Dr. Michael B. Riordan @michael_riordan Twitter profile

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Dr. Michael B. Riordan

@michael_riordan

3 years

Going into 2022, I am genuinely frightened by the number of people who have bought into the lie that cloth face coverings are the primary means to control a pandemic.

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Dr. Michael B. Riordan

@michael_riordan

2 years

Currently writing about the decision to introduce facemasks in the UK. I have read SCI-B's 20 April 2020 return to SAGE many times, but it is more more extraordinary everytime I read it. Here's why....🧵

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Dr. Michael B. Riordan

@michael_riordan

2 years

One of the oddest claims I’ve seen is that wearing a mask was easy. Nobody I know who had to wear a mask for hours a day said this, but it was repeated again and again on Twitter. But this makes sense: those who could afford to WFH might wear a mask when they

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Dr. Michael B. Riordan

@michael_riordan

3 years

The obsession with masks, I have always thought, is a means to let governments off the hook. Any rise in numbers can be attributed to irresponsible individuals, rather than underlying structural issues that only governments can deal with.

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Dr. Michael B. Riordan

@michael_riordan

2 years

The left‘s obsession with masking — like its entire response — was based on an utter contempt for anyone who couldn’t work from home. In saying ‘masking was easy’, the left showed its true middle-class arrogance and contempt for the working class.

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Dr. Michael B. Riordan

@michael_riordan

2 years

You may have notice I’ve recently hardened up my language on masking: it is now “based on no evidence.” This was deliberate: I have read every single evidence review done by UK government agencies until April 2020, and over time they become less certain of benefits of masking.

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Dr. Michael B. Riordan

@michael_riordan

2 years

Governments and the WHO specifically recommended against masks prior to 2020. Nobody who has looked at the (good-quality) evidence on masking could conclude it works. This is an excellent summary of the evidence.

Vinay Prasad MD MPH

@VPrasadMDMPH

2 years

UCSD ID epidemiologist Dr Ayers has carefully read all the mask studies. And accurately summarizes the evidence in this op-ed. 👇 This is exactly what we concluded in our 60k wrd review done in 2020/21 Spot on!

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Dr. Michael B. Riordan

@michael_riordan

3 years

The clam lockdowns are the progressive way to handle coronavirus is scientifically-, historically-, and politically-illiterate. Scientifically, because lockdowns not a sustainable means to control a virus; historically, because lockdowns are a novel idea that go against pandemic

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Dr. Michael B. Riordan

@michael_riordan

2 years

It is horrific that @ScotGov have presented facemasks, which were introduced by governments as a means of encouraging compliance, not as a means of pandemic control -- have lied, to 1/7

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Dr. Michael B. Riordan

@michael_riordan

2 years

Most Scottish nationalists want a one-party state led by Nicola Sturgeon, in which @theSNP are not subject to either the accountability of the @ScotParl nor the media. This was true before the pandemic

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Dr. Michael B. Riordan

@michael_riordan

2 years

Covid messaging failed because it relied on peer pressure — ‘good people/your people get vaccinated and wear masks’ — to encourage people to comply, rather than focusing on the clinical needs of individuals. Folk were not being asked to make health decisions, but moral ones. 1/4

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Dr. Michael B. Riordan

@michael_riordan

2 years

The *only* job of the Opposition is to scrutinise the laws that Government makes. Lockdown went against all prior pandemic plans, whether they were made by Tories after 2010 or Labour after 1997. It is understandable that people blame Boris for hypocrisy, but the hypocrisy 1/6

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Dr. Michael B. Riordan

@michael_riordan

2 years

I am convinced today that there is an agenda at a very senior level to nudge people towards masking to deflect attention from the systematic failure of governments across the UK to tackle the winter crisis — which we have had for many years but was exaserbated by lockdowns

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Dr. Michael B. Riordan

@michael_riordan

2 years

The WHO argued that "the wide use of facemasks by healthy people in the community setting is not supported by current evidence and carries uncertainties and critical risks," which included less adherence to other measures, self-contamination, breathing difficulties, supply issues

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Dr. Michael B. Riordan

@michael_riordan

11 months

Hi Frances, I am disabled and suffered far more from the mitigations you promoted in the name of me than I did from Covid. You have consistently misunderstood clinical vulnerability to Covid, and promoted scientific misinformation like this, ignoring how disabled people suffered

Frances Ryan

@DrFrancesRyan

11 months

After my column last week, many non-disabled people tweeted me to say covid was harmless now. This week: hospital admissions with covid in England rose by 30%. Thinking of every person battling this illness or making great sacrifices to avoid it - all as others deny it’s real.

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Dr. Michael B. Riordan

@michael_riordan

2 years

Nowhere was any advice given to make masking mandorary -- and at many stages, advisors warned against it. Yet, politicans introduced masks in spite of this solely on the basis of that one paragraph in SCI-B's 20 Apil briefing. That is a gross failure of goverment decision-making.

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Dr. Michael B. Riordan

@michael_riordan

2 years

Or the drivers who worked in distribution, or the men and women who brought the products they purchased to their doorsreps. For these folk, masking was not virtue signalling, it was a condition of their employment, and (for many) a huge burden.

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Dr. Michael B. Riordan

@michael_riordan

2 years

they had in mind the WFHers who might have to wear a mask for a few minutes each day, when they went to the shops or when entering or leaving a restaurant. They did not call to mind the people who served them, or the warehouse staff, or the folk who made the products they bought

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Dr. Michael B. Riordan

@michael_riordan

3 years

A reminder that key argument used by governments on face masks is that it makes people feel safe. It‘s a terrible argument: The death penalty/hardline immigration measures make people feel safe. Safety is a slippery concept: used throughout history to justify virtually anything

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Dr. Michael B. Riordan

@michael_riordan

1 year

I am glad that Deepti Gurdasani has recovered from what turned out to be a light brush with Covid. I hope this will make her reflect on why the fear she spread among vulnerable people was inexcusable.

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Dr. Michael B. Riordan

@michael_riordan

2 years

went to shops, or walked into a bar; for most of the day, they didn’t need to wear them. For them it was *easy.* When the scientists at SCI-B (and @IndependentSage ) claimed that we should mask as a symbol of community-spiritedness

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Dr. Michael B. Riordan

@michael_riordan

3 years

The overarching problem with virtually everything about our response to Covid is that this disease is treated aa exceptional. There are rule books on handling infectious diseases which were simply ignores in favour of a

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Dr. Michael B. Riordan

@michael_riordan

3 years

What’s the number one thing here that reduces your risk of Covid infection?

Wearing a mask

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Getting boosted

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Not being in hospital

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Living in a big house

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Dr. Michael B. Riordan

@michael_riordan

2 years

So, prior to 20 April 2020, *every* single piece of advice the goverment received -- which included reprsentations from international bodies (the WHO), the EU (ECDC), Scotland (Usher Institute), and a variety of UK and English bodies, argued *against* facemasks.

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Dr. Michael B. Riordan

@michael_riordan

2 years

There were a large group of non-specialist, but very vocal, experts who went about social media vastly over-estimating the number of people who were immunocompromised; and vastly over-egging the ability of masks to protect the immunocompromised. 1/3

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Dr. Michael B. Riordan

@michael_riordan

2 years

to cover up for their failure to challenge what was the biggest mistake of the entire pandemic: Lockdown. UK Labour, Tory frontbenchers, and others across the house are *jointly* responsible for supporting this catastrophic failure of policy.

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Dr. Michael B. Riordan

@michael_riordan

2 years

Despite briefing widely that today would be the end of the mask mandate in Scotland, @ScotGovFM today delayed ending it, on the basis of high case numbers that have not been stemmed by this zero-evidence policy. Failure of @HumzaYousaf or any of his colleagues in government

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Dr. Michael B. Riordan

@michael_riordan

3 years

Throughout the pandemic, children have been told by people like Dr Alwan they must suffer to protect the rest of us from a disease that presents itself only mildly in children. And we are the ‘childists’? Orwell would be stumped at the level of doublethink that is going on here.

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Dr. Michael B. Riordan

@michael_riordan

2 years

of the most extensive review of evidence. It recommended against facemasks in community settings. Doc. 1⃣ On 6 April 2020, the WHO produced its 'Advice on the use of face masks in the context of Covid-19: interim guidance'

Dr. Michael B. Riordan

@michael_riordan

2 years

And here is the summary table on mask studies from the WHO lit review, “Non-pharmaceutical public health measures for mitigating the risk and impact of epidemic and pandemic influenza”, 2019, pp. 25-6 (table 7)

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Dr. Michael B. Riordan

@michael_riordan

3 years

To all @UkLabour hypocrites whinging about plans to destroy Human Rights today while simultaneously voting for vax passes. Maybe you should have thought about that before you colluded in a state of emergency - the biggest assault on human rights in modern peacetime history

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Dr. Michael B. Riordan

@michael_riordan

2 years

Despite the fact that the impacts of lockdown were both knowable and predicted, opposition politicians did not bother to scrutinise the rules. Indeed, exxept for some Tory backbenchers, MPs and peers overwhelmingly supported lockdowns.

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Dr. Michael B. Riordan

@michael_riordan

3 years

I’ve never understood how people can complain about moralising during the AIDS epidemic, while arguing simultaneously that getting Covid reflects a person’s moral failures

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Dr. Michael B. Riordan

@michael_riordan

2 years

@UKLabour should have been reading pandemic plans, challenging government policy, and calling for measures to mitigate its effects. Instead @Keir_Starmer and his allies called for longer, harder lockdowns with harsher penalties. The obsession with Partygate is *solely* designed

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Dr. Michael B. Riordan

@michael_riordan

2 years

If Rishi Sunak is elected, you’ll have the two major parties advocating for austerity—cuts to public services—to pay for the massive injection of cash they voted in to prop up the economy. Both economy and public services were destroyed by the policy they both supported: lockdown

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Dr. Michael B. Riordan

@michael_riordan

3 years

Lockdown has lots of benefits. It gives governments more power; public health blue-ticks more influence; more money for drugs companies & big tech megacorps. For those with power lockdown is a win, win. Biggest lie that was sold to the iPhone-luvvie left was ’health vs economy’

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Dr. Michael B. Riordan

@michael_riordan

2 years

It does not follow from the claim that “Covid is serious” that “lockdowns were necessary.” For that argument to hold, you would need to add the premise that “lockdowns work to reduce Covid,” and the premise that there were “no other alternatives”…

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Dr. Michael B. Riordan

@michael_riordan

2 years

This document clearly was intented to justify a decision that had alrwady been taken by ministers... NERVTAG paper on areosol transmission: Hancock Statement:

Face coverings to be mandatory in shops and supermarkets from 24 July

Health and Social Care Secretary Matt Hancock spoke about plans to make face coverings mandatory in shops and supermarkets from 24 July 2020.

www.gov.uk

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Dr. Michael B. Riordan

@michael_riordan

2 years

A reminder that, prior to 2020, no Western country recommended masking in community settings for the control of respiratory infections, in either pandemic conditions, or otherwise. Cochrane reviews — the gold standard in evidence based medicine —

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Dr. Michael B. Riordan

@michael_riordan

1 year

I find the whole idea that we had to lockdown because the government wasn’t prepared deeply troubling. As rhetoric it works brilliantly, but logically, there is no reason lockdowns follow from being unprepared.

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Dr. Michael B. Riordan

@michael_riordan

2 years

The reason I go on about Covid—and have decided to write about it—is that this will not be our last pandemic. During Covid, disrupters decided to promote untested strategies, like lockdown and mask mandates, that drove inequalities. Disrupters knew how to use new technology to

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Dr. Michael B. Riordan

@michael_riordan

2 years

It the end of April--and no time between then and the introduction of masks in July--was any evidence for the effectiveness of masks at fighting the disease. Advisors knew that the evidence was weak. And they knew also of negative social and behavioural impacts.

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Dr. Michael B. Riordan

@michael_riordan

2 years

Prior to 20 April 2020, 4 key documents were ciruclated at the highest levels of the UK goverment. WHO's interim guidance on the use of facemasks in the context of Covid-19. The WHO had in 2019 produced a review of the evidence around NPIs, which remains one

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Dr. Michael B. Riordan

@michael_riordan

2 years

Because of this support, the Opposition can’t say what everyone now knows to be true: police-enforced lockdowns were wrong. By focusing on Johnson‘s legal breaches, rather than the inequity of the law, they try to distract us from their support for terrible and inequitable laws

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Dr. Michael B. Riordan

@michael_riordan

3 years

Hi @chrischirp can you explain how your admirable desire to help Afghan refugees fits in with @IndependentSage ’s view that government should be shutting borders to prevent the emergence of new Covid variants? 0.6% of the Afghani population have been vaccinated. 1/2

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Dr. Michael B. Riordan

@michael_riordan

9 months

The curious thing about Jonathan van Tam, Jenny Harries and others, was that they were saying the right things *before* the pandemic, and they were saying the right things *after* the pandemic, but they said the wrong things *during* the pandemic. These about turns cannot

Michael Absoud

@MAbsoud

9 months

We were lucky to have scientists LIKE JVT talk sense about child masking👇🏽 clip— “child mask mandates fail a basic risk-benefit analysis” 👉🏽

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Dr. Michael B. Riordan

@michael_riordan

2 years

Devi Sridhar spent the pandemic acting like a celebrity lifestyle guru, ignoring the science, and treating the planning, the evidence, the public—and her colleagues—with contempt. It does seem rich to begin her account of the pandemic by complaining about her social media abuse.

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Dr. Michael B. Riordan

@michael_riordan

3 years

I feel it is important to respond to this sort of charge. The COVID pandemic more than a health crisis, it’s a social crisis. Medical doctors do not have a prerogative on discussing the social impacts of health policy, since these affect us all.

Fiona@Scarborough 💙

@Scarborough_GB

3 years

@michael_riordan @BallouxFrancois Not a medical doctor then? Perhaps step aside for real doctors when there's a health crisis? No-ones calling for PHD graduates on the frontline.

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Dr. Michael B. Riordan

@michael_riordan

3 years

#ZeroCovid is in a way like austerity: it posits a theoretically impossible end point — zero infections or zero debt — and then claims that every other goal must be ignored until that goal is reached. The problem in both cases is that, in the endless meantime, every other …

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Dr. Michael B. Riordan

@michael_riordan

2 years

The shift from ‘shut down everything!’ to ‘people wearing masks will prevent the spread of disease’ is mind-boggling. If you thought we needed police-enforced lockdowns to get to ZeroCovid, how could you possibly think everyone wearing loose-fitting masks have the same effect?

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Dr. Michael B. Riordan

@michael_riordan

2 years

was the result of rules that were wrong. They were wrong because they went against all pandemic planning. And they were wrong because the planners warned of the terrible effects of lockdown, which were all foreseeable (and foreseen).

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Dr. Michael B. Riordan

@michael_riordan

2 years

diversion of resources from proper PH messaging, including hand hygiene. It argued that where it was used--in medical settings--the type of mask was more important.

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Dr. Michael B. Riordan

@michael_riordan

2 years

It is notoriously difficult to counter arguments like ‘you should mask because masking protects the vulnerable’ because the word ‘vulnerable’ carries an emotive force that lingers irrespective of whether the argument is valid: who wouldn’t want to protect the vulnerable? 1/8

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Dr. Michael B. Riordan

@michael_riordan

2 years

This conclusion is in line with most prior pandemic planning, including in the UK, who were seen as a global leader in the field.

Dr. Michael B. Riordan

@michael_riordan

3 years

Have stumbled upon NHS pandemic plan from 2012. Sec. 8 on masks interesting. 8.6: Surgical facemasks have role in "providing healthcare worker protection, as long as they are used correctly & in conjunction with other infection control practices, such as appropriate hand hygiene"

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Dr. Michael B. Riordan

@michael_riordan

2 years

The Good kind of protester or the Bad kind? When anti-lockdown protests were held in London, in Germany, in Australia, in Holland, in Canada… @guardian blamed sided with governments & blamed right-wing conspiracy theorists, but the paper seems to think these ones are legitimate

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Dr. Michael B. Riordan

@michael_riordan

2 years

themselves and and to the public -- that cloth masks are a means to "protect the vulnerable." There is zero evidence of this. It was a lie invented by @trishgreenhalgh and colleagues, with no evidential basis, which they have now retracted.

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Dr. Michael B. Riordan

@michael_riordan

11 months

The reason I go on about Covid is not just that I am (taking too long to) write a book about it, but because I am concerned that this is now the playbook, and that increased surveillance for infectious diseases, means that the Covid playbook will be dusted off sooner than most

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Dr. Michael B. Riordan

@michael_riordan

3 years

If we (the public and scientists) looked any other infectious disease with the same intensity as we examined covid, we’d realise that Covid is not exceptional. I’d have no problem people talking about long covid if they recognised that there’s also long flu and long colds….

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Dr. Michael B. Riordan

@michael_riordan

2 years

HSE advice to the public on the use of face coverings during 2009 pandemic: may increase the risk of infection by contamination and encourage complacency…

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Dr. Michael B. Riordan

@michael_riordan

1 year

Lockdown had nothing to do with this, of course

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Dr. Michael B. Riordan

@michael_riordan

3 years

My view this pm remains that government has no intention of imposing restrictions before Xmas - & is unlikely to do so after Christmas - but that it is fuelling speculation that it will to limit folk’s contact before Christmas, and increaae vax uptake. The tactic disturbs me

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Dr. Michael B. Riordan

@michael_riordan

2 years

Usher nalysed 3 systematic reviews based on 17 RCTs & unspecified other studies with less rigorous designs, & found quality of studies recommendihg facemasks was low--especially in community settings. Like WHO, it recommended AGAINST community masking

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Dr. Michael B. Riordan

@michael_riordan

2 years

The primary reason behaviour change is problematic is because it is anti-democratic: it assumes that what the goverment wants to do is worth doing, and then tries to get people to do this, not by persuading them, but by manipulating them:

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Dr. Michael B. Riordan

@michael_riordan

2 years

Wearing a facemask could demonstrate that an individual is concerned for other peoples’ welfare and is enacting desired social norms around safety and hygiene.

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Dr. Michael B. Riordan

@michael_riordan

2 years

A blast from the past Joggers and cyclists should wear masks – here’s why

Joggers and cyclists should wear masks – here’s why

Trish Greenhalgh, Professor of Primary Care Health Sciences, University of Oxford. Republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license.

www.phc.ox.ac.uk

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Dr. Michael B. Riordan

@michael_riordan

6 months

The @covidinquiryuk is difficult for me to watch - because, just like during the pandemic, you are ignoring all sorts of suffering — only one, institutionally approved form of collective suffering is allowed.

UK Covid-19 Inquiry

@covidinquiryuk

6 months

We understand that the @ITV drama #Breathtaking will be very difficult for some people to watch. There are several organisations listed on our website which can provide support on different issues. You can contact any of them if you are in need of help.

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Dr. Michael B. Riordan

@michael_riordan

2 years

NERVTAG Recommended 'Face masks in the community only for vulnerable individuals for short periods of unavoidable close contact" (in line with past UK plans). It advised against 'Face masks in the community only for vulnerable individuals for short periods of unavoidable

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Dr. Michael B. Riordan

@michael_riordan

9 months

Sadiq Khan pretending to be a scientist is one of the most dreadful displays I have seen at the Covid inquiry, but reveals just how much a small group of woefully ignorant Labour grandees took it upon themselves to promote terrible policy for entirely political reasons…

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Dr. Michael B. Riordan

@michael_riordan

2 years

The science never said that vaccines reduce transmission. @IndependentSage , @guardian and global health activism said they did, in order to make vaccination into a moral imperative, when it should have been a personal choice. 1/2

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Dr. Michael B. Riordan

@michael_riordan

11 months

It is extraordinary reading the transcript of the first day of the hearings just how deluded Counsel for the @covidinquiryuk are. The weight of evidence heard today suggests that SAGE and CCS were following pandemic plans, and Cummings decided to cajole the PM into ignoring them

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Dr. Michael B. Riordan

@michael_riordan

3 years

A regular refrain on the left is that lockdown was only solution available & *we* didn’t know its impacts. Maybe not. But the UK has a huge civil service and a large emergency planning community whose job it is to plan for these things. None of these (the *relevant* experts) were

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Dr. Michael B. Riordan

@michael_riordan

3 years

It is very easy the see how lockdownism — in its most basic form, the transfer of risk from rich to poor, and the transfer of resources from poor to rich — was sold by elites. They presented false dichotomies, such as saving lives/protecting the economy, that

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Dr. Michael B. Riordan

@michael_riordan

2 years

Yet somewhere in goverment someone was pushing for masks. While noting very little evidence for masks. SCI-B sought to oblige by providing a suggestion thst reduced any risk of 'negative behavioural consequences, and promote any positive aspects'

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Dr. Michael B. Riordan

@michael_riordan

2 years

It is often said that @IndependentSage and its international spin-offs had some overarching good intent that, in some way, mitigates the harm they caused, both through direct influence in government and by presenting inequitable public health as the option that should be favored

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Dr. Michael B. Riordan

@michael_riordan

1 year

Did you know the UK has an ethical framework for responding to pandemics? It doesn’t include fear, shame or stigma? It was created by the Committee for the Ethical Aspects of Pandemic Influenza which seems to have last met during swine flu (I think, @rwjdingwall ?)

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Dr. Michael B. Riordan

@michael_riordan

3 years

The @guardian asking teachers to blame kids …. This is what @KathViner ’s vile bigotry, scientific illiteracy, and germaphobia has turned a once respectable publication

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Dr. Michael B. Riordan

@michael_riordan

10 months

The exchange between counsel, Lady Hallet and Peter Horby on face masks is truly something else. I don’t think I have been so angered about anything else so far in the inquiry.

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Dr. Michael B. Riordan

@michael_riordan

2 years

And here is that suggestion: Wearing facemasks outside of the house could complement existing government messaging of social responsibility if communicated alongside the effectiveness of masks in protecting others who are not infected.

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Dr. Michael B. Riordan

@michael_riordan

8 months

Prior to 2020, nobody (not even the Chinese) even considered locking down to protect us from respiratory infections: in healthcare settings, the term was reserved for major incidents. Pandemic plans emphasized the need to keep the economy and public services going, not because

Dr Rachel Clarke

@doctor_oxford

8 months

As Sunak begins testifying, the usual suspects are out in force insisting lockdowns did more harm than good & the NHS was not overwhelmed due to Covid. The harms of lockdowns were profound (which is why they were a last resort). But the NHS was, categorically, overwhelmed. 1/

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Dr. Michael B. Riordan

@michael_riordan

3 years

Yes, Frances disabled children do exist, and they are often more impacted than the mitigations you have been calling for. Can you please stop spreading disinformation which has led to suffering and abuse of disabled children? 🧵 1/13

Frances Ryan

@DrFrancesRyan

3 years

Casual reminder that disabled children exist, deserve an education, and can be at grave risk from coronavirus. Anyone peddling the “just let kids go to school and catch the harmless virus” would do well to remember vulnerable children matter too.

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Dr. Michael B. Riordan

@michael_riordan

3 years

“Science” has been the most overly abused term of the pandemic. Science can tell us how viruses behave, it cannot tell us what governments should do. Dangerous things happen when scientists become ideologues or when politicians hide behind ideology masked as science.

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Dr. Michael B. Riordan

@michael_riordan

2 years

These negative epidemiological and broader social impacts of masking were recognised by WHO, ECDC and at all levels of UK goverment decision making--including among Scottish government advisors and behavioural scientists advising UK goverment.

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Dr. Michael B. Riordan

@michael_riordan

1 year

This is absolutely brilliant Laura: ‘Conspiracy theories are often blamed for vaccine hesitancy by public health scientists and politicians, who seem unable to grasp the fact they are the cause of lost trust when they employ conspiratorial means like nudge and fear to control

Laura Dodsworth

@BareReality

1 year

"Animal Farm’s new management were just pigs standing on their hind legs, lording it over the other animals. In another cautionary tale, the emperor was a fool, walking naked through the streets. The great Wizard of Oz was just a little man standing behind a curtain. Leaders are

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Dr. Michael B. Riordan

@michael_riordan

9 months

Lockdowns were an invention of the Chinese state, with no precedent in any country’s pandemic plans. Circuit breaker lockdowns appear to have been the invention of the Welsh Government’s Covid Technical Advisory Group….

David Paton

@cricketwyvern

9 months

The @covidinquiryuk , the gift that keeps on giving. This latest gem is from Chief Scientific Advisor @uksciencechief Long lockdowns ineffective. Tiers, rule of 6, curfews ineffective. But we're expected to believe lots of short lockdowns to be the magic bullet. Good grief! ...

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Dr. Michael B. Riordan

@michael_riordan

2 years

... In case you have been pouring over goverment documents: should note that NERVTAG and EMG joint briefing on role of areosol trasmission was considered by SAGE on 23 July, over a week after Matt Hancock's announcement, and curiously a day before facemasks came into force...

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Dr. Michael B. Riordan

@michael_riordan

2 years

Deeply problematic that most people think that a good response to catching covid is to speculate about where they got it - this seems to be a result of epidemiology becoming politicised. Remember, most speculations will be wrong. The Spanish Flu, after all, was traced to Kansas

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Dr. Michael B. Riordan

@michael_riordan

2 years

The problem about making certain behaviours into moral imperatives is people make decisions for the wrong reasons: if you choose to get a Covid vaccine you should be doing it to protect yourself against Covid not because your community leader tells you it is a good idea. 2/4

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Dr. Michael B. Riordan

@michael_riordan

2 years

Imagine if Frances Ryan had spent as much time calling for say, more hospital capacity, protesting against the closure of health services during lockdowns, or the rising abuse of disabled people … as she has lying that masks protect the disabled?

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Dr. Michael B. Riordan

@michael_riordan

3 years

planning & historic precedents; and politically, because far from reducing inequalities between rich and poor, lockdowns protect the WFH wealthy at the expense of people can’t work from home.

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Dr. Michael B. Riordan

@michael_riordan

1 year

2020, we went well beyond what planners had planned for in the most severe pandemic. The last major revision to the UK’s strategy (2011), set out plans proportionate to different scenarios. Here is the approach suggested for a high-impact pandemic:

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Dr. Michael B. Riordan

@michael_riordan

2 years

close contact' because of 'Evidence of lack of effectiveness'. NERVTAG warned of supply issues, and that facemasks could 'result in decreased ompliance with social distancing, hand hygiene etc.', was 'Unlikely to have a significant impact whilst social distancing in force'

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Dr. Michael B. Riordan

@michael_riordan

2 years

Prior to 2020, UK's pandemic plans (endorsed by @theSNP @scotgov at the time) was explicit about this: "Although there is a perception that the wearing of facemasks by the public in the community & household setting may be beneficial, there is in fact very little evidence /cont

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Dr. Michael B. Riordan

@michael_riordan

2 years

Doc. 2⃣ was Usher Institute's "rapid evidence review" (7 April 2020), based on Usher's adapted version of @CochraneUK specification for rapid evidence reviews. The authors asked 'Does the use of facemasks in the general population make a difference to the spread of infection?'

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Dr. Michael B. Riordan

@michael_riordan

3 years

What really (really) bugs me about the COVID response of those who claim to be on the left — @IndependentSage , @UKLabour — is that they’ve embraced the idea that the governed rather than the government should be held responsible for Covid, and therefore that 1/4

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Dr. Michael B. Riordan

@michael_riordan

3 years

@JobbingLeftieH Wait. This is the same Trish Greenhaigh who co-authored several papers saying cloth masks were absolutely fine? The Trish Greenhaigh who is primarily responsible for promoting useless cloth masks as one of our primary tools at fighting a pandemic?

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Dr. Michael B. Riordan

@michael_riordan

2 years

Moral imperatives have had 2 negative consequences: they failed to engage people who don’t belong to the dominant moral community. All those😷 &💉emojis reinforce the consensus among COVID’s moral vanguard, but drive others (who have a different conception of the good) away 3/4

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Dr. Michael B. Riordan

@michael_riordan

1 year

Covid has revealed the dangers of thinking with your tribe rather than thinking with your head. I don’t agree with @JuliaHB1 on an awful lot of things, but that does not mean I don’t agree with every word of this article.

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Dr. Michael B. Riordan

@michael_riordan

2 years

2nd, it is very hard, once a behaviour has attained moral law status, to get folk to change course: to stop wearing masks, constantly washing hands, or staying at home, even if continued observance has negative consequences. As Japan found to its cost 4/4

Dr. Michael B. Riordan

@michael_riordan

2 years

Covid public health and regular public health, part 2. Masks have never been legally mandated in Japan. This summer, the Japanese government had to run a campaign to encourage people not to wear masks outside to avoid heatstroke.

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Dr. Michael B. Riordan

@michael_riordan

3 years

What I have noticed is that my left-wing friends who supported authoritarian enforcement of non-pharmaceutical interventions now - a year in, after most of them have been treated pharmacologically - are starting to realise that such an approach had grossly inequitable effects 1/

Slothrop

@gnocchiwizard

3 years

so i think i get it. lefties who went along with lockdown madness will, for a little while at least, maintain that they didn't get what they wanted which is a full and fast lockdown at the beginning, the assumption apparently being that this would have made the virus disappear.

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Dr. Michael B. Riordan

@michael_riordan

2 years

Now it gets interesting. On 20 April 2020, Sci-B submittted to SAGE its 'use of facemasks in a community setting'. On the face of it -- let's say -- Sci-B followed its predescessors. It outlined, in more detail that its predecessors, the negative behavioral consequences...

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Dr. Michael B. Riordan

@michael_riordan

8 months

It occurs to me that the obsession with WhatsApp messages — and other water cooler issues — reflect the fact that nobody (not the Inquiry, not the media, not the opposition, not - by and large - the public) really wants to challenge the Covid response.

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