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."

@thatonehasalittlecar

This scientist has much to say on many of the subjects discussed here, and is highly qualified to do so.

podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-delingpod-the-james-delingpole-podcast/id1449753062?i=1000495618783

Uh? The link doesn’t work but Delingpole is a well known contrarian journalist and climate change denier. He has no scientific training whatsoever.

Lots of scientists have been silenced. That is a fact. This is in the public domain ffs.
It became fairly clear early on in this pandemic that the BBC etc were more sympathetic to a non contrarian view of covid. This explains why Ferguson is still getting airtime despite his projections being hopelessly wrong, not to mention he was caught getting his leg over during lockdown. This is the same guy whose misguided science sentenced loads or cattle to unnecessary death during foot and mouth as I recall. There are hundreds of alternative scientists so why keep using him?
The BBC have been a joke in all this, as I keep saying. Impartial, my arse!

The link doesn’t work but Delingpole is a well known contrarian journalist and climate change denier. He has no scientific training whatsoever.

This response is a good illustration of the problem.

The Delingpole interview is with a scientist who has differing views on the pandemic to the mainstream position, so the mainstream media will not interview him. That means he only has the option of speaking to the “contrarian journalists”. But speaking to a contrarian journalist is then a reason to discredit him.

It means it’s impossible to have any kind of differing view from the dominant narrative, and maintain credibility at the same time.

We already have a word that describes this phenomenon. Totalitarianism.

Mainstream Media have to worry about advertising. For a period it became toxic to question lockdowns or even to give a platform to anybody questioning them. This explains why mainstream media have generally taken a fairly non controversial stance. This really is not rocket science; it's about money ultimately.
This should not mean the non mainstream view is automatically wrong.

@Terracotta9

The link doesn’t work but Delingpole is a well known contrarian journalist and climate change denier. He has no scientific training whatsoever.

This response is a good illustration of the problem.

The Delingpole interview is with a scientist who has differing views on the pandemic to the mainstream position, so the mainstream media will not interview him. That means he only has the option of speaking to the “contrarian journalists”. But speaking to a contrarian journalist is then a reason to discredit him.

It means it’s impossible to have any kind of differing view from the dominant narrative, and maintain credibility at the same time.

We already have a word that describes this phenomenon. Totalitarianism.

It's a little more than that - the man he is interviewing is Dr Mike Yeadon.

His ideas aren't problematic because they differ to mainstream thinking, they're problematic because they're not evidence based in the slightest.

This include leading the rumours that COVID-19 vaccination is associated with female infertility, without evidence to back up his claims. He also claimed in October that the pandemic was over.

www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/health-coronavirus-vaccines-skeptic/

Oh yeah, Mike Yeardon, the guy who said the virus would fizzle out and deaths would stop when about 50k people had died. 100k deaths later and his ‘facts’ aren’t looking so true, are they?

As for scientists being ‘silenced’ - complete nonsense. Your man Mike wrote an article for the Daily Mail, one of the most widely read news sites in the world. Just because the BBC has more sense than to give oxygen to outliers and conspiracy theorists, doesn’t mean they have been ‘silenced’.

The scientific illiterati need to get a grip.

Who cares if his prediction for the death slowdown is wrong? Look at all the wrong predictions coming from Ferguson.

The covid death reporting remains controversial anyway, and we probably won’t get an idea of the true figures for some time.

@Terracotta9

Who cares if his prediction for the death slowdown is wrong? Look at all the wrong predictions coming from Ferguson.

The covid death reporting remains controversial anyway, and we probably won’t get an idea of the true figures for some time.

Predicting figures incorrectly last year isn't the problem.

The issue is that is went ahead to publicly state the pandemic is over and that masks and lockdowns aren't necessary. This has the potential to do real harm, and no respected scientist would make such bold assumptions in a public health emergency when all experts, whatever their view, are advising caution. And as it all panned out, he was totally wrong, we had another wave Jan/Feb 2020.

As I said previously, he also claims that COVID-19 vaccination causes infertility which has led him to becoming something of a hero of the anti-vax movement.

What wrong predictions from Ferguson?

@Terracotta9

The link doesn’t work but Delingpole is a well known contrarian journalist and climate change denier. He has no scientific training whatsoever.

This response is a good illustration of the problem.

The Delingpole interview is with a scientist who has differing views on the pandemic to the mainstream position, so the mainstream media will not interview him. That means he only has the option of speaking to the “contrarian journalists”. But speaking to a contrarian journalist is then a reason to discredit him.

It means it’s impossible to have any kind of differing view from the dominant narrative, and maintain credibility at the same time.

We already have a word that describes this phenomenon. Totalitarianism.

No it’s a terrible illustration of the problem. Dellingpole doesn’t get interviewed or write articles because when he does he frequently Cherry picks data, misinterprets it or is completely inaccurate just to match his opinion.

Inviting him on for a bit of balance, because he has an opposing opinion to mainstream science is not really how proper science journalism works or should work. Similarly, not inviting him on isn’t silencing him. It’s just not inviting people who don’t have anything worthwhile to add to the discussion.

Some of the people in that link, OP, are very firmly in the covid deniers category, and not the have a slightly opposing opinion about how best to manage covid. God know how some of them have explained away the huge number of patients in ICU this winter given the pandemic was over last summer. Presumably all those false positives have a really high fatality rate.

I can't think of one scientists whose predictions have been right, or even broadly right. And yet the only scientists we have listened to are those which have given doomsday scenarios.
The only logical explanation for that is back covering - nothing else.

[quote oldegg123]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[/quote]
You honestly dont think people are/have been silenced?

In the mainstream media, anti lockdown scientists, MPS, etc have hardly been given any air time, and when they have, talked over.

Talk radio has been shut down as its anti lockdown. Search into it that, read everything. There was no reason to loose their youtube platform. If you dont keep in line, and go with the narrative, you are dismissed, get less air time, have your platforms removed and so on.

"Cherry picks data, misinterprets it or is completely inaccurate just to match his opinion"
For the love of god EVERY SINGLE sage scientist has been doing the above all pandemic. Every one. And they have been doing it on prime time tv.
That's not to mention all the off the record briefings with journalists and what not.
People place way too much trust in these people. Let's Remember, Whitty and Co gave legitimacy to somebody who we know is a serial liar and cheat (and who paid to have a journo beaten up several years ago).

Talk radio has not been shut down. Its You Tube was briefly suspended because Google was cracking down on dangerous anti-science bullshit. But it was very quickly reinstated so it can keep peddling nonsense to the stupid.

This idea that there is one True Science opinion and anything else must be quackery is unreasonable.

It’s easy for scientists to all agree on something like Newton’s first law of motion because it is a simple statement which is falsifiable.

But with a big complex phenomenon with lots of moving parts, like a global pandemic, which will span multiple disciplines including epidemiology, clinical practice, virology, pharmacology, etc we would actually EXPECT there to be some variation of views.

This holds true even if those views mostly lean all in the same direction, like with climate change. The vast majority of scientists agree that we are staring down the barrel of climate change, but within that agreement there is still a range of differing views on timing, severity, root causes, thresholds for reversing it, etc etc

This is normal.

A global pandemic should be no different. The expectation that all real scientists agree with the dominant narrative, and any who don’t must be conspiracy-theorist quacks - well, as I said before. That’s creepy and totalitarian.

If that’s Boris you are talking about, I think it’s the public that gave him legitimacy at the polls. I doubt we’d be in this position with a different prime minister. And it’s not like Witty and co can get rid of him.

I’m almost certain we’d be in a different place with Hunt at the helm. Repeated lockdowns are a terrible idea because they aren’t a risk free option and are damaging. But most of the people who are most vocal about being against them are also very vocal about the things that most likely would have prevented them. Deciding covid is an over reaction is why we have multiple lockdowns, not a mechanism for getting rid of them.

@xenia Lord Sumption says there is a moral imperative not to obey the rules. He says the government takeover of power and the new legislation is seriously dangerous because it cannot be constitutionally challenged - only 'convention' and custom can be used to challenge it. Worryingly, no government in history has ever voluntarily relinquished power. Our civil liberties and rights will only be returned to us if there is mass civil unrest.

Listen to his latest Spiked podcast.

There’s a big difference between genuine areas of scientific discussion (which there are many in covid, as you’d expect) and proposing that the Covid deniers and conspiracy theorist quacks are the genuine scientific dissenting opinion.

"But it was very quickly reinstated so it can keep peddling nonsense to the stupid"
If you don't agree with somebody call them stupid. Pro lockdown brigade have been doing this for the last year.
Embarrassing.

What is the pro-lockdown brigade?

I'm not going to comment on the people in question in the OP, but it's worth mentioning that people like Devi Sridhar talk absolute nonsense (and lack relevant qualifications) but are frequently in the press.

I’m not calling you stupid because I don’t agree with you, I’m calling you stupid because you lack the ability to critically evaluate sources and credible experts.

@thatonehasalittlecar

Talk radio has not been shut down. Its You Tube was briefly suspended because Google was cracking down on dangerous anti-science bullshit. But it was very quickly reinstated so it can keep peddling nonsense to the stupid.

What anti science bullshit? You tube couldn't provide any evidence!

Talk radio has MPs, scientists and so on their show to support what they said. They weren't telling to disobey the rules etc. Their stance was/is, is lockdowns a proportionate viable response to Covid 19? As because they had many many people on there, MPS, journalists, teachers, scientists who could support it wasnt, YouTube suspended/took down their account despite not giving any evidence they were 'anti scientific'.

Yes anyone who doesnt think lockdowns are an proportionate response to this virus is stupid and must shut up. This is exactly my point.
There is no such thing as free speech unless it doesnt go with the MSM and government narrative.

@thatonehasalittlecar

I’m not calling you stupid because I don’t agree with you, I’m calling you stupid because you lack the ability to critically evaluate sources and credible experts.

That's exactly what you have done.

People aren't 'evaluting' the evidence that you and the pro lockdown brigade you want to hear, so if anyone comes to the conclusion that lockdowns have been more harmful then good, your dismissed as stupid and informed.

There are MANY MANY sources as to why lockdowns dont work and I've evaluated it. Theres many sources how lockdowns have caused more harm than the risk of Covid itself.