Written by Helena Windsor 

 

 

On July 9th, political commentator, Anthony Webber, kindly shared a letter he sent to the Secretary of State for Health, Sajid Javid and Transport Secretary, Grant Schapps, with Independence Daily readers. Mr Webber has been prominent in the fight against lockdown, unfortunately, presenting a series of inaccurate and misleading statements to ministers as ‘facts’ will do the anti- lockdown cause a serious disservice. Far from persuading them to hear the case, it is ammunition for those who want to continue controlling us.

Dear Readers, I’ll address some of the claims that were made.

1 and 15. The virus cannot be transmitted without symptoms. Many diseases are successful precisely because you are contagious before you have symptoms; all mums and school nurses used to know this. OK, that’s pre-symptomatic, where you most certainly can pass Covid on; I don’t know if it has been truly established if you can be contagious and have no symptoms at all but the Mirror recently reported that genes may play a part.

2. There is no need to be scared of the virus, it is no more dangerous than a bad winter FLU. It is definitely more dangerous than flu on balance; for some groups it is something to be justifiably scared of.

3. Those less than 70 years old, who are fit and healthy are more likely to die of FLU than Covid, this is a scientifically proven fact. Most people, of all ages, who die of regular winter flu die of secondary infections. This is why I have some friends who have taken the pneumococcus jab but declined the annual flu jab when offered. More severe flu strains do kill younger people directly and rapidly via ‘cytokine storms’ as happens with Covid.

4. The public were all falsely told that all were susceptible to Covid…I thought, back in early 2020, that, as coronaviruses were a fairly conserved group genetically, there was likely to be cross immunity and this probably explained, at least in part, why some people had it mildly. It took until Porton were evaluating antibody testing kits and found specificity issues to show it. There is a very good, published study from Singapore on this. However it was not a lie to warn people they were all susceptible – with a new pathogen we don’t know initially. More importantly, when we have a cold we don’t go off to get a microarray test to see which virus we’ve caught, so in the cross immunity stakes it’s a case of Russian roulette

5. Covid and Spanish flu are not comparable (True.) Spanish flu hit when many were exhausted and malnourished after WW1. How many would have died if modern medical facilities were available? Conversely, without ventilators, ECMO, oxygen treatment, blood thinners – many more who caught Covid would have died from it in the acute phase, or from complications like blood clots.

7 and 8. Covid – the main epidemic, was over in the U.K. in April 2020. This is probably one of the worst of the erroneous claims made in the letter. The main epidemic was NOT over in April 2020. The so-called Kent, or Alpha variant may be the major culprit for the numbers last winter, but Covid rumbled quietly at a low level over the summer and, predictably, kicked off again with the cross country movement to university and onset of winter. Most of the people I know, who have had it, caught it between October 2020 and as recently as June (thankfully the June case was mild due to being vaccinated) They were not ‘cases’ caused by false-positive tests, they were ill, some spent time in hospital.

9. In 2020, only 9,400 people died of Covid in the U.K. who did not have underlying health issues. Am I the only one who finds it offensive that the deaths of those with underlying health issues are trivialised? Especially when, but for the mendacity of the Chinese Communist Party – or perhaps worse, they need not have taken ill in the first place and, in some cases, the ‘underlying health issue’ may simply have been that they were obese.

11. It is a fact that those who have antibodies and who have not had the vaccines are not at risk themselves or to anyone else.  It is only fair to note that this is a very reasonable comment – and it’s not just antibodies but cellular immunity (which peer-reviewed research is showing plays an important role) but that is much more onerous to test for.

12. There is no proof that the vaccines are effective. The 3 vaccines currently approved by the MHRA in the UK have been properly tested in phase 3 clinical trials and real time data on efficacy is coming in all the time from across the world where they have been used.

14. The public have not been told that there are anti-viral drugs that can cure Covid, such as Ivermectin and Budesonide. Ivermectin has shown activity against SARS CoV2 in lab tests – this does not always translate into clinical success, an example is the much-touted Remdesevir. I would like to see some proper trials I can trust. Budesonide is not an anti -viral, it’s an asthma treatment; it is that mode of action that helps with covid infection. Mr Webber fails to mention dexamethasone, a successful and cheap treatment that arose from the first wave and undoubtedly saved many who ended up in hospital from death or a more severe illness.

To take some more claims: visitors jolly well can be a threat, take the Delta variant! Covid most certainly does circulate in warmer weather – look at the hot states in the US last summer and nor was it unusually cold weather in India when Delta took off. For the record, Covid tests, lateral flow or PCR, are highly specific, they WILL NOT pick up other cold viruses or flu.

 

Finally, Mr Webber quotes some of the myths about the PCR test which are circulating amongst anti lockdown folk. In another article, I will try to explain, simply, for the non-scientist, how PCR works. We run PCR tests in my laboratory, not Covid but the principles are the same and yes, our standard run is 45 heating cycles, there is nothing wrong with that at all, as I hope to show you.