An MP collected lockdown sceptic Toby Young’s ‘greatest hits’ and it’s quite the read

A Toby Young column in the Daily Telegraph has just been rebuked by the press watchdog after it wrongly suggested, among other things, that catching a cold could protect people from coronavirus.

It was covid sceptic Young, you might remember, who memorably said last year: ‘There will be no “second spike” – not now, and not in the autumn either. The virus has melted into thin air. It’s time to get back to normal.’

Unfortunately lots of other things that Young has said about the coronavirus appears to have disappeared from his Twitter feed, so Conservative MP Neil O’Brien did the public service of collecting some of his more memorable proclamations.

And it’s quite the read, it really is.

1.

As the UK tragically hits a record number of Covid-19 deaths, Covid-sceptic-in-chief @toadmeister appears to have deleted all his tweets from last year.

That's not surprising. Here are some of the things he claimed over the last year – a thread.

— Neil O'Brien MP (@NeilDotObrien) January 14, 2021

2.

"Should we be worried about the uptick in cases? Almost certainly not. It’s due to recent increases in testing capacity… Given the over-sensitivity of the PCR test, the rise in new cases is telling us just how many people have had Covid-19 in the past"

Telegraph, 7 September

— Neil O'Brien MP (@NeilDotObrien) January 14, 2021

3.

"as we sceptics are fond of pointing out, almost no one has the virus any more."

Spectator, 15 August

— Neil O'Brien MP (@NeilDotObrien) January 14, 2021

4.

"we were told… the number of infected people was on the rise again… the rise was due to a combination of increased testing and false positives."

Telegraph, 14 August 2020

— Neil O'Brien MP (@NeilDotObrien) January 14, 2021

5.

The check-in process at Heathrow took at least four times longer than usual and having to wear a face nappy for the entire journey was a pain in the bum. But… in Venice things started to look up – I’d finally escaped Gulag Britain."

Telegraph, 12 August

— Neil O'Brien MP (@NeilDotObrien) January 14, 2021

6.

I may… convene a public inquiry of my own. The experts I’ll invite to sit on the panel won’t be the usual hacks with an axe to grind… They’ll be [like] Sunetra Gupta, the Oxford epidemiologist who believes we may have achieved herd immunity already"

Spectator, 25 July

— Neil O'Brien MP (@NeilDotObrien) January 14, 2021

7.

The scientists predict a massive resurgence of Covid-19 infections if we don’t “get on top of things” and that part of the report is unconvincing… the paper seems pessimistic about the level of immunity that the UK population has already acquired."

Telegraph, 14 July

— Neil O'Brien MP (@NeilDotObrien) January 14, 2021

8.

"I’m going to go out on a limb and predict there will be no “second spike” – not now, and not in the autumn either. The virus has melted into thin air. It’s time to get back to normal."

Telegraph, 25 June

— Neil O'Brien MP (@NeilDotObrien) January 14, 2021

9.

"The decision to place the entire country in suspended animation on March 23 will end up costing more lives than the pandemic… one of the worst decisions in our history."

Telegraph, 12 June

— Neil O'Brien MP (@NeilDotObrien) January 14, 2021

10.

"in some parts of the country – such as London – the virus is expected to have completely vanished by the end of next month."

Telegraph, 29 May

— Neil O'Brien MP (@NeilDotObrien) January 14, 2021

11.

And even if you catch the disease, it it may not be much more deadly than a bad bout of seasonal influenza… We should dispense with silly, over-cautious social-distancing rules… Let’s just get back to the way things were."

Telegraph, 29 May

— Neil O'Brien MP (@NeilDotObrien) January 14, 2021

12.

"I was sent a paper by Mikko Paunio, a key scientific adviser to the Finnish Government, estimating that the infection fatality rate of Covid-19 is around 0.13 per cent – roughly the same as seasonal flu."

Telegraph, 18 April

— Neil O'Brien MP (@NeilDotObrien) January 14, 2021

13.

"What happened to the British people’s bulldog spirit, , our instinctive libertarianism? … It’s tempting to think the feminisation of British culture has left us bereft of manly virtues. We have become men without chests, to use CS Lewis’s phrase."

Telegraph, 18 April

— Neil O'Brien MP (@NeilDotObrien) January 14, 2021

14.

"The choice is between switching to mitigation or maintaining the lockdown indefinitely… It’s inevitable that we’re going to have to abandon the suppression strategy before we develop a vaccine out of sheer economic necessity"

The Critic, 2 April

— Neil O'Brien MP (@NeilDotObrien) January 14, 2021

15.

"Is the case fatality rate really as high as Professor Neil Ferguson and his team at Imperial College would have us believe? Dr John Ioannidis of Stanford University has speculated that it may end up being 0.05 per cent, lower than seasonal flu."

Telegraph, 3 April

— Neil O'Brien MP (@NeilDotObrien) January 14, 2021

16.

"The country is well on its way to acquiring herd immunity and the much-ballyhooed “peak” that we’re trying to avoid by locking ourselves down won’t materialise."

The Critic, 31 March 2020

— Neil O'Brien MP (@NeilDotObrien) January 14, 2021

17.

"Even if we accept the statistical modelling of Dr Neil Ferguson’s team… which I’ll come to in a minute, spending £350 billion to prolong the lives of a few hundred thousand mostly elderly people is an irresponsible use of taxpayers’ money."

The Critic, 31 March 2020

— Neil O'Brien MP (@NeilDotObrien) January 14, 2021

18.

But sadly, he hasn't learned anything in 2021…

— Neil O'Brien MP (@NeilDotObrien) January 14, 2021

19.

"A winter bed crisis in the NHS is an annual event… According to PHE, there was no statistically significant excess all-cause mortality in England in the final week of 2020"

The Critic, 11 January 2021*

— Neil O'Brien MP (@NeilDotObrien) January 14, 2021

20.

"If you compare mortality in December of 2020 with average December mortality over the the last five years, there doesn't as far as I can see appear to be any increase at all"

"London Calling" podcast, 4 January 2020

— Neil O'Brien MP (@NeilDotObrien) January 14, 2021

21.

"Some lockdown enthusiasts pick out a handful of examples where lockdowns have coincided with a fall in Covid deaths but that’s not a scientific approach."

The Critic, 11 January 2021

— Neil O'Brien MP (@NeilDotObrien) January 14, 2021

22.

"If Whitty and Vallance had taken questions, I hope someone would have asked them what the projected number of cases would be on 13th Oct if you discount the 91% of “cases” that are false positives."

Tweet, (now deleted), 21 September 2020

— Neil O'Brien MP (@NeilDotObrien) January 14, 2021

Here are just a few of the things people were saying about it.

This is a magnificent thread.
(No relation!) https://t.co/iZucShW63Q

— James O'Brien (@mrjamesob) January 14, 2021

Let the record show… https://t.co/cbL7b9AaqH

— Krishnan Guru-Murthy (@krishgm) January 14, 2021

https://twitter.com/mikegalsworthy/status/1349703733400260612?s=20

First of all Young tried to make a joke out of it.

Thanks Neil. I’ve been looking for an assistant to help compile an anthology of the best stuff that’s appeared in Lockdown Sceptics over the past nine months. Would you like to apply for the job? That way, at least you could get paid for obsessively trawling through all my work. https://t.co/1Omvotsckb

— Toby Young (@toadmeister) January 14, 2021

But then composed a longer response and here’s a bit of what he had to say (you can read the full thread here).

Attacks on Lockdown sceptics – and me in particular – have ratcheted up recently, with one of the most aggressive critics being the Conservative MP @NeilDotObrien. I thought it was time to compose a reply.

— Toby Young (@toadmeister) January 14, 2021

He compared lockdown sceptics to QAnon conspiracy theorists and anti-vaxxers and urged media companies "to practice some basic hygiene about whose views they are promoting", i.e. no-platform the sceptics.

— Toby Young (@toadmeister) January 14, 2021

But arguing that lockdowns cause more harm than they prevent is not comparable to arguing that the US government is run by a cabal of Satan-worshipping paedophiles or that vaccines contain microchips inserted by Bill Gates to control our minds.

— Toby Young (@toadmeister) January 14, 2021

In his latest Twitter thread, @NeilDotObrien accuses me of having deleted all my tweets from last year because I'm embarrassed about having got so many things wrong. https://t.co/T9ZXlPokNB

— Toby Young (@toadmeister) January 14, 2021

In fact, I installed an app last week that deletes all tweets more than a week old. This was in response to Twitter's increasing intolerance of people who challenge liberal orthodoxies, including Covid orthodoxy. I would advice other dissenters to do the same.

— Toby Young (@toadmeister) January 14, 2021

Yes, lockdown sceptics have got some things wrong, but I think we've provided an important counterweight to the largely one-sided reporting of the broadcast media, particularly the BBC. https://t.co/1uZsZq8yVG

— Toby Young (@toadmeister) January 14, 2021

READ MORE

Emily Maitlis quoted Toby Young’s own nonsense back to him – only 5 responses you need

Source Twitter @NeilDotObrien