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Sir Karam Bales ✊ 🇺🇦 Profile picture
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Apr 9 • 49 tweets • 21 min read
🧵A rough timeline of Gaslighting on Children and Schools
April 2020 - April 2022

Triggered by this exchange between Deepti and Shamez

UK policy, SAGE,JCVI etc had generally relied on their own studies and data, international work rarely referenced in meeting minutes
2/ Initially some gov advisors claimed shutting schools could be detrimental as schools helped build up herd immunity

Then Lockdown came and the narrative became children less likely to be infected, less likely to transmit when infected
3/ This comes from a study by Russel Viner, then President of @RCPCHtweets

He selected studies, many not on covid and concluded children would have little impact on transmission, partially because of the thinking most ppl would get infected anyway
4/ This led to unknown members of SAGE inviting Viner to be the expert advisor on covid transmission and children, he would also go on to be a source of evidence for the JCVI

The review claiming children unlikely to transmit still appeared in LAs Green Book in 2021
5/ PHE commissioned UEA to look at the effectiveness of different lockdown measures, conclusion, school closures and cancelling mass gatherings had the greatest impact on reducing R, gov chose to never quote this study, it was effectively binned
itv.com/news/anglia/20…
6/ PHE then did a study on transmission, whilst most students weren't in school and concluded transmission isnt an issue in schools

Media and others assumed this means children arent as infectious, not that smaller class sizes cuts chains of transmission
7/ August 2020 the media claimed schools were actually safer than other workplaces as only 1 teacher died, this was infact demonstrably untrue

Organising complaints through regulator I got retractions published, not on front page like original lie
8/ Jenny Harroes told us children are more likely to get hit by a bus than catch covid.....
9/ DfE Guidence for September apparently appeared out of the ether, claims there were no discussions or meeting to write it
10/ November, study on transmission in schools
Not enough evidence to know was spun as evidence of no transmission
11/ ONS was found to have breached guidelines with the way it represented data on risk to education staff, minimising the risk, statistics regulator reprimanded ONS who are normally pretty good
12/ Jan 2021 after schools were eventually included in lockdown Hancock and Johnson saying schools were vectors of transmission
Halfon had a cosy Ed committee with a one sided selection of experts concluding transmission isn't an issue
13/ A caller to BBC5live said they had a large number of children on their ward
RCPCH said this was unverified misinformation and pushed to have the clip taken down, months later the data shows there was a rise in hospitalisations
14/ March 2021 new PHE study finds transmission isn't an issue in schools
Method was to go in and do a sera study on students in on that day, children isolating eg confirmed cases and contacts were therefor not included
15/ Gov advisor Dingwall and Woolhouse claim cases have never risen with schools return

Both also claim we never needed to locksdown
16/ Ladhani, look no rose, see what happened next
Absoud, masks not needed due to cross protection from adults
Petersen, schools shouldn't tell communities about outbreaks
17/ Remember in mid 2021 when we were told vaccines had fixed everything, when asking about vaccine status of cases was private medical information

Complaints made to employers just for asking
18/ To get rid of contact tracing PHE decided to run trials where it was replaced with testing

Students and parents weren't asked for consent but apparently not doing this tests was unethical
19/ May schools infection survey
20/ Debate on schools has been filled with gaslighting and accusations, questioning official line is "pile ons" then calls for grown up debate, followed by the snide comments
21/ Gov suppressed PHE data on Delta in schools as it chose to remove masks
22/ Viner had argued against masks in schools throughout, when I introduced he then argued for their removal.

Here he is August 2020 saying masks don't work
23/ Viner then claimed on #r4today after masks had been removed, that masks and social distancing would keep children safe as reassurance

We didn't have social distancing, masks had been removed
24/ Unethical not to do trials without consent

Apparently unfeasible for schools to ask parents for consent, not like this do it all the time, this is when Munro blocked me

Don't ask for data of setting when PHE won't publish it
25/ Children may have inherent cellular immunity, as they don't get severe symptoms they can't be at risk of long covid🤷‍♂️

No study for isolation so how can we know it works🤦‍♂️

Might be good immunological reason for letting kids get infected
26/ June 2021 a thread of other examples of minimising compared to what the data was showing
27/ Daily contact tracing trial results, lots of headlines but the details show the study is a complete mess
28/ Then we get onto the question of child vax
29/ Dingwall, hand washing does more harm than covid

Finn with adults vaxxed do we need to vax kids

Viner and Farrar cut testing

Dingwall, natural immunity better than vax
30/ Thread of arguments made against child vax including cross T-Cell immunity?!
31/ Ladhani, if JCVI don't want to vax healthy kids, it could be worse for unhealthy kiss

Retweets LJ who has an antivax podcast her tweet, UfT and T4R are disinfo groups

Children naturally resistant to novel viruses
32/ Forget GBD, it's Independent SAGE who are the dangerous lobbyists

Never complained about GBD

Home imprisonment, however he has been supporting UsForThem, mentioned in the #HARTleaks
33/ Those urging caution had too much airtime, just look how much access and influence they've had with politicians
None
34/ Yeah it's Independent SAGE who should be the subject of in inquiry

No mention of the GBD and their meetings with governments?

Hmmm
35/ Independent SAGE had a child speak for a few minutes about their long covid, trolls piled onto, paediatricians decided to attack Independent SAGE for their "political agenda"

Yet they keep complaining children's voices aren't being heard🤷‍♂️
36/ UK Paediatrics claimed Delta was actually milder, claimed American Paediatric association were being misleading and attacked professionals in the states
37/ That in 2021 they were still trying to claim infections were occuring in school is staggering
38/ Ladhani describing vax as "novel technology" but don't dare accuse him of using anti vax tropes

Munro allow younger children to get infected

Ladhani, so many kids infected is there a point in vaccinating?
39/ JCVI decide not to vax, minutes from meetings, guess who were advising
40/ We then move away from claims children less likely to get infected and rarely transmit to minimising hospitalisations and deaths
41/ Viner and others argued against 5-11 vax
42/ Long covid is psychological
43/ Its only 1% of millions of children after all
44/ And the latest, that made me decide to put this together

Remember it would be unreasonable apparently to read this as suggesting hospitalisations were mild

End🧵For now...
Short bonus, start of 2020 @RCPCHtweets wrote about the importance of improving air quality in classrooms, impacts of pollution etc were clear, called for action

Pandemic hit, where have the calls for improved ventilation gone?
Suggest air filters and ventilation should be a priority, yet the same people dismiss it

Another attack on Independent SAGE and "unproven technology" eg air filters, not seen a single study apparently

Dingwall also claimed there's been no studies so shouldn't invest
We provided the studies and evidence and guess what......

No response

🤔
Now look at Sweden⬇️
Now hide the bodies...
"May or may not..."

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More from @karamballes

Sir Karam Bales ✊ 🇺🇦 Profile picture
Apr 9
Report this tweet, its based on VAER which the account says is verified, this is a misrepresentation, VAER isn't verified

Anti-vax disinformation from HART members and Ros Jones, also of UsForThem Image
2/ They followed up after they are I'm VAERs, they are self reported cases, unverified!

@SaferToWait = disinformation ImageImage
3/ Here is a list of the people involved and a look at Safer to Wait

Read 6 tweets
Sir Karam Bales ✊ 🇺🇦 Profile picture
Apr 6
🧵Even the language the government is using is straight out of the GBD play book, well they've got everything they wanted now, when we see the full consequences remember who is responsible

It's why GBD are busy trying to rewrite history
2/ We have an attempt to declare that lockdowns and all measures don't work, this is about absolving the pro infection crowd of all responsibility
"This was inevitable, nothing could have stopped these deaths and damage to health"

Using UK APPG to do this
3/ They go beyond this, to trying to shift blame.

Tucker of AIER/Brownstone supported by GBD and others calling for vengeance

This is incitement to violence, they know the target market for this message
Read 20 tweets
Sir Karam Bales ✊ 🇺🇦 Profile picture
Apr 6
#r4today "Cases appear to be peaking in children"

Herd immunity? Or is it that some areas have already started Easter holidays and lots of schools have gone to partial closures due to lack of staff?
#edutwitter
Yesterday we had "more children back in school" claiming there was less covid absence, only problem with that is that absence increased, just illness logged as covid went down, due to sick kids being off but not tested
As you can see in this joint letter from the school leaders unions

Read 4 tweets
Sir Karam Bales ✊ 🇺🇦 Profile picture
Apr 5
Short🧵
2020
Summer they promised Test and Trace as a way of removing measures and then test and trace didn't work

Autumn they promised schools a containment framework and then didn't implement it when needed
2021 they promised data not dates, then ignored the data on Delta and removed measures

This is what they do, they give false assurances to get what they want and then renage on them straight away

We see it on funding, on taxes, on organisational changes to institutions
The "we have anti virals now so no need for any measures" was GBD sophistry, production is limited and will take a while to scale up so making policy decisions that considerably increase demand of a bottlenecked supply wasnt going to work well
Read 4 tweets
Sir Karam Bales ✊ 🇺🇦 Profile picture
Apr 4
🧵Ofsted report on early years

This is getting a lot of media attention, being help up as the harms of lockdown, many using this to argue measures should never have been introduced and lockdowns were a mistake

I don't think the report shows this
gov.uk/government/pub…
2/ To start with, how was the report produced?

It's survey based, no stats or numbers included.

70 providers were inspected over the chosen time period
38 childminders
32 nurseries

So starting with a very small pool Image
3/ They then sampled some of these inspections, so a fraction of the 70, maybe only a handful of each type of provider

"Cannot assume the findings to be representative" The whole report is merely illustrative Image
Read 35 tweets
Sir Karam Bales ✊ 🇺🇦 Profile picture
Apr 2
🧵UK Childrens Commissioner

Look at their responsibilities

One of the rights they are supposed to uphold is the right to health and to be protected from infectious disease

All de Souza and previous incumbent have done is call for "normality"
2/ They speak for all children but with a particular focus on thr vulnerable

Any mention of CEV children at risk of covid particularly the immunicompromised?

Nope
3/ They are there to hold the government to account over the impact of its policies on children, so let's put covid to one side

Independent analysis shows Sunaks decisions will drive many children into poverty, we have the evidence, we can crunch the numbers, we know this
Read 6 tweets

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