COVID-19 News & Analysis

  • The Covid Inquiry: Further insights into the murky world of Behavioural Science
    Although the ongoing Covid-19 Inquiry increasingly resembles an expensive pantomime designed to support the dominant lockdown-and-jab pandemic narrative, scrutiny of the extensive witness transcripts can be informative as to the actions of key actors. Such is the case with the behavioural scientists, in particular those operating within the Scientific Pandemic Insights Group on Behaviours (SPI-B) – a subgroup of SAGE that advised the Government on its Covid-19 communications strategy.
  • Dictating to a virus
    The recent announcement by Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the Director-General of the World Health Organization (WHO), declaring the covid pandemic over, highlights the absurdity of bureaucratic regimes dictating when we should be scared or not scared of an endemic virus.
  • COVID-19: The Evidence revisited – summer 2022
    It is now two and a half years since the first lockdown and eighteen months since HART published its paper COVID-19: an overview of the evidence. Over the last few months, we asked all the original authors to go back and review their articles and update with relevant publications, revising their conclusions as appropriate. These chapters spelled out either evidence of harms from the pandemic policies or theoretical concerns. 
  • Covid-19: The Evidence Now Part 6
    This week’s instalment revisits the dire mental health implications of the Government’s covid response. ront and centre (which is where children should have been in 2020) we have Covid policies and harms to children by Clinical Psychologist Dr Zenobia Storah and Retired Consultant Paediatrician Dr Ros.
  • Covid-19 : The Evidence Now PART 3
    Last week we published Part 2 of our evidence updates, focusing on ethics, masks and elderly care. This week, we take another detailed look at the collateral damage caused by lockdowns and rather topically have reworked the piece on covid vaccines for children.
  • Covid above all else
    The Government’s enthusiasm for Plan B had been noted back in September, but the successful relaxation of restrictions in the summer had left it woefully short of triggers for its authoritarian tendencies.
  • Government review of care home winter plan based on terrible error or deliberate lie about successes last year
    Government has published a winter plan for care homes with plans for interventions for this winter in care homes including ipads as a proposal to replace human contact. The entire document is based on the premise that interventions in winter prevented deaths in care homes based on claims made in a review of last year’s winter plan. No data supports this notion. The Government report is either based on a terrible error or a deliberate lie.
  • Should children be vaccinated against COVID-19?
    HART would contest that it is unethical to ask children to take a vaccine to boost herd immunity or to offset political decisions such as school closures, at a stage when the drug trials have still to be completed. Policy makers would do well to re-read the Universal Declaration on Bioethics and Human Rights and to follow the authors’ guidance to ‘weigh up the risks and benefits with caution and to proceed with care’.
  • To B or Not To B
    Was ‘Plan B’ always in fact, ‘Plan A’?
  • Women’s reproductive concerns are brushed aside
    Women’s concerns around menstruation were brushed aside and only in the last month has money been promised for a clinical trial to investigate how long it takes teenagers with disturbed menstruation to return to normal after vaccination. 
  • Continuation of the Coronavirus Act
    To cap it all, the Coronavirus Act 2020 was continued for a further 6 months, on the basis of a 90 minute debate and no division lobby.
  • COVID risks in pregnant women
    When deaths and cases are not frightening enough the media turn, as they did last year, to pregnant women to promote fear.
  • The ongoing impact of the pandemic on children
    It is clear that children and young people have borne a disproportionate share of the suffering throughout the pandemic.
  • Is the vaccine working?
    What does world-wide data show us about vaccine efficacy?
  • Advance Australia Fair?
    Australia is now officially a society that is sanctioning medical apartheid.
  • The demise of informed consent
    6 October 2021 – The sanctity of individual decision making and informed consent must be retained and respected.
  • Halt COVID-19 vaccinations in children
    6 October 2021 – Giving children novel mRNA vaccination for COVID-19 is a medical intervention that remains unjustified.
  • No effect of school closures on COVID-19 in children
    6 October 2021 – There should never again be any suggestion of closing schools in order to mitigate the spread of a respiratory virus.
  • Proposal for mandatory COVID certification in a Plan B scenario
    6 October 2021 – The proposal goes against all scientific and democratic principles that prior to 2020 were a strong feature of British society.
  • New government report misleads about COVID-19 in children
    29 September 2021 – The effects on children have clearly been exaggerated and used to push unwarranted injections of healthy children.
  • Injunction request to halt COVID-19 vaccine roll-out for children
    29 September 2021 – A case was heard in the Court of Appeal on Wednesday 22 September requesting an injunction to halt the roll-out of the COVID-19 vaccines in children aged 12-15.
  • Meet the unvaccinated
    29 September – These are real accounts from real people. Names have been changed to protect identities, for fear of abuse. 
  • Children, coercive consent & COVID-19 vaccines
    29 September 2021 – In among the Chief Medical Officers’ inexcusable and unexplainable decision last week to proceed with COVID-19 vaccination of 12-15 year-olds, there lurked a deeply disturbing paragraph.
  • Pick your denominator
    16 September 2021 – Making the data show vaccine efficacy.
  • Over 30,000 Scottish secondary school children infected but don’t know it
    16 September 2021 – The ONS claims that 9-10% of under 20s are currently infected.
  • Vaccine mandates for healthcare workers
    16 September 2021 – So are mandatory vaccinations already a feature of NHS life, as is claimed?
  • Sajid Javid’s creative calculator
    16 September – The Health Secretary claims that vaccines have prevented more infections than there have ever been in the pandemic.
  • Chris Whitty ignores JCVI advice
    16 September – 12-15 year olds now offered COVID-19 vaccines ‘to avoid educational disruptions’ and ‘for their mental health’
  • COVID-19 vaccines: unnecessary for healthy 12 to 15-year-olds
    9 September 2021 – Grave concerns about the balance of risk. Vaccines are not required to prevent educational disruption.
  • More analysis of recent SAGE report
    20 August – A recent SAGE briefing outlined various scenarios that might occur in the evolution of the SARS-Covid-19 pandemic.
  • Myocarditis in children and young adults
    20 August 2021 – The roll out of the COVID-19 vaccine to adolescents has begun, despite evidence that myocarditis is a side effect of the vaccine.
  • COVID-19 transmits outdoors
    20 August 2021 – There are increasing numbers of reports of outbreaks occurring in outdoor environments.
  • Nothing unethical about covert ‘nudges’
    6 August 2021 – After six months of evasion and obfuscation, the British Psychological Society (BPS) has made its position clear: it sees nothing ethically questionable about deploying covert psychological strategies.
  • COVID-19 vaccine to be offered to 16 and 17 year-olds
    6 August 2021 – In attempting to defend the sudden change in position, JCVI Chair Professor Wei Shen Lim was entirely unconvincing in his reasoning.
  • What’s in store next?
    6 August 2021 – The government’s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE) has published an extraordinary paper setting out possible scenarios for the future.
  • Children continue to be let down
    6 August 2021 – The last school year will go down in history as one of the worst for children and young people’s rights, dignities and mental health.
  • Cases continue to fall
    5 August 2021 – It is time now for those that put their faith in these modellers to have a rethink too.
  • Why we set up HART
    29 July 2021 – We make no apologies for asking questions, rejecting censorship and upholding long-established ethics.
  • Busting the myth that vaccination prevents transmission
    29 July 2021 – Any discrimination or coercion of any form aimed at those who choose not to be vaccinated is unsustainable.
  • Summertime and there’s more good news
    29 July 2021 – Hospitalisations and deaths have remained much lower than would have been anticipated by the test numbers.
  • Cases dropping “puzzles” scientists
    29 July 2021 – Few headlines acknowledged the good news.
  • HART proposed methodology adopted in US
    22 July 2021 – It’s time for the UK to use Ct to track the spread, protect the vulnerable and regain our lives.
  • Johnson announces plan for vaccine passports
    22 July 2021 – The Prime Minister’s speech on Monday showed the murky depths to which we have descended.
  • What should we be scared of at the moment?
    22 July 2021 – Neil Ferguson continues to outperform on pessimism while alternative views are censored and suppressed.
  • Children’s vaccine advice changing by the day
    22 July 2021 – Adult protection is ethically achieved through adults protecting themselves, not by passing on the risks of vaccination to children.
  • Drop the mask and be a force for good
    22 July 2021 – An important contribution to getting our lives back to some form of much-needed normality.
  • Unvaccinated as ‘variant factories’?
    15 July 2021 – Several media outlets in the UK have simultaneously released a story alleging that unvaccinated people are risking their own health and will become potential factories of coronavirus variants.,
  • New data confirms children at extremely low risk
    15 July 2021 – From the beginning of the pandemic, it has been apparent that COVID-19 is largely a disease of the elderly or those with other co-morbidities and mercifully has had minimal impact on children.
  • NHS Protocol for treatment of COVID-19
    15 July 2021 – Nearly a year and a half after the country was locked down to protect the NHS, how is the NHS performing in managing the very condition that so threatened it?
  • Confusion among mask advocates
    15 July 2021 – Professor Trish Greenhalgh revealed her incoherent thinking in a long Twitter thread.
  • More hypocrisy on display at Wimbledon and Wembley
    15 July 2021 – In case we were in any doubt, there are now extreme double standards at play in our society. How long will we allow this rampant hypocrisy to continue?
  • Freedom Day briefing underwhelms
    15 July 2021 – The Prime Minister held a briefing on Monday to confirm that ‘Freedom Day’ is going ahead, yet managed to strike a sombre tone that bordered on the downright miserable.
  • Should cats and dogs be vaccinated against SARS-CoV-2?
    15 July 2021 – While epidemiological surveillance of domestic animals for SARS-CoV-2 is warranted, the available evidence currently indicates no cause for concern.
  • COVID-19 vaccination: Yellow Card reporting of adverse events
    12 July 2021 – An open letter from UK medics to the Chief Medical Officers of England, Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales and the Chair of the MHRA.
  • COVID-19 Anxiety Syndrome
    8 July 2021 – The goal of these psychological interventions is to introduce a gradual acceptance of the scientifically established assumption that a COVID-19-free world is unlikely.
  • Children receive vaccine despite the rules
    8 July 2021 – It is shocking to read that Rochdale Borough Council and some GPs have defied the current rules and are already vaccinating healthy 16 and 17-year-olds.
  • Question Everything’s first London summit 17 July
    8 July 2021 – The aim is to explore how the world can responsibly return to normality, without further harmful lockdowns.
  • Professor Devi Sridhar misleads again
    6 July – On Monday 28 June, Good Morning Britain (GMB) interviewed Professor Devi Sridhar, who in HART’s view, was once again allowed to give out highly misleading information regarding the safety of COVID-19 vaccines in children.
  • Junk science serves neither side of the debate
    2 July 2021 – A new paper attempting to determine the ratio of lives saved through COVID-19 vaccination to lives lost has been published in a journal called “Vaccines”.
  • Are vaccinations less effective in the under 50s?
    2 July 2021 – Latest data from Public Health England shows that the household transmission rate is 9% for the alpha variant and 12% for the delta variant meaning that 88-91% of household contacts do not catch it.
  • Government modellers proved wrong again
    2 July 2021 – When a disease is transmitted in a chain person-to-person, as for childhood infections like measles, then reducing human contact reduces transmission. The data on gastroenteritis shows clear evidence of this.
  • Testing incentives and unintended consequences
    2 July 2021 – The answer is not more testing, but less — or ideally no — testing of school children. Not for nothing was Operation Moonshot described as a “misguided policy, unlikely to reduce transmission” in the British Medical Journal.
  • New research suggests ivermectin works
    2 July 2021 – Last week Dr Tess Lawrie from the Evidence-Based Medicine Consultancy and colleagues published a peer reviewed systematic review and meta-analysis in the American Journal of Therapeutics that showed moderate-certainty evidence of large reductions in COVID-19 deaths.
  • New aggressive testing and isolation guidelines for schools
    2 July 2021 – New aggressive testing and isolation guidelines mean that more and more healthy children are currently sitting at home, on their own, isolating. Schools, children and families are in turmoil.
  • Children’s mental health crisis deepens
    28 June 2021 – HART believes that as a matter of urgency, children’s needs must be prioritised. Unnecessary testing of healthy children must stop. Fear messaging must stop.
  • Overblown claims of brain damage caused by COVID-19
    24 June 2021 – A paper on the changes to the brain after COVID-19 has been dramatised and used to further frighten people.
  • Vaccine update
    24 June 2021 – We have previously noted concerns about myocarditis and pericarditis caused by the mRNA vaccines (of which Pfizer is the main one in use in the UK), especially in young people.
  • The impact of lockdowns on excess mortality
    24 June 2021 – An important new paper from the prestigious National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) in the US examines the impact of “shelter-in-place” (SIP) policies on excess mortality across a sample of 43 countries and all US states.
  • The dubious ethics of covert psychological ‘nudges’
    24 June 2021 – On 6 January 2021, HART member Dr Gary Sidley (along with 46 other psychologists and therapists) wrote a letter to the British Psychological Society (BPS) expressing concerns about the ethics of deploying covert psychological ‘nudges’ as a means of gaining the public’s compliance with COVID-19 restrictions.
  • The COVID-19 testing trap
    24 June 2021 – Frontline staff, many of whom have had a SARS-CoV-2 infection, are getting increasingly frustrated by being forced to isolate due to positive testing.
  • Bloomsbury announce all staff must be vaccinated
    24 June 2021 – Bloomsbury Publishing have told their UK staff that COVID-19 vaccination will be compulsory before returning to the office on 19 July.
  • Morally repugnant restrictions on children continue
    24 June 2021 – Schools have been digesting a devastating update from the Department of Education that implies substantial ongoing restrictions over the next few months.
  • Protecting them to death
    22 June 2021 – It is not unusual to hear that relatives have not seen residents for 14 months. This has been especially barbaric for dementia patients and their families.
  • The ‘People’s Lockdown Inquiry’ launches
    17 June 2021 – The People’s Lockdown Inquiry (PLI) is a compilation of personal stories and reviews that aims to capture the impact of lockdowns on the British people.
  • Some animals are more equal than others
    17 June 2021 – Many people have been shocked at the pictures of G7 leaders in Cornwall last week freely enjoying themselves without, apparently, a care in the world about COVID-19.
  • Vaccination update
    17 June 2021 – HART member, Dr Ros Jones joined with 60 other doctors and academics to voice grave concerns about the safety and necessity of COVID-19 vaccines for children.
  • It is time to ditch the mask
    17 June 2021 – This week, Boris Johnson squandered the opportunity to remove all the remaining COVID-19 restrictions, extending the mask and social distancing requirements until, at least, 19 July.
  • COVID-19 is becoming more mild
    17 June 2021 – Headache, sore throat and runny nose are now the three most common presenting symptoms. There is no loss of smell and cough is only the fifth most common symptom.
  • Manufacturing a crisis
    17 June 2021 – On Monday 14 June, Boris Johnson reneged on the return to normal life from Monday 21 June. In order to justify this further assault on the country a crisis had to be manufactured. The real world data simply does not support what the prime minister claims.
  • Science without debate is dogma
    17 June 2021 – HART members have long been concerned about the lack of scientific debate in the mainstream media and the worrying trend of censorship and harassment of those who question the government’s narrative.
  • BBC mislead with child vaccination video
    16 June 2021 – In a week of very worrying developments, HART has been particularly appalled by a recent piece on BBC Newsround promoting the Pfizer vaccine for children. The senior doctors on HART are in agreement that this video material is heavily biased, makes several factually incorrect statements and could be seen as coercive propaganda.
  • Exposure risk to babies being fed by vaccinated mothers
    10 June 2021 – The human trials have not even reached a full year yet and did not include pregnant or lactating women, nor nursing infants. As a result, no safety can be ascertained, and therefore should not be claimed.
  • High levels of Midazolam prescriptions
    10 June 2021 – Further investigation into how much of the prescribed Midazolam was actually given to patients, and into the accusations of the whistleblowers that the drug was misused, is now urgently warranted, if only to allay fears of misuse.
  • Changing the goal posts for the vaccinated
    10 June 2021 – A stricter definition of disease for calling cases and attributing deaths to COVID-19 is long overdue. However, it must be applied to the unvaccinated as well as the vaccinated.
  • ‘Long Covid’ in children
    10 June 2021 – In a prospective German study,1,560 secondary school children were tested regularly for SARS-CoV-2 and all took part in a survey for typical ‘long Covid’ symptoms.
  • Tony Blair calls for medical apartheid
    10 June 2021 – There appears to be no upper limit to Tony Blair’s total disregard for human rights. With his track record during the invasion of Iraq, his latest attack is a direct assault on the inalienable human rights of British citizens.
  • COVID-19 child vaccination: irresponsible, unethical and unnecessary
    9 June 2021 – It is shocking that as of Friday 6 June the MHRA approved the use of the Pfizer vaccine in children aged 12 to 15 years old.
  • Child vaccination — implications for fully informed consent
    3 June 2021 – HART continues to be deeply concerned to hear various MPs and SAGE representatives calling for children to be vaccinated against COVID-19 despite the lack of long-term safety data.
  • It’s now or never – mask mandates must be lifted
    3 June 2021 – The 15 June will be the first anniversary of England’s mask mandate, 12 months on from the introduction of the unprecedented requirement for healthy people to wear face coverings.
  • Compulsory vaccination for NHS staff back on the agenda?
    3 June 2021 – A number of professional bodies — such as the Royal College of General Practitioners and the Royal College of Nursing — have already rejected the notion that COVID-19 vaccination for staff should be compulsory. Nevertheless, the government signalled its intention to consider mandating vaccination for NHS staff.
  • While the Prime Minister marries, the UK protests again
    3 June 2021 – Once again the mainstream media coverage of the London protest on Saturday 29 May was a woeful departure from the reality on the ground.
  • Concerns about third wave unfounded
    3 June 2021 – Inevitably, certain government advisors have begun to urge caution on relaxing Coronavirus restrictions on 21 June. Professor Adam Finn was quoted as saying it was “so much better to delay slightly than to go around with another cycle” of lockdown restrictions.
  • COVID-19 open letters on vaccination and other matters
    28 May 2021 – A number of groups have now written open letters to express concerns about aspects of the COVID-19 vaccination programmes. Widely ignored in mainstream broadcast media and the vast majority of print media, we will collect the letters here.
  • Concerns about Indian variant continue to be unfounded
    27 May 2021 – The news this week reports a ‘surge’ of cases and hospitalisations of the Indian Variant (B1.617.2) in the Greater Manchester area. Indeed the Indian government is distinctly unimpressed with this nomenclature and does not concur that this variant belongs to them.
  • Is the ‘Yellow Card’ safety system fit for purpose?
    27 May 2021 – Defenders of the UK’s Yellow Card system claim that it is efficient at capturing adverse events.
  • Mask mandates must be lifted
    27 May 2021 – The masking of healthy people in community settings is unlikely to reduce viral transmission, but has led to, and is maintaining, a range of profound social and psychological harms.
  • Vaccination round-up
    27 May 2021 – Seemingly there has been an international competition for the most persuasive incentive to get vaccinated. In Canada, it is only an ice-cream and live music, in the US it’s a free doughnut, whereas in Poland it could be as much as a hybrid car and in Dawson County, Georgia, convicted criminals could get up to 50% reduction in their custodial sentence.
  • SARS-CoV-2 was developed in a laboratory
    27 May 2021 – The mainstream media has started to report on the evidence that SARS-CoV-2 may have originated in a laboratory. From the outset of the pandemic, scientists have been attempting to draw attention to the fact that the SARS-CoV-2 genome was too distant from known bat coronaviruses for natural mutation to have been the source: the genome contains classic markers of genetic manipulation.
  • COVID-19 educational materials in schools
    27 May 2021 – Materials purporting to be formal education materials about the COVID-19 vaccine are being delivered to children in classrooms across the country. Accurate information is crucial for them to make a considered decision along with their parents and carers.
  • Matt Hancock violates patient confidentiality
    20 May 2021 – Mr Hancock revealed 18 COVID-19 patients were under the care of Bolton NHS Foundation Trust, hospitalised with the Indian variant. He informed the public that ‘the vast majority’ of these patients had not been vaccinated despite being eligible.