AUG 10, 2023 Authored by Will Jones. DailySceptic.org<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Throughout the Covid pandemic, the Scottish Government made a show of imposing stricter and longer restrictions than Boris Johnson\u2019s \u2018reckless\u2019 Tory Government south of the border. Yet despite these additional measures, in the two years from the start of the pandemic to spring 2022, Scotland averaged 23.9 excess deaths per million weekly, writes Dr. David Livermore in Spiked. \u201cThat was by far the highest in the U.K., with Wales suffering 22.9 excess deaths per million, Northern Ireland 18.8 and England 18.6.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This obvious failure of Scotland\u2019s response was, remarkably, summarised in an opening report commissioned by Scotland\u2019s official Covid inquiry and written by Dr. Ashley Croft, a public health infection epidemiologist who spent most of his career working for the military and now practises from Harley Street as a medico-legal expert witness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He told the inquiry that:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In 2020, there was scientific evidence to support the use of some of the physical measures (e.g., frequent handwashing, the use of PPE in hospital settings) adopted against COVID-19. For other measures (e.g., face-mask mandates outside of healthcare settings, lockdowns, social distancing, test, trace and isolate measures), there was either insufficient evidence in 2020 to support their use \u2013 or alternatively, no evidence; the evidence base has not changed materially in the intervening three years. It has been argued that the restrictive measures introduced during the COVID-19 pandemic resulted in individual, societal and economic harm that was avoidable and that should not have occurred.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dr. Livermore says he agrees entirely.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As Sweden\u2019s already-concluded Covid inquiry found, \u201cSeveral countries which did impose lockdowns\u2026 had \u2018significantly worse outcomes\u2019 than Sweden\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It also found that the restriction of individual freedom was \u201chardly defensible other than in the face of very extreme threats\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dr. Croft is similarly downbeat about the vaccines, saying \u201cit remains unclear as to whether or not COVID-19 vaccination has resulted in fewer deaths from COVID-19\u201d. Dr. Livermore disputes this conclusion, saying \u201cit seems fairly clear that vaccines did break the link between cases and deaths in the spring and summer of 2021\u201d. However, recent analysis by experts like Dr. Eyal Shahar suggests that much of the apparent effectiveness of the vaccines may be an illusion created by the healthy vaccinee effect, whereby those who took the vaccines tend, other things being equal, to have fewer underlying risk factors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In any case, Dr. Livermore agrees with Dr. Croft that \u201cthe protection they offered was brief and incomplete\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Long before vaccine passports were imposed on Scots in autumn 2021, there was abundant evidence that vaccines did not stop infection and transmission. This should have blown the bottom out of the case for vaccine passports. That it failed to stop them is a disgrace.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dr. Croft adds that the \u201c2,362 spontaneous [Yellow Card] reports suggesting a fatal outcome following COVID-19 vaccination\u201d are \u201cof concern\u201d, noting such events are likely under-reported.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But the most important point about Dr. Croft\u2019s report, says Dr. Livermore, is that it so flagrantly defies the Official Narrative of harsh but necessary lockdowns saving the population from the ravages of a deadly plague.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Irrespective of whether one agrees with his conclusions or not, Croft is to be congratulated for addressing the core question: did the Government\u2019s restrictions, deployed at great cost and societal disruption, work?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The fact that he has even asked this question stands in contrast to the groupthink on display at the U.K. inquiry, presided over by Lady Hallett. Its first theme, examining \u2018Preparedness and Resilience\u2019, concluded last month. During the hearings, witnesses were indulged in long meanders through Brexit and Tory\/Lib Dem austerity. This was despite the obvious fact that adjacent EU countries not previously governed by David Cameron and Nick Clegg experienced similar travails with the virus.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Witnesses also said that Britain had prepared for the wrong type of pandemic, with all of our plans anticipating an influenza pandemic rather than a coronavirus pandemic. But if coronavirus and influenza pandemics were so obviously different, scientists wouldn\u2019t still be arguing about whether the 1889-94 \u2018Russian Flu\u2019 \u2013 which was comparable to Covid in terms of mortality \u2013 was a form of influenza or a coronavirus.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Unsurprisingly, Croft\u2019s report hasn\u2019t gone down well with the lockdown-supporting press in Scotland. He has been attacked as being \u2018not an expert\u2019 in viral pandemics. I don\u2019t know Croft and hold no personal brief for him, but his CV indicates a much longer experience of microbiology-related public health than, say, public-health academic Devi Sridhar, who exerted much influence on Scotland\u2019s Covid response. Military medicine \u2013 where he spent his career \u2013 takes a great interest in epidemics. They have stopped many armies, from Charles VIII at Naples (syphilis) to Admiral Vernon at Cartagena (yellow fever).<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dr. Livermore concludes that \u201cit is telling that Scottish commentators no longer even try to say that Scotland\u2019s lockdowns were a success\u2026 there is too much evidence to the contrary\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
AUG 10, 2023 Authored by Will Jones. DailySceptic.org Throughout the Covid pandemic, the Scottish Government made a show of imposing stricter and longer restrictions than Boris Johnson\u2019s \u2018reckless\u2019 Tory Government […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":7389,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[761,332,973,607,608],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7388","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-concerns","category-mortality","category-vaccine-failure","category-vaccine-news","category-vaccine-safety"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cov19longhaulfoundation.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7388","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cov19longhaulfoundation.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cov19longhaulfoundation.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cov19longhaulfoundation.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cov19longhaulfoundation.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7388"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/cov19longhaulfoundation.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7388\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cov19longhaulfoundation.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/7389"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cov19longhaulfoundation.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7388"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cov19longhaulfoundation.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7388"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cov19longhaulfoundation.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7388"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}