Pennington was never really a ‘leading scientist’ at all. With a career based on an E-Coli outbreak in one Wishaw butcher’s, more than twenty years ago, retired 17 years ago, he is now a full-time political activist spending his days writing letters to the press as just ‘Hugh’ on behalf of the anti-democratic Scotland in Union covert letter-writing group.
Every major Scottish university has one or more professors of virology and of public health, active in their fields today. Professors Bauld and Sridhar from Edinburgh University are regularly featured on UK TV and in the press but, of course, are often fair to the Scottish Government.
In the midst of a pandemic, anyone can question the certainty of the research evidence for practice, but lives come first and, anyway, there is already research evidence to be going on with:
As Pennington surely knows, the experience of closing down the Aberdeen cluster in August revealed the role bars can play in the rapid growth of a Covid outbreak. Quite a severe lockdown was required to suppress it. The revellers will have infected at least some elderly and vulnerable people. It’s possible some of them died. Do we need to wait for academics to get a peer-reviewed survey published before we act on that knowledge?
Good news! At least three have already been done:
First, the highly respect Nature Medicine published research in September, tracing an outbreak to four bars in Hong Kong.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-020-1092-0
Second, also in September, a US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention study reported:
Adults with positive SARS-CoV-2 test results were approximately twice as likely to have reported dining at a restaurant than were those with negative SARS-CoV-2 test results.
https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/mm6936a5.htm
Third, from Emergency Infectious Diseases, in July, a study from Guangzhou, China, implicated the air conditioning in a restaurant.
John, regarding Pennington: are you Rob Newman and him DAvid Badeil, or is it the other way round?
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Let me think
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Cain and Abel?
Simon and Garfunkel?
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Here you are, with Betty. Nice moves, John
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That is quite funny Sam, if aabit un-pc these days. Good dancers, I’d never heard of them before, a laugh is always welcome these days anyway!
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I’ve got better legs.
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“I would suspect that there is going to be a recommendation to maintain the social distancing for quite some time,” said Erin DiCaprio, an expert on food safety from the University of California, Davis. “I assume that consumers are going to have a lot of fear about going back out to crowded environments.”
https://www.taipeitimes.com/News/feat/archives/2020/04/20/2003734936
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““Curfews likely to have a marginal impact. Low confidence,” Sage wrote.
Last month, Professor Graham Medley, a leading member of Sage, said the group had “never discussed” the 10pm curfew, fuelling the belief that the government adopted the measure alone….
…The papers also showed the scientists suggested:
Banning all contact inside homes with members of other households
Closing all bars, restaurants, cafes, indoor gyms and hairdressers
Requiring all university and college teaching to take place online
Advice to work from home for all those that can
In the documents, Sage warned that “not acting now to reduce cases will result in a very large epidemic with catastrophic consequences”.”
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/health/coronavirus-3-tier-lockdown-new-restrictions-boris-johnson-sage-curfew-b1012869.html
Pennington’s opinion is a waste of space.
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‘Frustrated’ Pennington is an utter disgrace in his attempt to undermine the Scottish governments’ work in trying to keep this deadly virus under some sort of control to er, save lives of people in Scotland. I am sure it’s a little more than ‘frustrating’ for people when their loved ones are in hospital because they can’t breath without help, and those who lose loved one to this dreadful virus.
When the bars and restaurants open again, is Pennington going to be the first to go out and mingle in close proximity with others? No he will not. The media are risking lives by undemining the ScotGov, it’s absolutely disgraceful.
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It’s done in Pennington,s name but I doubt if he actually writes or comments personally.
He will have an admin assistant who constructs all the comments for him
Pennington will read them and let the admin asst know if he ever disagrees with what’s been written
He’s 87 he never was a great orator
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Probs right there, but, he signs the lies off as his own though. Why is he given a platform, obviously they have no one else to spout their BritNat lies. Get him a pint in the nearest full to the brim bar soon as they open again, wear a mask or three though!
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Let’s not fool ourselves, Pennington only has a shred of credibility with a diminishing media, the public saw through both a long time ago which is why PQ stopped platforming him, that and the lingering smell of embalming fluid…
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