Kemi Badenoch’s new Shadow Education Minister, Neil O’Brien, backed keeping schools closed during Covid lockdowns and said Prof. Sunetra Gupta and other lockdown sceptics “have a hell of a lot to answer for”. The Telegraph has more.
Neil O’Brien, who has been an MP since 2017 and is a former Health Minister, was one of Mrs Badenoch’s first picks for her new team, announced on Monday.
Mr. O’Brien was a supporter of lockdown measures to contain the spread of Covid during the pandemic, including the closure of schools.
The new Shadow Minister used social media to share data studies that he said proved shutting schools reduced transmission. He also appeared to suggest that he was content with schools being closed as one of the “trade-offs” needed to keep the infection rate down.
Weeks after the third lockdown was announced in January 2021, with schools shutting again to most children, he shared a study he said showed “closing educational settings was the second most effective intervention in reducing R”, the way the spread of Covid was measured. …
He also expressed concern about schools reopening the following month, when the Government announced its roadmap out of Covid lockdowns. Boris Johnson announced then that schools and colleges would open for all students on March 8th.
He wrote that “a cautious, data-driven approach is right” adding: “Newly published Sage [Science Advisory Group for Emergencies] report puts the effect of school reopening on R at between 10% and 50% – huge range of uncertainty still.”
Worth reading in full.
O’Brien notoriously smeared Professor Sunetra Gupta and other lockdown sceptics including Toby, Allison Pearson, Ross Clark and Julia Hartley-Brewer in the Observer in January 2021, saying they “have a hell of lot [sic] to answer for”. In spring 2021 he set up an awful ‘fact-checking’ website called Anti-Virus: The COVID-19 FAQ that purported to counter the Great Barrington Declaration with regime-approved ‘Science’.
On the other hand, since Covid he’s been a key figure in the battle to convince Government to bring down immigration levels and promote data transparency around the issue. So it’s not all bad.
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