COVID-19: an overview of the evidence

[savethegrannies]

www.hartgroup.org/covid-19-evidence/
Key take-away: "The data is in: lockdowns serve no useful purpose and cause catastrophic societal and economic harms. They must never be repeated in this country."

Explain how the language was emotive borntobequiet I think what you really meant was don't say things you disagree with. Anybody can see testing in the UK has been great big fiasco. And now they are throwing good money after bad by doing rounds and rounds of tests with no purpose or end game
As I say it is now a back covering exercise.

@savethegrannies

Explain how the language was emotive borntobequiet I think what you really meant was don't say things you disagree with. Anybody can see testing in the UK has been great big fiasco. And now they are throwing good money after bad by doing rounds and rounds of tests with no purpose or end game As I say it is now a back covering exercise.

Most KS4 school students can recognise emotive language when they see it. This may help you.

www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/guides/zpr49j6/revision/2

You can even do a test! Have fun.

www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/guides/zpr49j6/test

Your language in your opening post is very emotive. The people you are quoting are mainly retired - or are clinical psychologists. Clinical psychologists are usually intelligent and very capable people but they have no training in infectious diseases or managing pandemics . As I said l said before they do not back up their assertions with any reputable scientific evidence.
Testing is vitally important in managing this outbreak otherwise we have no idea what is happening , and no ability to pick up new variants. There is an argument that mass lateral flow testing has not been properly thought through.
And where is your counter argument about the humanitarian disaster that is happening in Brazil , with thousands of deaths a day because there have been no viable public health measures adopted .
What are your credentials op for posting this nonsense

Thanks for this OP. It looks useful.

@borntobequiet Don’t you think emotive language from the government has played a part in terrifying the public and forcing people to comply with restrictions?

I am thinking of the ‘look into her eyes’ campaign. And the ‘anyone can spread it’ campaign. And the notorious ‘don’t kill granny’ rhetoric. Emotive language which we have been so grievously manipulated by.

Flyonawalk I actually think a lot of people are secretly feeling rather silly that they were taken in by the government's scaremongering. Eg people washing their shopping when the research on covid surviving on surfaces is finally in, and suggests such people were/are basically wasting their time (and behaving in just as extreme a way as radical conspiracy theorists imo).
It's hard to admit you've been made to look a fool. Far easier to double down on your views, regardless of the fact that these are misguided, not grounded in science and have been manipulated by corrupt politicians and their mates in the tech sector.

Well yes. But they know they’re doing it and I discount much of what they say because I recognise it. I don’t blame them for doing it because frankly, some people aren’t frightened enough.

Anyone who doesn’t expect to be manipulated by governments, political parties, advertisers and others with an interest in their money or their allegiance is naive. I was merely pointing out to the OP that by using emotive language she could expect to not be taken seriously.

borntobequiet a close family relative was so frightened she still wouldn't let family members hug her the day before she died of cancer. Is that frightened enough for you?

But people were washing food when there was scant information about surface transmission. There’s nothing foolish about taking precautions in the absence of evidence to the contrary.

This has been an evolving situation with scientists working incredibly hard to understand this new pandemic. Just because things have changed doesn’t mean anyone had been played for a fool.

Except perhaps the people who fall for conspiracy theory nutjobs and non-credible ‘scientists’. They are fools.

People are still washing food now! Read mumsnet 🤣. As for none credible scientists that's a very subjective statement. I think what you mean is scientists that have been silenced. Of which there are a great many. That's not conspiracy theory. That's fact.

OP, people aren't interested in facts, especially on Mumsnet.

I had done a thread about Covid facts. Studies on variants, vaccines reduce variants, etc. Each point I made I provided a link to a study supporting what I was saying. A poster reported it for "misinformation" though couldn't provide any evidence to the contrary. Mumsnet took the post down and still haven't provided any evidence it was misinformation

People will believe what they want to believe.
If facts like lockdown have had much wider drastic effect than Covid itself, unreliable statistics and tests results and so on.... then that means that people were wrong all along and they would look silly. We cant have that, so they will dismiss any counter argument no matter what evidence you have.

@savethegrannies

People are still washing food now! Read mumsnet 🤣. As for none credible scientists that's a very subjective statement. I think what you mean is scientists that have been silenced. Of which there are a great many. That's not conspiracy theory. That's fact.

Many many scientist, academics, news reported have been silenced.

Talk radio have lost their youtube channel as they were anti lockdown, how dare they demand evidence for lockdowns and masks.

There is only one way to think now, if not, your silenced.

@savethegrannies I suspect that a lot of people are not feeling silly at all actually. Specifically regarding the shopping thing, since advice at the time was acknowledged as been based on the foundation that we just didn’t know and some people may want to consider that level of protecting themselves if they are especially vulnerable. No one I knew or myself felt the need to go to that level but I understand why people would. Hindsight doesn’t mean we have ignore the circumstances as they were at the time.

Your assessment of ‘silliness’ is belittling and implies that you rather enjoy being contrary. It doesn’t take a high level of empathy to appreciate that people can have very real concerns even if you think those concerns are false.

I don't enjoy being contrary. I just think people should stick to facts. I read lots of stuff from scientists around the time the food washing became a thing. To a man or woman they said it was completely OTT.

MrsHastings I think I saw the thread abour covid facts. As you say when people make their minds up you are wasting your time. Disappointing MN took it down but I think media everywhere have come under enormous pressure to confirm to a certain line during all this.

The government still haven't provided any evidence to the education sector why secondary school pupils have to wear masks while seated.
The government still haven't provided evidence as to why hospitality cant open alongside non essential retail, which is why there is a judicial review.

This past year people have complied what the governmen have said and a lot done so in fear due to the media, without question.

When it all comes out in the wash as my nana used to say, how the government friends contracts have profited billions, media manipulation, unreliable tests and statistics, I think we will all look silly and ask ourselves why we didn't challenge it sooner.

@savethegrannies

MrsHastings I think I saw the thread abour covid facts. As you say when people make their minds up you are wasting your time. Disappointing MN took it down but I think media everywhere have come under enormous pressure to confirm to a certain line during all this.

Exactly. It's a bit like when we throw a paddy and go in a mood with our partners, then half way through you realise your wrong or have blown it out of proportion, but you cant go back now, you cant lose face, admit you were wrong so you just have to keep going

I said that in March 2020. Sadly the main legal cases against lockdowns failed in 2020 in the UK and since then the legal successes have had to be hitched to a discrimination law to succeed.

Now is the time for the courts to hold the state to account on our huge breaches of masks and freedoms. I will be having ceremonial burning of my mask the day they are no longer forced on us. I cannot wait.

@savethegrannies That’s a very good point about it being easier to stick with first response rather than change. It shows the sunk-cost fallacy on an enormous scale.

I truly believe that government policy at this point is political rather than scientific. It is too destructive to admit that mistakes were made, so they keep going with the misinformation.

@savethegrannies

borntobequiet a close family relative was so frightened she still wouldn't let family members hug her the day before she died of cancer. Is that frightened enough for you?

Obviously that’s too frightened. But I know people who still insist that Covid is no worse than seasonal flu. That’s not frightened enough.

I just think people should stick to facts

Then surely you have to accept that ‘fact’ is subjective and fluid in the case of covid since it’s such a new virus. We have to work with what we’ve got a lot of the time and this means accepting theory and modelling with very little definitive information. Each strategy has to be evaluated on risk/benefit and frankly the ones proposed in your opening link are too high risk and being proposed by people who aren’t in a position to be held accountable for the results of them should they prove to cause more harm than good.

The government still haven't provided any evidence to the education sector why secondary school pupils have to wear masks while seated.
The government still haven't provided evidence as to why hospitality cant open alongside non essential retail, which is why there is a judicial review

This is what I mean, demanding ‘evidence’ in the full knowledge that no absolute evidence exists specifically for covid. Whilst I agree that the logic and process of determination for both questions should be examined and transparent it’s unrealistic to expect definitive answers that just aren’t there. It concerns me that should it be ‘proved’ later on either were unnecessary or an alternative could have been implemented that the circumstances at the time will be swept to one side like there should have been a crystal ball available.

I’m not unsympathetic to the frustration of personally believing errors have been made during this pandemic but looking at the whole picture neutrally it’s impossible to ignore circumstances as they were at the time and see that any strategy would be a gamble. Some which paid off and some which didn’t. My personal frustrations are based on actions the government chose not to take despite actual real life evidence in other countries of successful measures that meant their populations day to day lives were less affected than those in the UK.

Obviously that’s too frightened. But I know people who still insist that Covid is no worse than seasonal flu. That’s not frightened enough.

When the media print these sensationalist scare mongering headlines, mishandling information, they cant control the level of 'fright' and 'scared'. People are scared to leave their homes, hug people.

Covid is not the like the seasonal flu, no. It is however, a respiratory virus that preys on the elderly and vulnerable, much like the flu.
It's hard to determine how many people have actually died of Covid as we don't record accurately.
If someone is tested positive for Covid within 28 days of death, it goes on their death certificate, into the Covid death pill without any evidence of it actually contributing to their death.

The threat of death and serious illness of this virus is not serious enough to have society locked up and scared.

It's hard to determine how many people have actually died of Covid as we don't record accurately.
If someone is tested positive for Covid within 28 days of death, it goes on their death certificate, into the Covid death pill without any evidence of it actually contributing to their death

I agree it’s hard but the debate at the moment includes the fact that the readmittance rate for covid patients is really high and in that group there’s a significant mortality rate. These individuals largely miss the 28 day cut off and are not counted in the covid total. The result of that is that the ones erroneously counted within the 28 days from a positive test even out with the ones that miss the cut off.

Realistically we’re not going to know for a while yet, mortality rates, increases in conditions known to be triggered or aggravated by covid will all be analysed taking into account various factors and then we will be able to accurately estimate a true figure be that lower or higher in most countries. It takes time for that to happen unfortunately and I don’t think we’re close enough to the finish point for any definitive conclusions.

Many many scientist, academics, news reported have been silenced.

Talk radio have lost their youtube channel as they were anti lockdown, how dare they demand evidence for lockdowns and masks.

There is only one way to think now, if not, your silenced.

@MrsHastingslikethebattle

That is complete nonsense. Academics and scientists aren't being silenced - you just need to take a look at pubmed to see the glut of coronavirus papers that have been published in the last year, many of which are controversial and don't use robust methods. If you can't find a journal to accept your paper (rare- as there is always a predatory one that will accept anything), you can stick it on a pre-print server like bioarchive and anyone can read it.

Best example of this is a paper called "Cyllage City COVID-19 outbreak linked to Zubat consumption" with authors including Gregory House and Nasus Joy which was accepted for publication in the American Journal of Biomedical Science & Research.

It was an exercise done to show how easy it is to publish fake science and how quickly it will spread:

www.researchgate.net/publication/343066384_Cyllage_City_COVID-19_Outbreak_Linked_to_Zubat_Consumption

www.the-scientist.com/critic-at-large/opinion-using-pokmon-to-detect-scientific-misinformation-68098

@savethegrannies

You have very little understanding of what a ‘fact’ is, and even less about the process of science.

Saying it’s a ‘fact’ that scientists have been silenced, whilst providing no verifiable evidence and linking to an opinion piece in your OP, doesn’t make it so.