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But I don't think lockdown sceptics have been consistently more wrong about the virus than lockdown advocates. For instance, the @WHO initially estimated the IFR of COVID-19 was 3.4%. We now think it's ~.025%. https://www.cnbc.com/2020/03/03/who-says-coronavirus-death-rate-is-3point4percent-globally-higher-than-previously-thought.html
A study by researchers at UCLA and IHME compared the accuracy of various models predicting COVID-19 mortality and the models produced by Imperial were judged to have far higher rates of error than the others — always erring on the side of being too high. https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.07.13.20151233v5
After the government unveiled its "graph of doom" showing deaths could climb to 4,000 a day absent more restrictions, it was reprimanded by the @UKStatsAuth. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/nov/06/how-uk-government-misrepresented-covid-projections-lockdown-explained
And how much trust can you place in the advice of public health authorities to wear masks when the initial advice was that they were ineffective outside healthcare settings? https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-52153145
Yes, lockdown sceptics have got some things wrong, but I think we've provided an important counterweight to the largely one-sided reporting of the broadcast media, particularly the BBC. https://twitter.com/T4Recovery/status/1349277549331959812?s=20
The daily sceptical blog I put together with a team of other, like-minded journalists has published some important stories, such as this one by a Lighthouse Lab whistleblower. https://lockdownsceptics.org/false-positives-inflation-in-milton-keynes/
And this one by a disillusioned worker at a pop-up testing facility in Salisbury. https://lockdownsceptics.org/scandal-pcr-testing-sites-not-fit-for-purpose/
And this review of the code powering Neil Ferguson's epidemiological model by Mike Hearn, formerly a senior software engineer at @Google. https://lockdownsceptics.org/code-review-of-fergusons-model/
It's also published some terrific pieces of writing, such as this piece on conspiracy theories by Sinéad Murphy, a philosophy lecturer at Newcastle. https://lockdownsceptics.org/conspiracy-theories/
And this "Postcard From Argentina" by a social science professor. https://lockdownsceptics.org/postcard-from-argentina/
And this tribute to all those who've been laid low by the collateral damage caused by the lockdowns by Freddie Attenborough, a sociology lecturer. https://lockdownsceptics.org/2021/01/01/latest-news-241/#for-the-fallen
Lockdown Sceptics will continue to publish these dissenting voices and continue to challenge the official narrative being pumped out by the government and the BBC. I don't think that's "dangerous"; I think politicians trying to smear and silence dissenting voices is dangerous.
Blaming the high daily death tolls on lockdown sceptics is a variant of blaming the public. If only ordinary people had been more compliant, we wouldn't be in this pickle. But thanks to lockdown sceptics like @toadmeister, @allisonpearson, @ClarkeMicah, @JuliaHB1 and @LozzaFox...
Nothing to do with the lack of PPE, failure to create dedicated hospitals for Covid patients, spunking tens of billions of pounds on a not-fit-for-purpose Test and Trace programme, building the Nightingales but not recruiting or training enough healthcare workers to staff them...
...decommissioning the Nightingales, failing to eliminate in-hospital infections and the ongoing scandal of secondary transmission in care homes… no. It’s all the fault of the general public and the "conspiracy theorists" who've led them astray.
Time to take the mote out of your eye @NeilDotObrien and take a look at the politicians you're so eager to curry favour with. Lockdown sceptics won't be your scapegoats. //Ends
Correction: Wrote the IFR was ~0.025% upthread when I meant ~0.25. In his bulletin for the @WHO, Prof John Ioannidis estimated the median IFR across 51 locations was 0.23%. https://www.who.int/bulletin/volumes/99/1/20-265892/en/
