Factchecking the Factcheckers - Full Fact against Mike Yeadon

This young guy "Abbas Panjwani" from Full Fact claims the following:

Ex-Pfizer scientist turned lockdown sceptic Mike Yeadon appears in a video liked thousands of times on social media telling mistruths about the pandemic.

He first claims: “You don’t need masks, they don’t work.”

Masks do work. Masks have been shown in various studies to reduce the transmission of viral particles.

It may be the case that respirators work better than surgical masks, but surgical masks are still beneficial. There is a reason why they are used and have been used for decades in healthcare settings. 

Mr Yeadon then says: “Forget lockdowns, they never slow transmission which took place mostly in institutions like hospitals and care homes.”

The effect of lockdowns on reducing transmission has been covered by various scientific papers.

Theoretically, you would expect lockdowns, which limit the interaction of humans, to slow the spread of a disease which is spread by person-to-person contact. 

Circumstantial evidence also points to this conclusion. In England, there have been three lockdowns, in March 2020, in November 2020 and in January 2021. In each case, following the introduction of lockdown measures, cases and deaths which had been rising, then fell.  

It is worth noting that Mr Yeadon’s previous explanation for why cases and deaths fell in the spring of 2021 was that herd immunity had been reached which was evidently not true as tens of thousands of excess deaths were recorded over winter. 

As for the claim that transmission mainly happened in institutions, there isn’t enough evidence to say this. Some studies point to contact within households being responsible for the majority of infections.

We’ve written before on how it’s hard to know whether cases of Covid-19 in hospitals are actually due to hospital transmission.

Mr Yeadon then says: “You don’t need to be vaccinated by inadequately tested and somewhat dangerous gene-based spike protein-inducing proteins [sic].”

Three Covid-19 vaccines have been approved by the UK regulator for use at the time of writing: the Moderna vaccine, the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine, and the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine.

Multiple stages of trials have proved that these three vaccines are safe and effective. Although a possible link between the AstraZeneca vaccine and an incredibly rare kind of blood clot is still being investigated, the benefits of the vaccine far outweigh the risks for most people. 

The Moderna and Pfizer vaccines both use mRNA “gene” technology which, once inside the body, provides the instructions on how to produce spike proteins like those found on the surface of the Covid-19 virus, prompting the body to generate antibodies. This is not dangerous.

This is my comments on his remarks:

1. Credentials: A young guy against one of the worlds most respected and published scientists. Who do you believe?
2. Mike Yeadon has everything to lose by speaking out, including maybe his life. Full Fact is funded bny Facebook, Pierre Omidyar(E-bay), George Soros and "anonymous Donors".
3. There is no comment field on the youtube video. Full Fact obviously doesn't want a debate.
4. Regarding Face Masks: 

There is some evidence that face masks might reduce, but not eliminate virus transmission in droplets from sick individuals. Full facy is also referring to a study in the Lancet from May 2020 that was very hypothetical based on no randomised controlled studies released before the first randomised study from Denmark, that showed no significant effect of Face masks ro reduce Covid transmission.

This means that there could be a reduction, but not an elimination of contagion from sick people. This does not implicate that wearing face masks can:

All these things are covered by the following references: https://www.medicdebate.org/taxonomy/term/2826
They also increase the risk of spread by finger contact as people touch their faces more often when adjusting the masks.

There have been no difference in spread of covid 19 if you compare countries or states with mask mandate and social distancing, rather a tendency to the opposite.

5. Regarding Lockdowns: It has been clearly proven that Lockdowns have more negative than positive effects. The studies stating the opposite are either computer models without relationship to reality, ie this study cited by Full Fact from the infamous Imperial college based on a computer model or non-comparative studies, where you mistakenly believe that the ie natural tendency for infections to diminish in summer was caused by lockdowns.

For more references, see https://www.medicdebate.org/taxonomy/term/2822. An Israeli study calculated that the cost for every potential prolonged life year because of Lock Downs would be 40 million dollars