It is reassuring isn't it? And so to that end I've asked her, albeit slightly curtly, why she is not seeking evidence as to why people might be exempt from sources such as PHE & ONS given that the public are not required to explain their exemptions when challenged. I suspect I know the answer....
Ah, the Trish Greenhalgh method!
The tweet in question though is loaded with replies that essentially backfired on her.
It certainly did backfire, and not just for the original poster. A respondent telling how she got covid from her asymptomatic 5 year old was easily tripped up when she was asked if she was sure, explaining her daughter did have some mild symptoms.
I'm not a genius, but doesn't 'asymptomatic' mean 'without symptoms'
Well she did try to qualify it be saying it was dependant on how you define asymptomatic. But yes, asymptomatic means without symptoms.
Clearly she has a short memory. Lots of people were out and about last summer. The world didn't end.The most recent ONS figures suggest 1 in 10 people are carrying antibodies.
Covid: Positive antibody tests doubled since autumn
Some 10% of the UK population is showing signs of recent infection, a doubling since October, says ONS.www.bbc.co.uk
Meanwhile I was listening to Radio 2 on my drive to work earlier and on the Jeremy Vine show they were talking about the vaccine. Susan Mitchie, "a Sage Scientist", was proffering the standard dose of doom and gloom. Her suggestion was that even after vaccination we should continue with the current measures for quite some time and we shouldn't get excited about lifting restrictions soon. She suggested we need 90% of the population to be immune one way or the other before we relax restrictions, even then some precautions will still be needed.
Her justification was that
a) there is no evidence the vaccine reduces transmission
b) there is no evidence the vaccine prevents long covid
c) some people won't or can't have the vaccine and vaccinated people might carry the virus and give it to the unvaccinated people who might then get very ill and might die.
I wish they’d introduce her as “a SAGE scientist who doesn’t believe in the consensus of her SAGE colleagues, and therefore also belongs to a separate group called Independent SAGE intended to criticise both SAGE and the Government in pursuit of a controversial Zero Covid policy”...
Who actually is this woman? I saw her name yesterday in connection with something that said people who go running or cycling should do so in masks. If that happens then she can jog on!
Last week I stopped off at the fish and chip shop on the way home from late shift. It's up quite a steep hill so I was slightly out of breath when I got there. I put on my mask and found it really hard to breathe. No way I'd wear a mask whilst cycling let along running.
I believe she's a Prof of Primary Care at the University of Oxford. However apparently we listen to her about epidemiology, but not the professor of Theoretical Epidemiology at the same university, Prof Gupta
Well how else are they going to convince the 99.7% of us that won't die from the virus if infected that we have a very, very small chance of dying? Its not really surprising though, the BBC have been fixated on scaring the general public about anything remotely health related for years. Covid has just given the BBC News editorial team a few more years worth of work.
Maybe they should give out the real figure - as of Dec 28th, it was 388 deaths in total across the whole pandemic for under 60s with no underlying health conditions. Presuming most of these people were in their 40s and 50s, I'm guessing it was around 20-30 people in their 20s and perhaps 40 in their 30s (all guesses).
The media are behaving disgracefully over the stats - the BBC yesterday said there had been a "sharp rise" in COVID cases between Tuesday and Wednesday(!) - completely Ignoring the fact that week on week Wednesday figures were 18% lower and only the 7 day average should be used to compare. This React study - with data from 6th January onwards, one day after lockdown (!) is now being used to pump up the fear that cases are still going up in contrast to the testing data that had a high of 68,000 that has dropped to around 36k-38K
I heard the report ,this morning, about the react study with pricked up ears as I have received an invitation to participate in this test. The letter to me emphasises that the test is "not 100 per cent accurate at an individual level", but this wasn't mentioned on the radio this morning.
