On Tuesday, @NeilDotObrien accused me of spreading disinformation and gave some specific examples. The vast majority of my tweets were factually correct based on publicly available data.

While Mr O’Brien is entitled to disagree with opinions that he thinks are wrong, doing so in this way as a member of the Government (in the Justice Dept) is inappropriate.

During a time like this, when there’s so much at stake, abandoning the central principle in a liberal democracy of using evidence rather than rhetoric to propose and refute ideas is dangerous and self-defeating.

Members of the Government have a responsibility to listen carefully to all arguments. They should then try to balance all the available information and make difficult decisions based on their best interpretation of *all* of them.

In his very first tweet @NeilDotObrien calls me a ‘top COVID-sceptic’. I have never denied the existence of COVID. Ever. His tweet is clearly false. Or, to use his phrasing, Mr O’Brien is ‘spreading disinformation’.

@NeilDotObrien is then forced to admit that I said in Oct ‘there is no 2nd wave. Yes there will be real winter cases but it will be a ripple’. I have always said that COVID will return every winter and kill mostly elderly people. Surely, This proves I’m not a ‘COVID-sceptic’?

.Some of the tweets I wrote that he shared might have been badly worded and a very small number may have been erroneous in some way. Where they were, I of course take responsibility.

However, I would like to place it on record that I have never denied COVID is a real and nasty illness. The pandemic phase killed many thousands of people. https://twitter.com/ClareCraigPath/status/1350115636312231936?s=20

Among many scientists and doctors including Government ones, I do not have the monopoly on getting things wrong; we all make mistakes and the right response is to learn from them and improve.

The culture of not being allowed to make mistakes is a dangerous one as it effectively impedes progress and any attempt at finding a solution. Scientists advising the Government have made serious errors.

On 8 Jan, I posted that there ‘are no excess deaths’. At the time, the data showed no significant excess deaths when compared to the five-year average. And this was at the time of a major new respiratory virus in its first endemic winter outbreak. Facts are not disinformation.

Since 8 January, new data has been released and it is now true that there is some excess death in the last two weeks. That death rate is not growing exponentially and it is not doubling every 4 days, as it did during the pandemic phase of this disease in Spring.

Legitimate debate is important to advance scientific progress. Attacking those who challenge the scientific orthodoxy is not conducive to a proper debate, is anti-democratic and could lead to errors.

If @NeilDotObrien had written a rebuttal of the actual arguments I have put forward I would have accepted that as an important part of a healthy debate. However, he didn’t bother to rebut almost any of my points.

As a result of his tweets, the accusation has been made that my commentary has resulted in spread of the disease and deaths. This claim is false, offensive and deeply inappropriate. It also overestimates my platform and reach.

The public have been very compliant with regulations. It treats the public as though they cannot be trusted to engage in discussion and debate in good faith. But public discussion of a major political policy is not an optional extra. It is core to our democracy.

I have never said “the idea health services could be overwhelmed was scaremongering”. This is how @NeilDotObrien represented me:

This is the tweet he used. Evidently, I was explaining how every pneumonia is a nasty disease to have. That is the truth. Posting factually true tweets cannot be spreading disinformation.

Respiratory illnesses in winter bring the NHS to breaking point every single year. As I recall, the purpose of the initial lockdown was to ‘flatten the sombrero’ and allow the NHS to cope with the inevitable country-wide spread of the disease.

What we now have is an *endemic* winter disease with an outbreak that started in September and has resulted in a ‘bad year’ in terms of winter deaths. As a result of lockdown, many thousands of people have died early from reduced ordinary medical care through

delays, cancelled services and failure to attend A&E – out of fear. For the NHS annual winter crisis, and this year is no different, COVID has compounded the problem massively because huge numbers of staff are forced to stay at home

(partly from false positives) and hospitals are having to try to separate patients into different areas for quarantining purposes.

It is brutal in hospitals right now. My heart goes out to those working in the NHS. Like many thousands of medical staff who are not working for the NHS right now, I volunteered to come back to work in the Spring.

I also stand by this. @NeilDotObrien has not provided information to prove me wrong. The Government could have performed simple experiments to investigate this.

I stand by this. The Government’s pandemic plan estimates a pandemic is likely to last around 15 weeks: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/213717/dh_131040.pdf. Pandemics don’t last over a year. Epidemics become endemic. Endemic viruses can’t spread in an *exponential* way.

@NeilDotObrien quotes me as saying that “there are 18% fewer emergency admissions in Dec 2020 than Dec 2019”. This is a statement of undeniable fact. It is verifiable from the Government’s own published data. https://www.england.nhs.uk/statistics/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/01/Statistical-commentary-December-2020-jf8hj.pdf

Almost none of Neil O’Brien’s tweets about me offered evidence to prove me wrong. I believe his intention is to deter me and other people from speaking out. I am concerned that a Government representative would behave this way about good faith scientific discussion.

Only by welcoming all ideas can we learn. By finding the ones that are right we progress. When people are afraid of sharing their ideas we impede science.

I remain committed to scientific debate and polite discourse and contributing to the analysis of the evidence that is vital to see our country through this crisis.

By attempting to damage my credibility, without offering evidence in his rebuttal, @NeilDotObrien's tweets discredit his own position as a member of the Government and a public servant.

I am a qualified diagnostic pathologist and a concerned citizen acting in good faith and pro bono. The allegation that I am ‘spreading disinformation’ is false, unevidenced and insulting. @NeilDotObrien owes me an apology.