Cummings Pandemic Prediction? ANOTHER LIE

Today’s papers will not make for happy reading in Downing Street: at yesterday’s daily briefing, alleged Prime Minister Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson announced a move to ease lockdown further, and to open non-essential shops by the middle of next month. This, he most likely believed, would claim today’s headlines. Instead, it was once again his chief polecat Dominic Cummings who took centre stage. And there is worse to come.

Not only did Polecat Dom try to explain away his trip to Durham (and to Barnard Castle), he also claimed that he had always been pro-lockdown: “there had been numerous false stories in the media about my actions and statements regarding Covid, in particular there were stories suggesting I had opposed lockdown and even that I didn't care about many deaths. For years I have warned of the dangers of pandemics. Last year I wrote about the possible threat of coronaviruses and the urgent need for planning”. He did?

BBC economics editor Faisal Islam picked up on that. “Cummings today: ‘Last year I wrote about the possible threat of coronaviruses and the urgent need for planning’.. appears to be reference to this blog... actually about biolab accidents and giving a ‘Red Team’ £1m to test security including honey traps”. But there was a problem with Dom’s claim.

Jens Wiechers had been perusing the Internet Archive, and warned “Cummings said he warned about i.a. corona virus in 2019. Thing is, he didn't. References to SARS and corona virus were added to his blog post on pandemic risks sometime between April and May of this year”. Whoops! And Wiechers’ search had continued.

“I've been spending quite a while now (essentially since he said this at the start of his statement) looking in other media, things where he can't edit, for any mention of SARS or corona virus and so far I'm coming up empty”. Henry Mance of the FT added “Woah, this seems far-fetched. But I have checked on the Wayback Machine and get the same result. What else could explain it?” Any more Cummings watchers care to comment?

Peter Jukes of Byline Media would. “I did go through a lot of Cummings writings in early April and found multiple references to Pandemics, and one to Herd Immunity. But never found one about SARS or Coronavirus. So yes, it looks like this was added recently. And he cited it today … Don’t fake evidence”. Charles Arthur confirmed the later addition.

So back came Faisal Islam to have another look. And this is what he found. “MORE: info on Way Bank machine internet archive corroborated by info on actual blog sitemap - hat tip [Martin Brown], [Aron Moore] and [Jon Williams] … edit that added ‘coronavirus’ quote made ‘2020-04-14 T20:55:20’ … So same day he returned to work, after Durham”.

He added “To be clear - I was genuinely interested in how prescient he had been on coronaviruses, and expected to be impressed. Perhaps that writing is elsewhere ... I’d be interested in reading it and happy to link to it, if anyone can show it me”. He’ll be waiting a long time. Jukes looked for it too, but also came up empty.

What that looks like is Dominic Cummings drove back from Durham, and was so tired that he sat down and edited history to give himself a get-out clause. Now he’s been rumbled.

How many lies have to be exposed before Bozo sacks him? Asking for the whole country.

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