There are more than 5 000 consultants in NHS Scotland. One, just one, has allegedly, but anonymously, told the Herald this:
The pandemic has reinforced a belief amongst NHS staff that they should be willing to “sacrifice their own health for a salary”, a consultant working on the front line of Covid care has said. The doctor said the decision to delay the second dose of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine coupled with insubstantial testing and PPE meant that a lot of NHS staff had “lost confidence” in public health strategy around the virus.
Remember this is:
How can we trust the words of one anonymous source? They might be having a breakdown or be Anas Sarwar’s sister-in-law.
Is this quality without the kind of background research formerly required for quality journalism?
How about this:
Healthcare workers, including those with jobs such as doctors and nurses, were not found to have higher rates of death involving COVID-19 when compared with the rate among those whose death involved COVID-19 of the same age and sex in the general population.
Compared with the rate among people of the same sex and age in England and Wales, men working in the lowest skilled occupations had the highest rate of death involving COVID-19, with 21.4 deaths per 100,000 males (225 deaths); men working as security guards had one of the highest rates, with 45.7 deaths per 100,000 (63 deaths).
In the first wave, key worker mortality was much lower in Scotland than in England.
ONS mortality statistics for England and Wales show that 237 health and care workers and 47 teachers were killed by coronavirus up to 23 April – deaths in the three weeks since are not included.
In Scotland:
As at 5 May, we have been notified by Health Boards or the Care Inspectorate of 7 deaths of healthcare workers and 6 deaths of social care workers, related to COVID-19. We are not able to confirm how many of these staff contracted COVID-19 through their work.
https://www.gov.scot/publications/coronavirus-covid-19-daily-data-for-scotland/
The UK has 12.6 times the population of Scotland so, pro rata, we might expect 12.6 times the deaths, 164, but it is 284.
Talking-up Scotland / Scottish media fact checking is like shooting fish in a barrel 
A new phenomenon is be researched by Scientists…BBC reality.
It appears to exist in the same dimension as normal space/time but the same input conditions appear to produce completely different outcomes at the same time.
It is considered possible that this is related to the location of the observer.
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Julia
And as to their location
It is with certainty that i state that it is not upon
Planet Earth
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Why anonymous, it reduces the validity of the story, to say the least. It is clear these BritNat daily rags rely on people not questioning their agenda, so who are their audience?
The Brit state employ people to know where to target their propaganda to those most likely to be manipulated by it. They might be wasting their time by the look of it though, people are not fooled quite so much these days!
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“Named sources”–nope.
“Corroboration”—nope.
“Journalism”–nope.
A “bumpy road” for the Hi Jack propaganda unit (AKA BBC Hootsmon), me thinks!
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Doctors/healthcare workers have had the vaccine.
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The more that this site and others have heightened awareness about journalistic practices, the more I am beginning to wonder if journalists actually do try to do objective research or do they just rely on press releases, and anecdote, without examining them. Did they ever do more than rely on a narrow range of sources?
With the regular calls during bulletins of : “Keep those texts and tweets coming”and then the reading out of these, significant proportions of the time of the bulletins is taken up by them.
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Perhaps Alasdair you missed the Orange Jaiket Man, hiding in plain sight, earnest and honest until somebody spots the repeat appearances ?
“With the regular calls during bulletins of : “Keep those texts and tweets coming” and then the reading out of these, significant proportions of the time of the bulletins is taken up by them.”
– Aye, the same methodology as releasing a bogus story, the press copy it, they read what the press are saying the following morning, a loop authenticating itself.
The “texts and tweets” are perceived as honest “public comment” but are doubtless selected to reinforce the narrative of their own pieces, throw in a few stooges and an occasional mild detractor to convey authenticity, and the loop continues.
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https://phys.org/news/2021-01-social-media-political-actors-industrial.html
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For these so called journalists
One Swallow doth indeed make a summer
Oh my God I just looked out the window and it is snowing
OMG the poor wee Swallow is doomed
But in this case most certainly pray that it is hell bound
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O/T
It’s probably well known to those that visit this site that Scotland’s fishing industry and at least parts of Scotland’s agriculture sector are having to search very hard for any Brexit ‘dividend’ – and that’s an understatement!
But it seems that it’s not just sectors in Scotland that are calling out this Tory-made UK/EU trade deal for the havoc it is causing. A tweet led me to this devastating account of the implications for England’s cheese exporters:
See https://westcountrybylines.co.uk/quadruple-cheese-brexit-whammy/
The article includes this:
“***UPDATE 18th Jan 2021, this is pretty shocking: Having just spoken to David Rutley MP, [Macclesfield]I asked him if this is a reciprocal arrangement and do EU producers (of cheeses) have the same restrictions as we have trying to export into the UK?
“Wait for it…. It turns out that no such reciprocal agreement is in place and the EU producers are free to export into the UK without restrictions. This is beyond all belief, but he added to this and told me, ‘we the UK agreed to this arrangement to encourage the EU to allow us to deal with them and avoid a no deal’!”
Given this latest revelation, what is to be the actual extent of the Brexit dividend- even for England? I believe Nissan in Sunderland has just committed largely to the status quo ante – but trumpeted as a major triumph of Tory Brexit!
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England indeed is
The Land of Despair and Disease
Hope is for fòols
And glory for the history buffs
Realty is for those who must deal with the consequence of their actions
England voted for it so bloody well get on with it
We wont for very much longer
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These anonymous people they come up with are the editor of the newspaper or tv / radio programme presenting the story.
They just make it up knowing that there is nobody that can prove they are lying .
There is no professional journalism no integrity they are part of England’s Westminster propaganda war on Scotland
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A good example of framing on Good Morning Scotland, this morning: item 1 “The BMA, the doctors’ Union has criticised the UK Government policy of delaying second doses of vaccines ….”; item 2 “ Nurses LEADERS in Scotland have warned that many nurses and midwives want to leave the profession, according to a survey of nurses in Scotland …”
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Whilst over on the Radio 4 Today programme Murdo Fraser was given free rein to express his views on the issues associated with the Scottish Parliament’s Harassment Enquiry. Frequent prejudicial comments made concerning the Scottish Government and the SNP despite at one point Fraser saying, in terms, ‘there may be nothing amiss here, but ..’.
This comes after noting an article on the same topic written by Alex Cole-Hamiton in The Scotsman (?) a week or so ago. It too was full of IMHO judgemental and prejudicial comments/assertions.
Is it not highly problematic for members of a formal, parliamentary committee of enquiry, taking evidence from witnesses under oath, to be commenting in the media on their views/interpretations of the emerging but not yet complete evidence in advance of the publication of the enquiry’s fully informed, final report?
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Alasdair
Fret not,because soon those framers within the ABC shall soon be seeking alternative employment
Maybe just as Picture Framers
Ah but such is too good for them and beyond their just reward
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I see this morning BBC in Scotland are left only pushing their “Covid in Scotland: Where are the latest cases?” pastiche, the rest of their failed propaganda having been demoted.
Amused to note doing the rounds elsewhere were the BBC video clip of DRoss’s latest hypocrisy over “not politicising the vaccination rollout” and the Baroness’s SG hidden Covid doses tosh, the irony of both being heavily promoted by the BBC was not lost in the comments.
Even the related GPA/BMA dose shortage story as well as your featured Herald story have met widespread ridicule, the propagandists appear to have fatally misjudged both the public mood and the scepticism with which their output is received.
If this was intended as a springboard for the opposition campaign toward the May elections, it has backfired spectacularly.
Unlike the dismissive reaction to their “incontinent pigeons” wheeze, the distortions over Covid have met with almost universal fury and contempt, and as many have said, once seen cannot be unseen.
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