In reading through the WDA’s publication, I checked out the article’s second footnote, regarding spread of respiratory disease by asymptomatic carriers. They cited an article on CNN in claiming that only symptomatic people spread respiratory infections. Not being a doctor, I Googled this. In less than a minute I found that asymptomatic carriers can and have spread influenza and tuberculosis. One study estimates that 25% of the world’s people are asymptomatic carriers of TB.It’s one reason some countries still vaccinate against it.

Asymptomatic carriers also spread other diseases, such as HIV, typhus and cholera. Asymptomatic spread of disease is serious business. If footnote number 2 is so wrong, why read any further into the article?

The article then attacked the COVID spread model from Prof Neal Ferguson. They claim that his estimate of half a million COVID deaths in the UK was a gross exaggeration, by at least a factor of 10. But, there have been over 120,000 COVID deaths in the UK, despite the lockdowns, mask mandates and vaccines. So Ferguson is now off by only a factor of four and we are still counting the dead. Readers can project for themselves what the death count would look like without the public health interventions that were put into place.

And to speak about exaggerated claims, Prof Cahill warned in December of 2020 that giving COVID vaccines to the elderly would lead to “ “most of the elderly, most of those people will have serious adverse events or will die in the next few months.” How could an “expert” be so wrong?

It can be difficult to decide who to trust on important health matters. I find it easy though to dismiss Martin, Prof Cahill and the WDA and will look elsewhere for health information.

Larry Chisesi, Praia da Luz