Thread by @EwanMacKenna

1/15 There's a rewriting of history by people who wanted lockdowns, and questioning it sees the worst gas-lighting and abuse. So a rare thread on my part dealing in facts, not in emotion, and thus removing making it personal.

2/15 It's often said 6.5m died of Covid, but this is misleading for a number of reasons. A) There's the OF versus WITH debate. B) Many sadly would have been killed by Covid no matter what we did, as seen by nursing homes in lockdown and so on around something you can't keep out.

3/15 The reality was and is that most were at minimum risk. In Ireland, four in five deaths from Covid-19 had at least three medical conditions, with 4.2 conditions being the average per person. They needed protecting, instead the rest were put at risk. thejournal.ie/covid-deaths-p…

4/15 So what did we do to the vast majority? For starters, exercise obviously helped but we closed gyms and limited movement often to 2/5km from home. This hurt the worst off most as they don't have home gyms and space. irishtimes.com/health/2022/08…

5/15 In this sphere, we also stopped children playing sport, leading to an increase in obesity, which in turn increased not just risk from Covid illness but an array of diseases going forward. uwm.edu/news/pandemic-…

6/15 Children, despite being at next to no risk, weren't just physically hurt. They also had their mental development badly hit by restrictions as well as their education. theguardian.com/education/2022…

7/15 If the young were one of the innocent groups hardest hit, the other was the poor. Our reaction to Covid drove a quarter of a billion people into abject poverty, where death rates are often higher than Covid. oxfam.org/en/press-relea….

8/15 The flipside of this was inequality and a new irreversible economic future. Billionaires made $5tn during Covid, more than previous 14 years combined. A new billionaire was created every 30 hours as well. There's no going back on that. oxfam.org/en/press-relea…

9/15 Meanwhile the economic impact for most was seen since late last year after printing money and slashing production. In the US in November inflation was 7pc. In the EU by January (all pre-war and energy spikes) it was 6pc. Similar trends were all over from Canada to UK.

10/15 Then there's mental health which doesn't just mean suicide (btw takes time to happen and measure) but quality of life. Lockdowns doubled your risk of mental health symptoms and that's just at the start of the consequences of lockdowns. (theconversation.com/lockdowns-doub…)

11/15 As an example of the previous around mental health, where I am in Portugal, anti-depressant sales have been rising sharply throughout the pandemic into the present. sulinformacao.pt/en/2022/01/mai…

12/15 Then there are the other physical diseases that were ignored due to Covid. Cancer is just one example.(Some will say hospitals were overwhelmed but even when they weren't, like in summer 2021 in Ireland, they were cut back until end of year anyway.) telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/12/0…

13/15 And when it comes to treating those and the many extra in all sorts of dire need of help, the economic collapse this helped start, along with the debt run up, will naturally see cuts to vital public services. People will die due to that. dw.com/en/whos-paying…

14/15 So all that was for what? Indeed countries like Sweden (who made huge mistakes early too by the way) tended to fare the same over the course of this. And without same restrictions, mental health and child development weren't hit the same way there. reuters.com/article/us-hea…

15/15 Thus, the good lockdowns did has been overstated, the bad is ignored by those who were warned, and the consequences are incoming. And that's all without the moral and civil rights debate.

Abusive terms like far-right and granny killer change none of these facts.

Fin.