TikTok Whitty

Timmy has commented on this story, but I thought I’d add my tuppenny-worth.

Matt Hancock today branded a maskless TikToker ‘pathetic’ and ‘ridiculous’ after he abused Chris Whitty in the street as the Chief Medical Officer got some lunch in Westminster.

Given that the event took place in the open air, the teenager’s lack of a mask was an irrelevance, but they’ve got to mention it anyway, haven’t they?

The Health Secretary has laid into the unnamed teenager, who calls himself ‘AA Bants’, after repeatedly accusing Mr Whitty of ‘lying’ to the nation about the pandemic that has claimed 100,000-plus lives.

That the health secretary decided to wade in at all is pathetic. Shouldn’t he be getting on with matters of state rather than commenting on a teenager making a TikTok video?

The film, shared on social media platform TikTok yesterday, shows Mr Whitty saying hello to passers-by but he refuses to be goaded by the youth who films the scientist standing in a queue while saying: ‘You’re a liar. Mandem is a liar. You lie about the Covid-19 cases man. Stop lying to the TV’.

Last autumn, Whitty and Vallence stood up at a briefing and presented a graph showing how many people would catch C-19 and die. By the time they presented it, it was already demonstrably false. Therefore he is a liar. They have repeatedly lied about this disease and continue to do so. They have lied about how many people have died as a consequence of contracting it, as opposed to those who died anyway. They have lied repeatedly with their scary predictions and they have lied about the efficacy of masks.

Asked about the incident in Strutton Ground Market near Victoria Station, Mr Hancock told the BBC: ‘I think the individual concerned is pathetic, I think it is ridiculous what he is doing.

‘Chris Whitty is one of our greatest living scientists and his advice to the Government all the way through this, and his advice to all of us in the population, has been incredibly smart and thoughtful, and he is a great asset to this nation. The idea that someone would do something as silly as that is ridiculous.’

“Greatest living scientists.” Well, all I can say is that the bar is pretty damned low. The man is a charlatan who is clearly out of his depth.

He added: ‘Chris Whitty is a scientist of great repute and, frankly, he should be respected by everybody. He’s got the big calls right and this man, is not even worth commenting on, this character’.

I don’t respect him. I despise him for his lies and fear-mongering and as a consequence the damage done to the people of this nation. I hold him responsible along with the other charlatans in SAGE and the government. Respect is earned, this man has done nothing that makes him worthy of respect.

Which brings us to Matt Vickers:

He also told the Guardian: ‘The chief medical officer is working day in and day out to help guide our nation through this unprecedented crisis and I think all of us, no matter your political affiliation can agree the man is doing his absolute best.

‘As the clouds of this pandemic continue to part, I think those like Prof Chris Whitty will be seen as heroes who stepped up, did their job and led us through the darkest of hours.

‘As for the young man in the video, the less said the better. Perhaps he should be made to volunteer on a Covid ward. Perhaps then he will feel a pinch of shame and embarrassment for his dangerous conspiracies and yobbish behaviour.’

I’ve been on the receiving end of this moronic appeal to emotion argument myself – for merely questioning the government’s response to the outbreak. It is an argument used by shallow, hard of thinking lack-wits who are unable to form a reasoned logical argument. Given that Vickers is an MP, that’s about right, frankly. The standard of argument put forward by these imbeciles would shame a sixth form debating society. As for his claim that Whitty is some sort of hero… Give me strength. He is typical of a petty little bureaucrat who has stepped out of his comfort zone and level of competence and it is embarrassingly obvious.

All of that said, I don’t think that this kid did anyone any favours. Not least because it gives fuel to those who would label lock-down sceptics as some sort of conspiracy theorists. This is the usual lazy thinking that lies behind the propaganda – a false dichotomy that you are either with the government and its idiotic, contradictory, unscientific rules or you are a crank spreading conspiracy theories. That’s where critical thinking died.