Fake news watch. There have been some extremely concerning unverified claims (all sourced from social media) circulating among doctor/health communities at breakneck viral speeds. The latest is the Laura duffel tweet. Further investigation does not seem to support the claims.

I have some observations about the above. The first is that it seems doctor/health professionals seem to be the ones being specifically targeted in the current wave of unverified claims. In the case I’m aware of the claims were circulated as if being from people known to them.

Only when pushed on sourcing was it revealed that the friend of a friend was actually an anon posting on Facebook picked up by said connection. Anon posting makes sense if you consider that in the UK, normal NHS staff are not allowed to make public comment to press/social media.

The weird thing about the Laura Duffel tweet, which is increasingly being disputed (here’s the challenge from the lockdown sceptics blog as a start: it’s midway https://lockdownsceptics.org/2021/01/03/latest-news-243/) is it was attached to an identity. That makes it very strange indeed. Why would someone lie?

It makes no sense to me. Since clearly if it was not true it would eventually be debunked and such an exaggeration could cost one one’s job. It is all very strange indeed. So if we presume the sceptics are right and it was an exaggeration how can it be rationalised?

There are only a few possible scenarios I think. 1) the tweet was accurate but the data from NHS trusts is being manipulated or downplayed. Or it is not catching young people. This is very strange, as the NHS doesn’t have an incentive to downplay this stuff.

Nor does the government have an incentive to bury the news given compliance issues. To the contrary the incentive is to bring in the cameras to hospitals and SHOW how awful it is. But there simply isn’t any corresponding footage.

This is odd given there was no lack of overflowing hospital ward footage in previous winter crises. Here’s an example of the stuff we have seen in previous years.

So perhaps it is about contamination control. Which is fair enough. But that undeniably creates a scenario where the frontline in terms of journalistic reporting has been transformed into a literal warzone controlled access zone/ only embedded journos being allowed to document.

While that is understandable in many ways, it nonetheless echoes the sort of control applied to journos reporting from Iraq or other embedded environments. Access deals require permissions. I’d be interested to hear of reporters who have had other experiences naturally.

But the fact that some woman was arrested for filming an empty hospital the other day implies to me that reporting/video control is extremely tight and above norm. Yes it’s never permitted to indiscriminately film in such establishments, but people do all the time.

That being patients etc. But it feels to me like we had more leaked footage from hospitals inside wuhan in feb than we do from NHS wards right now. If that’s an inaccurate statement I’d be interested to see any verified footage going round taken in the last week or so.

Scenario 2: The NHS data and supporting claims that have since come about from other health professionals is not false. It was the tweet that was false. Why would the tweeter lie? Is it because she for some reason does not fear losing her job?

This is all mere speculation, but the only rationalisation in my mind for such an erroneous tweet (if that really is the case!) is either 1) some sort of mental health issue, 2) willful trolling or 3) they were compensated by a third party to do it.

Granted all these scenarios seem far fetched - but that is why it is such an odd scenario. And one that should be gotten to the bottom of. In the meantime i think all claims from anonymous sources need pause for thought. The confidentiality issue works both ways.

The doctors/NHS staff unions would say confidentiality prevents the truth about how bad things are getting out. But (In the current environment where the norm actually is to assume things r worse than ever) — whether they like it or not — it also prevents the opposite testimony.

Which is why the only unquestionable source in a country like the UK (one would hope!) is data.

I should add, for those saying anon testimonies are important evidence, do they also think that about election fraud claims in the US? Probably not. If sworn affidavits at the risk of perjury are not deemed sufficient evidence, why should anon FB posts b treated as such?

To be clear I don’t have a view on whether the situation is excessively worse than a normal NHS winter crisis. My point is that given the non-reliability of social media, I really have no way of knowing other than from official data.