I was invited today to on @NickFerrariLBC to comment on the recent letter by 22 scientists on ending mask use in schools, and opening up the UK without masks & social distancing by June 21. I was *not* told that this would be a 'debate' with Anthony Brooks, one of the signatories

This is a letter that's been signed by Carl Heneghan, Sunetra Gupta, Karol Sikora - the architects of the pseudoscience & several debunked papers that led to the Great Barrington declaration - that caused untold damage to pandemic response across the world.

Both Heneghan and Gupta predicted there would be no 2nd wave. Gupta said early last year that 50% of the population was already immune, and we would reach 'herd immunity' soon. Both opposed pandemic control - & suggested we should let the virus spread through young people.

In September, they, in opposition to SAGE advice, advised Boris Johnson against lockdown even though cases were showing exponential rises. Ultimately, the govt was forced to lockdown in Nov. It's estimated that the delay cost tens of thousands of lives in the 2nd wave.

In the interview, Anthony Brooks started by suggested that cases and deaths in India are a small proportion of the total population, and the current devastation was due to 'poor health infrastructure' and not the proportion of cases, & that the UK could 'easily cope' with this.

We know this is completely incorrect. And hugely minimises what's happening in India at the moment. Cremations suggest deaths have been underestimated by between 4x-100x in different states, and cases by ~10x. https://twitter.com/DrEricDing/status/1384789570957500416?s=20

He went on to say that 'SAGE has claimed that the UK has attained herd immunity', and that the risk to young people of being infected was very low, and that SARS-CoV-2 was like the flu.

SAGE has never claimed the UK has attained herd immunity. They suggested that opening up rapidly even alongside vaccination could lead to hospitals and ICUs being full similar to the 2nd wave with tens of thousands of deaths - warning repeatedly that opening up must be cautious.

Very clearly 'herd immunity' hasn't been reached, also given the rapid 4-6 fold rise in infection among children we saw in Scotland when schools re-opened. And none of this addresses the fact that 1 in 5 young & healthy people get long COVID

We only have to look to what's happening in Chile, where vaccination rates are just behind the UK, and hospitals & ICUs have been overwhelmed exactly due to the sort of thinking supported by these scientists.

These scientists want to remove basic protections for children/staff in schools- when 43,000 estimated children & 110,000 staff are living with long COVID. Infections rose rapidly among children, increasing R when schools re-opened prior to Easter. https://twitter.com/dgurdasani1/status/1385630975485415427?s=20

The situation is better now, only because Easter break was associated with a drop in infections among children, and a drop in R in the community. We see a clear relationship between school closure & positivity.

18% of our pop is fully vaccinated and 50% partially vaccinated.

Also no mention of the threat posed by variants- the B117 variant which is a result of our 'let the virus spread through the population' strategy is now causing devastation across Europe, and the US, after having claimed tens of thousands of lives in the UK following late action.

Many of us warned that allowing transmission to continue alongside vaccine roll-out will pose a threat to our vaccines, and pandemic control. Yet, we've done nothing to address this. We now have non-B117 variants at between 15-20% in London & South-East. https://twitter.com/theosanderson/status/1386300280434794496?s=20

I really really hope much of this is travel and surge testing related, and not rises in the community - I don't know because the data aren't provided here. But in Maharashtra and W. Bengal, we saw B.1.617 become dominant while B.1.1.7 was prevalent (small nos of sequences though)

And data from the PHE on travellers shows the same- that B.1.617 became dominant among travellers from India alongside B.1.1.7. We don't know exactly what this means, but it is really concerning.

Despite all this, we're still platforming pseudoscience, and listening to scientists whose damaging pseudoscience has directly informed policies that have led to thousands of deaths. We can't do this again- 15 months into the pandemic- we must resist this.

The media & the govt has provided disproportionate attention to these fringe voices right from the start- and has not held them to account despite so many claims having been debunked. Disinformation costs lives. This needs to stop now.

I don't normally debate scientists who push fringe pseudoscientific views because I think this legitimises them and gives false balance to discussions. I would have never agreed to 'debate' Anthony Brooks had I known this was what was planned. Why is @LBC platforming this?