British columnist and author Allison Pearson, who said that lockdown doesn’t save lives, started 2021 with a tweet, asking about how Wuhan has managed to get the coronavirus under control.
Well, Wuhan was placed under a strict lockdown—public transport was suspended, school re-openings after the winter vacation were delayed, and population movements were severely curtailed. Dozens of cities in the entire Hubei Province implemented family outdoor restrictions, which typically meant that only one member of each household was permitted to leave the home every couple of days to collect necessary supplies. Also, China set up an effective national system of contact tracing, managing to test 9 million people for SARS-CoV-2 in Wuhan within weeks. Not to mention drones equipped with loudspeakers patrolling the streets. The list goes on.
But those are just the facts. Sam Bowman, on the other hand, decided to answer Pearson’s question with poetry. He crafted his reply using the headlines of her own articles as statements. Since then, over 120,000 people have “liked” Bowman’s response, and someone even re-uploaded it to the subreddit Murdered by Words, where it is going viral too.
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Bowman had seen most of Pearson’s similar “gems” throughout the year and knew they were bad, but hadn’t appreciated just how bad until he put them all together. “That made her Wuhan tweet seem absolutely bizarre to me—she seemed to have no conception of how her actions might have affected our own (very poor) response to Covid in the UK,” he told Bored Panda.
Pearson definitely noticed the thread. She wasn’t very fond of it too. “She sent one tweet saying that she didn’t, in fact, disagree with the things I’d said she did. I thought that was strange because all the pieces I’d quoted showed that she did—I had the receipts. Then she blocked me,” Bowman said.
This thread doesn’t mean Bowman is entirely happy with the way the country has reacted to Covid. “Sadly, the UK government has been pretty bad at tackling the pandemic. It’s repeatedly waited way too long to bring in measures it’s needed to, meaning that when it eventually has brought them in, case numbers and deaths were already locked in to be extremely high,” the man shared his thoughts on the situation. “It didn’t do the bare minimum to prevent Covid from re-emerging when cases were low over the summer, and, in fact, actually encouraged people to go out to restaurants and go on foreign holidays over the summer, which ended up increasing case numbers and with people bringing back lots of cases from abroad. It hasn’t even required foreign visitors to have a negative test to enter the country or required that they quarantine when they enter the UK, which has meant that if new strains do arise abroad, like the South African one, we will be exposed.” You can learn more about what he means here.
“A lot of people like Pearson said very stupid things all year, and they’ve been shown to be catastrophically wrong about Covid,” Bowman said, adding that he details some of these in the link above. “Now that it’s clear how bad things are, we need to highlight what they said and embarrass them so they feel some consequences for having been so wrong in such a reckless and irresponsible way.”
After the thread went viral, Allison retweeted this tweet
Image credits: JuliaHB1
As a person who comes from a country that spent 50 years under the Soviet Union occupation, I can’t help but smile with irony when Pearson’s supporters call their government “a totalitarian police state” because it is trying to help its citizens during a global pandemic.
But I guess rhetoric is the only counter-attack they have left in this situation?
Speaking of totalitarianism, when Pearson responded to a BBC article about the risk of coronavirus spreading in universities, she tweeted that she “wanted” students to get the virus to “speed us towards herd immunity.”
This tweet led to her account being suspended for a day—despite her insisting this view reflected the opinions of scientists including Oxford’s Prof. Sunetra Gupta and the Nobel Prize winner Prof. Michael Levitt.
Both scientists have criticized the government’s lockdown too, with Gupta arguing that restrictions weaken the immune system and leave people vulnerable to future pandemics.
That’s quite the U-turn in Pearson’s opinions on the pandemic.
In the early days, she criticized young people branding them “Generation Me” and urged them to practice social distancing and suggested they would “start whingeing about how ‘stressy’ it all is when the authorities try to curtail their freedom to even a minor degree.”
Who knows, maybe she will do another one after Bowman’s thread as well.
Here is what people said after reading Bowman’s thread
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I never considered myself super smart but with all those individuals crawling out of their holes and screaming on the internet, I sure feel like a genius.
Yeah sometimes twitter is a great way of raising your selfconfidence.
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NZ did fairly well, and they aren't a totalitarian regime. They did have strong, decisive leaders who implemented the necessary measures quickly, and communicated them clearly. They also have expert-level track-and-trace, and strong quarantine procedures. Importantly, they are not afraid to recognise and admit errors, own them, and take and communicate corrective measures. Ardern comes off looking like a leader, we have BoJo the incompetant and indecisive muppet.
You forgot to include how much of a liar Boris the Buffoon is.
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@AlphaPuck: that’s a strange way of saying don’t be right and criticize me when I’m wrong and publicly.
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Sad and amazing that absolute totalitarianism is more effective in this case than caring about other people.
That's because many people don't seem to care about anything but what makes them feel better at that moment. Lockdown did not make those people feel nice, so they decided to skip it.
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Since March, people in what are supposed to be some of the most educated countries in the world, have been listening to some of the dumbest people to ever hold a public office. I can't say anything about Boris Johnson because I am not British, but I can speak about Donald Trump and I believe that this man caused 300,000 needless deaths because he wanted to downplay this very deadly disease. Being asked to wear a mask when you are out in public, stay in as much as you can, and social distance as much as you can is not living in a totalitarian society. It's caring about someone other than yourself.
Agreed. In the case of Boris he didn't downplay it, just didn't act fast enough when it mattered unfortunately.
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i think the movie Idiocracy (not a great movie by any means) should be studied as a documentary at schools. It feels as if we've failed at humanity. a few simple rules to be followed, and we couldn't even do that. Pathetic.
ahhh i loved that movie i laughed SO hard because its totally the way humanity is going!!
Load More Replies... Yep, this. People are so dam selfish, can't even fathom doing something for someone else. I work in healthcare and just yesterday had an old woman come in who refused to put on a mask and then told me "I don't care about your health". Absolutely horrid excuse for a human being
Sounds like Allison is a silly bitch. Not surprising. There are a lot of stupid Americans who look at almost 400,000 dead and say, "We don't need masks. I feel fine today."
Alison Pearson is a British journalist and not a smart or popular one except with idiots.
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I still see so much people in the streets with the mask under their nose or smoking without a mask :( Its f*****g january, what the f**k is wrong with them?
... How the hell is someone supposed to smoke with a mask on? *facepalm *
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That's what makes me angry...this could have been over a long time ago, we could all be moving on with our lives but thanks to the ignorant and the selfish I haven't seen my family, been out with friends, been able to take my mother to the braille center, or even go to bed without worrying someone that I love will become sick and die for months. I don't even know why I'm writing this because it won't change anyone's mind...people that don't care enough to wear a mask or stay home certainly don't care about people they haven't met. I feel the lack of care every day, every time I wake up and hear the news I feel just how many people in the world don't give a s**t about people like my mom.
They also lied about it. https://www.firstpost.com/health/covid-19-cases-in-wuhan-mightve-been-10-times-higher-then-official-data-showed-chinese-cdc-report-9159971.html
They didn't lie. China's CDC confirmed a greater number of people with antibodies than recorded infections. It confirms the asymptomatic population of covid, without deaths. To date China has only had around 5000 deaths, you know, roughly the same as Americas daily rate. I trust china more than America and will never take a vaccine made in America.
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Who even knows what happened in Wuhan. Did this guy forget that the pandemic broke out in Wuhan and for months the Chinese denied it? For all we know the death toll was significantly higher. What the Chinese did and what worked in the end was to provide health care to all those people. They built a new massive hospital even! The failure in the west is not a failure of people's scepticism but rather a fail of our health system.
Exactly. They lied for MONTHS and didn't close the city until they were pressured to, and the CCP being, well, the CCP, for sure the numbers they gave are the not real ones.
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Keep wasting time commenting on your own ignorance, instead of researching it. You sound like a broken record of every ignorant stupid media lapdog who sucks up bullshit and parrots the opinions of stupid people.
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This Allison lady sounds like a real moron..How did she get a career in writing? That requires some intelect she clearly doesn't have.
She is like many of those that work for the telegraph (uk) and Fox News (USA)— She isn’t the only one. Also, Boris Johnson was like her until he himself got the virus and then he changed.
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I understand no one wants the government to have all the power to control us like mindless ants, but when it comes to something that affects everyone’s health there isn’t much choice. Something’s gotta give otherwise we’ll never have normal again.
Should we start a Go fund Me for Allison Pearson to cover for all the Aloe Vera she needs for the coming year?
Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country. 60 years ago this was said and now it’s “me me me”. If the government said masks weren’t allowed for security purposes the same crowd would throw a fit if they weren’t allowed to wear a mask. They would have masked rallies and they would say it’s “their right”
And all those countries are either very small, or totalitarian. Some things work differently with one of those 2 factors. Chinese can't choose to do what they want. Does that make a totalitarian regime better? Small countries are also easier to lock down for short amounts of time. The US has corrupt leadership, from congress to individual cities. This allows corrupt leadership to impose their own rules and disregard them at whim. Same with Canada, as we see in Quebec. Comparing those countries to the US is apples and oranges. In addition, those countries had government help with rent and healthcare. The US doesn't. Which is another issue, but a real one that contributes to why US citizens could not just shut down. NOR did those countries have an entire summer of government sanctioned riots that destroyed peoples' lives, and spread the virus even more.
Currently more than 1 of every 1,000 people in the United States has died of COVID. Catching COVID could kill you and/or cause you great pain and/or leave you with health problems that might last for the rest of your life. I'm happy to wear a mask. I'd wear a HAZMAT suit if I had one.
Because from day 1 China wore masks. How do you control an airborne virus? Tell people it's airborne. Not once in all this bullshit did any govt in ANY country (except china) say anything remotely close to telling people it was an airborne virus. We heard wash hands, flatten the curve, we're in this together, social distance. But not once was airborne mentioned. Research it, you'll see I'm right. I worked in a medical faculty and got cautioned for saying it was airborne, everyone believed media instead of actually researching it. Many many lives would have been saved.
I know this is the UK, but we have the issue of too many "Muh rights, muh freedom, and muh choice!" people in the US. Just try and do the kind of lockdown China did here. Would not be pretty.
They also welded some doors shut so sick people would not get out, just like in ye olde days of the medieval plague. But nobody talks about that. I predict the virus will return.
It's a corona, like the common cold. It mutates constantly. Covid 19 has already mutated 100 times and There are many strains across the world right now. There is a reason there has never been a vaccine for corona.
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It all boils down to people who think they are important being told they are not and have to obey the same rules as anyone else. This is why they fight against emergency national medical precautions. They just want to act like nothing is happening. These are the people that people will remember and not in a good way. There will be a lot of politicians losing their next local elections and a lot of media morons will find themselves out of a job when this is all over
After the first three answers, every further argument is like kicking the opponent while laying on the floor... and another... and another... and another. That is SOOO satisfying!
Cool except China has no freedoms for its people of any kind, really. Also, they were abducting sick people from their homes. I agree that the UK/US did very poorly but, China isn't the gold standard this makes it to be. LASTLY, CHINA INFECTED THE WORLD.
Yeah not cool dan. Your last statement smacks of venom and accusation, like it was done on purpose. You talk of of "done poorly" with such a no nevermind shitcunt "but" in there. Did you miss the fact we are talking about 100s of 1000s lives FFS??
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Last thing I'd trust would be pretty much any of the 328 million Americans. You have proven none of you can be trusted. Especially your President, the man with the wall of 10,000 lies.
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Everything that comes out of China "news wise" is propaganda and has been for a very long time. Everything reported in the US is now propaganda. I saw videos of the biggest damn pool party ever coming live from Wuhan in May. Nobody had a mask on in the entire crowd and they were all on floats holding hands. Sorry I dont trust one damn thing coming out of China. They lie. A LOT.
Now COVID is non-existence in where I used live. Some people took them off already, but most chose to wear them.
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Being kind to your fellow man is not total control. That’s our problem as Americans, we are not forced, but asked. And you think it’s patriotic. What was your Military MOS? When did you sacrifice? Just sit back and enjoy the freedom!
Load More Replies... I never considered myself super smart but with all those individuals crawling out of their holes and screaming on the internet, I sure feel like a genius.
Yeah sometimes twitter is a great way of raising your selfconfidence.
Load More Replies... NZ did fairly well, and they aren't a totalitarian regime. They did have strong, decisive leaders who implemented the necessary measures quickly, and communicated them clearly. They also have expert-level track-and-trace, and strong quarantine procedures. Importantly, they are not afraid to recognise and admit errors, own them, and take and communicate corrective measures. Ardern comes off looking like a leader, we have BoJo the incompetant and indecisive muppet.
You forgot to include how much of a liar Boris the Buffoon is.
Load More Replies... @AlphaPuck: that’s a strange way of saying don’t be right and criticize me when I’m wrong and publicly.
Load More Replies... Sad and amazing that absolute totalitarianism is more effective in this case than caring about other people.
That's because many people don't seem to care about anything but what makes them feel better at that moment. Lockdown did not make those people feel nice, so they decided to skip it.
Load More Replies... Since March, people in what are supposed to be some of the most educated countries in the world, have been listening to some of the dumbest people to ever hold a public office. I can't say anything about Boris Johnson because I am not British, but I can speak about Donald Trump and I believe that this man caused 300,000 needless deaths because he wanted to downplay this very deadly disease. Being asked to wear a mask when you are out in public, stay in as much as you can, and social distance as much as you can is not living in a totalitarian society. It's caring about someone other than yourself.
Agreed. In the case of Boris he didn't downplay it, just didn't act fast enough when it mattered unfortunately.
Load More Replies... i think the movie Idiocracy (not a great movie by any means) should be studied as a documentary at schools. It feels as if we've failed at humanity. a few simple rules to be followed, and we couldn't even do that. Pathetic.
ahhh i loved that movie i laughed SO hard because its totally the way humanity is going!!
Load More Replies... Yep, this. People are so dam selfish, can't even fathom doing something for someone else. I work in healthcare and just yesterday had an old woman come in who refused to put on a mask and then told me "I don't care about your health". Absolutely horrid excuse for a human being
Sounds like Allison is a silly bitch. Not surprising. There are a lot of stupid Americans who look at almost 400,000 dead and say, "We don't need masks. I feel fine today."
Alison Pearson is a British journalist and not a smart or popular one except with idiots.
Load More Replies... I still see so much people in the streets with the mask under their nose or smoking without a mask :( Its f*****g january, what the f**k is wrong with them?
... How the hell is someone supposed to smoke with a mask on? *facepalm *
Load More Replies... That's what makes me angry...this could have been over a long time ago, we could all be moving on with our lives but thanks to the ignorant and the selfish I haven't seen my family, been out with friends, been able to take my mother to the braille center, or even go to bed without worrying someone that I love will become sick and die for months. I don't even know why I'm writing this because it won't change anyone's mind...people that don't care enough to wear a mask or stay home certainly don't care about people they haven't met. I feel the lack of care every day, every time I wake up and hear the news I feel just how many people in the world don't give a s**t about people like my mom.
They also lied about it. https://www.firstpost.com/health/covid-19-cases-in-wuhan-mightve-been-10-times-higher-then-official-data-showed-chinese-cdc-report-9159971.html
They didn't lie. China's CDC confirmed a greater number of people with antibodies than recorded infections. It confirms the asymptomatic population of covid, without deaths. To date China has only had around 5000 deaths, you know, roughly the same as Americas daily rate. I trust china more than America and will never take a vaccine made in America.
Load More Replies... Who even knows what happened in Wuhan. Did this guy forget that the pandemic broke out in Wuhan and for months the Chinese denied it? For all we know the death toll was significantly higher. What the Chinese did and what worked in the end was to provide health care to all those people. They built a new massive hospital even! The failure in the west is not a failure of people's scepticism but rather a fail of our health system.
Exactly. They lied for MONTHS and didn't close the city until they were pressured to, and the CCP being, well, the CCP, for sure the numbers they gave are the not real ones.
Load More Replies... Keep wasting time commenting on your own ignorance, instead of researching it. You sound like a broken record of every ignorant stupid media lapdog who sucks up bullshit and parrots the opinions of stupid people.
Load More Replies... This Allison lady sounds like a real moron..How did she get a career in writing? That requires some intelect she clearly doesn't have.
She is like many of those that work for the telegraph (uk) and Fox News (USA)— She isn’t the only one. Also, Boris Johnson was like her until he himself got the virus and then he changed.
Load More Replies... I understand no one wants the government to have all the power to control us like mindless ants, but when it comes to something that affects everyone’s health there isn’t much choice. Something’s gotta give otherwise we’ll never have normal again.
Should we start a Go fund Me for Allison Pearson to cover for all the Aloe Vera she needs for the coming year?
Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country. 60 years ago this was said and now it’s “me me me”. If the government said masks weren’t allowed for security purposes the same crowd would throw a fit if they weren’t allowed to wear a mask. They would have masked rallies and they would say it’s “their right”
And all those countries are either very small, or totalitarian. Some things work differently with one of those 2 factors. Chinese can't choose to do what they want. Does that make a totalitarian regime better? Small countries are also easier to lock down for short amounts of time. The US has corrupt leadership, from congress to individual cities. This allows corrupt leadership to impose their own rules and disregard them at whim. Same with Canada, as we see in Quebec. Comparing those countries to the US is apples and oranges. In addition, those countries had government help with rent and healthcare. The US doesn't. Which is another issue, but a real one that contributes to why US citizens could not just shut down. NOR did those countries have an entire summer of government sanctioned riots that destroyed peoples' lives, and spread the virus even more.
Currently more than 1 of every 1,000 people in the United States has died of COVID. Catching COVID could kill you and/or cause you great pain and/or leave you with health problems that might last for the rest of your life. I'm happy to wear a mask. I'd wear a HAZMAT suit if I had one.
Because from day 1 China wore masks. How do you control an airborne virus? Tell people it's airborne. Not once in all this bullshit did any govt in ANY country (except china) say anything remotely close to telling people it was an airborne virus. We heard wash hands, flatten the curve, we're in this together, social distance. But not once was airborne mentioned. Research it, you'll see I'm right. I worked in a medical faculty and got cautioned for saying it was airborne, everyone believed media instead of actually researching it. Many many lives would have been saved.
I know this is the UK, but we have the issue of too many "Muh rights, muh freedom, and muh choice!" people in the US. Just try and do the kind of lockdown China did here. Would not be pretty.
They also welded some doors shut so sick people would not get out, just like in ye olde days of the medieval plague. But nobody talks about that. I predict the virus will return.
It's a corona, like the common cold. It mutates constantly. Covid 19 has already mutated 100 times and There are many strains across the world right now. There is a reason there has never been a vaccine for corona.
Load More Replies... It all boils down to people who think they are important being told they are not and have to obey the same rules as anyone else. This is why they fight against emergency national medical precautions. They just want to act like nothing is happening. These are the people that people will remember and not in a good way. There will be a lot of politicians losing their next local elections and a lot of media morons will find themselves out of a job when this is all over
After the first three answers, every further argument is like kicking the opponent while laying on the floor... and another... and another... and another. That is SOOO satisfying!
Cool except China has no freedoms for its people of any kind, really. Also, they were abducting sick people from their homes. I agree that the UK/US did very poorly but, China isn't the gold standard this makes it to be. LASTLY, CHINA INFECTED THE WORLD.
Yeah not cool dan. Your last statement smacks of venom and accusation, like it was done on purpose. You talk of of "done poorly" with such a no nevermind shitcunt "but" in there. Did you miss the fact we are talking about 100s of 1000s lives FFS??
Load More Replies... Last thing I'd trust would be pretty much any of the 328 million Americans. You have proven none of you can be trusted. Especially your President, the man with the wall of 10,000 lies.
Load More Replies... Everything that comes out of China "news wise" is propaganda and has been for a very long time. Everything reported in the US is now propaganda. I saw videos of the biggest damn pool party ever coming live from Wuhan in May. Nobody had a mask on in the entire crowd and they were all on floats holding hands. Sorry I dont trust one damn thing coming out of China. They lie. A LOT.
Now COVID is non-existence in where I used live. Some people took them off already, but most chose to wear them.
Load More Replies... Being kind to your fellow man is not total control. That’s our problem as Americans, we are not forced, but asked. And you think it’s patriotic. What was your Military MOS? When did you sacrifice? Just sit back and enjoy the freedom!
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