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https://t.co/n7fagVLYm0
We assembled two mammalian expression vectors and one DNA cassette inserted into African Swine Fever from PRJNA607174! What happened in GuangDong at Mar-Aug 2019???!

The legitimacy of those “samples”—completely destroyed. The CoV-like sequences—cloned. No data from the pCoV group should ever be trusted in any way anymore!

Note: the DNA cassette exist in both unintegrated and integrated forms. Likely using homology-directed recombination. Whatever they were trying to express it is not just one or two proteins. There were also SV40 Ori which is yet to be properly mapped.

https://t.co/O1FYnwX6Oj
Why you need expression vectors in VERO since these cells are never used as expression hosts? Especially since there were a load of different tags on these vectors. The proteins had novel tags both N and C, IgK, His, Myc—especially His tag. This is for

NiNTA purification. There is no way that anyone would tag a protein this way and only use it to transfect VERO cells. There are no other host cells in these datasets other than Manis Javanica. Only Manis Javanica and Chlorocebus Aethiops. VERO is never used for recombinant
I came across this tweet from "Caroline Mansfield" about my local hospital being "empty".

So let's take a look:

First up, some warning signs:
1) A generic username, and another real Twitter account (I've emailed)
2) No registration with GCRN
3) Only recently joined Twitter


On to the Issues.

Issue No. 1: Barnet Hospital isn't actually IN Hertfordshire. It's in Barnet, with an Enfield postcode.

Which is confusing, but wouldn't be counted in Hertfordshire's hospital admission data.


Issue No. 2

Barnet is actually VERY busy with COVID cases, with 22% of our ENTIRE pandemic caseload in the LAST 7 DAYS ALONE

Source:
https://t.co/IECfMo8FAK


Issue No. 3:

Barnet Hospital is seeing incredible pressures, the trust (The Royal Free Trust) has cancelled most non-urgent and routine work,

and as of 23rd Dec had admitted 244 patients with COVID, roughly half the peak of March, and climbing v. fast.


Issue No. 4
Even busier is Intensive Care - the whole trust only has 57 beds (23 - Barnet & 34 at the Royal Free Hospital).

As of 23rd Dec, 40 of them were occupied by COVID patients. That's 70% of the ENTIRE CAPACITY used up by COVID ALONE.

Source: https://t.co/zGmMSuoywN
“Belief” is NOT a Medical Counter Measure

Through April 2020, the official recommendation by the Journal of the American Medical Association was unambiguous.

“Face masks should not be worn by healthy individuals to protect themselves from acquiring respiratory infection...

...because there is no evidence to suggest that face masks worn by healthy individuals are effective in preventing people from becoming ill.”

https://t.co/7CHdVGLeZS

Part of that lack of evidence in fact showed that cloth facemasks actually increased influenza-linked...

...illness.

https://t.co/CqRtlg0yro

In contravention to established science, States, municipalities and businesses have violated the legal requirements for the promulgation of medical counter measures during a public health emergency stating a “belief” that face masks limit...

...the spread of SARS CoV-2. To date, not a single study has confirmed that a mask prevented the transmission of, or the infection by SARS CoV-2.

All parties mandating the use of facemasks are not only willfully ignoring established science but are engaging in what amounts...

...to a whole population clinical trial. This conclusion is reached by the fact that facemask use and COVID-19 incidence are being reported in scientific opinion pieces promoted by the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and
26/42 Are there any national datasets that accurately capture what is going on? The brilliant @jburnmurdoch has highlighted number of admissions into ICU. The message from his animated chart (click on link) couldn’t be clearer – this winter is v unusual: https://t.co/76ZvHU2pmV.


27/42 Some sceptics arguing covid-19 tests are inaccurate. PCR tests not 100% accurate but hospital inpatient testing accuracy much increased by frequency of testing (typically admission, days 3 & 6/7, then weekly). This means very low numbers of overall false positives.

28/42 Some sceptics argue that the published covid-19 positive inpatient numbers include both those admitted with covid-19 and those who acquired covid-19 in hospital. And that there are significant numbers of patients who have acquired covid-19 in hospital.

29/42 Covid-19 positive test data has always included anyone testing positive, irrespective of initial diagnosis. And the NHS has always acknowledged that hospital acquired (nosocomial) infection is a big issue. Hospitals are working incredibly hard to control it….

30/42 …The NHS regularly and completely transparently publishes nosocomial infection data, by hospital. But neither issue affects the degree of pressure that hospitals are under. Every inpatient, irrespective of initial diagnosis/infection source, occupies a hospital bed.
Seeing a lot of this circulating on the right, so let me explain why folks are worried even though it is not literally true that every ICU bed in the country is occupied at the moment.


#1, the big worry is ICU space, not hospital beds, and as you can see from this very thread, ICU utilization is running well above hospital utilization generally.

#2 The constraint on ICUs isn't beds, it's staff. ICU beds are (relatively) easy to build. They're not much good if the only people you have to staff them are the cafeteria workers.

#3 It's true that ICUs can flex to deal with high utilization. But to do so, they have to:

1) Stretch existing workers to do more (potentially compromising care)
2) Recruit workers from other specialties (potentially compromising care)
2) Hire additional temporary workers

Hiring temps is the best strategy. The problem is, it's a good strategy that's hard to implement when a staggering fraction of the nation's hospitals are all having the same problems, requiring exactly the same skills from the same shrinking pool of workers, at the same time.