UKH

Thought I would promote this website answering the misinformation spread by the so-called covid and lockdown "sceptics". I haven't been through it, but everything appears to be backed by peer-reviewed science and given appropriate context.

If people keep accusing you of talking crap about the pandemic, check on here to see if they might just be right:

https://www.covidfaq.co/

Good to see them list certain prominent Covid Skeptics with details of their exploits.  

When I perviously criticised one of those people and their involvement in the Barrington PR exercise, there was as strong rebuttal on here from someone claiming to be a scientist and claiming that this kind of negative shutting down of debate is not good science.

It's not a debate when one side is acting in clear bad faith.   I don't understand how a practicing scientist could look at what I wrote about Barrington and misunderstand or misconstrue it as trying to shut down debate, any more than I can understand how they consider Barrington or the people involved to be acting in good faith and therefore capable of debate.  It's not debate, it's manipulation masquerading as debate.

I am so happy to see a Conservative MP on the panel behind this website.  I bet he watches his back.

I think I will send them my scientific deconstruction of the "false positives" blog post from CEBM.

Two of the people featured prominently on this website continue to be enabled in their activities by being allowed to continue acting in bad faith, under the guise of academic freedom, whilst presenting their University of Oxford credentials.  I would love to hear the raw view from some of the people at the same institution who are making really important, positive contributions to fighting this pandemic.   I would also love hear what some of the junior researchers at the CEBM have to say.

Had a quick skim, looks good.

I wonder if just repeatedly posting the link and refusing to engage in pointless debate with certain posters that keep appearing might be a better way to deal with the issue.

It is a better idea.  Sometimes a bit of engagement with the regular draws out more about them however...

I bet this isn’t your best idea for dealing with them.

Has google earth been updated recently? That large excavation in the back field is for a...swimming pool.

I don't think people care about truth any more, I had some bellend posting on our local FB page telling everyone how dangerous the vaccine is based on ten people reacting to the Moderna vaccine in California.

He was interested in discussing the fact, simply wanted to "prove" the vaccine was dangerous.

When I suggested he seemed happier to have a virus from a bat circulating around his body, but not a vaccine from an company that has been working in healthcare for a number of years.  I was accused of being a scaremonger. WTF?

This isn't the first time shit like this has happened, and he wasn't the only one suggesting they wouldn't have the vaccine because it's dangerous.

You could also point them to the series of reports by Clive Myrie, from the Royal London Hospital. If you're not moved by them, you're either dead, or a Tory cabinet minister. Or you could claim it's just propaganda, I suppose..  

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/health-55724994

That Conservative MP, Neil O'Brien, is quite an interesting figure.  His twitter takedowns of Allison Pearson, Toby Young & the Daily Telegraph have been brutal (I also noticed him engaging with UKCs own VictimofMaths there on some details of covid and data visualisation).  After Cummings got the boot he was elevated to some kind of policy position in Number 10 but I'm not totally clear what that means.  He's obviously very numerate and comfortable with data, he's very engaged with regional economic inequality issues, bit too fond of anti-woke culture wars, very hawkish on China.  I would say he was clearly destined for higher things in government, if it wasn't for the suspicion that talent and sincerity are not necessarily regarded as qualifications in the current regime.

I'm getting that here, but for the Norwegian vaccine deaths. I pointed them at the Bloomberg article about it. 

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-01-18/what-to-know-about-vacci...

...specifically point 8:-

8. Has anaphylaxis been connected to vaccines before?

Yes. Such reactions occur about 1.3 times per million doses of flu vaccine administered. With other vaccines they have been seen at rates of 12 to 25 per million doses, though the studies were small. For the Pfizer-BioNTech Covid vaccine, according to the CDC, the rate as of Dec. 23 is 11.1 per million doses, which is very low. The agency said the risk surrounding the vaccine is less than the risk of getting a severe case of Covid-19.

In the Scandinavian press they aren't blaming the vaccine on the Norwegian deaths, the consensus seems to be that these people were very old and or with multiple existing conditions, any infection could have tipped them over the edge at any time.

If in Europe you vaccinate every over 80 year old in the space of a month, it's a statistical certainty that some of those over 80 year olds would have died in the weeks after, with or without the vaccine. It's not going to make folk immortal.

Interesting, thanks.  I should definitely drop their group a line with an informal write up I did on a CEBM piece - it's clear it was bullshit but it was satisfying to apply actual scientific methods to try and prove the claim made in the piece and show that it was quantifiably so...

I am amazed at the patience some people have with Twitter - it looks like such a septic place to me with the lunatic fringe having tens of thousands of followers ready to pile on to anyone who gets their ire - and not just on Twitter.  I was pleased to see Alan McNally calling Yeadon out a while ago on Twitter, but it seems that rapidly escalated to a barrage of abusive emails to his work account, and I know of someone having a lot of grief following something like that including a false/malicious police report.  It's not a good situation for the public understanding of science.  

I'm gradually and begrudgingly accepting I can't ignore politics so much.  Thanks by the way for the book recommendation a few weeks ago; I forgot to reply on that thread.

I had a similar experience recently when someone posted a link to a local FB group by a spurious scientist claiming it all to be a hoax.  I queried him several times on why, if it's all a hoax, more than half the ICU beds were taken up by seriously ill covid patients.  After avoiding answering the question via the usual deflection tactics, and strawman arguments, he eventually responded with the answer: "ICUs, so far as I no (sic) don't have hundreds of beds only 6-8, have you thought of that?".  At which point I gave up.  So far as I could see many of the dimwits in the FB group felt he'd delivered a knock out blow, intellectually speaking.  So there you go.  Covid only exists because there isn't an inexhaustible source of ICU beds.

My retired next door neighbour asked me what I though of the current crisis a couple of weeks ago.  At the time, I was shovelling snow and thinking about a work problem so I answered on automatic - normally I'm mindful not to discus politics of other such issues with them.  By the time I'd tuned in to what I was saying about the government response to this crisis they were ranting about how if I'd been around in the war we'd all be speaking German by now whilst also calling me a liberal leftie marxist academic and suggesting if I was such an expert maybe I should be in charge.  I think their problem was that the government I was less than happy with was blue, and I suspect if it was a red government they'd have been agreeing with me.  They suffered some sort of rage apoplexy and stumbled off when I explained how I'd arrived at my opinions.  During the conversation he also mentioned something about problems with testing and various other tropes from the misinformation brigade.

It's common for people over here to mock the USA for the large number of people who proudly embrace their ignorance of wider things in favour of their tribal political allegiances.  I don't think it's any better here - we're just very British about the problem and ignore it.  Well, it's a little bit better, we don't have guns or coal rolling.

cheers for posting this John

Another broadside from Neil O'Brien MP on Twitter this morning, Dr Clare Craig the target "sceptic" this time.  

I've found twitter very useful, made some useful contacts and got very helpful visibility for some of my work through it.  The mute button is your friend (though to be fair the science/science policy/innovation policy corner of it I inhabit is fairly sedate).  The most sustained attack I've come under on it was from the Medical Research Council, which I admit wasn't very pleasant at the time.

Glad my book recommendation was useful (though I have completely forgotten what it was).

The twittersphere would be a much better place were people's identities verified properly. I remember signing up for a bitcoin-related online account and having to undergo a fairly thorough identity check to do so. Were twitter to do similarly it would have three notable effects:

1. Posting in general would become more reasonable and far less abusive;
2. There would be far fewer outright lies and outright liars on the site;
3. Twitter would soon die off due to a combination of people not being bothered enough to jump through the hoops and people unwilling to be easily traceable for the  misleading and/or abusive comments they're there to make.

I wonder if any such identity-verified site one day will be able to catch on widely?

I've had a twitter account for years but never used it, decided that tweeting was a bad idea for me because I could easily get into trouble. I like using UKC as although Off Belay is public, it would take a bit of deliberate effort for anyone outside this community to find out what I'm saying on here; and then there's the pub which isn't fair game for, e.g. an employer to use against you - that would be doxing.

However, with the shitshow happening in my profession (companies undermining the lockdown by telling their customers to come out for unnecessary retail using a loophole in the rules), having raised my concerns the appropriate ways privately and got nowhere, I'm now part of a full-on twitter barrage. I use my own name, so it's easy to see it's me (I'm on a public register, you can look up where I work), plus because I started with the private correspondence there's no doubt that it's the same Jon Stewart on twitter.

I could have created an anonymous twitter profile, but I'm happy to put my money where my mouth is. I'm calling out unethical behaviour and anyone who tries to shut me up is just digging themselves deeper into the already very deep hole they've dug. When you make a total cock-up (with added dishonesty) and everyone can see what you've done, it's not a good look. If you then try to silence those who are raising concerns (after they've already been down the appropriate channels to no avail) it's just making the situation worse.

So over this, I am perfectly happy to post publicly, journalists copied in, under my own name, easily identifiable. Many others wouldn't be, if they felt more exposed.

There's definitely a balance in that many people wouldn't post anything remotely interesting without the anonymity; on the other hand, loads of the drivel would stop. There's probably some better solution where you could create a temporary anonymous account but you'd have to get retweeted by someone with a verified account for it to be seen?

I've found from the twitter battle I'm engaged in how horribly addictive it is. Send the tweet, then feel that sweet dopamine hit when people on your team all like and retweet it, with famous people you respect copied in (James O'Brien in this case - I would love for him to pick up on the story, but it is quite boring in the scheme of things). Just makes you want to do it again. And again. And again...

In reply to geode:

The fact that one contributor is a Tory MP makes it a "Tory website" and invalidates its content?

You're right that the sceptics/anti-vaxers are thick: they're not going to listen to facts and change their minds. But no, having a Tory MP involved is not going to be the make or break of persuading them.

Besides, some Tory MPs are the people responsible for legitimising the whole "sceptic" viewpoint, Steve Baker and his band of merry c^nts.

Edit: 

What? Normal people with functioning brains can critically evaluate the information on that website, because it's all transparent about where it comes from. If someone can't do that, it means they're an idiot. When it comes to scientific information, the best you can do is explain the evidence clearly and be transparent about its reliability. The fact that a lot of people are just too stupid to process that correctly isn't something that can really be accounted for, without sinking to their level and trying to go for emotional manipulation.

The right thing to do in the face of misinformation is to provide the correct information, clearly and with transparency. When that fails, there's not a lot left you can do at this level of public debate on the internet.

That was a tough thing to watch. Very sobering.

(And I was a little disturbed by the number of times people were touching their faces and eyes. I'm sure they know what they're doing but I couldn't help notice.)

I don't even know where to begin with her and Yeadon.  Probably with Pauli.  

Marketing myself and what I do has always been a giant blind side.  These days my professional outputs live out of the limelight and we hire other people do do the sales and marketing side.

Being a naive idiot, I'd have hoped the RCs would rise above such things.  I can see some big bun fights coming over the RC budgets following this pandemic.   Glad to be out of it.  I know some of my astronomy colleagues are contributing in a positive way to modelling efforts although how of that work is (or should be) fed through to policy is another matter.  Still, better than turning in to a poundshop Peterson.

"Designs on Nature" which is on my reading list for once the home schooling area is over....

That bothered me, too...

Which is why Twitter presumably rubbing their hands in glee when sensible people take up the fight against idiots like Yeadon and Craig as it just spins more and more people thought advertising views on their platforms.  It's in their financial interests to give as wide a platform as possible to dangerous idiots and malevolent forces whose output is dangerous to public health.

An era of corporate responsibility this isn't.  

The business model isn't there for something like Twitter.  You can get your identity verified in Twitter but that seems to be a "famous person" thing.

The closes I can see is LinkedIn, but most of the content on there is very much driven by marketing and networking rather than shared mutual interest.  They have a very different business model.

Really?  What about?  My experiences with the MRC in past were always very positive (experience of a couple of MRC units, including the one were I did my PhD).  I'm surprised that they'd be involved in something like this, certainly at an organisational level.

Then again, the research councils have changed, perhaps beyond recognition, since I was involved. 

Free speech innit. 

His metaphor is the wrong way round.  In WW2 he'd have been listening to Lord Haw Haw, saying the German bombs aren't real and leaving his lights on and curtains open in the black out.

You probably never had much to do with their comms department!  I'd made an intervention questioning their research priorities at a time when they felt it was unhelpful in the context of discussions about the budget split between the research councils.  On the positive side, I did get some public support from the Director of the Wellcome Trust.  

Yes indeed, with UKRI, things are different.  In the olden days, the Research Council chief executives would put on a public face of unity when they negotiated with the government for the overall science budget, before, in private, fighting each other like rats in a sack about the budget split.  Now they can leave the unity bit to UKRI central and go directly to stage 2.

I'm nicking that for future use!

Thanks.  I stole it from a podcast!

I’m wondering about raising it with the neighbour with my usual charming manner.  What’s the worst that can happened?