FILE PHOTO: A woman holds a small bottle labelled with a "Coronavirus COVID-19 Vaccine" sticker and a medical syringe in this illustration taken October 30, 2020. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/File Photo

I’ll get straight to the point: Sir Andrew Pollard, head of the Oxford Vaccine Group, is either a liar or a complete dingbat. Sir Andrew claims achieving herd immunity with the Delta Variant™ is “mythical,” and that “herd immunity is not a possibility because [Delta] still infects vaccinated individuals.”

Hey, Sir Andrew! Get a load of this!

1-(1/R0).

That’s the herd immunity threshold formula. Herd immunity is the mathematical output of R0, the base reproduction ratio. R0 is the number of people one infected person can infect. Multiply the output by 100 and you get the threshold stated as a percentage of the population.

The formula is very clear on two things, Sir Andrew:

One, if a infectious virus can spread through a population, then there is a herd immunity threshold. R0 for COVID is about 2.5.

This means…

1-(1/2.5) DOES NOT EQUAL 100%! IT EQUALS 60%!

Two, there is no variable in that formula that says “vaccine.” Therefore…

HERD IMMUNITY MAY BE ACHIEVED INDEPENDENT OF A VACCINE.

Duh.

I’m typing in caps, Sir Andrew, to try to get the point across to you. You’re in charge of the Oxford Vaccine Group and this SHOULD BE SOMETHING YOU KNOW. And I apologize if “Sir” is not your personal pronoun.

Oh… so you’re saying the Delta Variant™ is “highly infectious,” and R0 is at 8 and therefore the herd immunity threshold is higher at 87.5%?

One, that just means you’re still lying about herd immunity not being achievable without a vaccine; and

Two, that also means the Delta Variant™ peaked last month and is dying out. I don’t need to tell a man of your achievements that the more infectious a virus is, the faster it spreads… right? Eh, I probably should remind you of that, actually…

The more infectious it is, the faster it (is suppose to) spreads (unless you’re a dingbat or a liar).

Now why would you say these things, Sir Andrew, when you certainly know better?

It probably has something to do with how a year ago, when I had only 2,600 followers on my (now perma-banned) Facebook policy page, I received this message after being “fact checked” by seven(!) sites including PolitiFact, Reuters, AP, and Agence France Presse. I can’t even remember the other three. They pulled in Johns Hopkins, UT Irvine, UT Austin, Penn State, and several others that again I can’t remember.

(Funny enough, all but two of the “fact checks” seem to have been disappeared from the internet. But anyway…)

So what did I do to warrant so much attention from such heavy hitters despite having next to no following?

I pointed out that the persistent decrease in the positivity rate indicated we reached herd immunity in May 2020. Being Matt McBride, I of course went point-by-point in all of these “fact checks” and discredited all of their assertions.

Of course, now we know that the positivity rate, the case fatality rate, and both the predicted and observed herd immunity threshold dates all align to May 2020. It’s just simple math, really.

But soon after being “fact checked,” I received this message:

“Hi Matthew, I’m a researcher at the University of Oxford, and I am interviewing people whose COVID-19 posts have been fact checked, labelled, and/or removed. One of your posts was identified and flagged by politifact before being labelled by FB. I’d like to ask you a few questions to hear about your story and experience with this. Please let me know if you would be willing to chat and I can share a bit more information about the project. Thank you!”

Wow! An Oxford researcher cared so much about a guy with almost no social media following that he personally wanted to make sure I was okay!

So having been taught to look both ways before I cross the street, I dug a little and found the guy was at the time a postdoctoral research fellow at the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism. He specializes in part in health misinformation, disinformation, and political communication.

RISJ is funded by Facebook, Google, the BBC, multiple world class universities, and other major national media agencies. RISJ’s governance includes executives from Facebook, Washington Post, and The Atlantic. RISJ is essentially the media’s core political propaganda factory. Their research always starts with the assumption that the media message was The Truth. Even their URL has “politics” in it.

Oxford is just a part of the RISJ propaganda machine, another cog in the machine using its academic reputation to spread propaganda. Of course, this Oxford researcher wasn’t interested in my experience being fact checked. Remember, I worked with these types: He wanted some quotes that he could twist to use against me. I never responded.

So, Sir Andrew, we know you’re out to sell a vaccine, although for what specific reason I remain unsure. You sure have made a ton of money already off the fear you’ve pushed, so I don’t know why you still want to stick everybody on the planet with your concoction.

We are from two different worlds, Sir Andrew, but in my world no amount of money is worth sinking one’s own reputation.

CHECK OUT THE LATEST EPISODE OF THE TROY SMITH SHOW FEATURING AN INTERVIEW WITH LEADER OF TAKE CALIFORNIA BACK, DR. CHRISTIAN VIGIL!

SHARE AND SPREAD THE WORD, BIG TECH IS CENSORING US LIKE NEVER BEFORE!

THE TRUTH IS AT LAUNCH LIBERTY!

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