Anthony Costello
@globalhlthtwit
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Doctor, Speaker, The Social Edge. Ex-Director, WHO. Professor UCL. Chair, Lancet Climate Countdown. Advisor @cap2030org Tweets/RT≠endorsement
London
Joined October 2009
My opus major, 'The Social Edge' explained. .Available in all UK bookshops for order from Gardners. Amazon UK: .US: .iBOOK .NOOK .KOBO
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We’ve been here before. In 1974 inflation rose because of a global oil price crisis. The new Labour Chancellor, Denis Healey, increased benefits +pensions, subsidized essential foods, cut VAT, and increased taxes on incomes over £4000 (£44,000 in 2021). Sunak prefers poverty.
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Boris Becker went to prison for 2.5 years for tax evasion failing to declare £2.5m overseas assets. Nadhim Zahawi has been asked by HMRC to pay £3.7 million in tax after failing to declare capital gains on overseas assets. Er. surely he must resign and face charges?
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Shamima Begum is a British citizen who was brainwashed and trafficked as a fifteen year old to Syria. She lost three children in an Isis ‘marriage’. She should be allowed home, have her citizenship restored and be rehabilitated with her family.
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Many video pictures of captured Russian soldiers show frightened teenagers saying they thought they were on exercises. Some could be under 18 and therefore children. War is exploitation of the young by old men.
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Neil Ferguson is an independent and fine modeller. He transgressed SD rules a month ago. So why was this non-news released on the day our death rates overtook Italy? And before imminent decisions to lift the lockdown in the UK and US? Who else will be scapegoated?.
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The boycott of Carole Cadwalladr by BBC, C4, ITV and Sky is shocking and incomprehensible. Despite the trolls, history will judge her the most courageous and important journalist of our generation.
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After announcing he’ll remove restrictions on banker’s pay, the Chancellor says that 120,000 more people on Universal Credit must "take active steps to seek more and better-paid work, or face having their benefits reduced". Brutal, structural violence against women +children.
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Robert Jenrick and Dr Jenny Harries defend the decision to delete the country comparison of deaths graph now that it shows the UK has the highest death rates in Europe. This graph has been shown for 7 weeks. Doctors should not support political manipulation of health data.
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BREAKING: Sunak is reneging on many of the UK’s net zero commitments. The worst decision of any Prime Minister in my lifetime. A betrayal of our children, of our international responsibilities, and scientifically illiterate.
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We’re in a mess. Cases, hospitalisations and deaths are all rising. It's too late for test and trace to stop it. Things will just get worse. We have FOUR options: (1)
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Everything I’m hearing from Profs Whitty and Vallance- evolving unstable virus, short lived immunity, vulnerable people, need to maintain surveillance, revamp national testing fast within 2 weeks- at odds with the nonsense we heard from the govt in Parliament.
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Where is the algorithm? It should be published and accountable to scientific scrutiny. A consequence of the pandemic, independent scientists should review this algorithm that has caused misery for so many young people. Publish it. @GavinWilliamson.
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The revelations from C4 Dispatches about failings in test and trace by Randox, Serco, sub-contracted companies and the role played by Harding, Hancock, and the PM are breath-taking. It amounts to criminal negligence, pure and simple.
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Please stop calling it NHS Test and Trace. Fake branding. The NHS wasn’t involved. It was a hotchpotch of crony contracts with unqualified favored companies like SERCO, Randox, Immensa etc, call centre tracing based on no scientific evidence, +leaders w no public health crediblty.
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Time for Hancock to resign. No data on speed of testing, call centers dont work, app doesn't work, no data on isolation, wasted taxpayers money, economy at risk, public health staff doing all the work without investment.
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PM Johnson tells Tory MPs the UK vaccine production was "down to capitalism and greed" and then asks them to delete his comments. Er. Oxford AZ was not for profit. Perhaps he meant PPE procurement, test and trace and No 10 refurbishment.
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Tomorrow we launch our Independent Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies Report. We make 18 recommendations to the government to help the UK suppress the virus, save lives and get the economy moving again. (1).
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BREAKING: The UK now cannot do most blood tests. No tubes. GPs are forced to ration. Read this BMA press release from last night. “At a very perilous point”…
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Rishi Sunak’s failure to take out insurance against interest rate rises a year ago on almost £900bn of reserves created by the quantitative easing process has cost the government £11 billion.
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Unlike all other countries, the UK strategy aims to build herd immunity by allowing the steady spread of #COVID19. The government argue it will block a second peak in several months time. Here are EIGHT questions about this HERD IMMUNITY strategy: (THREAD).
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As Beth Rigby points out, nothing has changed apart from in Liverpool. No chance this will work. Worse, the public health malpractice of test, trace and isolate, run by a committee of people with no public health experience, remains in place. We need lawyers.
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Priti Patel says people who break lockdown are 'morally reprehensible'. How would she describe a government that does not try suppress community transmission?.
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55,000 dead (FT estimate), 20,000 new cases every day after seven weeks of lockdown, and a vertical and outsourced test, trace, isolate fiasco, the disastrous March 12 herd immunity strategy has led to public health and economic chaos.
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How can we have a press briefing about a national lockdown with not a word on reform of the hopeless find, test, trace and isolate programme? Not even a question. Shameful.
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The story so far. About the failure of public health. Not masks. Look at the death rates in China (pop 1.4bn), Vietnam (100m), USA (340m) and UK (68m). Yes, you cannot see the death curves in the first two because they are so low. (1)
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We have 8000 cases daily, a private testing system set up without connection to primary care, call-centre tracing that appears a fiasco, and no digital app. After 4 months. Unless the population has hidden (T cell?) immunity, we're heading for resurgence.
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The UK has the highest case rates of COVID-19 in the world. One third of our population is not protected. China has already vaccinated a higher % and through infection control has a death rate of 3 per million. Our death rate is 2028 per million. The govt + advisers are silent.
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For the record, 30,000 people have died from Covid in the seven months since Johnson, Sunak and Javid’s ‘freedom day.’
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We have had no effective government since July 7 when Boris Johnson resigned. Nothing much will happen until September 20. Nearly 11 weeks lost when the country faces the worst economic crisis for decades + hunger stalks the land. Our Houses of Parliament need major reform.
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Today 62322 cases, 1041 deaths. The NHS cd be overwhelmed in the next week, not in 21 days. Scientific advice was crystal clear from SAGE on Dec 22: Lock down. The PM ignored it, waited two weeks, then told parents it was safe 2 to go to school. He is entirely to blame.
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Today we lost 1820 of our citizens. Many of these deaths could have been prevented. I plead with our Secretary of State @MattHancock and @CMO_England to make changes to our community protective shield as follows: (1).
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Sir Dominic Grieve, former Conservative Attorney General says “Boris Johnson is a vacuum of integrity” running “a cronyistic cabal” and “chaotic government” for “self-enrichment”. #r4today.
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My response to Professor Sunetra Gupta's idea to let SarsCo-V2 spread to all people now, like other seasonal coronaviruses
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The PM announces 20 more peers, making 52 more this year and 860 in total for 67 million popn. The US has 100 Senators for 370 million. We need immediate abolition of hereditary peers, and a plan to end this absurdity. An elected second chamber of no more than 100 would be best.
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Rapid vaccination roll-out is a huge tribute to NHS primary care. Local teams, who know their community, finding the most vulnerable. So why did we not link test, trace + isolate to local public health + GPs? We cd have prevented tens of thousands of deaths + saved billions of £.
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The refusal of Rishi Sunak to fund people to self- isolate is in stark contrast to his decision to provide £400 million of our taxes in loans to Greensill from the government’s Coronavirus Business Interruption Loan Scheme (CBILS), despite the official limit being just £50m.
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In other news Kwasi Kwarteng on his first day as Chancellor sacks Tom Scholar, the Permanent Secretary at the Treasury who had been a distinguished civil servant for 30 years.
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This is a disaster. We have more than 50 flights from India daily. 77 cases of a really nasty India variant that affects younger people already here? Surge testing without isolation support. Contacts not being tested. This is a total shambles. We have learnt nothing after a year.
Here's the same data including B.1.1.7 and plotting on a log scale
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The government claim that up to 3 April 2020 it was “unlikely” that there was pre-symptomatic and/or asymptomatic transmission of COVID-19. Let us consider the evidence. THREAD (1).
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The chancellor’s wife owns > £500 million worth of shares in a company still trading as normal with Moscow.
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The huge problem for PM Johnson is that he has driven a cart and horses through any contact tracing programme. Why will contacts contacted by SERCO call centres self-isolate for 14 days rather than 'follow their instincts'?.
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Watching Andrew Marr on BBC1 saying everything is great and the vaccines will protect us against 'Indian variant' and everything is on course to open fully June 21st. This is a travesty of the data in the PHE report sneaked out late last night with a misleading press release.
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There is a lot of nonsense about Zero Covid being an extreme position, only possible in repressive states (er. S Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, Norway, Finland, NZ??) and our UK strategy reflects a more sensible centrist view. So compare the UK with successful countries. (1).
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Two members of the government SAGE, John Edmunds and Sir Jeremy Farrar, have said it is too early to lift the lockdown given the number of COVID19 cases and the need for test, trace and isolate to be in place.
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The C4 Dispatches and Sunday Times investigation into the King and Prince William’s exploitation of the armed forces, NHS, charities and wind farms through rentals is pure corruption. Worse they pay no corporation tax. The Duchy of Cornwall and Lancaster should be nationalised.
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No amount of diplomatic crafted messaging by our medical advisers can avoid the reality that by standing alongside these new government policies they risk increasing illness, deaths, health inequalities and new variants.
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Sorry but the argument from the PM, Chris Whitty and David Nabarro about only bad options and lockdown as a last measure is NOT WHO policy and not correct. They advise ACT FAST. a 2 week circuit break 5w ago would have saved lives, protected the NHS and also the economy.
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I've heard three serious examples of misinformation on BBC programmes in the past 24 hours from Professor Robert Dingwall of JCVI, Lord Sumption and Sir Charles Walker MP. (1).
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BBC report a terrible crisis in Japan. where they have had 263 deaths and 11,135 cases. That's 2 deaths per million pop. Here in UK we have had 135,000 cases, 18,100 deaths and 267 per million. And that's with 40% of community deaths missing.
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53000 cases reported for the UK today. The government must speak and act now.
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Hancock asked whether PM complacency is to blame for the NHS being overwhelmed? No, it’s the variant vaccine he says. The variant was reported in September, its transmission known in December, and SAGE advised lockdown Dec 22. The PM ignored advice for 12 days.
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Isolation of a person with a dangerous infection is a cornerstone of public health science. Yesterday 294 people in the UK and over 2000 in the USA died from Covid. The PM/Javid idea to end isolation is criminally negligent. Whitty/Vallance must say so.
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Over latest 7 days, 213528 cases(up 30%), 3071 hospital admissions (up 57%) and 192 deaths within 28d of a positive test (up 63%). The result of libertarian recklessness by Javid and Johnson.
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We didn't suppress the virus in Feb 2020 + followed an absurd herd immunity policy. We failed to copy Asian contact tracing and isolation in July when cases were low. We failed again after 2nd lockdown which led to the third. Nothing has changed for the next variant surge.
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Why do we have to put up with this Serco, Deloitte, Lighthouse Lab, McKinsey nonsense which has messed up the creation of a Find Test Trace Isolate Support public health shield? Just move resources to regional Health Protection Teams, local authority public health + GPs. Period.
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What happened in 2010 to cause this awful decline in our health and cancer services?
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I wonder how the algorithm adjusts teacher's assessments at Eton? Did any student there miss their Oxbridge entry?.
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18,200 cases today, 54% increase on the week. Why have Hancock and Sunak not shifted any funds from the £38 billion into local public healthteams? Incomprehensible.
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We were told you cannot suppress Covid so "we must live with the virus". When Asian states did suppress Covid19, within a month by early March 2020, SAGE were 'unanimous' that these states would face a huge second wave. Here are the cases in UK, S Korea and China: (1)
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8. Vaccines are a safer way to develop herd immunity, without the risks associated with the disease itself. Is it ethical to adopt a policy that threatens immediate casualties on the basis of an uncertain future benefit?.
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The PM and advisers are ignoring what was widely known in March. Here is my tweet on Mar 11, the day of the budget, and before the disastrous Mar 12 press briefing when they said we should let the epidemic spread.
Social distancing NOW could cut death rates tenfold. That's why parliament should close and set an example. As should any work places or institutions where groups of people come together in close proximity.
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If the £20 uplift to Universal Credit is removed in April, 6.2 million families will lose £1,040 next year and half a million more people, including 200,000 children, will be pulled into poverty. Cost £1.5 billion. Money wasted on ineffective test and trace = £22 billion.
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Last week 1 in 12 children were infected with COVID-19. Hundreds of thousands. So far 96 children have died, 500 hospitalized +in ICU. 1 in 7 infected will develop long COVID, many w cognitive impairment. Long term? We don’t know. Avoidable if we’d started vaccination in July.
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“ We cannot afford to put our pollinator populations at risk.” Michael Gove 2018. Within one week of Brexit, Government breaks promise to maintain ban on bee-harming pesticide
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UK destitution is up 50% since 2017. Our children going hungry. People working harder and harder to remain in poverty. Why is this only being covered on C4?.
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The BBC report that President Bolsonaro of Brazil is accused of crimes against humanity and misuse of public funds in his mismanagement of Covid, Their death rate is 2817 per million. The UK death rate is 2031 per million.
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We’ve lost 18000 dead since the decision was made not to have a circuit break in September. Thousands more will die in the next 2m. No effective trace or isolation. 80,000 plus excess deaths. A national disgrace.
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I've been ambivalent about releasing SAGE names in case the scientists were subjected to unfair abuse. But if this is true and SAGE was politicised then we must know who was attending these meetings.
Revealed: Dominic Cummings is on secret scientific advisory group for Covid-19
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Rishi Sunak offers a £500m hardship fund to hungry people. On Wednesday he removes £6 billion from universal credit which will create worry, stress +hunger for the poorest families + children in the UK. The most regressive and shameful economic policy in living memory.
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The BBC has an editorial duty to challenge and correct statements that are false. The media also report that PM Johnson said almost all deaths from Covid in the first wave were over 80. Again Prof Spiegelhalter said this is wrong, that 40% of people were in younger age groups.
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The local public health teams identify 99% of the contacts of those they test. But they don’t get data from those tested by Deloitte. And Serco have managed only 59000 contacts in 6 weeks ie <1 contact per tracer per fortnight. A £10 billion shambles.
Exclusive: Leak reveals test and trace system is failing in major outbreak sparking a scramble by health chiefs this weekend: .#TomorrowsPapersToday
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As chaos engulfs Kabul airport involving British residents, Afghan interpreters and UK troops, the PM poses for photos with Team GB boxers, while his Foreign Secretary Raab remains on holiday.
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On the Today programme this morning Sir John Bell echoed the official story that in the first six months of the pandemic we faced a new virus with little evidence to guide us. Nothing could be further from the truth. THREAD (1)
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When the chair of the Health Select Committee says #COVID19 represents "the biggest failure of scientific advice to Ministers in our lifetime" why are the minutes of SAGE meetings, especially prior to March 12, still secret? MPs should insist on their release.
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I'm tired of the BBC reports of 'distribution problems', the 'difficulty finding test machines'. We've failed to provide PPE, the shameful absence of virus tests for our health workers. We've had 8 weeks. Germany and Ireland did it. Why didn't we?.
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If any MPs have profited from untendered pandemic procurement contracts they should be brought before the courts. Simple as that.
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Overcentralisation v Self-organising. The UK always had testing capacity. Like Korea we developed a WHO approved test on January 10th. But Korea immediately approached their pharmaceutical companies to help expand testing. We didn't. (1).
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The contact tracing app is dead. The SERCO call centres r subcontracted thru multiple companies without regulation. Deloitte testing run outside the NHS. Our 'public health protection' designed by Hancock/Harding. Is this ethical or legal? Does it work? Their data out tomorrow.
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Remember apps? Immune passports? The PMs Moonshot nonsense (no science, feasibility, evidence) has been earmarked for £100bn, almost the entire NHS budget, w contracts for Astra, Serco and G4S. This is waste/corruption on a cosmic scale.
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41,000 cases today. 21286 in hospital (close to April peak), 1529 on ventilators, 2143 admitted yesterday. Things are spiralling out of control even before we see the full impact of Christmas superspreader events.
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500,000 of our citizens, many with cancers, are immunocompromised. They need protection from people infected but not isolating. We need a statement from @CMO_England and @uksciencechief
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Tomorrow Independent SAGE will release recommendations for when to reopen schools, partly based on risks to children measured by a forward dynamic causal model from a world leading mathematical modeller. Will be interesting to compare with the government's scientific advice.
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Today's Lancet climate and health report presents 56 indicators of health and climate change across FIVE domains. (Download the report for free from the Lancet website). Here is a thread of some of the key findings. #Lancetclimate24 (1)
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The minutes of SAGE meetings before the fateful March 12 press briefing have not been released. March 13 meeting had 14 government advisers and ten independents: 4 math modellers, 2 virologists, 3 behavioural scientists + a clinical academic. Not a single public health person.
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UK policy is reckless: they’ve stopped population testing, contact tracing and rigorous quarantine measures - the bedrock of epidemic control and WHO advice. This will not delay but accelerate the epidemic. THREAD (1 ).
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Another remarkable fact about this mismanaged epidemic. Your personal doctor, your GP, is not able to order a test or home test for you. You have to go yourself through 111 or a website.
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“The government guidance is for people to make decisions based on what they think is appropriate based on the circumstances they are in” said Sunak. Seat belts? Smoking in public spaces? Food hygiene? Paying tax? Corporal punishment? Discharge of effluent into water?.
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Chancellor Sunak has been in California meeting tech investors. FT reports he did not attend a roundtable discussion with UK hospitality sector. But er. 'Treasury insiders said the meeting clashed with a scheduled call with US healthcare bosses.' Why?
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We must get real. We've a virus exploding with an R of 5.5. We've boostered 25 million. Great, but tht leaves 43 million w inadequate protection. CMO strong, but hamstrung by the PM's Tory rebellion. We should cancel all parties, football matches, events now. Too risky for NHS.
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I don't mind public criticism but I do object to being misrepresented, in a major paper like @thesundaytimes without being consulted. Their leader writer Dominic Lawson has taken a pop at me so let me correct his accusations. (1)
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Nepal desperately needs our help. With test kits, oxygen, ventilators and vaccines. Gurkhas have fought for the British army for 200 years. It would be great if our Foreign office could respond quickly. @DominicRaab @AnnelieseDodds @JeremyFarrar @PradeepgyawaliK
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More misleading data from Hancock about FTTI. They are missing three quarters of cases. This is not world beating. Its not working well. Their 'test and trace' system will not work. It should be replaced by a 'find, test, trace, isolate, support' scheme involving local GPs and PH.
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Er. astonishing. the UK government ordered 1.8bn rapid Covid tests from Innova (California company) paying them £4.3bn. No competition. Test not evaluated or used in the US. Exclusive contract approved by Treasury under Sunak. In 2022, CEO Huang said Innova made a profit of.
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Why are we setting up private sector testing in car parks of airports to collect nasal swabs done by people themselves in their cars? Why can't this be done at GP surgeries, with couriers to labs, results the same day, copied to local public health?.
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A key question not addressed in the report on ‘one of UK’s worst ever public health failures’ is why the core scientific advisory group SAGE had not a single independent public health expert, yet four clinicians and numerous mathematicians.
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Matt Hancock: we are doing 'enhanced contact tracing' to people with the S Africa variant to make sure they self-isolate. Shouldn't every case receive enhanced contact tracing? Failure to isolate the virus is why we have 35000 cases every day.
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Yesterday just EIGHT per cent of people in England who tested positive received their results by the end of the day after they had taken the test. 25% had waited FOUR days or more. Test and trace has collapsed.
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On vaccinating children. UK data released today reports that over ONE Year 5,800 children were admitted with Covid19, 690 children admitted with a linked paediatric inflammatory multisystem syndrome(PIMS-TS) of whom 251 required intensive care. 25 children died from Covid19. (1).
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