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Sunday 13 February 2022

Julia Hartley Dooda PWNED Again

There are real journalists out there, trying to find stories, check them for factual accuracy, perform follow-on research, and all the while ensuring that they are not distracted by misinformation. And then there are those who simply refuse to listen, and instead continue to peddle opinion masquerading as fact, doing so loudly and persistently. In the latter category are pundits like self-promoting TalkRADIO host Julia Hartley Brewer.

Pretentious? Who, moi?

Ms Hartley Dooda has been unswerving in her opinions on the Covid-19 pandemic: face coverings don’t work, lockdowns don’t work, and so nothing must be permitted to get in the way of Herself Personally Now going off on expensive and ostentatiously trailed long haul holidays, not that she’s just rubbing it in the noses of the less well-off, of course.

Evening all

To this end, she decided to intervene in a discussion on the pandemic involving MSNBC host Mehdi Hasan, after he had correctly asserted “To pretend 3k dead a day [that’s in the USA] - around a fifth of whom are vaccinated - is the time to ‘move on’, that this isn’t a state of emergency, is objectively bonkers. Our vaccination and booster rates suck. None for kids under 5. Long Covid is a thing”. Ms Hartley Dooda wasn’t letting that one pass.


Children don't need Covid jabs, let alone boosters. And there's not a single study showing mask wearing in the real world has any effect at all. You used to be a journalist who looked at facts rather than virtue signalling to get approval. What happened to you?” It was soon made clear to her that face coverings do work, and a whole host of studies showed that they did (a PNAS evidence review makes for a good, if long, read - HERE).


It was also made clear to Ms Hartley Dooda that this was a campaign destined to develop not necessarily to her advantage. Some Tweeters reported her for misinformation. She was told “There are hundreds of studies showing exactly how much masks reduce and contain the spread of airborne respiratory droplets and Covid”, to which all she could manage in response was “There aren't. Really. There aren’t”.


Hasan, meanwhile, applied the most severe of burns when he responded: “You never were one so I won’t ask you that question back … Also, you, like me, have a degree in politics, philosophy, and economics, so save your anti-vaxxer, anti-masker ‘views’ on epidemiology and virology for your conspiracy crowd. Thanks”. In other words, OUCH!


But she was not downhearted: “I've never been anti-vax. I've had Covid twice, am jabbed and have never indulged in any conspiracy theories. I'm not anti-mask, I'm pro-scientific evidence”. She indulged Mike Yeadon until his sick bigotry was exposed. And she was an unswerving supporter of the Great Barrington Declaration. Remember that?


The Declaration’s Wikipedia page notesThe World Health Organization (WHO) and numerous academic and public-health bodies have stated that the strategy is dangerous and lacks a sound scientific basis … [the Declaration] was sponsored by the American Institute for Economic Research, a libertarian free-market think tank associated with climate change denial”. But Ms Hartley Dooda supports what the GBD proposed.


Moreover, she has asserted “the [GBD] was and is correct”. So her assertions are at the very least shaky, and at worst plain flat wrong. And being “pro-scientific evidence” does not mean ignoring the bits that are inconvenient to you. Dooda duly Pwned. Again.


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12 comments:

Mr Larrington said...

The other consequence of mask-wearing, of course, is that it muffles the utter bilge spouted by Julia Dunning Kruger and her ilk.

Daph said...

Well here’s a surprise, for once I agree with JHB in that I favour the Great Barrington Declaration authors who recommend a Focused Protection approach. The declaration has been signed by thousands of medical scientists and practitioners - what lay person like me is to say that their view is more, or less, valid than thousands of other scientists and practitioners who take a different view. All I can say is that the declaration makes sense to me in view of the numbers reported on Covid cases, deaths, complications of co-morbidities, numbers of deaths where Covid is the only cause stated on the death cert, long Covid, adverse vaccine reaction reports, peri- and myocarditis, natural immunity vs vaccine immunity effectiveness, instances of Covid despite being fully vaccinated, all the above in the context of age, sex and race, plus the expectation of eventual endemic existence of Covid.

Anonymous said...

The woman is a brain-dead idiot.

All the paper degrees on the planet couldn't compensate.

Serfing the UK - Scam & Gene said...

@12:46
"The declaration has been signed by thousands of medical scientists and practitioners" including Drs Crippen and Shipman.

Anonymous said...

@ 12:46.

All the "Great Barrington Declaration" proves is that even "professionals" can be dangerous morons.

No responsible scientist claims vaccination and masks STOP the virus. Only that they decrease the chance of infection - substantially if particularly vulnerable. That's invaluable in a pandemic.

The evil mischief of people like Brewer is that she thinks her absurd opinion is worth more than the lives of vulnerable human beings. Which makes her a danger to plain human decency and common sense.

Anonymous said...

Defending Merdi Hasan?


"During a sermon delivered in 2009,[65] quoting a verse of the Quran, Hasan used the term "cattle" to describe non-believers."


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mehdi_Hasan

PaulR said...

Daph - Well there really is a surprise. You come out in favour of the GBD yet can’t go two sentences before contradicting yourself: you’re a lay person and say therefore you can’t favour one of the two broad approaches you outline whilst confidently asserting you favour one of them…

Anonymous said...

Ah, JHB.
Would this be the same person who slates the vaccine but took it so she could jet off on holiday, and posting a picture of herself wearing a mask despite moaning about them?
Who works for the same place that is happy to have "select" individuals rant about the virus strangely run away from debate with actual virologists and immunologists?
Also, I'm sure I noticed somewhere that GB News had vaccine rules for its staff, despite its mouthpieces saying basically "do as I say, not as I do"
Worth looking into Tim???

Anonymous said...

No-one ever says what form that grandly-titled "Focused Protection" would take though, do they?

Perhaps because it's actually much more difficult than it sounds?

Anonymous said...

Spewer is a timely reminder (for those who need it) that "journalism" has become little more than a constant diatribe of far right hate-propaganda.

There may well have been a time when "real journalists" were employed in corporate media. But that era is long dead. Now there is nothing but mean-spirited gobshites and cowards shit scared of losing their worthless "careers". They stink out British culture with their lies, brutal dishonesty and artificial hysteria. Spewer is typical of them, and worse than most.

Dorky Parrot said...

@14:12
'Al Jazeera Host Mehdi Hasan Apologizes for Past Criticisms of Non-Believers' - https://www.thewrap.com/al-jazeera-host-mehdi-hasan-apologizes-for-past-criticisms-of-non-believers/
'Cattle' 'Sheeple' 'Oiky' et al - Terms that you'll see every day on social media and mainstream media. Big deal.

iMatt said...

Children don't need coved jabs, Julia? Well, my 12 yr old niece has a mild dose of Covid twice. Yes, she has been given her full dosage, and has still been affected. However, just think how worse she could and probably would have been without ANY vaccine!

It's akin to wearing a seatbelt. Doing so probably won't stop you getting injured in the even of a severe crash. But it could very well make the difference between being severely injured or not, or being killed or not. Why take the risk?