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Alan has been blocked by Marianna Spring, the face of BBC Verify, on Twitter.  It seems she struggles with dealing with evidence and data.  She obviously can’t process facts and figures or cope with reality – she would rather focus on showing off her “headshots.”

It seems even people who disagree politely with her and post large amounts of heavily referenced evidence and data aren't welcome in Marianna Spring's world.https://t.co/H2sIPnqkKI pic.twitter.com/2NndbXSV7S

— Alan (@A1an_M) June 13, 2023

A few weeks ago, Alan pointed out that contrary to what the BBC seems to think, there is no “UK Conspiracy Movement.” Just many individuals who are desperate to seek and share truth rather than lies fed to them by corporate media, especially about covid, Alan said.

He promised to justify his claims to a Twitter user with data and evidence and has done so, comprehensively, in three parts. As others who are over the target and are ruffling the BBC’s feathers have experienced, the BBC calls in the British Army to deal with it and so the Mutton Crew have been responding to Alan’s tweets.

It wasn't a very good vaccine then, was it #muttoncrew ?
That's the WHOLE point. pic.twitter.com/bXSKNfOVRD

— Alan (@A1an_M) June 12, 2023

The Mutton Crew derives its name from being followed/followers on Twitter of Graham Bottley, who is also known as Swaledale Mutton. They are part of the disinformation arm of the British Army known as the 77th Brigade whose speciality is information and psychological warfare.

The following is Alan’s Twitter thread justifying his response to Marianna Spring from the beginning, starting with Spring’s showing off of her “headshot.”  You can read Part 1 of Alan’s evidence HERE and on the Thread Reader app Part 2 HERE and Part 3 HERE.

At the end of May, Spring tweeted out a portrait of herself accompanied with the comment: “New headshot for my next podcast for Radio 4 Marianna in Conspiracyland investigating how the UK conspiracy movement has evolved and intensified – exposing its connections and lots more.”

Alan responded: “There is no ‘UK conspiracy movement’. There are just individuals who have given up hope of mainstream media ever telling the truth and are seeking out independent sources of news.  Pretty much everything broadcast in the mainstream media about the pandemic turned out to be a lie.”

• The virus wasn’t a deadly threat to everyone, only to the elderly with comorbidities.
• Masks aren’t effective in preventing virus spread.
• The vaccines don’t prevent infection or transmission of the virus.
• And they only reduce symptoms/severity of the disease for a limited period.
• They also no longer worked at all once the virus had mutated. Hence the need for “boosters.”
• Children were never at any risk from the virus. Zero children died from it in 2020 who were not already seriously ill.
• The vaccines are not “safe” relative to previous equivalent vaccines like the seasonal influenza ones. Vaccine injuries are occurring at rates far higher than those for past vaccines like Pandemrix which were withdrawn on safety grounds.
• We were led to believe that a tiny percentage of the population was unvaccinated, but it turns out the figure is over 20%.

All of these points are verifiable facts, yet the mainstream media, including the BBC, told us an entirely different story.

So, there is not a “Conspiracy Movement.” But there is a “Truth Movement,” composed not of shadowy “far right” figures but ordinary respectable members of the public who are sick of being lied to.

Alan on Twitter, 26 May 2023

Another Twitter user challenged Alan: “’All of these points are verifiable facts’.  They obviously aren’t, though. At least, not from reliable, credible sources.”

Alan responded by saying he would write a Twitter Thread with the evidence. Evidence that was available at the time, not with hindsight, but which corporate media chose to ignore, de-emphasise or even censor.

Part 1

Yesterday I pointed out that there is no “UK Conspiracy Movement”; rather there are a lot of individuals seeking out alternative news sources because they have noticed that almost everything the mainstream media had told them about the pandemic for the last 3 years has turned out to be false. And I listed a few examples and promised to provide evidence to back them up. So here is part 1 of the evidence: “The virus wasn’t a deadly threat to everyone, only to the elderly with comorbidities.”

Attached are the results from a study by the most cited epidemiologist in the world, Professor John Ioannidis of Stanford University. In the spring and summer of 2020, he monitored studies of covid mortality and seroprevalence (measurement of the extent of spread of antibodies against covid-19 which demonstrated exposure to the disease) to calculate an average Infection Fatality Rate (“IFR”) for covid-19. This is the number of people infected with a disease who go on to sadly die from it, expressed as a ratio. He calculated an overall figure for all age groups and one for the under 70s. For the under 70s, the median IFR was 0.05%, or 1 in every 2000 people infected. For comparison, the IFR of seasonal influenza for all age groups is around 1 in every 1,000 people infected.

Read: The infection fatality rate of covid-19 inferred from seroprevalence data, John P.A. Ioannidis medRxiv 2020.05.13.20101253; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.05.13.20101253 Now published in Bulletin of the World Health Organization doi: 10.2471/BLT.20.265892

Then if we look at what actually happened in England and Wales in 2020, we see that according to the Office for National Statistics (“ONS”), just under 81,000 people died with covid-19 mentioned on their death certificates. However, of those 81,000 people, 61% were over 80 years of age, and 84% were over 70 years of age. And the median age at death with covid was 80.3 years of age.

Also, from the ONS we find out that in 2020 the number of deaths that involved covid-19 but were recorded without any pre-existing conditions in England and Wales was 9,432.

So, 88% of the 81,000 deaths recorded in England and Wales with covid on the death certificate involved people with other pre-existing conditions.

I followed mainstream media very closely in 2020 and none of this important (and reassuring) context was shared with the public. Instead, all that featured was the fear campaign and propaganda relentlessly pushed by the government and public health authorities. A fear campaign which the scientists on the Independent Scientific Pandemic Insights Group on Behaviours (“SPI-B”) who were responsible for it have since said they regret.

Read: Use of fear to control behaviour in Covid crisis was ‘totalitarian’, admit scientists, The Telegraph, 14 May 2021

For anyone who complains that this information does not come from a credible source – it comes from the independent Office for National Statistics. If you have a more credible source of statistics, please feel free to share it.

And for anyone tempted to post: “But who are you, Alan? What are your qualifications to say all of this?” I would answer “I’m a complete nobody.”  And that’s exactly the point here. A complete nobody with nothing more than a suspicious mind and access to the internet spotted all of this – but highly paid journalists either did not or kept quiet about it all.

Don’t you think that’s a disgrace? I do.

References to the ONS source data below: Average age of those who had died with covid-19, Office for National Statistics, 11 January 2021

I’m not saying any of this in hindsight. This information was available AT THE TIME.  But anyone talking about it was silenced or labelled a “conspiracy theorist.” Exactly what the BBC is STILL doing.

In my next post, I’ll cover masks. And I’m looking forward to that post because it contains a link to a source even the BBC couldn’t fault – the BBC.

Note: A Twitter user responded to Alan with a link to a response to a Freedom of Information Request.  When asked why it didn’t consider covid-19 to be a high consequence infectious disease (“HCID”), Public Health England responded:

“When more was known about covid-19, representatives from the four UK public health bodies reviewed the updated information about covid-19 against the UK HCID criteria and determined that some features had changed since the meeting in January 2020.  In particular, by the time of the March 2020 review, more information had emerged about population-level mortality rates, which were low overall … the group was satisfied that knowledge gaps no longer existed for two criteria (“typically has a high fatality rate”; “often difficult to recognise and detect rapidly”), compared to when HCID status was considered in January 2020.” [emphasis our own.]

Read more: FOI Why is covid-19 not a High Consequence Infectious Disease (HCID), Public Health England, 19 January 2021

Part 2

In this thread I’m going to talk about masks: “Masks aren’t effective in preventing virus spread.”  This will be a long thread so here is the TL; DR version:

• At a population level, masks have not been shown to be an effective intervention for respiratory viruses.
• This was true before and during the covid pandemic and will likely remain true afterwards.
• Public health authorities began the pandemic by giving the correct advice.
• The advice changed in Jul 2020 – for POLITICAL reasons.
• The media at best failed to provide a balanced view and at worst was an active participant in making universal mask-wearing happen.
• Mask wearing, aside from playing a role in politics, also has important psychological effects at an individual and group level.

OK, on with the detail.

At the very beginning of the pandemic, the advice was either that they were not necessary, would have little impact if used, or that they should not be used. For example, Anthony Fauci when asked in Feb 2020 if they were needed: “Absolutely not.”

Q: Are face masks needed?

A: "Absolutely not."

NIAID Director Dr. Anthony Fauci says that there is no reason at this point for people in the U.S. to wear surgical masks to protect themselves from #coronavirus. pic.twitter.com/S7gxQsBL6Z

— Spectrum News DC (@SpectrumNewsDC) February 14, 2020

And in March 2020, UK Chief Medical Officer Chris Whitty: “In terms of wearing a mask, our advice is clear: that wearing a mask if you don’t have an infection reduces the risk almost not at all. So, we do not advise that.” 

Read more: Coronavirus: Chief medical officer tells public not to wear masks, Independent, 4 March 2020

And if we look at the World Health Organisation’s (“WHO’s”) pandemic guidelines published in autumn 2019, mask-wearing is only recommended during pandemics and epidemics for the symptomatic (note also some of the “not recommended in any circumstances” items which we also ended up doing):

So, during the period when the pandemic was at its first peak in April 2020, mask-wearing was voluntary in shops and other indoor public spaces. I remember well visiting my local Tesco and Morrisons on a daily basis during this time, seeing the same unmasked staff, fit & well week after week.

However, in June, the government made face covering mandatory on public transport and in healthcare settings and on 24 July, with covid cases and deaths at very low levels, they extended this to shops and supermarkets 

Read more: Face coverings to be mandatory in shops and supermarkets from 24 July, UK Government, 14 July 2020

In the government’s announcement, the Health Secretary says that effectively this was being done for political and psychological reasons (arguably in an attempt to compensate for the government’s fear campaign on the population a few months earlier).

Certainly, the science of masks hadn’t changed at this time. Indeed, a study done in Denmark in April/May 2020 but whose publication was delayed for several months, found no statistical difference in covid infection between masked & unmasked.

And even the Health Secretary’s 24 July statement about introducing masks to shops and supermarkets makes no promise about them being effective in reducing virus spread (not that a Matt Hancock promise would be worth much anyway):

And finally, the BBC, the home of impartial journalism itself, broadcast on Newsnight that the WHO eventually backed mask mandates due to “political lobbying”, not due to any new science or change in its view of their effectiveness:

While there is some evidence to suggest public health authorities were initially reluctant to recommend masks at the population level due to concerns that this might result in shortages for healthcare workers, it seems clear that the senior leadership knew that while masks might help in the case of symptomatic individuals and reduce the risk of them spreading the virus, there was little evidence of any benefit of wider use at the population level.

So, in summary, mask mandates were a political decision, not a public health one.

Mask mandates in England remained in force until January 2022 at which point, they were withdrawn in most settings, although they remained in use in some situations, notably healthcare settings. The rules remained in Scotland and Wales for longer.

Read more: Covid-19: England prepares to ease plan B restrictions, British Medical Journal, 20 January 2022

As mentioned previously, the scientific literature pre-covid provided little support for mask-wearing at a population level. During the covid pandemic itself, there were numerous new studies on the subject, for example, this one (see below) which found that mask mandates at a large London hospital had no discernible effect on hospital-acquired Covid cases.

Mask mandates at a large London hospital during the first 10 months of Omicron (Dec 2021- Sept 2022) had no discernible effect on hospital-acquired Covid cases, a new study finds.https://t.co/jNLMzjIoDL pic.twitter.com/6uFTjMhZCO

— Benjamin Ryan (@benryanwriter) April 6, 2023

There was also a lot of excitement about a study done in Bangladesh which supposedly found masks to be effective …

Read more: The Impact of Community Masking on covid-19: A Cluster-Randomized Trial in Bangladesh, 31 August 2021

… but methodological criticisms suggested its findings were unreliable.

Read more: The Bangladesh Mask Study Is a Missed Opportunity, The Daily Sceptic, 3 September 2021

However, then the widely-respected Cochrane Library published a review of all recent research into the effectiveness of mask-wearing on respiratory virus control, including the large number of RCT studies done in the covid era. 

Read more: Jefferson T, Dooley L, Ferroni E, Al-Ansary LA, van Driel ML, Bawazeer GA, Jones MA, Hoffmann TC, Clark J, Beller EM, Glasziou PP, Conly JM. Physical interventions to interrupt or reduce the spread of respiratory viruses. Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews 2023, Issue 1. Art. No.: CD006207. DOI: 10.1002/14651858.CD006207.pub6. Accessed 13 June 2023.

In the words of the lead author Tom Jefferson, the study found that:

This publication led to an explosion of “fact-checking” stories supposedly debunking the idea that Cochrane had concluded that “masks don’t work.”  Even Cochrane itself published a statement clarifying what had been found, much to the anger of the lead author.

And if you look more widely at media coverage of the mask issue, there is very clear ongoing support for mask-wearing. For example, stories supporting mask-wearing were given prominence, like this one: Covid: Masks upgrade cuts infection risk, research finds, BBC, 29 June 2021

And whenever “debunking” was done, it was always done on stories suggesting masks had no benefit or were harmful, like this one: Coronavirus: ‘Deadly masks’ claims debunked, BBC, 24 July 2020

Or this one: Don’t believe those who claim science proves masks don’t work, The Guardian, 27 February 2023

And when conflict occurred between the masked and the unmasked the media often portrayed the unmasked as extremists even though, as we have seen, there is plenty of evidence the “anti-maskers” have a scientific point.

Read more: Coronavirus: Why are Americans so angry about masks? BBC, 20 July 2020

So, we have a situation where science provides little support for mask-wearing, the scientists themselves changed their advice only for political reasons but the media provides little nuance about the debate and instead pushes the government position du jour relentlessly.

I’m going to end this thread (part 2) by talking a little about what, in my view, were the real reasons for the change in advice in mid-2020. Despite what Matt Hancock says, I don’t think this was anything to do with trying to coax people back out to the shops.  In fact, the University of North Carolina Professor, occasional New York Times contributor and a key figure in influencing the US CDC into changing its mask advice in April 2020, summed the real reason up rather well:

Masks were introduced at a time when cases and deaths were at a low (in the UK) or were about to peak and decline (in the US) in order to 1) remind people there was still a pandemic and 2) create a sense of community amongst the rule-followers and create a conducive environment for future control measures.

You might innocently say “Well what’s wrong with that? We were in a pandemic! We needed people to feel fear.”  But from my previous thread, we know that this virus was only a deadly threat to a tiny percentage of people.

So, the continuation of masks was done for political reasons, yes, but not benign political reasons. In my view, it was done to maintain fear, ensure the “pandemic” lasted far longer than it needed to and provide the backdrop for the rollout of universal vaccines. 

Masks also fulfilled a psychological need for many who had essentially been hypnotised as part of a “mass formation” by the pandemic propaganda spread by the mass media. As Prof Mattias Desmet describes here:

I talk more about how the pandemic response looks very much like a classic “mass formation” in these threads:  https://twitter.com/A1an_M/status/1559139157657767936

Masks. In summary:

• Don’t work at the population level for respiratory epidemics. Science (not “the science”) says so.
• Were introduced for political and psychological reasons.
• Media didn’t provide balanced coverage of the argument due to political pressure or their own activism.

Part 3

I promised to justify my claims with data and evidence, so this is part 3: “The vaccines don’t prevent infection or transmission of the virus.” 

Let’s start with the big picture.

Four novel vaccines were introduced in late 2020 / early 2021 to tackle the pandemic. mRNA vaccines from Moderna and Pfizer and viral vector vaccines from AstraZeneca and J&J.  These were all given Emergency Use Authorisation in countries where they were used, none of them having at that point completed their Stage 3 clinical trials.

The vaccine programme in the UK started on 8th December 2020 with the first injection of the Pfizer vaccine into a patient in Coventry.

Read more: Landmark moment as first NHS patient receives covid-19 vaccination, NHS England, 8 December 2020 and Twitter Thread by Alan

The vaccination programme proceeded at pace from this point, with vaccines being first given to the most elderly and at-risk age groups but then rolled out rapidly through younger age groups. By December 2021, 51.79 million people had received a first dose of a vaccine (76.7% of the official total population).  We saw similar fast progress elsewhere in the developed world, for example in Israel (69.6%) and the US (73.5%).

While this wasn’t mentioned much at the beginning (other than by “conspiracy theorists”), once the programme was underway it was announced that a second dose of the vaccine would be needed. But uptake of this was also high.  By the end of 2021, 70% of the UK population were “fully vaccinated” as it was described then, and 63% in Israel and the US. 

So, it’s reasonable to believe that if the vaccines made some quantitative difference in the risk of people becoming infected with SARS-CoV-2 or transmitting it to others, and given that the virus was already widespread in all three of these countries and much of the world we would see an obvious decline in the numbers of infections in these populations, certainly after December 2021 when more than two-thirds of these populations were vaccinated.

But if we look at the charts … No, we don’t. Quite the opposite.   In fact, around November/December 2021 there was an explosion of new cases with higher peaks, especially in Israel. And the total number of cases after most people were vaccinated is far higher than the total before most people were vaccinated.

And this wasn’t just a function of increased levels of testing. If we look at the share of tests which were positive, the same pattern. More peaks after the vaccine rollout.

Same story with hospital patients and ICU patients. More peaks after the vaccine rollout.

So, looking at the big picture, there seems little evidence that the vaccines slowed down rates of infection or transmission. If anything, they seem to have exacerbated the situation, if the empirical data is anything to go by.

So, let’s focus a bit more on the scientific evidence about individual vaccines and their performance.

Firstly, let’s look at this meta-analysis (study of existing analyses) in The Lancet.

And let’s look at this one in the International Journal of Epidemiology.

So, on the basis of these two studies, one of which summarises many others, it’s clear that whatever protection the vaccines might provide, to begin with quickly dissipates.  Of course, vaccine zealots insist that this is because the virus mutates and so boosters are needed. 

But you don’t have to be a so-called conspiracy theorist to know that it was well-known prior to 2020 that coronaviruses mutate very readily, which is why no successful vaccine had ever been developed and therefore made success this time highly unlikely.

Nor does it take a so-called conspiracy theorist to notice that “one more booster” is unlikely to overcome this problem or that boosters every 80 days stretching beyond the horizon would be a very profitable revenue stream for the notoriously amoral pharmaceutical industry.

So, we have big-picture empirical evidence that the vaccines didn’t prevent infection by or transmission of the virus, and we have detailed evidence from research that any protection against infection (or hospitalisation or death for that matter) wanes within a few weeks.

But for the final word on the matter, let’s hear from the vaccine manufacturers themselves. A Pfizer executive being questioned in the European Parliament:

2. For those people who have not heard of the “Speed of Science ®”, it was first introduced to the world when an EU parliament member Rob Roos @Rob_Roos asked Pfizer Executive Janine Small whether they have tested the vaccine to prevent transmission. Her answer below pic.twitter.com/oJlK2eccNq

— aussie17 (@_aussie17) December 8, 2022

Evidence that the vaccines prevented transmission would have been a massive marketing boost for the manufacturers. But they didn’t even test for this. They knew there was little possibility of the products being effective in this way – they weren’t designed to be.

So, in summary:

• Empirical evidence shows that the vaccines didn’t prevent infection or transmission at scale.
• Specific study of the vaccines shows any protection they provided was limited to a few weeks (making them useless as public health/pandemic control intervention.
• And one of the manufacturers themselves admitted they never tested if their product would prevent transmission 

Now, think back to the beginning of 2021. Was the vaccine sold to you by the media as “the solution” to stopping the pandemic? Was it used as a justification for introducing vaccine mandates into social care and the NHS because it would “stop the spread”?  Was it used as a justification for requiring vaccination for travel, for entry into night clubs and venues, or jobs even not involving healthcare? 

Was it used to scapegoat the unvaccinated because they alone were to blame for spreading the virus and “killing granny”?

Do you remember the media embracing government advertising with its full array of psychological weaponry? Do you remember them giving a platform to those opposed to the use of vaccines as a psychological weapon in this way?  Do you remember the media featuring any of the prominent scientists and public health officials who were sceptical about the vaccines’ efficacy or safety?

No. Me neither.

If the evidence that the media has just been used by a very powerful lobby to push for a mass vaccination programme which was neither justified nor likely to be effective is not clear to you by now, I’m not sure what it would take to persuade you.

I was wrong at the beginning of this thread. There is a UK Conspiracy Movement. A movement determined to push its version of the truth, to silence opposition, and to advance the interests of powerful lobbyists.

Take a look in the mirror, mainstream media.  It’s you.

Appendix A

A couple of other graphs which illustrate the vaccine failure. One from Israel which shows the possibility that new waves of vaccinations actually made the situation worse, not better.  Note the bigger peaks of cases and hospitalisations over time…

And this one. Covid “cases” worldwide.  Look at the graph growing at a steady rate throughout the initial vaccination period in 2021 until at the end of the year with more than two-thirds of most developed countries vaccinated – the rate of infections increases dramatically!