Elizabeth Aina
Senior Screening Case Officer
Professional Regulation
Nursing and Midwifery Council
17th Floor, 1 Westfield Avenue,
London E20 1HZ
28 November 2022
Dear Elizabeth
Re: NMC Fitness to Practise 091370/2022
Thank you for your correspondence of 21 November 2022 regarding a concern that an anonymous referrer has raised about my fitness to practice as a nurse on your register. I have read this carefully and respond below. Thank you for the opportunity to reflect on the concern and the relevant documentation in which to do so but I wish to eschew that opportunity in favour, and without prejudice, of responding here in writing.
I take this concern with the utmost seriousness. Whilst I am retired from clinical and educational work, I remain active as an editor and a speaker at international conferences and there is the risk of a publicly known investigatory process, which (given my public profile) is likely to be reported in professional and social media.
I must ask at the outset about the nature of the concern. You say it was raised anonymously and I seek clarification about whether this is merely being kept anonymous in my regard (which is understandable) or if the person raising the concern has identified themselves to you. I ask because, without knowing the identity of the person raising the concern, it may be hard to know if they have the necessary expertise to raise the concern, which relates to published scientific work, or if this is merely a malicious attempt by a detractor to defame me. I see that the person raising the concern offers an alternative explanation for the observations which are reported in the article in question. I have been advised not to address those arguments but rather to explain my own position and to support that as I intend to do below.
The concern relates specifically to a co-authored article titled: Nurses Don’t Do Numbers published in an online daily newspaper The Daily Sceptic of 9 November 2022. It is alleged based on the article that I have used my ‘status as a registered nurse to promote incorrect information about Covid-19 and the nursing profession in general’. And that my ‘articles (sic) and views has the potential to cause harm to the public in general by spreading false or incorrect clinical information. This would call into question the basics of his professionalism and further investigation is therefore required’.
While I can understand the need to check whether or not someone has been spreading incorrect information (or not) in the light of a professional registration, I am puzzled that reference is made here to my ‘views’. My views are largely unknown to most people and when they are expressed—to the exclusion of incitement to violence or expressed hatred towards a group or person on the basis of immutable characteristics—they are expressed legally under freedom of expression. Being a Registered Nurse does not limit my ability to speak freely. However, the nub of the case that has been raised is not about views, and indeed I have expressed none, it is about the interpretation and expression of scientific data. Also, notably, I have offered no health-related advice in the article, I have merely raised legitimate concerns.
The unredacted sections of the article that were presented to me in support of this investigation are as follows:
“Can nurses count? You would hope so, given their role in administering medication by pill, injection or intravenous drip, and in observing vital signs. Indeed, most practitioners do this day in day out, proficiently. Nonetheless, while nurses pride themselves on person-centred care, arguably their statistical naïveté has been exposed by the COVID-19 phenomenon. Generally, nurses seem to have fallen for the plague propaganda and shown themselves as uncritical if not willing participants in unethical policy.”
“The danger of limited numerical skills is becoming more apparent. We now have a steady pattern of 10-15% reduction in births and a 15-20% excess mortality in countries with high COVID-19 vaccination rates. Nurses should notice this and raise concern: this is a requirement of their code of conduct. The last three years, however, have shown that the vast majority of nurses uncritically accept the official narrative on lockdowns (demonstrably the most damaging public health intervention ever imposed on a population), PCR tests (highly dubious), masks (scientifically proven as useless against airborne respiratory viruses) and experimental vaccines that are far from safe and effective.”
I will confine my response mainly to the second paragraph as the final, critical sentence, of the first paragraph is exemplified in the second paragraph and I can support all these points with scientific evidence. However, I would like to say with reference to the general statement at the end of the first paragraph that there has been a complete lack of critical analysis of the measures introduced in the wake of Covid by nurses in the legacy and mainstream media and in the nursing press and it is this apparent lack of critical thinking in the face of accumulating evidence contrary to the ‘Covid narrative’ by members of an evidence-based profession that most concerns me.
Thus, taking each point in turn (paraphrasing slightly in some cases):
10-15% reduction in births
This point is supported by reference to official data, for example from Scotland where on 28 June 2022:
‘47,786 live births were registered in 2021. This was 2% higher than the previous year, but still the second lowest annual total since records began in 1855, according to figures released today by National Records of Scotland.’
A BIB Working Paper from Germany and Sweden for June 2022 states that:
‘The seasonally adjusted monthly TFR of Germany dropped from 1.5-1.6 in 2021 to 1.3-1.4 in 2022, a decline of about 14 %. In Sweden, the corresponding TFR dropped from about 1.7 in 2021 to 1.5-1.6 in 2022, a decline of almost 10 %. There is no association of the fertility trends with changes in unemployment, infection rates, or COVID-19 deaths. However, there is a strong association between the onset of vaccination programmes and the fertility decline nine months after of this onset.’
On 22 November 2022 an open letter, the signatories of which included Fellows of the Royal College of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, contained the following:
‘Obstetricians and gynaecologists in the U.K. have put their faith in and adjusted their practice according to guidance from their Royal College (RCOG). However, recent advice from the RCOG has been in complete contradiction to everything that it itself and academic institutions have been teaching about evidence-based medicine. This advice is that: COVID-19 vaccines are not only safe but strongly recommended for pregnant women. Such advice is not grounded in robust data based on ethically conducted research.’
and called for a:
‘stop to Covid vaccination of pregnant women over serious safety concerns.’
15-20% excess mortality in countries with high COVID-19 vaccination rates
On 11 November the Health Advisory and Recovery Team (HART) led by retired pathologist John Lee published their Comparison of European deaths in which using data from EU vaccine tracker and excess deaths data from EU government statistics they state:
‘The extent of vaccination between different countries is strongly correlated to how many deaths they have experienced both at the end of 2021 and in more recent months.’
They are largely able to account for confounding data and show that:
‘55% of the excess mortality could be predicted based on the proportion of the population vaccinated in each country.’
Lockdowns are demonstrably the most damaging public health intervention ever imposed on a population
We are now reaping the effects of the prolonged economic and social lockdown endured in the UK in 2020, 2021 and to some extent in 2022. This has had disastrous economic, social and medical effects and it is surely unnecessary to support these points with references as they are now a matter of public record. However, there remains the point of whether lockdowns were effective. Had they been effective then this may mitigate and justify to some extent the damage that was done. But there is no evidence to support that they were sufficiently effective to justify their implementation. As stated in a systematic review from a team at the Johns Hopkins University in the Studies in Applied Economics series:
‘The results of our meta-analysis support the conclusion that lockdowns in the spring of 2020 had little to no effect on COVID-19 mortality.’
Publishing in the Oxford University CESifo Economic Studies journal Christian Bjørnskov in a study of 24 countries could:
‘find no clear association between lockdown policies and mortality development.’
With reference to Canada, Douglas W. Allen of Simon Fraser University stated in a working paper that:
‘it is possible that lockdown will go down as one of the greatest peacetime policy failures in Canada's history.’
Reporting in Science Open following a study of lockdowns in Western Europe Thomas Meunier reported that:
‘Comparing the trajectory of the epidemic before and after the lockdown, we find no evidence of any discontinuity in the growth rate, doubling time, and reproduction number trends.’
PCR tests (highly dubious)
PCR testing for Covid is known to be highly problematic due to the phenomenon of false positive test results. They are also unable to distinguish between complete ‘live’ viruses and fragments of viral DNA from ‘dead’ viral particles. This arises from the very high specificity of the tests which means that they have a propensity to suggest that someone has Covid when they do not. Sensitivity (and its reciprocal corollary ‘specificity’) is a feature of any screening test with a binary outcome; moreover, due to their reciprocal nature, if sensitivity is very high (which is with PCR tests) then specificity—the ability to provide a positive test that is truly indicative of the presence of Covid—is reduced. This was discussed on GOV.UK on 3 June 2020 where the following was stated, against a background of the receiver operating characteristics (the combined ability of both sensitivity and the reciprocal of specificity are able accurately to provide a correct diagnosis) of the tests:
‘The diagnostic sensitivity and diagnostic specificity of a test can only be measured in operational conditions.’
The report continued to say that:
‘Operational false-positives and false-negatives will have significant impact in the way we respond to the COVID-19 pandemic’
and that they:
‘have been unable to find any data on the operational false positive and false negative rates in the UK COVID-19 RT-PCR testing programme.’
The report concludes:
‘The UK operational false positive rate is unknown’
but provides an estimate of false positives and the detrimental effect these may have:
‘DHSC figures show that 100,664 tests were carried out on 31 May 2020 (Pillar 1 and 2 RT-PCR tests). 1,570 of those tests were positive for SARS-CoV-2 (1.6%). The majority of people tested on that day did not have SARS-CoV-2 (98.4% of tests are negative). When only a small proportion of people being tested have the virus, the operational false positive rate becomes very important. Clearly the false positive rate cannot exceed 1.6% on that day, and is likely to be much lower. If the operational false positive rate was 0.4%, 400 of the 1,570 positive tests would be false positives. That would represent 400 people being isolated when they are well, and much wasted effort in contact tracing. It is possible that a proportion of infections that we currently view as asymptomatic may in fact be due to these false positives.’
The situation was summarised eloquently by a German academic writing under the pseudonym Eugyppius thus:
‘The PCR is very good at detecting the genetic sequences that it targets. The problem with high cycle thresholds isn’t that these yield ‘false positives’ (i.e., they find virus where there isn’t any), but rather ‘meaningless positives’ in the context of diagnosis. That is, at high cycle thresholds, the test detects trace amounts of virus that aren’t relevant for establishing whether the patient is infected or infectious. Similarly, you could imagine a hypersensitive metal detector that detects trace amounts of metal being entirely useless for your garden variety weekend treasure hunter. The metal detector is detecting metal, just not in a way that is useful for the questions its user is most interested in.’
Masks (scientifically proven as useless against airborne respiratory viruses)
The only rigorous study of the use of masks by the gold standard method of a randomised controlled study (the DANMASK study) published in Annals of Internal Medicine showed in 4862 people who completed the trial:
‘Infection with SARS-CoV-2 occurred in 42 participants recommended masks (1.8%) and 53 control participants (2.1%).’
They concluded that:
‘the difference observed was not statistically significant.’
Another large scale study of mask mandates in Bangladesh published in Science was heralded as showing that wearing face masks was effective against Covid. However, the primary outcome in the study was, in fact, the efficacy of mandates at encouraging people to wear masks; Covid infections were a secondary outcome and as secondary analysis of the data showed, with respect to Covid:
‘the data are consistent with mask promotion campaigns having had zero causal influence on the outcome variables.’
A continuously updated Cochrane review of physical measures, including face masks, against the spread of airborne infection showed in November 2020, with respect to medical/surgical masks:
‘There is moderate certainty evidence that wearing a mask probably makes little or no difference to the outcome of laboratory‐confirmed influenza compared to not wearing a mask.’
and with respect to N95/P2 respirators compared to medical/surgical masks:
‘The use of a N95/P2 respirator compared to a medical/surgical mask probably makes little or no difference for the objective and more precise outcome of laboratory‐confirmed influenza infection.’
The HSE Pandemic Flu - Workplace Guidance, with respect to medical surgical facemasks continue to state:
‘Surgical masks are plain masks that cover the nose and mouth and are held in place by straps around the head. In healthcare settings, they are normally worn during medical procedures to protect not only the patient but also the healthcare worker from the transfer of microorganisms, body fluids and particulate matter generated from any splash and splatter. Whilst they will provide a physical barrier to large projected droplets, they do not provide full respiratory protection against smaller suspended droplets and aerosols. That is, they are not regarded as personal protective equipment (PPE) under the European Directive 89/686/EEC (PPE Regulation 2002 SI 2002 No. 1144).’
The November 2021 review of cloth face masks by the CATO Institute states:
‘Of sixteen quantitative meta‐analyses, eight were equivocal or critical as to whether evidence supports a public recommendation of masks, and the remaining eight supported a public mask intervention on limited evidence primarily on the basis of the precautionary principle.’
In his book Unmasked Ian Miller retrospectively breaks down the data related to mask mandates between states in the USA that implemented these compared with those that did not (between-subjects); for states before and after the introduction of mask mandates (within-subjects) and also compares the implementation of mask mandates in states in the USA with other countries which differed in their mask mandates. He finds no evidence that these were effective in containing the spread of Covid.
Experimental vaccines are far from safe and effective
That the vaccines, particularly the Pfizer vaccines, were still experimental at the time of being approved for use and had not, for example, been tested for their ability to prevent transmission (ie this stage was an experiment being conducted on the public) is now a matter of record. Furthermore, questions have been raised about the integrity of the trials that were carried out prior to the use of the Pfizer vaccine generally as in the BMJ of 2 November 2021 by Paul Thacker who said, with reference to the speed with which the vaccines were developed:
‘speed may have come at the cost of data integrity and patient safety.’
When the Pfizer safety and efficacy data were published in The New England Journal of Medicine a detailed analysis pointed to several anomalies in the data compared with other sources and some very unlikely reporting related to, for example, unreported vaccine allergies including severe allergic reactions (real world prevalence 2%) and anaphylaxis (1/3700) which were not reported but would have been ‘impossible to miss’ in a database of 21,700 people.
In terms of vaccine safety, according to the Yellow Card reporting system on 8 November, the reported events since February 2021 include:
Pulmonary Embolism & Deep Vein Thrombosis = 3,557
Anaphylaxis = 1,393
Acute Cardiac = 16,936
Pericarditis/Myocarditis (Heart inflammation) = 1,132
Blindness = 432
Spontaneous Abortions = 617 miscarriages + 15 foetal deaths
Guillain-Barré Syndrome = 576
Seizures = 2,950
Paralysis = 1,205
Tremor = 11,617
Reproductive/Breast Disorders = 45,543
The total number of fatalities attributed to vaccine harms include: Astrazeneca (1112); Pfizer (577); Moderna (18).
It is worth noting that the Yellow Card system in use in the UK, while it does not prove causation, undoubtedly underestimates adverse vaccine reactions for several reasons, including the fact that clinicians are reluctant to use it. It has been estimated that the Yellow Card system may only pick up a very small percentage of vaccine injuries (meaning that the real figures for adverse vaccine reactions may be underestimated by several orders of magnitude) and that the mainstream media are very wary of reporting vaccine injuries, even from the Yellow Card reporting system. The relevant Ofcom page on ‘Combatting Covid-19 Misinformation’, for example, makes no mention of the Yellow Card system for reporting adverse vaccine reactions.
Finally, in relation to the efficacy of the Covid vaccines—always reported in terms of Relative Risk Reduction (RRR)—in April 2021 The Lancet published an article titled ‘COVID-19 vaccine efficacy and effectiveness—the elephant (not in the room)’ where the fundamental difference between RRR and Absolute Risk Reduction (ARR), the latter being the true measure of how much protection a vaccine offers compared with not being vaccinated, is explained. As opposed to the commonly quoted figures of 85-95% effectiveness (RRR) the ARR of the Covid vaccines was calculated as follows:
‘1·3% for the AstraZeneca–Oxford, 1·2% for the Moderna–NIH, 1·2% for the J&J, 0·93% for the Gamaleya, and 0·84% for the Pfizer–BioNTech vaccines.’
I have been very grateful for this opportunity to state my case and I look forward to hearing from you in due course.
Yours sincerely
Roger Watson
FRCP Edin FRCN FAAN
Great stuff proves the world was conned now we have to kill the bastards that did it.