Covid One Year Ago’s Tweets

Stian Westlake

@stianwestlake

May 27, 2021

"Of course the UK had a herd immunity strategy" - the unmissable

turns back the clock and reviews the evidence

It’s bizarre that this needs saying, but *of course* the UK had a Herd Immunity plan

What it was, where it came from, and how it was abandoned

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Really enjoying the

substack Thorough reporting of what happened + some very perceptive commentary lessonsfromthecrisis.substack.com/p/why-was-it-s

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Jun 2, 2021

New post: Why was it so easy to fool the media on herd immunity?

Why was it so easy to fool the media on herd immunity?

UK planning at the start of the pandemic involved allowing the majority of the population to become infected with covid between April and September 2020, causing five thousand deaths a day and ending...

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May 27, 2021

"The UK had official plan to manage the mass infection of the population until we reached herd immunity, outlined in official government documents and described in media appearances by our top scientists, who mostly went on to pretend it never happened"

It’s bizarre that this needs saying, but *of course* the UK had a Herd Immunity plan

What it was, where it came from, and how it was abandoned

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May 27, 2021

It’s bizarre that this needs saying, but *of course* the UK had a Herd Immunity plan

It’s bizarre that this needs saying, but *of course* the UK had a Herd Immunity plan

What it was, where it came from, and how it was abandoned

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May 20, 2021

"once something becomes the “institutional opinion” it automatically gets endorsement from every other major institution similar to the way an AAA rating was rebroadcast through the financial system in 2008" lessonsfromthecrisis.substack.com/p/the-noble-li

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May 20, 2021

"once something becomes the “institutional opinion” it automatically gets endorsement from every other major institution similar to the way an AAA rating was rebroadcast through the financial system in 2008" lessonsfromthecrisis.substack.com/p/the-noble-li

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May 11, 2021

New post: A timeline of the strange period last year when the most prominent anti-mask campaigners were public health officials lessonsfromthecrisis.substack.com/p/what-on-eart

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May 19, 2021

New post: the "noble lie" on masks probably wasn't a lie

The "noble lie" on masks probably wasn't a lie

Why Western public health went all-in on a campaign against masks.

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Mike Bird

@Birdyword

May 12, 2021

I'm sincerely glad that

isn't allowing the Western failure on masks to simply be memory-holed. I think this series is going to be the magnum opus on why western medics and scientists, assisted by a pliant media, failed so badly.

The transatlantic institutional anti-mask campaign, summarised

Early in 2020 as the pandemic began to surge around the world, Asia and the West were divided on whether people should wear facemasks to try and stop/slow transmission of the new virus. In short,...

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Stuart Ritchie

@StuartJRitchie

May 11, 2021

Here it is: the definitive story of the bizarre, mainstream, institutional anti-facemask campaign of early 2020. Read it and weep: lessonsfromthecrisis.substack.com/p/what-on-eart (by the author of

)

The transatlantic institutional anti-mask campaign, summarised

Early in 2020 as the pandemic began to surge around the world, Asia and the West were divided on whether people should wear facemasks to try and stop/slow transmission of the new virus. In short,...

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New post: A timeline of the strange period last year when the most prominent anti-mask campaigners were public health officials lessonsfromthecrisis.substack.com/p/what-on-eart

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Sam Bowman

@s8mb

The Covid pandemic has probably been the worst expert failure since the Cold War. In this series,

is retracing the jaw-droppingly bad advice given by experts – starting with the warnings against border closures. A must-read. lessonsfromthecrisis.substack.com/p/the-experts-

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"The scary lesson in all this is that for unusual risks like pandemics, where the real-life test of expert theories occurs very rarely, we should expect many expert consensus views to be completely back-to-front wrong"

Quote Tweet

"The experts can stay wrong longer than you can stay alive" New on Substack: Lessons from the Crisis: lessonsfromthecrisis.substack.com/p/the-experts-

Show this thread

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"The experts can stay wrong longer than you can stay alive" New on Substack: Lessons from the Crisis:

The experts can stay wrong longer than you can stay alive

Early in 2020 Western governments, alarmed by reports from China, asked the international public health community whether they should close borders to limit the spread of coronavirus into their...

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April 2021 Lawrence Gostin, Georgetown University global health law professor who helped write the international regulations: “I have now realized that our belief about travel restrictions was just that — a belief. It was evidence-free.” vox.com/22346085/covid

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March 2020 "Border controls are more an expression of xenophobic policy than an enduring solution to an infectious threat. Today, there’s far more to gain through international cooperation than by keeping borders locked down" politico.com/news/magazine/

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Feb 2020 "The US has a sophisticated public health system and the CDC is the best in the world... the risk to Americans is relatively low and there is no justification for extraordinary, draconian action, like a travel ban" healthaffairs.org/do/10.1377/hbl

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Feb 2020 "WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said Tuesday that widespread travel bans and restrictions weren’t needed to stop the outbreak and could "have the effect of increasing fear and stigma, with little public health benefit." politico.com/news/2020/02/0

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Feb 2020 "Health experts decry travel and trade restrictions as bad policy and irresponsible violations of international law. Yet governments continue to implement them, even though scientific evidence—and economic self-interest—advises otherwise" foreignpolicy.com/2020/02/23/vir

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Jan 2020 "Countries are taking measures to ban travel. These changes rarely prevent the spread of disease, but they are likely to spur devastating economic and health consequences. They may also violate international health law." thinkglobalhealth.org/article/corona

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Jan 2020 "Travel and trade restrictions might seem like a common-sense public health response — so why does the WHO frequently recommend against them? Here’s why border measures do not work" washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/

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Jan 2020 "The evidence on travel bans for diseases like coronavirus is clear: They don’t work" vox.com/2020/1/23/2107

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"Right before an impending crisis, life will look very normal and people will not be panicking" New on Substack: lessons from the crisis (free to read)

Things can get really bad, really fast, way faster than regular people will notice

Most people don’t pay that much attention to the news Most people who do read news get their info from journalists focused on a narrow range of topics with a narrow range of approaches, reporting the...

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Apr 26, 2021

26 April 2020 "Coronavirus herd immunity will be achieved in Stockholm in the next few weeks, according to Swedish Ambassador" masslive.com/coronavirus/20

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The battle at the heart of British science over coronavirus | Free to read

Apr 14, 2021

14 April 2020 “When it came to foot-and-mouth and SARS, we used to be the ones telling China how to respond, but now the boot is on the other foot. The Asians are in the lead and they’ve responded well. We’ve done poorly.”

ft.com

The UK government has been accused of paying too much attention to epidemiologists over other experts

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Apr 13, 2021

13 April 2020 UK NERVTAG warns: "Particular caution should be exercised in COVID-19 patients discharged from hospital to nursing homes, homeless shelters, or other institutions where there are vulnerable individuals." gov.uk/government/pub

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Apr 12, 2021

12 April 2020 Shortly after China's first days with zero covid deaths and with cases in double figures, lockdowns are eased in Wuhan businessinsider.com/wuhan-resident bbc.com/news/world-asi

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Apr 11, 2021

11 April 2020 "Coronavirus pandemic exacerbates inequalities for women, UN warns" theguardian.com/world/2020/apr

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Apr 10, 2021

10 April 2020 "Australia 'probably on cusp of curbing COVID-19 to point where it dies out'" theage.com.au/national/victo

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Apr 9, 2021

9 April 2020 The UK recommends that members of the public do not wear masks. UK SAGE notes that there is "no conclusive evidence" in favour of their use but agrees to review the decision and explore studies of mask effectiveness at a future meeting gov.uk/government/pub

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Apr 8, 2021

8 April 2020 "WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus accused Taiwan of being behind a racist campaign against him, and Africans in general" bloomberg.com/news/articles/

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Apr 8, 2021

8 April 2020 "WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus accused Taiwan of being behind a racist campaign against him, and Africans in general" bloomberg.com/news/articles/

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Apr 7, 2021

7 April 2020 "By the end of January, the government’s chief medical adviser was explaining to politicians in private that if the virus escaped China, it would infect the great majority of people in Britain. It could only be slowed down, not stopped" reuters.com/article/us-hea

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