South Africa Hospitalizations15% week over week0.3% from yesterday Gauteng Province2.4% week over week0.7% Long plateau: Ventilators are last to peak (17% of Delta peak) Should see meaningful declines later this week.

Throughout the pandemic, wearing a face mask has been one of the best ways that anyone can easily reduce their risk of catching or spreading COVID-19. Putting aside the often contentious debate over mask mandates, face masks remain a crucial and effective individual tool, which is why it continues to be frustrating that most people, two years in, are not wearing better masks.

Seriously, Upgrade Your Face Mask Omicron is everywhere. Dr. Abraar Karan explains why cloth masks don’t cut it.

this exchange is unedifying in style, but the content principles play - scoring past output for accuracy- seems important to online science discourse, particularly under conditions of high uncertainty. How could we build this in a less divisive, discourse undermining way?

How could my identity possibly affect the evidence I provided and gave sources for? Does knowing my name make those articles more or less relevant in any way? and, if yes, by what mechanism?

I *literally* came to respond to your subtweet because I *retweeted* your thread with this information account, which also means it gets indexed in the http://SciBeh.org database. Along with high quality pro arguments- because this is what that account is for.

against this survey data you might set actual uptake figures in France, various Canadian provinces, and Germany after the introduction of passports

and I didn't say we *should* mandate them. I simply pointed out that when considering the impact of passports on uptake we should probably look at *actual uptake* in response to *actual mandates* in addition to survey data, which may or may not translate into action, no?

so, observational data has weaknesses- so does survey data, but it's there and we should look at it. On your second point, yes, that is important, we should study that, if we have no data we can't factor it into decision. Third is separate issue/factor to weigh.

I get that you are against mandates. I am responding to the *reasons* you give for this. Those reasons should be evidence based, right? and they should also not include the claim you are trying to justify. That's all.

"reveal myself"? really? this is the account of http://SciBeh.org, the human being typing this right now is Ulrike Hahn. What is the relevance of that to the very specific piece of information I sought to inject in your thread for the benefit of readers?

I literally only responded to *one* point in your overall argument/set of tweets. You somehow seem to assume that it is not possible to try to accumulate facts in order to come to a decision,

NBA player says he doesn’t need vaccine… 40-thousand likes and 1.4 million views. Scientist/doctor corrects NBA player… 4-thousand likes. We’re so screwed…

depending on interpretation, and interpretation of current UK Covid policy, Singapore is not "the first country" to be trying this 7/7

t's lizard-people-level crazy to think the JCVI meant this: https://twitter.com/BallouxFrancois/status/1454980187976871941?s=20… 6/7

this is a reasonable thing to consider: https://twitter.com/apsmunro/status/1454792162000916481?s=20… 5/7

https://twitter.com/dgurdasani1/status/1454383106555842563?s=20… 4/7

t can't possibly be what the JCVI meant with the respective bullet points in their minutes. Here a selection of that debate: 3/7

The JCVI seems to have at least considered the value of childhood infections as providing boosters for adults, sparking intense debate about the ethics of this, whether this makes epidemiological sense, or whether, in fact, it would be so crazy and nonsensical that ...2/71

interestingly the Singapore Health Minister also mentions "boosting through mild infections" - a concept that is currently generating much furore in the UK in the wake of the release of the JCVI minutes on child vaxx decisions 1/n

To assess the effectiveness of vaccination in preventing severe forms of Covid-19, EPI-PHARE conducted two real-life studies in parallel using data from the SNDS (National Health Data System), one in 15, 4 million people aged 50 to 74 (7.7 million vaccinated compared to 7.7 million unvaccinated) the other in 7.2 million people aged 75 and over (3.6 million vaccinated compared to 3 .6 million unvaccinated). Both cohorts were followed until July 20, 2021.

Impact of vaccination on the risk of severe forms of Covid-19

Lots of useful international examples in the comments to this post And more from @cmmid_lshtm here: https://github.com/cmmid

A very disturbing read on the recent JCVI minutes released. They seem to consider immunity through infection in children advantageous, discussing children as live 'booster' vaccines for adults. I would expect this from anti-vaxx groups, not a scientific committee.

I am not American either, but I would imagine that it is decision relevant when the costs of policies not only hit some citizens more than others, but particularly when they hit groups likely to be under-represented or even excluded from making those very decisions

As the pandemic continues to recede, IHME will update its COVID-19 models and forecasts at the beginning of each month. In the meantime, our researchers will keep track of any developments that might require more frequent updates.

COVID-19 Projections

Worth exploring I believe

Maybe this always happens in times of great instability? Or maybe it reflects misplaced values of university administrators/boards? Where building endowments is all? Where many College Presidents are no longer scholars/thinkers but selected to keep Universities off the headlines?

As a professor who trained or taught at similar great universities I’m interested in understanding how professors or even whole institutions lost their moral compass during the pandemic and were so eager to align with authoritarian leaders new outlets podcasters

And then you begin to see how authoritarian or totalitarian regimes unfold. A common thread from my read of political thought leaders in this space like @anneapplebaum @ruthbenghiat is how authoritarianism relies in part on intellectual cover and Stanford Harvard others delivered

Many thanks @Finneganporter while i predicted some of this, a part that caught me off guard in the pandemic was the rise of contrarian intellectuals from conservative think tanks or even Harvard Stanford so desperate for relevance they aligned themselves with far right extremists

So those critiquing others for being too certain (I get subtweeted a lot for this)- Am I certain about the exact impact of omicron in the UK? Not at all Am I certain it'll be high impact? Quite Am I certain we should act now? Absolutely

Best to act early, quickly & scale back if the response was an overreaction. I can safely say that I've not seen any overreaction in UK pandemic policy though, so this is extremely unlikely. Under reaction which is far more damaging has been the mainstay, and continues to be.

Same with long COVID. The greater the uncertainty, the more the need for caution, and the more the need for early action. Even the best-case scenarios look very concerning with omicron. So please don't use uncertainty as an excuse for inaction. Inaction will kill in a pandemic.

I've seen people use 'uncertainty' around aspects of evidence to justify inaction. Uncertainty in evidence *does not* mean uncertainty in policy. As I've said, while there's a lot of uncertainty around the exact impact of omicron, there's little doubt that it'll be severe

R2 = .49 .... 50% still unaccounted for? I'm game..

Interesting question. Not sure there is much variance left to explain once you take into account ideology. For climate change r=.7 between denial and libertarianism. Massive.

but I feel I know smart people who definitely believe their own Covid minimising nonsense, and while ideology is undoubtedly a factor, it can't be all....

Hmm. post-Brexit I'd say. Pandemic puts all that on steroids but it all ultimately comes back to the original Project Gaslight (a.k.a. Leave).

there is an interesting post-pandemic research stream on "successive detachment from reality in non-clinical populations" to be had here that could become a thing...

It's pretty stunning. The expectation that they can gaslight not just the British public (that's easy) but other governments (that don't drip feed on UK tabloids) is beyond weird.

"act like"

.@SciBeh !?

This was not far from the mark.

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

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

31/ Even the Mail had some questions about him

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