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The Story About Overdosing Ivermectin Patients Clogging Up Oklahoma Hospitals Was Too Good to Check

My latest Spectator column is about the fake news that circulated at the beginning of this week claiming that gunshot victims in Oklahoma were unable to get treatment in emergency rooms because ER doctors were too busy dealing with patients who’d overdosed on ivermectin. Incredibly, Jolyon Maughan invoked the story in a tweet urging Ofcom to investigate Calvin Robinson for promoting fake news! To date, the tweet remains undeleted and – who would have thunk it? – Twitter has not suspended him for trafficking in misinformation about COVID-19.

Here are the opening three pars of my column:

Last weekend, Rolling Stone ran a story about an interview an emergency room doctor had given to a local news station in which, according to the TV reporter, he’d said hospitals in his state were so swamped with patients who’d overdosed on ivermectin that gunshot victims were struggling to be seen. For context, ivermectin is an anti-parasitic drug used for deworming horses that has been touted by vaccine sceptics as an effective prophylactic against Covid-19. For boosters of the Covid vaccines, this story was manna from heaven. Here were a bunch of hicks so dumb they were stuffing themselves with horse pills rather than getting jabbed, with predictably disastrous results.

There was only one problem — it wasn’t true. A hospital in rural Oklahoma that had worked with the ER doctor issued a statement saying it hadn’t treated any patients with complications arising from taking ivermectin. Two days later, Rolling Stone issued a clarification saying it had been “unable to independently verify any such cases’”. Pity it didn’t try to verify the story before publishing it, but then it probably fell under the heading of ‘too good to check’. That was the attitude of various media organisations that rehashed the story without bothering to confirm it, including the Guardian, Newsweek, the New York Daily News, Business Insider, The Hill and MSNBC. Incredibly, the host of a show on CNN called No Lie repeated it, as did the best-selling author of a book debunking anti-vaccine myths. Perhaps the icing on the cake is that this little nugget of fake news was regurgitated by an academic at the University of Maryland who specialises in ‘mis/disinformation’.

Needless to say, Twitter didn’t suspend any of its users for trafficking in falsehoods and nor did any ‘independent fact-checkers’ on Facebook flag the story as wrong. This is the type of in-accurate anecdote that the self-appointed scourges of ‘mis-information’ are happy to ignore because it confirms their prejudices about vaccine sceptics being ignorant rubes. As a rule, any story that challenges the official narrative about coronavirus is scrutinised by these gatekeepers in forensic detail, while those that support it, like this one, are given a free pass. That explains why journalists at papers like the Guardian were quick to dismiss the lab-leak hypothesis about the origins of SARS-CoV-2, yet lapped up fanciful stories linking the Great Barrington Declaration to unscrupulous businessmen worried about their profits.

Worth reading in full.

By Toby Young  /  9 September 2021 • 12.30
   
28 comments

England’s NHS Waiting List Hits 5.6 Million

Few will be surprised to read that the number of people in England alone waiting to begin hospital treatment has risen again to a record high. 5.6 million people were waiting to start treatment at the end of July, an increase of almost half a million from the end of April. And the figure will not stop rising yet, with the Institute of Fiscal Studies estimating that the waiting list could reach 14 million by next autumn. The Guardian has more.

A total of 5.6 million people were waiting to start treatment at the end of July, according to figures from NHS England. This is the highest number since records began in August 2007 and includes those waiting for hip and knee replacements and cataract surgery.

The number of people having to wait more than 52 weeks to start treatment stood at 293,102 in July 2021, down from 304,803 in the previous month, but more than three times the number waiting a year earlier, in July 2020, which was 83,203. …

The data shows the total number of people admitted for routine treatment in hospitals in England in July 2021 was 259,642, up 82% from a year earlier (142,818), although this reflects lower-than-usual figures for July 2020, which were affected by the first wave of the Covid pandemic. The equivalent figure for July 2019, before the pandemic, was 314,280.

NHS England said many more tests and treatments had been delivered this summer compared with last, while hospitals cared for thousands more patients with Covid. It said there were 3.9 million diagnostic tests and 2.6 million patients started consultant-led treatment in June and July, compared with 2.7 million tests and 1.6 million treatments over the same time last year. …

NHS England also pointed to data showing that almost half a million people were checked for cancer in June and July, among the highest numbers on record. …

The new data showed that more than 325,000 patients in England had been waiting more than six weeks for a key diagnostic test in July. A total of 325,229 patients were waiting for one of 15 standard tests, including an MRI scan, non-obstetric ultrasound or gastroscopy.

The equivalent number waiting for more than six weeks in July 2020 was 489,797, while pre-pandemic in July 2019 there were 37,206.

Tim Mitchell, the Vice-President of the Royal College of Surgeons, said the overall data showed 7,980 patients waiting more than two years for treatment. The longest waits were for trauma and orthopaedic treatment such as hip and knee replacements, followed by general surgery such as gallbladder removals and hernia operations.

Worth reading in full.

By Michael Curzon  /  9 September 2021 • 11.42
     
18 comments

Why Lionel Shriver Isn’t a White Nationalist

Observer columnist Kenan Malik has taken Spectator columnist Lionel Shriver to task for her recent column arguing that “white Britons” should be making more fuss about the prospect of becoming a minority in the U.K. in the next few decades. “In the big picture,” Shriver writes, “along with the native populations of other western countries, white Britons needn’t submissively accept the drastic ethnic and religious transformation of their country as an inevitable fate they’re morally required to embrace without a peep of protest”.

Malik is not impressed: “Shriver’s,” he writes, “is but the latest in a series of arguments by prominent conservatives bemoaning the decline of the white population or defending the legitimacy of white ‘racial self-interest’”. Boiling Shriver’s argument down to the claim: “To be truly British, the country needs to stay largely white”, Malik retorts that what the identity politics of both left and right get wrong is they fail to recognise that ‘whiteness’ does not matter:

For both right and left, whiteness has come to acquire an almost magical quality. On the one side, whiteness is something to be protected, something too little of which transforms British communities, and mysteriously makes them less British. On the other, whiteness has become an embodiment of privilege or wickedness and racism seen not in social or structural terms but in the inherent qualities of being white.

It’s an obsession that replaces political argument with magical thinking and gives new legitimacy to bigotry. Racism matters. Whiteness does not.

It’s worth noting that the facts of demographic change are not in doubt. Shriver succinctly summarises them in her piece, and Malik does not question them.

In the past 20 years, foreign-born residents of the UK have doubled to nine million, going from 8% to 14% of the population. In tandem, the white British proportion of the population has fallen from 89% to 79%, while ethnic minorities have grown from 10% to 21%. Since 2001, 84% of UK population growth has been due to immigrants and their children, rising to 90% since 2017 – the majority non-EU.

More than a third of UK births now involve at least one foreign-born parent; in parts of London, 80% of births are to foreign-born mothers. Indeed, non-UK nationals are disproportionately concentrated in British cities. The majorities of London, Slough, Leicester and Luton have an ethnic minority background. About half the births in London, Birmingham, Manchester and Cambridge are to foreign mothers.

Unsurprisingly, then, a third of British school children are already from ethnic minorities; in 20 years, ethnic-minority children will constitute more than half the students in state schools. As of 2018, 90% of immigrants were under 45. That means the ethnic transformation of the UK, whose white population is far older, is destined rapidly to accelerate.

Why Lionel Shriver Isn’t a White NationalistRead More

By Will Jones  /  9 September 2021 • 11.33
     
32 comments

Covid Risk on Flights Between New York and London ‘Less Than One in a Million’

The risk of exposure to COVID-19 when flying between New York and London after all the passengers have obtained a negative PRC test result 72 hours in advance is less than a one in a million, a study of transatlantic service by Delta Air Lines has shown. Travel Weekly has more.

The research examined data from almost 10,000 passengers on Delta’s Covid-tested flights between New York-JFK and Atlanta to Rome.

It found that a single COVID-19 molecular test performed within 72 hours of departure could decrease the rate of people actively infected on board to a level that is significantly below active community infection rates.

For example, when the average community infection rate was at 1.1% – or about one in 100 people – infection rates on Covid tested flights were 0.05% or five in 10,000 passengers.

The U.S. carrier’s chief health officer Dr Henry Ting said: “When you couple the extremely low infection rate on board a Covid-19-tested flight with the layers of protection on board including mandatory masking and hospital-grade air filtration, the risk of transmission is less than one in one million between the United States and the United Kingdom, for example.

“These numbers will improve further as vaccination rates increase and new cases decrease worldwide.”

He added: “We are going to live with COVID-19 variants for some time. This real-world data – not simulation models – is what governments around the world can use as a blueprint for requiring vaccinations and testing instead of quarantines to re-open borders for international travel.”

Using real world data to assess the risk posed by COVID-19? That’ll never catch on.

Worth reading in full.

By Toby Young  /  9 September 2021 • 11.18
   
12 comments

Unvaccinated NHS Workers to Be Barred from Seeing Patients

The Government is due to publish a consultation today on mandatory Covid vaccination for NHS staff, with the Times reporting that workers will be legally obliged to get ‘jabbed’ in order to see patients – or face getting sacked.

The Government will publish a consultation today on plans to make vaccination a condition of employment for 1.2 million frontline NHS workers. Those who refuse will be barred from working with patients, meaning that they will need to be redeployed or could even lose their jobs.

Official figures show that 8% of NHS workers, equivalent to 116,717, have not received their first dose. In London 14% of NHS workers have not received their first jab.

The Government has already announced that from November 11th vaccination will be compulsory for all care workers, prompting warnings that tens of thousands of care workers could leave the profession.

The NHS confederation, which represents organisations in the health service, has argued that compulsory vaccination is unnecessary because NHS staff are “overwhelmingly doing the right thing”. However, Boris Johnson is said to be concerned about the role of unvaccinated staff in the spread of the virus in hospitals. …

Johnson spoke about people who were unvaccinated during a hospital visit yesterday. He told the BBC: “What I’m particularly concerned about is that in great hospitals like this, 75% of the people who are succumbing to Covid are not vaccinated. What I would really say to everybody is come on now. It’s a great thing to get a vaccination.”

A study by The BMJ in February found that inoculation rates among ethnic minority doctors and healthcare staff were significantly lower than among white staff. Health and care workers were in the first and second priority groups for vaccination.

A Government source said that the Prime Minister personally backed the plan for mandatory vaccination, adding: “It’s only right that those who are caring for people who are particularly vulnerable to coronavirus should be vaccinated. This will save lives.”

The move could face legal challenges. Lawyers have said that employment contracts would have to be redrafted and that a blanket policy that all employees must be vaccinated would run the risk of being ruled unlawful discrimination.

Worth reading in full.

By Michael Curzon  /  9 September 2021 • 08.44
         
69 comments

Feudalism’s Revenge

We’re publishing an original essay by longtime contributor Freddie Attenborough today – and this one is a humdinger. Possibly his best yet. Anyone who struggles to digest a piece of this length can go to his Substack where he’s divided it into two parts: one and two. It’s a variation on the “It’s not a conspiracy, but…” theme, suggesting that even though Boris and his Government couldn’t organise a washing up rota, let alone The Great Reset, they’ve revealed their unconscious agenda via their endless cock-ups. And that agenda is essentially to turn the masses back into forelock-tugging serfs by destroying their health and their livelihoods and making them completely dependent on the state. It’s a fantastic read, with some first-class phrasing – more like a stream-of-consciousness novel by Martin Amis crossed with John Kennedy Toole than a polemic. Here are the opening two paragraphs:

The U.K. Government’s latest attempt to satiate Boris Johnson’s multiple, complex and apparently chronic penetrative insemination paraphilias will involve the private sector in bribing young people with discounted takeaway food and free taxi rides. Food delivery and taxi-hailing firms including Uber, Bolt, Deliveroo and Pizza Pilgrims have all been enrolled in this latest psychiatric intervention and are now offering incentives for young people to arouse the Prime Minister’s husband by receiving what he’s taken to referring to during Cabinet meetings as “the pharmaceutical boys’ ejaculate”. “How many disease vectors have the pharmaceutical boys ejaculated into this week?” he’ll ask excitedly, often several times a minute, the words oozing up and out of that capricious little slit in his head like smarmy treacle, mellifluous and full of privilege.

As you might imagine, the BBC got themselves pretty hot and horny about this, the policy’s underlying mix of messianic, full-throttle welfarism and Old Testament-style retributive psychopathy touching a sweet spot for the munificent totalitarians over at New Broadcasting House. Not that they were able to get off as many superlatives as they’d have liked. True, manipulation of the young is as essential to the BBC as it is to every other elite western institution currently waging war on that dangerous, socially harmful pathogen known as “cognitive diversity” – sorry, I mean “Covid misinformation”. But unlike, say, the Guardian, Independent SAGE or Emily Maitlis, the BBC’s efforts to save the povvy proles from wrongthink are forever getting ensnared in all sorts of tiresome, fuddy-duddy, neo-Victorian priggery: here, a Royal Charter blathering on about fairness and due impartiality; there, a Parliamentary Select Committee stuffed to the gills with white men all bloviating away about discredited colonial-era shibboleths like objectivity and truth, and everywhere you look hardworking reporters barely able to take a rhetorical step without some ghastly white supremacist popping out from behind a copy of Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom and demanding they stop acting like the public relations arm of the global pharmaceutical industry.

Go and make yourself a cup of coffee, then come back to your device and read it in full.

By Toby Young  /  9 September 2021 • 07.30
     
43 comments

No, Minister, Vaccine Passports Are Not Necessary to End the Pandemic

Vaccines Minister Nadhim Zahawi has insisted to MPs in the Commons that vaccine passports are necessary to end the pandemic. The evidence, however, suggests otherwise.

While the U.K. has seen a spike in reported ‘cases’ in recent days, much of it is driven by the increase in testing as schools have returned. The positive rate, by contrast, shows a gentle decline.

There’s no sign here of vaccine passports being needed to prevent unmanageable spread.

What about elsewhere? Israel is a highly vaccinated country which got in there early with vaccines, so that upwards of 55% of the population has been double vaccinated since early April, and it has made extensive use of vaccine passports.

India, by contrast, is a low vaccination country which only recently broke through 10% double vaccinated.

How are they faring? Israel is currently experiencing a big surge in Delta infections, at a time when over 62% of the population is double vaccinated.

No, Minister, Vaccine Passports Are Not Necessary to End the PandemicRead More

By Will Jones  /  9 September 2021 • 00.04
         
65 comments

News Round-Up

By Michael Curzon  /  8 September 2021 • 23.58
 
7 comments

Government Hopes to Begin Booster Vaccine Roll-Out in Next Fortnight

The NHS is ready to launch a booster Covid vaccine roll-out in the next fortnight and is waiting for the ‘green light’ from the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) – not that the group’s advice on the vaccination of children has been duly welcomed. The i has the story.

The JCVI is meeting on Thursday to review the latest data on the effect of giving a third dose of the coronavirus vaccine to people who have already had two.

Ministers and NHS bosses had been hoping to start the boosters rollout on Monday this week before the committee delayed its final decision on which groups should be offered a third jab.

They are now expecting an announcement within days – allowing the health service to call up elderly and vulnerable people for a jab almost immediately afterwards. 

A senior Government official told i: “The NHS is ready to move very quickly once a decision is made, the main delay would be contacting everyone who is eligible.”

There is a chance the campaign will be able to start as soon as next week, although the week after is currently seen as more likely.

The planned NHS timetable would see as many as 35 million jabs given out in the next three and a half months, similar to the rate of the original vaccines rollout, allowing for it to be complete by Christmas. Unlike at the start of this year, there are no significant restrictions on the supply available to the U.K.

It remains unknown whether everyone over-50 and all the clinically vulnerable will be eligible for a booster, or whether they are going to be restricted to the oldest groups and those most at risk from a coronavirus infection.

Health Secretary Sajid Javid said he was “confident” that the booster programme would be launched this month but that the Government was waiting for advice from the JCVI for final details.

He said: “I’m very confident there will be a booster programme but in terms of who actually gets it and when, we’re waiting for final advice, which could come across certainly in the next few days from the JCVI. We need to see that advice. I’m confident that we can start the booster programme this month.”

The JCVI will advise on issues such as whether people should get the same type of coronavirus vaccine as previous doses or different ones.

Worth reading in full.

By Michael Curzon  /  8 September 2021 • 22.14
     
45 comments

Nadhim Zahawi Won’t Rule Out Vaccine Passports in Pubs

The Vaccines Minister insisted vaccine passports will not be imposed on “essential services” in a clash with MPs today but refused to rule out their introduction at pubs and restaurants. The Sun has the story.

Nadhim Zahawi defended the introduction of vaccine passports which he said would “reduce transmission and serious illness”.

Boris Johnson is already facing a major rebellion over the plans, with more than 50 Tories expected to mutiny.

Covid papers will be needed to enter nightclubs and other large indoor venues from later this month.

Mr. Zahawi didn’t rule out their use becoming more widespread.

He sparred with raging MPs during a heated debate at the Commons Constitutional Affairs Committee.

The vaccines minister was pressed by Labour’s Deputy Leader Angela Rayner on where people will have to show Covid papers.

He replied: “I can assure her that there are some essential services which will not need for people to show Covid vaccine certification.

“These settings that have stayed open throughout the pandemic, such as public sector buildings, essential retail, essential services and public transport.”

Mr. Zahawi insisted it “pains” him to introduce vaccine passports and it’s a decision “we do not take lightly”.

He said it is “something that goes against the DNA of this minister and his PM but we are living through difficult times, unprecedented times”. …

But fuming Tory MPs lined up to angrily denounce the Government’s plans.

William Wragg accused the minister of talking “a load of rubbish” and said he was trying to “defend the indefensible”. …

Mark Harper, Chairman of the Covid Research Group, said vaccine passports are “a pointless policy with damaging effects”.

He added: “I’m afraid the Minister is picking an unnecessary fight with his own colleagues. I say to him the Government should think again.”

Worth reading in full.

By Michael Curzon  /  8 September 2021 • 16.07
       
202 comments