20th November: Weekly Round Up

The week in disinformation

Nov 20, 2022

Masks in Schools

The Boston paper on mask use in schools triggered the usual arguments, with the usual characters seeking to discredit the paper.

Hoeg, Prasad, Munro etc have all denounced the paper considering the methodology to be so flawed that they is nothing to take away from the paper,

Tracy Høeg, MD, PhD @TracyBethHoeg

My piece for @Sensible__Med on the myriad issues w/ @NEJM's recent study from Boston on school masking. If people use this study to justify mask mandates for kids to reduce covid risk/structural racism/educational inequities, you can show them this 👇 sensiblemed.substack.com/p/nejms-disapp…

sensiblemed.substack.comNEJM’s Disappointing Decision to Publish the Boston School Mask StudyA point-by-point analysis of Cowger TL, et al.

dthat “ not disclosing the information outweighs the public interest in disclosure.

Meanwhile an FOI to the Uk’s Department of Education regarding the evidence base behind the decision to remove masks from classrooms. Rather than providing the evidence base requested the UK government sated "Not disclosing the information weighs the public interest.“

Dr. Deepti Gurdasani @dgurdasani1

A rather shocking response to a freedom of information request to England's @educationgovuk as to why masks were dropped in schools on 17th May - shared with me by @HoppySaul. It states that "not disclosing the information outweighs the public interest in disclosure". 🧵

Dr. Deepti Gurdasani @dgurdasani1

Loretta Torrago @Loretta_Torrago

Antimaskers complain a Boston study showing masks work is confounded. Antimaskers don't complain about confounding in a Spanish study declaring masks make no difference but compared unmasked 3-5 yr olds to masked 6-11 yr olds despite (some) evidence transmission is age-dependent.

As with the recent immunity debt debate, there are efforts to exaggerate the harms of lockdown.

Andy Cook @AndyCook_CSJ

Major new report ⁦@csjthinktank⁩, leading ⁦@Telegraph⁩ & ⁦⁦@BBCNewsnight⁩. One fifth of pupils ‘missing’ from classrooms since pandemic. A full blown emergency. You can’t level-up, skill-up, anything else-up, if they don’t show up

telegraph.co.ukOne fifth of pupils ‘missing’ from classrooms since pandemicNearly two million in England failing to attend school regularly while study authors call rise in home education ‘alarming’

The Centre for Social Justice was founded by former Conservative party leader Ian Duncan-Smith, the Ghost Children narrative is built on misrepresenting figures for students with severe absence, predominantly from absence to claim those students have gone missing due to lockdown. This has been debunked repeatedly yet the stats continue to be quoted across the media.

Sir Karam Bales ✊ 🇺🇦 @karamballes

🧵DfE lining up a data grab via schools bill DfE has previously allowed gambling and other private companies access to access student data CEV households, parents of longcovid kids worried about punitive action Based on incorrect "ghost children" stat bylinetimes.com/2022/06/28/why…

bylinetimes.comWhy does the Government Need to Collect More Data on ‘Ghost Children’? – Byline TimesGrassroots groups are raising concerns that clause 48 of the Schools Bill will be used to penalise families, reports Karam Bales

The CSJ produced their original misleading report on Ghost Children in collaboration with Us For Them and HART as revealed in the #HARTleaks.

Sir Karam Bales ✊ 🇺🇦 @karamballes

7/ Start of Feb UsForThem including HART member Ros Jones had a meeting with IDS and the "Common Sense Group" of MPs Tory MPs advised UfT they needed to make their messaging "harder hitting, invoking 'permanent harm' to children!"

That it continued to be cited without challenge across the UK media and also by the Children’s Commisioner and the newly appointed DfE minister Robert Halfon is yet another example of MPs embracing disinformation.

Covid Recovery APPG

John Bye @_johnbye

The latest meeting of the APPG on Pandemic Response and Recovery will hear from Piers Robinson, long time conspiracy theorist and frequent guest on Russian state media. Thanks to Esther McVey and HART, who run the APPG, he'll now be talking to MPs about pandemic "propaganda". 🤦‍♂️

More details in John Bye’s thread

John Bye @_johnbye

Piers Robinson left his job at Sheffield Uni under a cloud in early 2019, after students and fellow academics complained about his promotion of conspiracy theories on everything from 9/11 to the Syrian civil war and the Salisbury novichok poisonings.

google.comSheffield Uni Professor Leaves Post After Accusations Of Promoting Conspiracy TheoriesProfessor Piers Robinson was exposed by HuffPost as a supporter of 9/11 conspiracy theories.

Authorities cover up the scale of long covid

The CDP has already covered various authorities misleading their public on airborne transmission and transmission in schools. It now appears that the same is happening with long covid, as documents from New Brunswick reveal.

Chris @HallwayOrchard

PoP NB submitted a RTI request for records of discussions of Long Covid. The response brings to light a shocking level of deception perpetrated against the people of NB, under which true magnitude of risk was hidden and the fundamental precepts of public health were abandoned. 🧵

NHS100k

NHS100k is linked to the Together Declaration, Workers for England Union and the far right English Democrats, it has been promoted by various elements of the Living Marxism cluster of organisations, MPs and members of the House of Lords like Claire Fox (LM/Academy of ideas).

Last week this interviewed a well known conspiracy theorist, why is a group like this being promoted in parliament?

John Bye @_johnbye

NHS100k has done an interview with funeral director turned covid conspiracy theorist John O'Looney, in which he claims covid vaccines contain nanotech that reacts to 5G, that we'll all be dead within 5 years, and that first wave covid deaths were actually caused by midazolam. 🤦‍♂️