PUSHING back Western Australia’s opening date by “weeks or months” is well worth it to “protect children from COVID-19,” claims Mark Duncan-Smith. The WA president of fringe doctors’ union, the AMA, Dr Duncan-Smith was in the news in October when he accused the unvaccinated of being “pro disease.” Now he wants the state to stay closed for business until 90 per cent of the population aged over five is fully ‘vaccinated.’ Because covid is preponderantly harmless to children, Duncan-Smith had to get creative to drum up a fresh scare:
“It is affecting the paediatric group and the NHS in the UK has recorded 7.4 per cent rate of long COVID.
“This is why we need to vaccinate the kids, and if it does mean pushing back the date by a couple of weeks then I think all West Australians, especially the ones with children, are going to be happy to do that to see the children protected better.”
The NHS has “recorded” nothing of the sort. I recognised the figure from some reading I did for a post on ‘long covid’ at Old Catallaxy some months ago. It was a percentage generated by the UK’s Office of National Statistics based on a self-reporting survey whose June data set is now irrelevant. The bogus claim was first made by Duncan-Smith two weeks ago at a press conference (transcript) in which he compounded one falsehood with two others:
A five-year-old in Victoria unfortunately and tragically died this week from COVID, and people need to be aware that although the death rate is low in children, there is a high or significant incidence of long COVID in children. In Australia it’s reported it being potentially around the 2 to 3 per cent mark, but the NHS, which has a much greater experience with long COVID in the paediatric group reports 7.4 per cent of children get long COVID.
Now put that in perspective. That’s potentially 35,000 cases of long COVID in children if they’re not vaccinated. We just need to keep this in mind.
First, the five year-old in Victoria did not die from covid. For a medico to misstate a child’s cause of a death to alarm the public is disgraceful. Second, the ONS survey Duncan-Smith misidentifies did not prove that vaccinated children are protected from long symptoms if they contract covid. That’s because there were no vaccinated children in the survey group. Not one. This birdbrained analysis was shopped successfully to the WA News in addition to the ABC. The latest surveys – and surveys of surveys – on so-called long covid show it is minimally problematic in children. Duncan-Smith’s press conference assertion that “there is a high or significant incidence of long COVID in children” is false. There have been three flaws in studies on this supposed illness: 1) response rates so low as to be unreliable and biased; 2) tick-a-box ‘symptoms’ indistinguishable from the normal physical ups and downs over the course of a survey period; 3) not accounting for the psychological damage caused by scaremongers:
Most likely to report persistent symptoms were older girls who already had poorer physical and mental health.
Those struggling emotionally and mentally could be more attuned to even minor physical illnesses, the researchers said, and a positive coronavirus test could help trigger that.
Of all the children in the study, 40% reported feeling sad, worried or unhappy. And the researchers said it was clear the pandemic had had a damaging effect on young people because of: the closure of schools, not seeing their friends, concern about the risk from the virus.
Parents who want their children calm and healthy will achieve those ends more readily by keeping them away from hysterical fruitcakes on television than they will with a covid vaccine.
How do all these MAD people get in to power???
Is there no-one left to tell them to shut the f*ck up.
By doing the right courses and networking with the right people in Uni and post-graduation.
By clipping the right tickets, paying the right dues to the right people and performing the right favours.
By joining the right organisations and seeking the patronage of the right sponsors, and then doing the right courses, congregating with the right classes and sayig and doing the right things and memes du jour.
And going full Game of Thrones on anyone who might possibly challenge their position or otherwise interfere. Regardless of who they might be…
HR is run by Human Rabble.
RA
yes… but what a fetid swamp we are descending into and how will we climb back out of slime… this time???
and RA
no need to answer that.
Read Michael Crichton’s introduction to his 1990 novel called Jurassic Park where he warns about the dangers of genetic engineering.
Image if we had real reporters in this country.
Well I want changes to WA’s criminal law, so that doctors who lie and go beyond their remit are sent to jail. For a very long time.
Chaps a cosmetic surgeon. Hopefully he’s better at constructing noses and boobs than he is at credible narratives.
Long Covid is psychogenic?