Matt Hancock just lied about coronavirus care home deaths
Former health secretary Matt Hancock just lied about the government’s knowledge of the asymptomatic transmission of coronavirus (COVID-19). It was in relation to 3 April 2020 – which up to this date a court has now ruled the government had acted unlawfully in allowing people back into care homes without coronavirus testing.
Unlawful actions or state-sanctioned deaths?
As Sky News reported, the government did not require care homes to test residents who were returning from a hospital until mid-April 2020. A court has now ruled that as unlawful. Sky News wrote that two judges said:
policies contained in documents released in March and early April 2020 were unlawful because they failed to take into account the risk to elderly and vulnerable residents from non-symptomatic transmission of the virus.
They said that, despite there being “growing awareness” of the risk of asymptomatic transmission during March 2020, there was no evidence that Matt Hancock, who was health secretary at the time, addressed the issue of the risk to care home residents of such transmission.
But if you’re Hancock, then he and the government knew nothing about asymptomatic transmission.
Hancock: lying
BBC News questioned the former health secretary about this. Hancock gave the usual vacuous token apology for the “pain and the anguish” he and the government caused families. He trotted out the usual ‘lessons learned’ BS the government is so fond of. But crucially, Hancock claimed that:
We ministers were not told about the asymptomatic transmission. This was a really important scientific fact.
Read on...
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This is a lie. Sky News said as much, as it reported that:
The SAGE scientific advisory group said “asymptomatic transmission cannot be ruled out” in early February.
The evidence is clear: Hancock’s a liar
On Twitter, people were pointing to vast amounts of evidence. This showed that the government would have known about asymptomatic transmission before mid-April 2020. Dr Anthony Costello from Independent SAGE put out a huge thread. It contained large amounts of research prior to April 2020 on this:
The government claim that up to 3 April 2020 it was “unlikely” that there was pre-symptomatic and/or asymptomatic transmission of COVID-19. Let us consider the evidence. THREAD (1)
— Anthony Costello (@globalhlthtwit) April 27, 2022
Fionna O’Leary screen-grabbed a portion of the parliamentary record from 16 March 2020. It shows that Hancock seemed to know about asymptomatic transmission:
Broadcaster Matthew Stadlen claimed SAGE knew of this on 28 January 2020.
So, either Hancock is a liar, he has a terrible memory, or – in light of scientific researchers producing documentary evidence of asymptomatic transmission in early 2020 – he thinks we’re all fools. It’s pretty clear which one it is.
Featured image via BBC News – screengrab
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Have they never heard of the phrase, “I think I’m getting a cold”?
Of course they knew used it to their advantage culling useless eaters saving monies
The question not addressed in the article is, why, if they knew (and we know they did) did they decide to send back people to care homes without being tested where they would go on to infect staff and patients? This led to tens of thousands of deaths. This was a deliberate decision. Did they decide that they had to prioritise hospital beds to younger people? Well, if the were asymptomatic COULD they have been isolated in nursing homes by the use of barrier nursing? Would they have had better outcomes if they did? Undoubtedly. As they were asymptomatic there was no need to keep them in hospital. If infected they could have been isolated and barrier-nursed to prevent staff and other residents from catching and dying from COVID. This wasn’t about preserving beds for younger people – some kind of triage by age etc. This was about keeping the headline numbers down and looking good. They say what happened in Italy with the elderly and decided to thrown them under the bus. I have worked for politicians and know how short term they think and how they only care about winning the next vote, looking good in the House tomorrow and retaining power. This wasn’t a mistake, not an unforeseen outcome either. This was knowing and done for reasons of wishing to look like things were under control, they lied about knowing about asymptomatic spread as they ignored their advice knowing the deadly outcome. I don’t think highly of politicians and this is from personal experience of how much they lie, cheat and deceive and try to get others to do the same..
Horrific. But Labour under Starmer would be no better is presumably the mantra of this website so waste of time voting for them?