Devi Sridhar has claimed the only reason the pandemic isn't over is the fact that some adults have not been vaccinated – despite Government data showing the large majority of infections and deaths are in the vaccinated.
by Dr. Sinead Murphy On August 26th, Professor Devi Sridhar, Chair of Global Public Health at University of Edinburgh and Covid advisor to the Scottish Government, tweeted this: https://twitter.com/devisridhar/status/1430905196075311106 Sridhar has been a high-profile contributor of allegedly scientific expertise throughout the Covid months; recently, she has featured in the Telegraph in support of the roll-out of the Covid vaccination programme to children of 12 years and above, as well as on the BBC’s Newsround, when she assured her school-aged audience of the ‘100%’ safety of the Covid injections when administered to children. Notwithstanding her tweet that her interventions in the Covid debate have been nothing more than simple explanations of what’s happening, many of Sridhar’s claims during the past year-and-a-half have been contestable at best, plain false at worst. The BBC quietly retracted Sridhar’s '100%’ safety statement, although not before it was broadcast in thousands of schools across the U.K., complete with that air of implicit authority that the BBC continues to confer on its content and contributors. In response to this, and possibly other ‘bumps', Sridhar is now running for cover. But it is a curious kind of cover, worthy of our consideration. "I’m just an academic," she is pleading, as if that condition comes with a great exemption, with indemnity for all fallout from inaccurate forecasts and implausible ...
An anthropologist by background with no training in medicine, virology or immunology, Devi Sridhar has nonetheless become a go-to person for the broadcast media during the pandemic, and frequently gets things wrong.
Prof Devi Sridhar, who advises the Scottish Government on Covid, has U-turned on the efficacy of the AstraZeneca vaccine against variants (she now believes it works), and says "we must move away from harsh lockdowns".
