Response: The study was only testing protection for the wearer, not others in the vicinity. Pressure on the NHS is being increased by coronavirus, not lockdown, and would only grow if restrictions were lifted.Ĭlaim: Danish study shows masks don’t stop the spread Suicide rates have not risen, and violence may have fallen. Response: This contradicts all the evidence that virtually all of the excess deaths we have seen have been attributable to Covid. Response: The ONS recently estimated 14% more deaths in the previous year than the baseline from the previous five years – and that happened even though in the latter part of the year, deaths from causes other than coronavirus actually fell.Ĭlaim: Lockdowns cause more deaths than they prevent In any case, the huge rises in hospitalisations and deaths disprove the idea that people aren’t really getting sick. Response: This theory is based on a statistical misunderstanding, and since during the summer (when Covid cases were low) only 0.3% of tests were showing positive results, it cannot be that a much greater proportion of positive tests are now “false”. The IFR is being kept low by lockdown – and if the virus were allowed to spread, the death rate would be higher because there wouldn't be enough space in hospitals to treat those who need it.Ĭlaim: 91% of Covid ‘cases’ are false positives. Response: The 0.5% figure has been challenged by significantly higher recent estimates, and it understates how lethal Covid is to older people who get it.
While public support for lockdowns has remained solid, with most criticism reserved for the government’s execution of the policy rather than for the principle, those behind Anti-Virus view the prospect of widespread vaccination – coupled with the staggering death toll being published each day – as lending a new urgency to their cause.Ī summary of rebuttals offered by the Anti-Virus website to selected claims made by sceptics – detailed in full on the site.Ĭlaim: The infection fatality rate (IFR) is very low – 99.5% of people who get it survive The site, which has been live since Wednesday, may signal the start of a new phase in the fight to defend lockdowns against prominent critics, whose visibility vastly outstrips the proportion of expert views they represent. We’re able to track where they’ve been wrong again and again but doubled down, or simply moved on to the next subject.” “Seeing that in a forensic way is useful. “Their story always shifts,” said Neil O’Brien, the MP and Conservative party vice-chair, who is one of the progenitors of the group and perhaps the most prominent. Pitched as a source of reliable information, the site is devoted to demolishing the claims of the sceptics and, when they pivot to new predictions, holding them to account. He is one of a group of volunteers, ranging from a politician to an anonymous doctor, behind a new website, Anti-Virus: The Covid-19 FAQ. In recent weeks, though, Ritchie – also the author of Science Fictions, a well-reviewed book about shortcomings in scientific research – has found himself participating in a fightback. Toby Young: admitted on Newsnight he had been wrong to write ‘the virus has all but disappeared’ in June. It’s like a robot zombie army.” In the course of a telephone interview, he got four disapproving tweets from the same user, whose profile picture was a great big yellow grin. They make the same discredited arguments over and over again. “And with the emoji, it’s almost cult-like.
“When you tweet anything to dispute these claims, they come after you endlessly,” said Ritchie. If it is meant to be friendly, it doesn’t necessarily come across that way. At some point they settled on the smiley as their membership badge.
Often they are indignant at the efforts of Ritchie and others to refute the claims of a small but thoroughly amplified cadre of columnists, academics and enthusiastic amateurs, ranging from the free speech advocate Toby Young to the engineer and diet guru Ivor Cummins, who provide dubious but densely argued justifications for their stance.
The emojis often decorate the Twitter profiles of the self-proclaimed “lockdown sceptics”, a subset of social media users who remain unconvinced that coronavirus restrictions are necessary, even as the number of deaths in the UK approaches 100,000. The lecturer at the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience at King’s College London, is not delusional: instead, and somewhat to his surprise, he is on the frontline of a coronavirus information war. S ometimes, Stuart Ritchie feels like he’s being pursued by an army of smiley faces.