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Listening to the Dail #Covid19 hearings its clear there is now active lobbying to undermine public health measures with dodgy science. Heard a reference to a document from Michael Levitt at Stanford being circulated. Compare his predictions at start of August & reality
That interview is from August 2nd - why are Dail TDs now boosting this disproved idea and other ones, in particular the chair throwing in multiple leading questions at the end of the last session. Is the pub lobbying money really that good? https://www.stanforddaily.com/2020/08/02/qa-michael-levitt-on-why-there-shouldnt-be-a-lockdown-how-hes-been-tracking-coronavirus/
Levitt seems to have given this interview saying "it seems to me that dying at 70 isnât the same as dying at the age of 17, no matter how great you think you are and how important you are." right as death took off. Is that a position we can accept in Ireland?
This is an excellent thread on the bad predictions around Florida and the disaster that unfolded. Let's not make the same mistakes here out of wishful thinking and conspiracy theorists showing us cherry picked misleading data https://twitter.com/firefoxx66/status/1296080742607355904
As an example here is TD Matt Shanahan suggesting the meat plant cases are 'false positives' a recent talking point of the US based denialist movement which is seeking to undermine the credibility of testing. Strange to see it surfacing here
Another example is the chair having a go at masks via the misnamed 'Oxford University Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine' which has published some very poor quality Covid material and simply removed material that was wrong. Who asked them to the Dail in the 1st place?
Hereâs a thread from way back when the âevidenceâ based medicine crowd seem to have inspired a terrible article in the BMJ based off there incredibly misleading ( and wrong ) reading of Chinese research. https://twitter.com/andrewflood/status/1246063815508348928
Here we have the chair asking a very legit question except spun in a percular way to try and put responsibility on NPHET rather than the HSA "who confirmed that 39 meat plants had been inspected, of which 30 inspections were pre-announced" in contract with 6k pub inspections
There really isnât any mystery as to why there are fewer hospitalizations, much more testing finding a greater ratio of less severe & even asymptomatic cases along with the greatly reduced age of those infected solves the âmysteryâ https://twitter.com/richardneher/status/1296379444165320704
Went back to the Dail record and it turns out it was again TD Matt Shanahan who mentioned Levitt https://www.oireachtas.ie/en/debates/debate/special_committee_on_covid-19_response/2020-08-26/5/
Sessions ends with a very odd section where chair Michael McNamara makes extraordinary claim that "The trend for some time in North America .. is that detection has not been accompanied by an increase in hospitalisations & deaths" This is flat out wrong, 1000+ dying a day.
Quite a detailed piece on the Irish Times on the lower hospitalization & fatality ratio which includes some useful stats as to comparative numbers of over 65s - huge gap between April & now https://www.irishtimes.com/news/health/covid-19-why-are-deaths-and-hospitalisations-falling-so-dramatically-1.4340185
A couple of replies here added useful technical information - here are more Levitt predictions from July that are already gross underestimates. Peru - one of âmore certainâ predictions for instance has 3 times as many cases and 2 times deaths. https://twitter.com/CovidSerology/status/1299199309603172354
Worth adding that we are now seeing an increase in hospitalisations from the low point of 6 at the end of July to the 32 today. A five fold increase in under a month is not something we'd want repeated next month or the month after.
And a whole thread on how far Levitts July predictions were off. This is not the guy you want TDs to be taking already wrong advice from in August & demanding as they did that public health resources are consumed considering it https://twitter.com/CovidSerology/status/1299326016930811904
Sweden gets talked about a lot as an alternative model because they skipped lockdown - they paid a huge price in lives without economic benefit as shown in this thread & still have nothing like âherd immunityâ with even Stockholm only at 11.4% even though 1 per 1000 died https://twitter.com/andrewflood/status/1295358286372524032
Israel provides a very strong warning to us as many of the same forces of denialisms, opportunistic politicians and a base in the religious hard right meant they went from very under control 1 per million to disaster level 2000 per million over the summer https://twitter.com/erlichya/status/1301637520699068422?s=20
TD McNamara going all on on the more extreme end of the denialism. Expressing risk as a percent of the entire population rather than those infected is pure bullshit even leaving aside the way exactly are you proposing for the old & those with underlying conditions
In line with the global pattern where more deaths means more GDP loss Ireland's 2nd quarter GDP loss of 6.1% comes in well under Swedens loss of 8.5%. https://www.thejournal.ie/gdp-ireland-5197914-Sep2020/
Another thread on a similar theme arising out of the same set of ideas still being pushed by people with influence despite already having been shown by events to be nonsense led me to look up Levitt's early predictions https://twitter.com/andrewflood/status/1304444312730636288?s=20
Weâve a better idea of what was happening in Florida now that many deaths have been reported. From this itâs clear that when Levitt was predicting no significant increase in deaths was pretty close to the moment that daily deaths took off https://twitter.com/zorinaq/status/1306331764449632256
From this report it seems TDs falling for these discredited bad science takes are already going to cost lives. The lag of waiting for deaths is probably a month when you taken into account notification delays & a month at the current rate will mean many many more deaths built in
Levitt was wrong yet again in his predictions for Israel where unfortunately his ideas seem to be parts of reason for failure to respond to rise in cases & the subsequent & entirely predicted rise in deaths. Ireland is already facing a similar experience with TDs stalling action https://twitter.com/johnmcclean_ie/status/1306523161396228096
Of course as before when their theory fails the bad science crowd simply come up with more bad science to explain the failure - nonsense about seasonal flu being the current go to. This requires ignorance, hence blocking critics https://twitter.com/greg_travis/status/1306517072965447680
This usefully looks at some of the 'experts' who have been invited to the Dail, eg "I was not able to find a single peer-reviewed study by Heneghan about COVID-19 in the scientific literature." I've already noted above problems with his self published bits https://bylinetimes.com/2020/09/23/scamademics-right-wing-lobbying-groups-reviving-herd-immunity-in-the-uk/
In an unexpected twist the' let it spread lobby' scored an own goal in bringing over Swedenâs former chief epidemiologist Dr Johan Giesecke as once the realties of Ireland were explained to him he saw that controlled spread really wasn't an option here https://www.irishtimes.com/news/health/swedish-expert-backtracks-on-herd-immunity-for-ireland-1.4362844
Perhaps that will encourage those at the fringes of that lobby to cop on and realise we don't have the health or education systems that could function with high levels of incidence. They haven't been able to hear our own experts say it despite repetition so who knows
Dail Covid chair McNamara at it again at the Dail Covid hearings this morning using them as an opportunity to make rat licker scare stories respectable. We've just been treated to the 'false positives' (explain cases) and CT cycle (explain cases) myths https://twitter.com/andrewflood/status/1308767005353353216
TD Jim O'Callaghan was also at it with standard rat licker talking points, in effect suggesting the September deaths were historic ones of old people who didn't really deserve much more life. He won't have been happy with the answers that they were recent and averaged at 71
McNamara now trying to undermine backward contact tracing before its even begun by suggesting its going to ask loaded questions. Basically these TD's do not want to hear of transmission if it happens in commercial setting, just want to concern troll without answers to undemine
McNamara asking if someone with a broken leg then tests positive are they counted as a hospital case. From an infection point of control they have to be, he says he knows, so presumably after he spent last month saying not many were in hospital this month its they aren't sick /31
Once the transcript becomes available later today or tomorrow I'll post the specific questions I'm referring to - may be others I missed as I had it on in the background while doing other work /32
Actually McNamara Is busy posting the rat licker clips himself which are then being eagerly seized by the troll gang and posted to the comments sections of media stories. The Dail is being used to add credibility to this nonsense /33 https://twitter.com/MlMcNamaraTD/status/1310969615821008896
Here he is suggesting that Covid deaths might really be people who've fallen off the roof of a building. Followed by the suggestion Covid hospitalised are really in for broken legs. Wonder who scripts these because they are crafted to be troll bait /34 https://twitter.com/MlMcNamaraTD/status/1310928652457177088?s=20
People are getting freaked out about a few 100 students behaving unsafely at Spanish arch - meanwhile in the Dail you have the chair of the Covid committee wilfully producing misleading troll bait that will be blasted all over social media to undermine public health /35
And as if to illustrate what I meant here is McNamara's dogwhistles to various conspiracy theories providing the fodder for the same guy whose been feeding him material to go full in on the WHO global conspiracy. This was the co-signer of that Irish Times letter too,
Embarrassing, the Cummins crap gets a write up for the damage itâs doing in the NYT. It would be a lot nicer if Ireland was know for the app than the source of viral video disinformation that is even promoted in our Dail by the chair of our Covid committee https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/29/health/coronavirus-herd-immunity.html
Jim O'Callaghan was just doing a sustained list of rat licker framing questions in the Dail right now designed to minimise the numbers of deaths because they are often of elderly people or those with underlying conditions. It's shocking to listen to, will get transcript or video
Bloody hell, McNamara now setting up material for the rat lickers who push the idea that NPHET is a big Pharma conspiracy to use, will be interesting to see how selective his video soundbite of this is. Glynn points out declarations of conflict are how meetings start
McNamara now again pushing false positives but only allowing reply in writing. Repeating leg broken claim again. He is putting in qualifiers this time around, perhaps because of push back. Again trying to block responses on the spot, now sounds quite uncomfortable
Here is Jim O'Callaghan's bizzare line of questioning - the answers to many of these are in daily reports
McNamara, the chair of the committee, again going on about false positives, later PCR detection, people really having broken legs or really having heart attacks. It's like a rat licker bingo card of techniques to minimise cases, severity & death. https://www.oireachtas.ie/en/debates/debate/special_committee_on_covid_19_response/2020-09-30/2/ )
And here just having questions about suicide stats. This may seem reasonable but rat licker accounts have been blasting false claims about drastically elevated stats all over social media for a couple of weeks intended to frame it as a choice between fighting Covid or Suicide
A lot of this approach seems to have got into the Dail because of a very misleading document circulated by this YouTube to TD's - it shows very poor judgement on their part but one the aligned with lobbyists interests in downplaying risk & severity https://twitter.com/andrewflood/status/1304716640903405569
It's not quite as clear from the text as it from the video but in the end of the last session McNamara seemed a lot more hesitant with the line he was pushing and inserted qualifiers. I suspect he had a lot of pushback in the previous 24 hours from doctors - there is a mention.
The early sessions were still in period of low incidence so 'only raising questions' seemed harmless. By yesterday as cases got out of control & deaths rose the consequences of minimising threat & severity was becoming clear. Plus this came out https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/29/health/coronavirus-herd-immunity.html
This piece looks at Levitts incorrect predictions but also the refusal to share the code that they were supposedly drawn from. I also didnât know he was a South African which from that generation adds some context around attitudes to human life https://liorpachter.wordpress.com/2020/09/21/the-lethal-nonsense-of-michael-levitt/
And a long thread on the YouTube Engineer who seems to have suck McNamara and other TDs in with his cherry picked âscienceâ nonsense. Itâs part of why government delayed action https://twitter.com/jocami_ca/status/1307572931766165504
As the debate over phase 5 heats up we have TD Jim Callaghan at it again https://twitter.com/LeftistDad/status/1313058524298182656?s=20
I think for his suddenly discovered concern for mental health (no previous mentions in a search on his account) TD Timmy Dooley deserves a mention. https://twitter.com/MajorThrill/status/1313089681245057024?s=20
