"...rapid antigen tests may not be as fit-for-purpose in routine workplace screening to prevent asymptomatic spread of Omicron, compared to prior variants..." @awyllie13 @DrBlytheAdamson https://medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.01.04.22268770v1.full.pdf…Quote TweetMatthew Herper@matthewherper · 5 JanStudy raises doubts about rapid Covid tests’ reliability in early days after infection. The upshot here: the rapid tests may not catch infection for a few days. There are cases of transmission documented after a false negative. https://statnews.com/2022/01/05/study-raises-doubts-about-rapid-covid-tests-reliability-in-early-days-after-infection/…Show this thread

An entire maternity ward has Covid in Gothenburg, Sweden.

RFK jr’s book alleging Bill Gates funded fake negative hydroxycholoroquine studies to rob us of a Covid miracle cure is now #1 on Amazon.Quote TweetEric Nelson@literaryeric · 17 Nov 2021Right now Will Smith has a new memoir, the 1619 project just pubbed, Fox News has a Christmas celebration book, and Jon Karl has a Trump expose breaking news every day. RFK jr’s book on how Bill Gates and Fauci created Covid to sell more deadly vaccines is outselling then all.Show this thread

Every time a new variant with a selective advantage is making the rounds, but especially this time.

We'll know much more about this level of risk in ~2 weeks when we get neutralization results. I'm particularly interested in neutralization titers of individuals with two doses of vaccine vs individuals with three doses of vaccine. 18/18

Note also that high immune escape, lower intrinsic transmissibility is not necessarily a good thing. Higher immune escape places previously infected and vaccinated individuals more at risk. 17/18

Again, based on wildly divergent spike protein, I'm guessing that immune escape will be substantial and so I still suspect that it's quite possible that Omicron will show lower intrinsic transmissibility than Delta. My updated diagram. 16/18

Note the these estimates are sensitive to assumed population immunity. Under a scenario of 85% population immunity, we get the following picture instead that shifts the required level of immune escape upwards for a particular R0 value. 15/18

Under a scenario of 90% population immunity against previous variants, we get the following picture where Omicron could lie anywhere along the dashed line ranging from an intrinsic R0 of 3 and 83% immune escape to an intrinsic R0 of 9 and 20% immune escape. 14/18

We can then use the approach here to factor possible scenarios of intrinsic transmission vs immune escape that would give Omicron Rt of 2.5. 13/18

Having two very different methods give Rt estimates of between 2.0 and 2.5 gives me some (small) degree of confidence. We can triangulate relative fitness with Rt so that Delta in South Africa is at Rt of ~0.8 and Omicron is at about three times this with Rt of ~2.5. 12/18

This also gives a median estimate of doubling time of 4.9 days, which we can convert to an estimate of Rt assuming a generation interval of 5.1 days (https://eurosurveillance.org/content/10.2807/1560-7917.ES.2020.25.17.2000257…). Doing so gives a median estimate of Rt of 2.0 with a 95% credible interval of 1.6 to 2.6. 11/18

This updated analysis gives a median estimate of the common ancestor to Omicron viruses of Sep 30 with a 95% credible interval of between Sep 9 and Oct 13. 10/18

Secondly, I'm now masking spike which has issues of spurious within-Omicron diversity due to amplicon dropout during sequencing. I've adjusted molecular clock rate from 8×10^-4 to 5.5×10^-4 to compensate (determined from sequences taken over the course of the pandemic). 9/18

I've revised my own phylodynamic estimates of rate of spread with a couple improvements. First off, I'm now using 206 Omicron genomes generously shared by researchers through @GISAID. 8/18

Work from @seabbs and colleagues gives a similar result of Rt increasing from ~0.8 to above 2 over the course of November in Gauteng (https://epiforecasts.io/covid/posts/subnational/south-africa/gauteng/…). 7/18

In work from @lrossouw we get a rapid rise in Rt in Gauteng from ~0.8 to ~2.5 over the course of Nov corresponding to the take off of Omicron (https://unsupervised.online/static/covid-19/estimating_r_za.html#54_Gauteng…). 6/18

In addition to changes in relative frequency, we can look at what's happening with case counts, which have been rising rapidly in Gauteng and South Africa. We can measure the exponential growth in cases via Rt (the number of secondary cases caused by an index case). 5/18

But as stated previously, I believe this estimate is likely to drop somewhat as more data comes in. But I wouldn't be surprised if this drops to something still significant, say 3X or 4X the transmission rate of Delta in South Africa. 4/18

Key datapoints include rapid displacement of existing Delta viruses by Omicron in Gauteng and South Africa. Estimates of logistic growth rate here by @TWenseleers imply Omicron has ~5X current transmission rate of Delta. 3/18

Monday's post was mainly meant to emphasize that observed rapid spread of Omicron can be influenced by both intrinsic transmissibility and immune escape. Here, I'll try to put (speculative) numbers on this rate of spread. 2/18

Following up here with speculative estimates of the rate of spread of Omicron and a stab at how to apportion this rapid rate of spread between intrinsic transmissibility and immune escape. 1/18

I guess Omicron is not going anywhere with already >5% of sequences in Belgium and Netherlands #Omicron

this is very high for a Monday

This is what it feels like again https://xkcd.com/2278/

I’m trying to reconcile Pfizer’s optimistic statements about 3rd dose protection against omicron https://nytimes.com/live/2021/12/08/world/omicron-variant-covid/pfizer-says-blood-samples-showed-a-third-dose-of-its-vaccine-provides-significant-protection-against-omicron… vs data from Germany showing that while 3rd dose (booster) protects it may not be very durable? We really need to hear from CDC/FDA/WhiteHouse on this…

Perhaps unsurprisingly, this is an absolutely awful study filled with issues and numeric mistakes https://twitter.com/GidMK/status/1471320819817058304?t=lL7bvKxMz7XGrLeB2FiSzw&s=19…Quote TweetPierre Kory, MD MPA@PierreKory · 5 JanResults of the world’s largest study of ivermectin in COVID have just been posted. Meticulously collected data from hundreds of thousands of patients find massive reductions in hospitalization & death. “Controversy” over. Join us tomorrow for discussion with study investigators twitter.com/Covid19Critica…

People drastically underestimate how often an event with an 0.01% chance of happening will happen if you have millions of events

Pay careful attention to who is out there expressing *outrage* that Twitter banned Malone Hint: The Brownstone Institute, the new iteration of the Great Barrington Declaration, is outraged I know, you’re shocked! Just shocked!

Good things sometimes do happen One of the world's worst peddlers of dangerous vaccine disinformation His supporters will scream "censorship!" but I for one am happy that his horrific nonsense about vaccines won't feature on Twitter

The original document (https://web.archive.org/web/20211227215943/https://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2021/s1227-isolation-quarantine-guidance.html…) was self-contradictory on this point. The December 29th revision specifies clearly that symptomatic individuals can exit isolation after 5 days provided that "their symptoms are resolving."

La desinformación contra las vacunas contribuyó a la trágica e innecesaria pérdida de 200.000 estadounidenses que se creyeron sus galimatías anticientíficas desde junio.

When the antivaccine disinformation crowd declares twisted martyrdom when bumped from social media or condemned publicly: they contributed to the tragic and needless loss of 200,000 unvaccinated Americans since June who believed their antiscience gibberish. They’re the aggressors

Bonjour @19h30RTS, voici l'évolution des infections pour Denmark, Switzerland, France, Unitedkingdom :

there is going to be a lot of redefining "herd immunity" in the coming months

Do wish our politicians including @Keir_Starmer @NicolaSturgeon would watch these @bmj_latest #covidunknowns and some of our @IndependentSage colleagues too. Might have prevented a lot of harm. Need to refocus on health care capacity and social determinants.

Omicron is illustrating "herd immunity" as how it was introduced: a relative concept, that reduces the adverse outcome of infections within populations, not as an absolute threshold that stopped transmission; as @bmj_latest #covidunknowns webinar explains

excuse me....am i wrong or you didnt control for previous infection of the vaxxed? if that is the case how can you "isolate" Omicron only neutralisation of previous variants? hence...how can you say Omicron infection alone displace delta? beyond the survivor bias issue

nb- only in that age group, and no examination of respective severity

Timothy Caulfield: Misinformation – Vaccines, Vaccine Hesitancy & Media https://youtu.be/wQSIo1AmQMw via @CARPNews @Zoomer Thx for opportunity to debunk COVID myths! - No evidence vaccines harm fertility or will change your DNA - Vaccines are not "experimental"

Here's a good one

going out on a limb here: deporting someone on health and safety grounds who has just publicly admitted to violating quarantine (subject to up to 3 y imprisonment) by going to a photo shoot and interview having tested "positive" won't be something court will find controversial https://twitter.com/DrEliDavid/status/1481895082768875523

Choose your adventure, friends

and what is even more surprising is that it is popping up in a discourse between extremely educated individuals who think and argue about complex issues for a living

2/2 it seems to be being advanced as part of an argument *against* measures to reign in rampant infection rates (as a kind of undercutting defeater). Arguments where its hard to tell whether they are meant as arguments for or against a position seem cases of "poor argument"

as an argumentation researcher, I am intrigued by a new (to me) phenomenon of argument failure: the argument below, I (and I assume most people) would view as an argument *for* taking measures against Covid to protect hospital capacity, but ...1/2

Australia will surpass the US on vaccination this week. New South Wales already there.

schrodinger’s antivaxx

So, @JeffreyZients is in charge. But not in charge.

When did 4.5% of children in any age group being infected *every wk* become ok for any disease?

interesting SciComm on Twitter development- the dedicated translator

no worse- he took Medley's comment that Sage model the scenarios the government asks them to consider to mean that they basically set out to find the justification for what the government already wanted to do. Complete failure to distinguish between inputs and outputs of a model

Let me guess, FN thought that the model "failed to predict" something? (because the scenario didn't eventuate, which of course has nothing to do with the model). All thoroughly familiar from climate denial.

one of the more depressing moments of pandemic discourse for me was recent exchange between @FraserNelson and @GrahamMedley where FN thought he had scored an amazing "gotcha" moment, when all exchange showed was FN not understanding what phrase "model a scenario" means..

This is such an important point. You cannot look at data without a model. You cannot even look at anything in the world without a model--e.g. theory of mind, which only infants and people in a coma do without. All those model-bashers just reveal their ignorance @SciBeh

BA.2 has a growth rate advantage over BA.1 of ca 0.11/day. That's quite sizeable. If it would have the same short generation time as BA.1 of 2.2 days it would imply a ca.1.3x higher transmissibility, due to higher contagiousness or immune escape.

47/ And finally, GBD, Tucker from AIER/Brownstone, Clare Craig from HART etc are operating in Uganda to increase vax hesitancy and build the antivax movement In how many other countries are they doing the same? Heinous

46/ Good money in podcasts £30k a month good, thats part of the issue, many of them do this full time while those of us fighting for sense are working full time

45/ And of course this can easily be debunked, Davis surely must have seen the corrections fill his TL, yet its still up and being quoted by others Doesn't help those falling for conspiracy theories to have MPs spreading this crap

44/ Recently we had @DavidDavisMP getting his facts from a podcast and claiming deaths had been massively overstated

43/ Once again another Ivermectin study turns our to be junk

42/ Just America's Frontline Doctors alone are estimated to have taken in at least $15 million for consultations and alternative treatments

41/ $2.5million just from subsstack, where Nawaz from LBC is now plying his conspiracy theories

40/ And the grift is growing

39/ In the UK we see another attempt at a Proud Boys tribute act, some people really want aggressive paramilitaries on UK streets Also seeing a poliferation of "common law constables"

38/ Special shout out to Tenpenny for most insane comment of the month Quantum entanglement to steal your bank details!

37/ Of course the far right groups like the Proud Boys have joined in, starting to look like the antivax movement is being subsumed into the far right

36/ Once again its the same ecosystem of overlapping groups and narratives in the US "Defeat the Mandate" also came with a festival of fruitloops

35/ We see groups of politicians, media, astroturf, academics, the far right all coming into alignment and cooperation to undermine the pandemic effort with disinformation and political pressure on a weakened Prime Minister who only cares about his job

31/ Even the Mail had some questions about him

34/ Then we see those involved in the NHS astroturf campaign linked to the #TogetherDeclaration campaign also have far rights links, and Russian links

33/ And what a suprise Steve Baker of CRG is also in on the action

32/ Now we have a midwife as well, "I'm not antivax, but..." Also linked to the new disinformation campaign

30/ We have the "I'm not antivax but..." NHS guy who Javid spoke to quickly being handed a platform and given prominence by the disinformation groups/campaigns

29/ We also have new astroturf organisation and campaigns not just against mandates but also putting out a lot of disinformation

28/ We even end up with articles encouraging us to speed the spread of covid

28/ Now there's another one on children which they are all quoting as "incredibly robust", its not rare, no need for measures A look at the issues with this study

27/ In the UK we have Munro, Ladhani and Dingwall minimising long covid

26/ Some in the BBC also responsible for trying to normalise preventable deaths

26/ We saw the usual ppl trying to minimise the scale of the Omicron wave by blaming testing

25/ And Molly Kingsley of UsForThem also at it in the Mail

24/ Other examples Misuse of statistics on lockdown harms to children, just as the urgency of normality have done No suprise to see Lucy Johnson at it

23/ Just look how Sunetra Gupta was silenced last week by writing an article in the Telegraph that reached a large audience. She now says herd immunity means constant reinfection, thats how we protect the vulnerable

22/But remember its the GBD who see themselves as the martyrs of the pandemic, forge about their meetings with politicians, their support from swathes of the RW media, their the ones being silenced

21/ The CRG and the APPG sponsored by the GBDs Collateral Global fill the media with disinformation on a daily basis The APPGs recent attempts to halt vaccination of under 16s shows how far they've embraced the ideology

20/ Issue is that its Bhattacharya who the CRG MPs currently quoting as they oppose all measures in schools, calling for masks to be completely banned

19/ More time and effort has been spent on gaslighting to keep measures out of schools than any other aspect of the pandemic It is after all the key part of a pro-infection herd immunity strategy Great read here on Bhattacharya

18/ Appears Kulldorff has been deleted off LinkedIn

17/ What we are dealing with is not just a difference of opinion between experts, its deliberately muddying the waters and there seems to be concern that its the antivaxxers and conspiracy theorists who are lapping this up

16/ It also appears there's been manipulation o VAER to support these dredging tactics Thousand of adverse reactions reported from a single IP

15/ If you're willing to support the pro-infection agenda then it seems you'll be offered a short cut to gaining a large platform

14/ Misuse and misrepresentation of VAER is a standard tactic of antivaxxers

13/ Last year Hoeg was one of those behind the paper that dredged VAER massively inflating the risk of myocarditis from vax Turner of the Telegraph promoted it poisoning the debate on child vax in the UK

12/ More on those concerns

10/ As a full time school worker the idea we can get back to normal in the short term is a joke The "toolkit" they've produced is another example of the weaponisation of mental health to support pro infection policies

9/ In the US a load of them have teamed up for Urgency of Normality However schools can't have normality whilst policy makers and other adults accept high infection rates

8/ More examples of Ghandi

7/ Examples of how Noble, Ghandi and Prasad have undermined public health messaging

7/ Yet when caught or called out there will be clarifications and accusations of being misinterpreted and taken out of context, never contrition. Playing both sides on PH messaging doesn't work

6/ Having minimised covid harms, they find themselves playing down the benefits of vaccination For example in the US, Vinay Prasad has ended with messaging likely to increase hesitancy and embolden antivaxxers A look at an example of this

5/ There is a reoccurring theme of dividing children into "healthy" and "comordity" then dismissing concerns an individualistic approach to measures leaves vulnerable children greater risk Same vulnerable children they claim to champion when convenient

4/ These academics provide a statistical shield for policy makers to justify not taking transmission in schools seriously Their minimising of risks is also used by antivaxxers to reinforce their beliefs An example from US is Emily Oster

3/ Those minimising the impact on schools and children are an important part of the disinformation ecosystem Each country has a small group of over publicised academics fighting against all measures backed up by astroturf campaign groups

2/ As always theres been a focus in gaslighting around schools and children In the UK education is facing serious disruption due to a lack of measures so adults can pretend everythings back to normal while politicians still chase the herd immunity unicorn

1/Some questionable stats, studies and statements over past 6 week Examples and evaluation First of all its worth looking at the impact some studies and articles have had in recent months

#COVID Case and Hospitalization Update: -17,305 New Cases -8,741 Hospitalizations (-594) -134 New deaths reported by healthcare facilities through HERDS

Overall - these are great news. -Despite the increased prevalence of sub-lineage BA.2 in the UK, there does not appear to be a decrease in VE as compared to BA.1. - The booster vaccines remain effective against the most severe outcomes of Omicron infection.

At 25+ weeks following the second dose, vaccine effectiveness was around 60% while at 2+ weeks following a booster vaccine effectiveness was 95% against mortality.

VE against mortality with Omicron BA.1 was estimated for those aged 50+ by combining the risk of becoming a symptomatic case with the risk of death among symptomatic cases in vaccinated (all vaccines combined) compared to unvaccinated individuals.

Next, VE against death for Omicron BA.1. Although we have previously observed waning of the boosters against symptomatic disease during Omicron infection, protection of the boosters has been well maintained against severe disease when we have looked at hospitalisations.

VE after 2 doses and after the booster dose was similar for BA.1 and BA.2. After 2 doses VE was 9% (7-10%) and 13% (-26-40%) respectively for BA.1 and BA.2, after 25+ weeks. This increased to 63% for BA.1 and 70% for BA.2 at 2+ weeks after a booster.

First, VE against BA.2. The Omicron sub-lineage known as BA.2 was designated VUI-22JAN-01 on 19 January. VE against symptomatic disease was analysed in a test-negative case control design. Pillar 2 data from symptomatic cases tested between 27/12 & 21/01 were included. 2/7

Two important updates from our team this week: - Vaccine effectiveness (VE) against symptomatic disease after Omicron BA.2 shows that VE remains unchanged - VE against death after Omicron BA.1 shows VE is 95% at 2+ weeks after booster 1/7 Full report

NEW: Vaccine effectiveness (symptomatic infection) data for BA.2 {Omicron’s more infectious sister} NO difference in VE between Omicron (BA.1) and BA.2 Possibly even higher VE for BA.2 but estimates overlap

Guy who says his natural immunity was a good stand in for mRNA accuses others of undermining vaccination

He had me from the start … but then the AI clip rocketed this one to the top of my list of best COVID vaccine explainers … sorry fork hands, it was a good run.

Listen to @Schwarzenegger

Israel data showing the decay of vaccine efficacy over time. Y-axis is cases per 1000 from July 7 to Aug 10, for unvaccinated, and for people vaccinated at different times Cases are higher in those vaxed earlier Despite world-data caveats, this seems quite compelling

Yes. One benefit is that this is looking within age bands (e.g. 50-59). So there can be confounding within the age bands, in terms of who is prioritized (e.g. occupational risk, comorbidities, prior infection), but less so than if we looked across the whole population.

Things I think when I see this: - This shows rates for all reported cases regardless of disease severity. What does the pattern look like for just severe cases? - Will we see the same pattern for other dosing schedules (e.g. longer spacing in the UK) or vaccines (Moderna)?

Real-world data from Israel show a growing gap between the earliest vaccinated (blue arrow) and the recently vaccinated (green arrow) within age groups. Confounding is always a concern (are these groups fundamentally different?) but the magnitude of the difference is notable.

but this account is meant to be an information account, not one for discussing my personal views.

personally, I'd consider it a natural, considerate, and moral response to avoid contact with others when carrying an infection that can be dangerous to others. So what seems dystopian to me, is not doing so, and not creating the social/financial conditions that allow it.

One in four 35- to 54-year-olds in England not complying with Covid self-isolation

@DrJBhattarcharya's behavior is especially disgraceful because he has the credentials and appearance of a person doing this type of science, when in practice, he is engaged in sophistry to justify his predetermined conclusions.

Policy issues are complex and difficult -- some of the best scientists (e.g. @ProfEmilyOster) look at the data for themselves and reach conclusions that are at odds with many epidemiologists. This work is essential.

This experience casts in a new and more sinister light Jay's past policy mistakes, such as his claim that Covid mortality was substantially lower than epidemiologists believed and so Covid would lead to fewer deaths than a typical flu season:

His assessment of the DANMASK trial as showing that masks are ineffective is also equally misleading as I explained in my declaration to the court.

Despite admitting to me in private correspondence that focusing on the absolute reduction in risk was misleading relative to the proportional reduction, he did *exactly this* in the court case before he knew I would be there to correct him.

Jay knows all of this since I messaged him privately to correct his misrepresentations, and he saw it all again when I testified in the trial to correct his misrepresentations but he keeps repeating his misleading statements in public forums.

6) We have cross-sectional evidence showing that villages with larger increases in mask-wearing had larger reductions in symptoms and symptomatic seropositivity, in line w/ our other estimates.

5) We have precise estimates for symptoms and symptomatic seropositivity at older age groups, esp. for surgical masks, where the CI rules out less than a 15% reduction (and includes a 55% reduction)

3) The CI for Covid symptoms is a 7-17% reduction (from our 30 pp increase in masking). 4) Our standard errors for symptomatic seropositivity drop by half under alternative (equally plausible) ways of imputing missing values, w/ a CI of 6-20%.

1) We can rule out a zero effect w/ a p-value of .032 in the specification to which Jay refers 2) This is the *reduced form* from an increase in masking from 13% to 42%; so universal masking might be several times as effective

This is an absurd mischaracterization of our results as Jay is well aware. What does it get wrong?

He now summarizes our study in Newsweek by saying, "In a study in Bangladesh, the 95 percent confidence interval showed that masks reduced transmission between 0 percent and 18 percent. Hence, masks are either of zero or limited benefit."

The judge disallowed him as an expert witness because of his repeated misrepresentations:

I recently testified pro bono in a trial about masking in schools (in my view, a complex question) for the sole purpose of explaining that the court should not trust @DrJBhattarcharya because he is deliberately misleading people about our study and others.

It is sad. @DrJBhattarcharya is the worst example I have personally seen of someone who was previously a scholar but who now engages in repeated misrepresentation of scientific results to serve a partisan agenda.

The sad thing is that @MartinKulldorff and @DrJBhattacharya once were taken seriously. I'm the last person to say Tony Fauci is always right, but these two have turned into parodies of their former selves. This is just embarassing.

New York City Update Cases down 67%. Positive rate down to 3.8%, lowest since 12/12. Hospital census down 33%, lowest since 12/28. New admits lowest since 12/21. Getting closer and closer to pre-Omicron levels.

Anyone who is unwilling to disclose their vaccine status has disclosed their vaccine status

Correlates with cases 4-10 days after.

Boston wastewater makes all the past waves seem almost flat. It is hard to comprehend.

I also dislike the choice of axis scales. I don’t mind line graphs with axes that don’t go to zero (https://callingbullshit.org/tools/tools_misleading_axes.html…) But choosing the scale on the right hand graph so that the values appear “low” in the frame and the vast majority of the graph is empty—that’s problematic.

School & university administrators, as you grapple with this week’s decisions, spare some time to think about how to delay *next* January’s start date to Jan 16 2022. Do you need to extend into summer? Change course lengths? Figure it out because this is going to happen again!Quote TweetDr Ellie Murray, ScD@EpiEllie · 6 JanOne thing that really makes me frustrated about the current school discussion is that everyone is acting like this was a surprise. We have been in a pandemic for 2 years!Show this thread

UPDATE: It seems @GBNEWS' other resident crank @thecoastguy didn't get the memo. Almost a year after Michael Yeadon was exposed as a racist and started raving about plots to depopulate the Earth, he's STILL platforming him. Unbelievable. h/t @mellowmark

Both @talkRADIO and @GBNEWS have a terrible track record of platforming quacks. Their one-sided and often demonstrably false coverage of the pandemic has even included letting anti-vax campaigners make unfounded claims about vaccine safety unchallenged. Will @Ofcom ever act?

Another of @TVKev's favourites seems to be Clare Craig, who told HART friends they should "seed the thought that vaccines cause covid". She's been on his show several times, and even tried to scare pregnant women off getting vaccinated by falsely claiming that it may not be safe!

Meanwhile back at @talkRADIO, presenters like @TVKev O'Sullivan, @Cristo_radio Foufas and @thejamesmax have also kept putting Ros Jones on air to talk nonsense about covid vaccines, even letting her falsely claim that vaccinating children is somehow against international law!

Not everyone's a fan of @gbnews though. Liz Evans described them as "fake alternative media", and suggested Del Bigtree's anti-vax show The Highwire instead! Clare Craig called them "worse than the BBC in many ways", despite them putting her on the channel multiple times.

Indeed, @gbnews tried to get Ros Jones back just a couple of days after her first appearance, this time inviting her to their studio. But this required a PCR test and, hilariously, she was so paranoid about false positives she turned them down! One member suggested faking a test.

And @gbnews invited Ros Jones back several times after that to make increasingly wild attacks on the idea of vaccinating children. This continued until at least September, long after we knew she'd spent all year secretly working with anti-vaxxers to stop kids getting vaccinated!

HART and UsForThem's Ros Jones has also frequently appeared on @GBNEWS, even after the channel asked "how I can possibly say that children will die of vaccine damage who would not die from covid". She can't, but other members gave her various false figures and claims as "proof".

Another @talkRADIO host who moved to @gbnews, @PatrickChristys, also platformed HART members' wild claims on both channels. Even months after #hartleaks revealed the group's true colours, Christys had Gary Sidley and Clare Craig on his GB News show.

When @mrmarkdolan jumped ship to @GBNEWS he soon picked up where he'd left off. On his second week he and HART's Gary Sidley ganged up on Dr David Strain in a debate on masks (on which Mark's own views are very clear), and the next week HART's Rev William Phillip was on his show.

They aren't kidding. Barely a week went by without @mrmarkdolan giving HART members a platform, sometimes two in one day! Members used it to demand that children "must not" be vaccinated, claim lockdowns would kill more people than covid, and call the Delta variant "over hyped".

More popular with HART members is @JuliaHB1's former @talkRADIO colleague @mrmarkdolan. They call him "a strong ally" who gives "HART the respect we deserve" [sic] and is "as anti-mask as we are". They even joke that he "gives more opportunity to speak than Ms Hartley-Brewer".

And anti-vax HART members were *really* upset when @JuliaHB1 got vaccinated. Members said she "crumbled" and was "another huge disappointment". When she spoke favourably about others getting vaccinated, Harrie Bunker-Smith asked "can we get a HART member on to correct her?"

Ironically though, HART don't even like @JuliaHB1. Members constantly complain about her talking over them, and call appearing on her show "a waste of bloody time". One called her "a huge help to the cause but quite annoying", saying she likes to "deliver a lecture". #awkward

But the most worrying episode was in January 2021, when @JuliaHB1 is reported to have got "a sympathetic Cabinet minister" to ask the Chief Whip to tell @NeilDotObrien MP to stop "smearing" HART members ahead of the group's launch! A shocking abuse of democracy.

It's not like @JuliaHB1 can feign ignorance either. Yeadon tells a HART colleague that @talkRADIO "know what I fear but they can't broadcast it". What Yeadon feared was that covid booster shots might be programmed to kill billions of people! Hardly a credible source then...

Earlier in 2021, @JuliaHB1 was still using Michael Yeadon as a source weeks after he was exposed as a racist and started ranting about plots to depopulate the Earth! Yeadon admitted he was "no longer broadcast-able". But JHB still came to him for background info for her show.

Even after #hartleaks showed HART to be a bunch of cranks, @JuliaHB1 continued to platform the group's members. Including Ros Jones falsely claiming that children were more at risk from vaccination than covid, and Tony Hinton comparing vaccine passports to the holocaust!

Despite this appalling track record, after HART launched in January 2021 @JuliaHB1 regularly gave members a platform to speak out against testing, masks, and vaccination. And their predictions didn't get any better either, as they consistently underestimated the Delta wave...

In 2020, @JuliaHB1 and other @TalkRadio hosts gave airtime to future HART members like Michael Yeadon, Clare Craig and Anthony Brookes. They predicted there wouldn't be a second wave (there was), it wouldn't be as bad as the first (it was), and we had herd immunity (we didn't).

One of the most prolific spreaders of misinformation over the last two years has been @talkRADIO's @JuliaHB1. When she asked someone "what disinformation" she had spread, it didn't take me long to find plenty of examples involving prominent HART members:Quote TweetJohn Bye@_johnbye · 31 Oct 2021Replying to @JuliaHB1 and @AlisonGeorge10Michael Yeadon claiming young healthy people don't get severely ill, and questioning the safety and effectiveness of covid vaccines. https://twitter.com/talkRADIO/status/1334438493909610496?t=PsUsYDgxSFcFE5JAWVhq6A&s=19

Despite repeatedly being proven wrong by subsequent events, covid disinformation groups like HART have constantly been given a platform on TV and radio throughout the pandemic. Even after #hartleaks revealed many of their members to be anti-vax conspiracy cranks. 2: broadcast

HK has another lay of swiss cheese. Testing waste water to identify COVID positive buildings, following by mandatory testing on occupants. It can find some silent spreaders.sciencedirect.comThe first case study of wastewater-based epidemiology of COVID-19 in Hong KongEarly detection and surveillance of severe acute respiratory syndrome-coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) virus are key pre-requisites for the effective contro…

Absolutely. And neither myself nor others should invite challenging conversation and then be resistant to it being positioned in a reasonable and considered way. That's how we learn. Not sure I agree that Tim's position is all that different to my own. But that's not for me

2/2 what prompted me to respond in these threads, however, were in principle arguments that seemed relevant to the scope and depth of such inquiry11

I think there might be a difference here between what you are putting forward and what @timcolbourn is arguing any rational individual should be *for* analysing the expected costs and benefits of a course of action, and I assume we all agree on that. 1/2