In the Herald today:
The Scottish Government ignored its own scientific advice not to close schools during the second Covid wave of 2021, the UK inquiry into the pandemic has heard.
Mark Woolhouse, Professor of Infectious Disease Epidemiology at the University of Edinburgh, said that the decision to shut classrooms across Scotland was “not necessary” and did not contribute to halting the spread of the virus.
Woolhouse, as far as I can see, was only one of the 20 advisors on the Scottish Government COVID-19 Advisory Group.
I’m not aware of this group advising against school closures. Prof Sridhar was in favour in January 2021.
Is Woolhouse jealous because he did not get Nicola’s personal telephone number like Devi?
What do other researchers say about school closures?
From The University of Manchester and Imperial College London – Closing schools and workplaces appear to have been the most effective strategies to mitigate deaths from Covid-19 in the early days of the pandemic’s first wave, according to a study of 130 countries.
From researchers in India – School closures help reduce the spread of COVID-19.
From researchers in London – Lockdown and school closures in Europe may have prevented 3.1m deaths
Has Woolhouse been useful in other ways? Nope. From April 2021
Prof Mark Woolhouse speaks in Edinburgh to warn us of a third wave which might cause the ‘NHS to buckle’ and that the first lockdown ‘in Scotland’ failed to protect the most vulnerable.
First, parts of NHS England did buckle under the strain of rampant infection. Many Covid-19 patients had to be transferred as far as from London to Northumbria. Nothing like that happened here. Indeed, across the country capacity was always well above demand with the overflow facilities unused.
Over the period of the pandemic, the infection level was only just over half per head of population of that in England and the death rate was around 40% lower. This situation, as Professor Bauld has pointed out, derives in the main from consistent messaging by the Scottish Government, leading to greater trust and presumably greater compliance with pandemic control measures.
Further NHS Scotland has far fewer problems with staffing and retention. Scotland has 20% more consultants, 25% more GPs and 50% more nurses per head of population.
Despite this, the Scottish Government clearly does not need Woolhouse to be helicoptered in to save us. The Scottish Government has just announced a ‘transformational increase in funding’, £2.5 billion to to help recovery from the pandemic.
As for the deaths of the vulnerable in care homes, Woolhouse makes the case for independence. Though research from Stirling University revealed such deaths were lower in Scotland, the UK Government’s advisors failed to warn the 4 nations of the risk and indeed misled them with herd immunity nonsense until it was too late. Freed of the shackle to the Eton schoolboy regime in London, Scotland has vaccinated 100% of the residents and staff in care homes and achieved a death rate less than half of that in English care homes.
Mark? Thanks for coming. Thanks for thinking of us. When’s your train?
Sources:
https://www.gov.scot/groups/scottish-government-covid-19-advisory-group/
https://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/scottish-news/medical-expert-says-scots-schools-23252620
https://journals.plos.org/globalpublichealth/article?id=10.1371/journal.pgph.0000266
https://www.imperial.ac.uk/news/198074/lockdown-school-closures-europe-have-prevented/
Talking-up Scotland 'Albatraz' 
“When’s your train?” A boat surely to Lismore.
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All These unionists talking tripe, should had their comments “vetted For truth and factual accuracy prior to inquiry
This scene is no more than mud sling
They know throw enough muck/LIES And it will stick
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Closing the schools was as Prof Woolhouse said not necessary. It has also caused a greater number of non-respiratory virus related medical and social problems. The same as for the lockdowns in general: the cure caused more problems than the sickness.
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Dangerously Wrong……I bet you didn’t get the vaccine either!!!
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Ths is from an earlier Covid Inquiry public hearing on Module 2 in London (16 October 2023). The Inquiry’s lawyer puts this to Professor Woolhouse: ‘Then if we can go to a passage towards the end of YOUR STATEMENT, please, you return to this theme …..:
“… SAGE and its subgroups PUT TOO MUCH EMPHASIS ON CONSENSUS AND TOO LITTLE ON MINORITY VIEWS. The most likely outcome — intended or otherwise — of only expressing a single view is that it presents policy makers with an overly limited set of options and so will channel policy decisions along a particular route.”
The lawyer then asked pointedly: ‘May we take it, Professor, that you felt that IT WAS OFTEN YOUR MINORITY VIEW THAT WASN’T BEING HEARD BY POLICYMAKERS?’ (my emphasis)
Woolhouse replied: ‘That’s where I’m most sensitive to this issue, that’s true, yes.’
And from the transcript of the same London hearing, on Professor Woolhouse’s view on school closures (apologies for the length of the extract but it takes time to reveal the particular characteristics of this academic’s positions):
The Inquiry’s lawyer to Woolhouse: ‘I want to ask you just about two final broad areas. One is the question of transmission in children. Can we go, first of all, please, to your statement at page 34, paragraph 187. Thank you.
‘Now, at this part of your statement, you refer quite expressly to the period in sort of early-ish or mid-2020. First of all you refer to March 2020 and then later in the paragraph you refer to June 2020, and WHAT YOU SAY BY REFERENCE TO THOSE DATES IS THAT THERE WAS NO EVIDENCE THAT SCHOOL-AGED CHILDREN WERE AT SIGNIFICANT RISK FROM COVID-19, as you say, for the good reason that they were not. And then you talk about teachers being exposed. (my emphasis)
‘Do you agree that whatever the position in early 2020, later on in 2020 there did become evidence — THERE WAS EVIDENCE AVAILABLE THAT CHILDREN WERE IN FACT AT RISK AND WERE CATCHING COVID-19?
Woolhouse: ‘So THERE WAS DEFINITELY A CLINICAL RISK TO SOME CHILDREN, particularly those with a variety of comorbidities, but healthy children, the risk remained extremely low throughout the pandemic, and if it hadn’t, of course, we wouldn’t have re-opened schools when we did, as almost every other country in the world did. So that was generally agreed. So the clinical risk to children was not that great.
‘So what I think you’re talking about is THE RISK OF INFECTION IN CHILDREN, WHICH, YOU’RE QUITE RIGHT, EVIDENCE DID ACCUMULATE THAT CHILDREN, PARTICULARLY OLDER TEENAGED CHILDREN –…. — in the later years were getting infected, yes.’
The lawyer goes on: ‘…. let’s just look, if we may, at INQ000207121, this is a report from Professor Edmunds and Angela McLean, which I know you’re familiar with. It’s dated 17 October, so later in the year. It’s based on or it reports or records two
strands of evidence: one, serological data from Public Health England, and the other sort of ONS swab testing.
‘As we can see, we may not need to go beyond the first paragraph, but what this report tells us, or reports, is that both of those strands of data recently suggest that older children — sorry, that CHILDREN, PARTICULARLY OLDER CHILDREN, MAY PLAY A MORE SIGNIFICANT ROLE IN TRANSMISSION THAN WAS PREVIOUSLY THOUGHT.
‘You, I know, became aware of that report no doubt around the time it came out. DID THAT LEAD YOU TO ADJUST YOUR VIEWS FROM THOSE THAT YOU REFER TO IN THAT PARAGRAPH OF YOUR STATEMENT THAT WE LOOKED AT?’
Woolhouse: ‘Yes, I’m not sure I saw the report in this form but the data were discussed and available outright(?), and it did cause me to wonder about my views, and particularly my views about school, because this was important new evidence.
The lawyer: ‘Yes. SO YOU’VE GOT NO REASON TO DOUBT THE EVIDENCE THAT WAS THERE AT THE TIME THAT CHILDREN WERE BEING INFECTED WITH COVID, PERHAPS MUCH MORE THAN HAD PREVIOUSLY BEEN UNDERSTOOD. And I know that there is a separate matter which you remained concerned about, which is the question of whether allowing for the new data which suggested that children were being more widely infected than had previously been understood, it followed from that that children should be seen as driving transmission of the disease in the community, and what were your views on that?
Woolhouse: ‘ So even more specific than that is whether transmission
going on in schools was driving the pandemic, and this — THAT VIEW, WHICH WAS HELD, DEFINITELY, BY SOME PEOPLE IN SPI-M, I’M SURE THEY’LL TELL YOU THEMSELVES, BUT I THINK JOHN AND ANGELA (expert members of SPI-M) BOTH HELD IT, WAS, OF COURSE, A POWERFUL ARGUMENT FOR CLOSING SCHOOLS AND KEEPING THEM CLOSED. IF they were driving the pandemic.
‘Despite this evidence, which as you say I do accept, it doesn’t say directly: are schools driving the pandemic? And it also, when it was published, flew in the face of studies from around the world that said: no, schools are not driving the pandemic, they’re playing — they’re making a contribution to transmission, and there was a lot of argument about how big that contribution was, but they’re not driving it. So it’s that aspect that I continue to challenge.’
‘But I have to say, this caused me a lot of concern, could it be true, but I came to the view that it actually wasn’t true, that schools were not driving the pandemic.
Lawyer: ‘Sorry, let’s try and unpick that double negative at the end there.’
– and on the exchange goes, with the lawyer gently but explicitly teasing out Woolhouse’s divergent opinion on school closures. I wonder if the lawyer at the Edinburgh hearing was so (appropriately) forensic? It will be interesting in the Inquiry’s reports to observe the status accorded to Woolhouse’s evidence on the UK’s Covid response and on Scotland’s response.
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Re the Tories in the previous one here is a good one from our “friend” joke.
Andrew Bowie tells Tory critics to ‘get a f****** grip’
A SCOTTSH Tory told party critics to ‘get a f****** grip’ in a leaked WhatsApp exchange.
Oh dear I wonder if he was one in DRoss WhatsApp shower who leaked it?
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What we are seeing in the media reporting is what we expected they would do. They are selecting evidence outwith the context of all the evidence that implies that the Scottish Government and senior medical officers were incompetent.
If you look at the front pages of the Scottish press, there is a remarkable similarity in what they are choosing to report.
Alasdair Macdonald
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He really iS P G Woodhouse!
Who iS that Weirdo?
Not Once did He appear during the Pandemic!
I think that He iS an Evil Yoon BOT
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In the days before MMR and other vaccines schools were the breeding ground for all these “childhood” diseases.
Why should schools not have been suspected as the same for Covid, after all for some reason children showed few of the symptoms of the disease and the severity of Covid appeared to be proportional to age?
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I’m glad I’m not the only one who thinks this inquiry is an orchestrated hatchet job.
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My own take on this for what it worth is that though children themselves were less likely to be affected by the virus they could act as carriers of the virus into the home infecting older siblings and parents which frankly was not a risk worth taking considering the speed the virus travelled and indeed mutated. Was this man at anytime asked if he approved of the catastrophic ‘ Eat out to help out ‘ ?
Golfnot
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Although troubled by some lines of questioning at the Covid Inquiry appearing to seek political angles, given their experience with the #10 debacle, I accept it is an entirely legitimate avenue to explore.
I’m slowly catching up with the evidence sessions which lag media reporting by a day or two, but what I’m witnessing is far removed from what was reported in Scotland’s media, cherry picking from the evidence to deliberately misinform the public.
eg WhatApps – We already know from the London stage of the Inquiry that #10 initiated the instruction to all civil servants and Ministers to delete such messages – We know that Jason Leitch et al as civil servants were subject to that same instruction, yet this pertinent context is entirely absent in reporting.
Likewise the same stripping of context in the Jody Harrison piece in the Herald “Covid Inquiry: Scottish Ministers ignored advice not to close schools” https://archive.ph/VWvp5 – It is perfectly acceptable that Prof Woolhouse held a particular view, but his view was not the only one under consideration by the ‘committee’, which then made recommendation to SG – That context is crucial to understanding what happened yet remains absent.
I note two embedded links in the article, “READ MORE: Gregor Smith tells Covid Inquiry ScotGov advice ‘to delete WhatApps’ ” and ” READ MORE: Jason Leitch confirms he wiped pandemic WhatsApp messages “.
The BBC in Scotland has consistently reported similarly, it reeks of collusion or orchestration, propaganda in place of impartial journalism.
It’s oddly reminiscent of the early days of SG Covid briefings with the media jackal pack turning up at the end, and we all turned it off….
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The grandparents and families were grateful for the on-line schooling to keep the elderly alive. Any sacrifice was worth it to keep the elderly safe from harm. Blame US/China for creating the virus. Beyond belief.
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