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I’m really struggling to watch the slow motion car crash of people denying the seriousness of this moment in the pandemic. An appeal to all those out there who are contributing even in small ways to this. 1/n
Firstly- I get it. I hate the restrictions. If you are not front line you will not have seen for yourself the horror show. You probably don’t have a close relative who has died. With a CFR of somewhere in the 0.5-1% ballpark it means... 2/n
... you know many more people who had mild disease or recovered. I also know you are not the primary cause of the ongoing terrible state we are in. That responsibility lies squarely with the govt 3/n
I was active in wave 1. ICU/ high dependency shifts and led the family liaison team doing 10 hours a day of calling the poor relatives of patients they couldn’t visit. It was heartbreaking. These people were you and me. Many were HCWs who caught the virus... 4/n
... trying to protect us.
I then moved on to setting up vaccine trials and the COVID follow up clinic. A daily reminder that for every miracle story there is another patient struggling with what will be lifelong burden of devastating consequences 5/n
I then moved on to setting up vaccine trials and the COVID follow up clinic. A daily reminder that for every miracle story there is another patient struggling with what will be lifelong burden of devastating consequences 5/n
If hadn’t held the hand of a dying patient or made those calls to their wife or husband, or sat in my car weeping after 12 hours on ICU or maybe even just if I didn’t know a close friend/family who had died, then I might be wondering too if all of this was proportionate 6/n
But I did. I can’t unsee all this stuff. I have mostly tweeted about vaccines and from a position of experience. I’m not an epidemiologist. I’m not a systems researcher. I don’t understand economic particularly better than anybody else. But we are past the debate stage 7/n
The false PCR premise is just plain wrong. Accept it and move on. The comparisons to the flu are simple to disprove. No flu has ever looked like this or wrought this damage (and remember this damage is despite the biggest public health measures of a lifetime) 8/n
The concept that we can just abandon anybody with an “underlying condition” to fate is cruel and ignores that this may be as many as 1 in 3 of us. It is not me. But so what? 9/n
The economic argument is also dead. Not a single currently economically coping country in the world has got there by just ignoring the virus or attempting to enact a “protect the vulnerable” policy that nobody has ever outlined in even sketchy detail 10/n
The “what about other conditions and deaths not related to COVID” falls apart at seams if hospitals can’t even manage to look after COVID never mind try to keep the rest of the show on the road 11/n
You may be a vocal minority on social media but your voices count. Just walk outside. How much does this resemble the brutal but effective first lockdown? Not much. That is primarily a govt failure, but your stridency is not helping 12/n
The vaccines are almost here but they will take months to roll out. There is light at the end of the tunnel, but there is still a dark, cold tunnel to get through.
Please. Just step back from the brink here and we can all pull together to support... 13/n
Please. Just step back from the brink here and we can all pull together to support... 13/n
...each other, our families, our friends and our NHS. This is not a proxy culture war or a political battle of big vs small state. This is only surviving and fracture or unity.
We have a moment here. There are thousands of lives at stake. It is 1918... 14/n
We have a moment here. There are thousands of lives at stake. It is 1918... 14/n
...the first armistice is declared. The deaths are not finished. Many of you have sunk too much into these theories and can’t come back. I’m going to bet some have not. Don’t encourage society to sacrifice lives on the alter of dogma unnecessarily.
