and the current First Minister, John Swinney, to close school without the Cabinet being present.

Professor John Robertson OBA

Is it because Cook just trusts the Herald and is too lazy to do his job?

It seems so.

In the Herald, January 2024:

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://www.manchester.ac.uk/discover/news/closing-schools-and-workplaces-linked-to-reduced-early-covid-deaths-finds-study/

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/