincidence, I've been tracking jt throughout the pandemic

A brief look at other countries⬇️
46/ Schools are the key to a herd immunity strategy, this is why so much effort has been to keep mitigations out

Long thread of threads looking at all policy choices on schools throughout the pandemic pandemic
47/ Previously sensible counries appearing to go mad at the moment is the produce ofa year year disinformation campaign

A very long look at the network of overlapping interests⬇️
48/ I would like to see more comparison threads like this for other countries, I'll compile them into threads to add to my pinned tweet, been working on the international perspective

Also, if you haven't already the JCVI minutes are interesting
49/ This is what living with it is starting to look like in the UK, overflow tents in hospital car parks, although this isn't getting media attention

The management notes on language feels very Swedish

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More from @karamballes

Mar 24
While there are ppl in the BBC engaged in intentional minimising, I think a greater number of reporters are surrounded with misinterpretation and don't understand the nuances when scientists explain

Not enough journalists are scientifically literate
To be honest I think we have an issue with the science curriculum and exam structure as clearly intelligent ppl, well educated in others lack basic functional understanding of scientific principles
It feels like there is a hierarchy of the acceptability of ignorance

In English the inability to do the basics, bad grammar and poor spelling,are considered by many to be a source of shame or embarrassment
Read 13 tweets
Mar 24
They said..
Scrap masks to get back to normal
Stop isolating contacts
Stop testing
Stop isolating positive cases
That will end the disruption

Over 200k student off sick last week and schools moving to rotas due to lack of staff

So this is back to normality then?
1/
2/ They said the best place for children is in school

We said we agree, but if schools aren't made safe then we will face continued disruption and increasing burden on staff and students health

They said
Ventilation and filtration wasn't needed
Long covid wasn't an issue
3/ Masks were damaging education
Transmission in schools wasn't an issue

They claimed it wasn't the virus causing disruption, it was the measures

So all the measures are gone, they got their way, yet the disruption is increasing

Looks like issue was the virus not the measures
Read 10 tweets
Mar 23
🧵Sunak on @LBC talking about how freeports will boost jobs, because business will get big incentives

How much do those incentives cost us? Because it looks a lot like hes paying businesses to set up an onshore tax haven with reduced employment rights
2/ Freeports are sold as areas where normal rules/taxes are suspended, however the libertarian think tanks see the end outcome as essentially the privatisation of a port/city, when you've got ppl like Peter Thiel involved in a project...
3/ Consider that Freeport contract was handed to P&Os parent company and Singham from IEA is heavily involved in the project
Read 9 tweets
Mar 20
🧵Oh dear Conservative Woman really is quite extemist

Here they report on two failed court cases by Hoare and Jackson
2/ They claim there was convincing evidence about the dangers of vaccines, actually its a load of guff from HART and other similar groups
3/ I see the I'm not antivax,just anti this vax mask is slipping, now all child vax is collateral damage for the greater good?
Read 10 tweets
Mar 19
🧵A failure to accept reality, the unsustainability of normality, and those seeking to rewrite history.

To start with the living with covid plan hasn't even been fully implemented yet and we already see a new wave rising
2/ First of all @sajidjavid made claims cases and hospitalisations were still falling, and wasn't pulled up in an interview that this wasn't true.

Then we are told rising cases are no cause for concern, the we are told to "brace", but at least we have more "freedom" than others Image
3/ Messaging is pandemic over, I thought the plan was to treat it like flu and other viruses, however the "Living with Covid" plan doesn't do this, instead it tries to pretend covid no longer exists

Chicken pox is notable in schools but not covid?
Read 35 tweets
Mar 11
🧵Schools should be included as a vital part of an inquiry

I have kept a detailed timeline for exactly this purpose, children and staff have faced a reckless attitude to their personal health and due to dangerous ideology education suffered preventable disruption
2/ Mid March 2020 we were told schools need to stay open to help build up immunity
Then in April we were told children rarely get infected and are considerably less infectious

This was from Viners paper for Gov
3/ Schools were partially closed April and May, for around 6-8 weeks depending on their holidays

Staff were in school with keyworker and vulnerable children and had to juggle trying to set up remote learning

Nurseries, AP, SEND special schools stayed fully open
Read 31 tweets

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