Scottish Government Covid Adviser U-Turns on Efficacy of AstraZeneca Vaccine against Variants
Professor Devi Sridhar, the Chair of Global Public Health at the University of Edinburgh and a member of the Scottish Government Covid Advisory Group, said two months ago (in a tweet that has since been deleted) that the AstraZeneca Covid vaccine does not work against the South African variant. She now claims that the vaccine does work against variants, and that “we have to move away from harsh restrictions and lockdowns”. “Steerpike” has the details on this U-turn in the Spectator.
Eight weeks ago… the good professor was spreading inaccurate information about the effectiveness of the AstraZeneca jab against new variants after she tweeted on March 26th: “Huge risk: watching a slow-moving car crash as U.K. Government stays open to France and other European countries, which have a South African variant our main vaccine (AZ) doesn’t work against. The red list approach doesn’t work. We need blanket international quarantine to avoid future lockdowns.”
Two months later, such a blanket international quarantine has not been introduced. Case numbers continue to fall in Scotland with just 313 cases reported yesterday and zero new reported deaths of those who tested positive. The red list approach is still in place and AstraZeneca is still being administered daily to thousands across the U.K.. You might have thought an academic who had been so outspoken on this might be somewhat embarrassed by this extremely positive data.
Apparently not, given Sridhar’s recent tweets. The professor has now done a complete 180 and switched to being bullish about the resilience of Britain’s vaccines (including the much-maligned AstraZeneca). She tweeted on May 23rd: “My take on current situation: variants will continue to cause issues but our vaccines (both doses!) are effective as an additional layer of protection. We have to move away from harsh restrictions and lockdowns to data-driven, precise outbreak management using science and logistics.” Quite the turn around.
Of course, you cannot point this volte-face out to Sridhar as she has a disconcerting habit of blocking her critics online. Her tweet of March 26th has now been deleted – not surprising given how inaccurate her AstraZeneca claims proved to be. Other claims are harder for Sridhar to remove, such as her apocalyptic warning on Sky News at the end of February that “there is a huge risk of bringing back all kids at the same time and then having to shut schools again” – another prediction that failed to transpire.
Sridhar herself has shown no qualms about demanding greater accountability and transparency for others, writing online that “secrecy goes against public good esp in crisis when decisions have implications for 66 million people”. Mr S wonders whether Sridhar’s preference for expunging her inaccurate predictions is conducive to good policymaking.
Worth reading in full.
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She is a narcissistic moron. She also now has a regular column in the Guardian I believe… Says it all really
Marxism (i.e. bureaucrats can manage people’s needs better than they can themselves) often is a symptom for NPD.
I think we have exceeded our quota of narcissistic morons in positions of authority. One – Boris – was enough to serve as a warning to all.
The anthropologist is a psychopath, who wants the assorted lunatics at the W.H.O to make global laws for everyone’s good. Here she is on alcohol: The World Health Organization is the only body that can promote health through the use of international law. It should make alcohol its next target, says Devi Sridhar. Unlike any other global-health body, the World Health Organization (WHO) can create legally binding conventions, and it only requires a two-thirds majority vote to do so. Yet this power is vastly underused. In more than 60 years, this United Nations agency has produced only two major treaties……… The WHO has shown a reluctance to use hard legal instruments. Instead, it tries to influence societal norms through guidelines and recommendations. This is a major missed opportunity. Now is the time for the WHO to take a bold step and move towards a third treaty to protect world health. There is an obvious target. About 2.5 million deaths a year, almost 4% of all deaths worldwide, are attributed to alcohol — more than the number of deaths caused by HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis or malaria. Alcohol consumption is the world’s third-largest risk factor for health burden; in middle-income countries, which constitute… Read more »
A couple of bottles of Buckie a day might put her in a better frame of mind generally. It wouldn’t hurt her mentally, as she’s plainly parted company with her senses some long time ago.
So true, it’s rainbows and unicorns all day for Devi!
I firmly second your motion that Buckie is a fantastic cure-all.
Definitely medicinal, and quite possibly a putative Covid prophylactic. In these harsh times, it may also be a first-rate anti-depressant and insomnia cure.
Listening to that bat-crazy woman could turn almost anyone to drink.
Obviously these comments must now be worthy of a reverse ferret. Something along the lines of halving alcohol duty in order to help the population to cope with the miseries of lockdown.
‘Yet this power is vastly underused.’
Now there’s a chilling phrase, fit for a power-hungry freak.
LOL! NIcola Sturgeon and co won’t like this. Whisky is a huge export product for Scotland, and therefore a massive earner in taxes for the Govt. The last thing they want is for consumption to be reduced.
It’s a pity she doesn’t pipe down and push off back to her homeland of the USA, where she would fit right in with the New President and his chums.
She is a chum of Chelsea Clinton, ISTR.
That explains a great deal.
We already have the sociopathic Leana Wen all over the news.
When our brave compatriots were confronted with dictatorship and tyranny what did they do?
The morons bought expensive dogs and Volkswagen camper vans
I suspect none of these idiots have experienced a single days hardship in their I Phone dictated lives
Soon they will be exchanging the vans for a bag of potatoes and eating the dogs
I see that the expensive dogs are suddenly Canis non Grata with many that bought them “for the lockdowns”, and now to be rid of. In the true spirit of “Dog bites Man” rather than vice versa, I hope the expensive dogs will be dining upon their erstwhile owners.
Well that’s the last time I’ll be voting for Devi Sridhar.
Lol!
Does sh deserve all this attention?
Only because she may have the ear of those in power. The main headline makes it look like she’s getting some sense in her head, but I don’t think that’s the case if you read her tweet:
“We have to move away from harsh restrictions & lockdowns, to data-driven, precise outbreak management using science & logistics.”
Just wants a better lockdown.
yes, she doesn’t really expand here on what
“precise outbreak management using science & logistics.” means
back to tiers I suppose
but it could be anything. she could mean aggressively finding the infected and forcing them to isolate. its just a waffly bullshit phrase that means anything she wants it to mean when looking back and pretending to be right
“imprecise outbreak management using the Humanities and disorganisation”
The main “outbreak management” focus should have been in hospitals and care homes. Imagine if the billions spent on T&T, fear porn, furlough, covid marshals, stupid signs etc etc had been spent in hospitals and care home.
Imagine if it had been spent on cancer research.
Generally the mad technocratically inclined lockdown zealots I’ve encountered usually mean more testing, better track and trace, “local” restrictions. Just more lockdowns and madness by any other name.
It didn’t work last time, which means we just need to try a bit harder…
Sort of like how they said to wear 2 masks, when it’s pointed out masks holes are too wide to stop virus sized particles
A bit of a lift from the Bozo isn’t it….remember “data not dates.”
Or whoever is the current Head script writer.
She should pal up with Ferguson
there is more joy over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance.
Not over that sinner!
See my comment – she has not repented.
Devi Sridhar is a moron. God knows how she got to be in the position she’s in. Friends of the Clintons I suppose – jobs for mates etc. I wouldn’t give her opinions the time of day – she has literally no background in what she’s pontificating about.
“Sridhar turned down a funded position at Harvard Law School to join the University of Oxford Global Economic Governance Programme in 2006, where she was awarded both MPhil and DPhil degrees.”
One world government drone
^^^^^
THAT
That’s exactly what we’re seeing here. An entirely self serving scumbag.
Fox on the run…
Mainstream article dances around ADE….
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2021-05-antibodies-sars-cov-infectiona-factor-severe.html
Antibodies that enhance SARS-CoV-2 infection—a possible factor for severe COVID-19
discovered for the first time that both neutralizing antibodies that protect against infection as well as infection-enhancing antibodies that increase infectivity are produced after infection with SARS-CoV-2 by analyzing antibodies derived from COVID-19 patients.
Antibodies against the receptor binding site (RBD) of the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein play an important function as neutralizing antibodies that suppress SARS-CoV-2 infection by inhibiting its binding to the human receptor, ACE2. On the other hand, the function of antibodies against other sites of the spike protein was unknown.
“We found that when infection-enhancing antibodies bind to a specific site on the spike protein of SARS-CoV-2, the antibodies directly cause a conformational change in the spike protein, resulting in the increased infectivity of SARS-CoV-2. Neutralizing antibodies recognize the RBD, whereas infection-enhancing antibodies recognize specific sites of the N-terminal domain (NTD),” explains Professor Hisashi Arase. “Furthermore, the production of infection-enhancing antibodies attenuated the ability of neutralizing antibodies to prevent infection.”
Isn’t she a social anthropologist? Pure diversity hire, nothing more.
Could Devi please explain to me the situation in Florida? All the doom and gloom about the U.K. whilst Florida seems to be looking good.
It’s because there are hardly any old people with comorbidities in Florida.
Oh, hold on…
Or obese people..
Indeed.
If you were designing a place where you’d expect to find huge vulnerability to COVID, you’d start off with Florida’s demographics.
Fat chance.
Goodness me, did someone get gifted shares in AstraZeneca?!
Probably a relative got “gifted” some Alexion shares…
Interesting she should come out with this very shortly after about half of the people booked to have their vaccinations in Glasgow didn’t turn up for their appointments.
Almost as if they are desperate to maximise vaccination uptake – even more worried about that than about the so-called “Indian variant of concern”.
Just had another argument of the type that makes me despair.
It was over both imprisonment and the vaccines – with individuals who are essentially sceptics.
But this is the fall-back of evil when facts contradict the evil game-plan :
“Let’s not talk about this, because it upsets people. And it gets boring.”
… the censorship of faux empathy from the depths of cotton wool.
I’m so sick of hearing that line – Fingers in ears and ‘La la la’.
The OH and I have cut ourselves off from Covidians
We use a freedom pub not a gulag pub
If by chance we meet a Covidian in the street and we are asked the question we just lie and tell them we have been jabbbed
Not worth talking too, certainly not worth saving, too late for most of them anyway
Even for relative sceptics, I think they kind of hope if they don’t think about it or talk about it then it will all blow over. Facing the truth is painful.
Sridhar is an anthropologist
Apologies there is no other way of saying that
She’s a cunt
A cunthropologist.
She looks like a raving mad lunatic, well we all knew that just like the rest of these so-called experts running the asylum.
I believe it’s called ‘spreading dangerous misinformation’, and ‘risking the lives of millions with irresponsible conspiracy theories’. Isn’t that the normal response to those questioning the efficacy of the vaccines? Oh I forgot – one rule for her…
She’s looking very portrait in the atticky – just like Blair, Johnson and Gates. Someone should tell them that’s the face they’re supposed to leave upstairs.
Thick as mince
We have to shine a light on these “expert” Big Brother mouthpieces, and call them out for what they are.The members of the Ministry For (Mis)information must be found out and paraded as the shills they truly are. Are you getting twitchy, Dr. Hillary?
It is sadly a product of media driven hysteria. Be it Mad Cow, Weapons of Mass Destruction or Covid19. Experts , who normally languish in obscurity get their 15 min in the sunshine and hence get lots of money thrown at them to develop institutions to pursue their studies. It is not in the interest eg any of the PH or epidemiologists to suggest the pandemic and risk may be over. Deaths will occur as a direct result of the lack of normalisation of NHS activity and these individuals should be held to account for their malign influence.
Looks like Devi Sridhar was an opportunist, not a true believer like Deepti Gurdasani.
Among the almost endless experts lording it over us this here ” professor ” has been my numero uno headcase.
Horrible little self-serving pseudoscientist and a nasty piece of work.