It’s also worth remembering the social media campaign which was being run by the NHS England back in 2021. “If someone has Covid-19, they breathe it out in particles… particles that hang in the air like smoke.” Now tell me again that they didn’t know it was airborne… 🧐

In this clip, Dr Lisa Ritchie explains how, even today, despite all the evidence to the contrary, she STILL believes that the predominant mode of transmission for Covid is droplet & contact. (Reminder: Dr Ritchie is still the Head of infection prevention control for NHS England)

An extract from the IPC Minutes (Sept 2020) sheds further light on Dr Ritchie’s reticence to change her position: “If you wanted to change the guidance itself, it would need a very careful narrative as it would be easy to give the impression that we got it WRONG the first time.”

In this clip, Dr Ritchie explains the explains the importance of the hierarchy of controls, and how mitigations like engineering controls (which include ventilation & air filtration) should be prioritised over individual protections like masks…

However, when she was asked about the membership of the IPC Cell who defined the IPC guidance, she reveals that there were NO members with any expertise in engineering/physics, despite the importance of engineering controls in the hierarchy of controls.

The article below investigates the shocking chain of events which led to the government downgrading PPE for healthcare workers from FFP2/3 respirators to surgical masks, ignoring the science on Covid being a “High Consequence” & airborne disease. bylinetimes.com/2023/08/17/beh…

As a result of this decision to downgrade PPE to ineffective surgical masks, thousands of doctors were left over-exposed and under-protected. This heart-breaking report from the BMA chronicles the debilitating effect that Long Covid has on many doctors. bma.org.uk/media/7318/bma…

Meanwhile this is the current IPC guidance from NHS England: ▪️If healthcare workers have Covid symptoms, they don’t need to test & should still go to work. ▪️If they go against guidance by testing & it’s POSITIVE, they should *still* go to work & just wear a surgical mask.

Dr Ritchie’s session at the Covid Inquiry is available on YouTube here: MORNING SESSION (from 1:33:00): youtu.be/m1c5AYORCH4 AFTERNOON SESSION: youtu.be/OMA1uAk0F_U You can also find a full transcript of her testimony here (from text block 62): covid19.public-inquiry.uk/wp-content/upl…

Poor, pathetic, incompetent little Ofwat has released its annual appraisal of WC's performance, as you'd expect it's grim. Major pollution incidents up, customer satisfaction down, sewer flooding up, drinking water quality down, leakage up and on and on. Another annual litany

Today in the Lords ... The big event is the 2nd reading of the Water (Special Measures) Bill. No votes, no amendments, just raising all the problems. The Bill is a huge disappointment; to fix the pollution/lack of investment relies on the same systems that have failed for 30 yrs.

‘One teaspoon of the chemical is enough to kill 1.25 billion honeybees… by destroying their nervous systems.’ No,This can’t be allowed to happen. What is an election promise for? theguardian.com/environment/20…

It’s time for Labour to remember its roots and reinstate the right to peaceful protest. Thanks to Chris Packham for the narration Location: HMP Wormwood Scrubs

Regarding the recent application by National Farmers' Union to allow 'emergency' use of neonics on sugar beet, this image explains the problem: most of the pesticide goes into soils, leaches into waterways, & is taken up by wildflowers & hedgerows. Only 5% in crop. nature.com/articles/natur…

"Privatisation should never have happened. 35 years of complete waste. £68bn worth of debt, £78bn of dividends, money that could have been spent on our infrastructure and that wasn’t." - Tim Farron It’s time to put the public first and fix this broken system.

"English water system singled out for criticism by UN special rapporteur. Prof Pedro Arrojo-Agudo says regulator Ofwat ‘complacent’ about water firms putting their shareholders before public." Now even the UN's special rapporteur thinks Ofwat is a joke, and he's right.

For one single minute, the absolute antidote to the endless populist anti-immigration rants we hear day in, day out👇 "We Spaniards are the children of immigrants, not the parents of xenophobia" Pablo Sánchez, PM of Spain which has THE HIGHEST GROWTH IN THE EU+UK My Eng s/t👇