Up-to-date figures on hospital onset Covid infections outside of Scotland are difficult to find. The most recent data we have are from the Nuffield Trust in November 2020 (above) revealing that, by the 14th, 19% of all Covid cases in English hospitals had been acquired after admission. In the same period, week-ending 18th November 2020, in Scotland, only 1.2% of all cases were definite hospital onset and 0.8% were probable. https://beta.isdscotland.org/find-publications-and-data/population-health/covid-19/hospital-onset-covid-19-cases-in-scotland/18-november-2020/ The hospital-onset infection rate in English hospitals was thus nearly ten times higher – frightening. By week-ending 17th February 2021, in Scotland, 2.5% were definite hospital onset and 0.9% … Continue reading LATEST: You are at least TEN TIMES more likely to catch Covid in an English hospital

The Guardian today revisits Cheltenham Races when Tory England ignored the warnings from Italy. They don’t mention Tory MP Laurence Robertson (no relation!). They should. I did in a report here on April 23rd 2020. I think it points the finger accurately. Here is again: Over 250,000 people attended the annual four-day event in March, which ended 10 days before lockdown measures began. A former director of Public Health in the region said it should not have gone ahead, and lessons must be learned. The government has defended its decision not to cancel the festival. Prof Gabriel Scally, former director … Continue reading Note to Ian Murray: The real ‘ground zero’ in the UK

The Herald review opens with: Living in the public eye means always being asked to say you’re sorry. At least that seemed to be the subtext of last Saturday’s Meeting Myself Coming Back (Radio 4), in which John Wilson questioned former New Labour spin doctor Alastair Campbell. You might think Campbell has a lot to say sorry for, of course. But it soon became clear he was not much one for regret and remorse. Were you guilty of bullying behaviour, Wilson asked him at one point? It seems Campbell once punched a journalist. I suppose if you’re a journalist, you’ll … Continue reading What? Not even for the 1 MILLION dead?

The 7-day average for Covid deaths yesterday was down from 40.9 the previous day to 35.7. The daily fall had been even greater, from 57 to 31 but, hey, we know daily changes mean little. Strictly speaking a 24 hour change in the 7-day average is little better and we should be looking at it in 7 day intervals. So 35.7 yesterday, 40 a week before, 47 a week before that, 57 a week before that and 60 a week before that. Now that’s a trend. That’s news, even. So, my headline above, useless, infantile, is of course just satire … Continue reading Covid deaths fall days before lockdown exit plan

The number of Covid infections caught in hospitals has begun to decline (end January 2020) but don’t expect our media to be interested now. Caitlin and others were much interested when they were going up but she’s onto something else now. Why do they increase? I bet it’s that SNP not providing enough nurses or cleaners. Well, you’ll see from the two graphs, hospital-onset infections started to climb at the end of September 2020 as admissions increased. More patients, more infection. Who’d a thunk? The same thing happened in the first wave. Admissions start to fall at the end of … Continue reading Shocked journalist told hospital-onset infections increase after an admissions increase and then fall when…..

Free from any apparent editing, Ian Murray is allowed below to tell bare-faced lies based on stories that cannot survive a collision with the evidence. Three of his lies are countered below. First, the Nike Conference in late February 2020 was not ‘our ground zero moment‘ leading to the virus spreading throughout the city and spreading to North-East England That myth was put to the sword in June by the Chief Medical Officer who explained that the virus was already in Scotland at the end of February when the conference was held, that the early cases had no links to … Continue reading Ian Murray’s sleekit words

We’ve seen enough of this kind of thing. From Tory agriculture minister John Selwyn Gummer (real name) making his 4 year-old daughter eat a burger to prove they were safe, through more recently, Alex Cole-Hamilton rushing to the press after saving his daughter from choking, to the Herald’s Neil Mackay writing about a sex attack on his daughter, minor celebrities use their children to make arguments that would be better made rationally. BBC Scotland have delighted in this: Scottish crime author Ian Rankin says his son Kit has been “forgotten” as vaccines were delivered to care homes. The 26-year-old – … Continue reading minor celebrity uses their child to make weak argument against SNP policy

Who is it under fire from? Well it’s him: He said for the benefit of BBC Scotland: ‘I really can’t see any way out of this apart from Scotland falling into line with England.’ He and the Telegraph both seem to be well out of touch with the wider population. A YouGov survey suggests a significant majority across the UK prefer Nicola’s system: Continue reading 5 000 call for England to fall in line with Scotland on quarantine

BBC Scotland’s Christopher Sleight off-hands this to us: First Minister Nicola Sturgeon says that falling Covid-19 deaths in care homes and among the oldest Scots is the first “hard evidence” the vaccination programme is working. Can this drop in deaths be attributed to the vaccine, or could there be another cause? Anon of BBC Scotland does its best to undermine the truth by dancing around the essential facts confirming both the First Minister’s claim and the far greater cut in deaths in Scotland than in England, clearly due to the Scottish strategy of protecting the care home as a priority … Continue reading Yes if you look at the facts which of course you don’t

By Alasdair Galloway: Previously we have worked through a good deal of the case for the “prosecution” of Nicola Sturgeon. What follows is, broadly, the case for the defence. One of the most trenchant critics of the First Minister has been Stewart Campbell at Wings over Scotland, to the extent that when I see he is dealing with this topic I tend to stop reading. Campbell was a major asset in the 2014 campaign. I know people who still have their “Wee Blue Book” from back then. He undermined the Unionist case at every turn, even if he did have … Continue reading In Defence of Nicola Sturgeon: Part 2 of 2 by Aladair Galloway