Posted on 04/25/2023 2:44:04 PM PDT by lightman
There is no evidence that shielding benefited vulnerable people as a COVID pandemic response, according to a new study.
A new study of health data has examined the policy of shielding those deemed “Clinically Extremely Vulnerable” (CEV) to the virus, with the study’s main author claiming the UK government policy “was sort of made up at the time and implemented.” The shielding practice involved minimising interaction between CEV persons and others.
Top oncologist Angus Dalgleish, who is now speaking out against COVID vaccine boosters, told The Epoch Times that he was not surprised by the results of the study, and that governments “caused more harm than good.”
A research team from Swansea University examined data from the year after the policy was introduced in March 2020, and concluded that a “lack of clear impact on infection rates raises questions about the success of shielding.”
The team compared the 117,000 people shielding in Wales with the rest of the population, some three million in total, who were not.
Shielding
Shielding was introduced at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, with health authorities claiming that it was one of the few interventions available to support those who were considered to be most at risk of serious illness from the virus.
The government guidance on shielding for Wales and England ended in 2021.
The study also found that the COVID-19 rate was higher among those shielding at 5.9 percent, compared to 5.7 percent for those not who did not implement the measure.
It said that shielded people and their families made great efforts to isolate and protect themselves from COVID-19 infection and subsequent harms, including death.
However, such isolation and restrictions on going out “may have affected the mental and physical health of people included in this public health policy intervention, without evidence so far of substantive protective effects.”
The researchers concluded that a lack of clear impact on infection rates “raises questions about the success of shielding and indicates that further research is required to fully evaluate this national policy intervention.
“Shielding was an untested public health policy that was introduced in the United Kingdom early in the pandemic, in contrast to other countries where there was more focus on closing borders, lockdown, test and trace systems,” the authors added.
“The shielding policy was based on assumptions rather than evidence of effectiveness,” they said.
Professor Helen Snooks of Swansea University Medical School, who led the research, said: “Our study found no evidence of reduced COVID-19 infections one year after shielding was introduced. This raises questions about the benefits of shielding for vulnerable people as a policy.”
Talking to the BBC about the research, Snooks said that for a “particular person, it may have been the best thing to do.
“What we evaluated was the policy of writing to people and recommending very strongly that they stay at home. It wasn’t underpinned at that time by any evidence.
“It was sort of made up at the time and implemented.”
‘Locked Themselves Away’
Angus Dalgleish, Professor of Oncology at St. Georges Hospital Medical School London, is renowned for his ground-breaking work on HIV/AIDS. Dalgleish told The Epoch Times by email that the study’s findings were not surprising.
“Everything the government did had no scientific basis, including lockdowns, shielding, masks and, I would add to that, the vaccine programme, which has clearly caused more harm than good,” he said.
“They should have done what I and others advised: top-up vitamin D3 levels and treat early symptoms as you would any other airborne infection—aspirin, mouthwash, intranasal interferon, and becotide,” he said.
“Now we hear that mask-wearing has caused increased pneumonia, long COVID symptoms, and cognitive decline,” said Dalgleish.
Dr. Tony Hinton, an NHS consultant in ear, nose, and throat surgery who has openly questioned COVID-19 narratives in the British medical community, also told The Epoch Times by email that he was “not surprised” by the study.
Hinton has been vocal about the harms of lockdowns on children, and has repeatedly stated that children must not be given the COVID-19 jab.
“Some people basically locked themselves away for two years, and there was no science to support the policy. A much better approach would have been to give all elderly and vulnerable people Vitamin D supplements of 4,000 units a day,” he wrote.
“This could have been sent out free of charge and would have cost a few million pounds,” Hinton stated, noting that the total budget for the entire NHS Test and Trace program in its first two years was £37 billion.
“£37 billion was wasted on test and trace for no benefit,” he said.
The Welsh government did not respond to The Epoch Times’s request for comment.
A Welsh government spokesperson told The BBC: “The introduction of shielding was one of a number of public health interventions made to keep Wales safe that followed medical and scientific advice.
“We will continue to review evidence as we learn from the protective interventions and mitigations applied during the COVID-19 response.”
The Epoch Times also contacted the British government regarding Prof. Dalgleish’s comments, but did not receive a reply before this article was published.
The masks were a huge joke esp. those blue paper ones.
Those stickers on the grocery store floor SAVED MY LIFE!
I still see people wearing them in public.
And alone in their car. Just because they wear them doesn’t mean they’re affective. All they are are moisture barriers, they don’t stop any virus let alone COVID. It’s like using chicken wire fencing to stop flies.
I saw a guy wearing TWO masks and gloves frantically dart through a grocery store when it first opened...hustled out to his car with great haste (didn’t bother to re-rack his cart) whereupon off came the masks and gloves and in went a CIGARETTE.
Looked like something out of a Mel Brooks movie.
And now less than $425 to reach 27% in our freepathon!
04/25/23 | Jim Robinson
Posted on 4/25/2023, 2:17:21 PM by Jim Robinson
Let’s get ‘er done!
Just three days ago I was hiking the Santa Cruz Mountains on the San Francisco Peninsula. It was sunny as can be and there was a nice stiff breeze blowing.
An Asian woman was coming up the trail as I was headed back down. When I was 20 ft away from her, she grabbed her mask, pressed it tightly to her mouth and nose, turned her head away from me, and moved to the far edge of the trail. One misstep and she would have fallen into the ravine.
How’s that for having a brilliant understanding of comparative risks? Her chance of falling into that ravine and getting seriously hurt was 100 million times higher than her chance of catching COVID from a brief encounter with a stranger outdoors while using silly and ineffective protective measures.
children couldn’t visit their parents in senior homes...it just wasn’t right...period.
I was at HEB (grocery store) yesterday in Austin and more people than usual are masking. I’m guessing these are the same folks who have “In this house we believe in science” signs. Morons all.
Any questions?
The higher quality masks did provide some protection for short term exposures but the shielding never made much sense to me. I guess at the beginning of the pandemic they believed that COVID could be transmitted through droplets in the eyes but that was debunked fairly quickly.
SNORT.
CoupFlu policy was NEVER about protecting public health.
Anywhere on the sodding planet.
Good thing nothing happened to startle her.
“I was at HEB (grocery store) yesterday in Austin and more people than usual are masking. I’m guessing these are the same folks who have “In this house we believe in science” signs. Morons all.”
I see them here in the grocery store too. IMHO, having one of those libtard signs in your front yard is an open invitation to home invasion.
‘An Asian woman was coming up the trail as I was headed back down.’
Asian women seem especially insane about this; there’s one in our neighborhood who wears one up to her eyeballs when she’s walking her dogs; when of course she’s outside, all by her lonesome, rarely within 50 feet of anyone else...
All of it was based of feel-good BS. All of it.
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