UK COVID Inquiry| Misleading the Public

Prof Jim McMenamin of Public Health Scotland ‘Statement’

Dear Inquiry

I watched Professor Jim McMenamin give evidence on behalf of Public Health Scotland to the inquiry on 29/5/2025. I note that he made several claims within his evidence that are not factually correct and I believe he has used statistical interpretation to mislead the inquiry.

First of all, McMenamin makes the claim that the public health interventions (including the COVID19 vaccines) reduced the number of deaths from COVID19 in Scotland. Even using Public Health Scotland's own data, that claim is not accurate.

Scotland had suffered NO excess deaths in early 2020 when COVID-19 was said to be circulating unchecked. By the time of the National Lockdown on 23/3/2020, Scotland had actually recorded NEGATIVE levels of excess death (below in yellow in the chart). The spike in excess deaths only started AFTER the lockdown was implemented, with death rates in Care Homes doubling during April 2020 (whilst under lockdown restrictions).

Since lockdown, Scotland has suffered over 28,000 excess deaths. This represents a 10% increase on the pre-pandemic average

Prof McMenamin makes the claim that the COVID19 vaccines reduced the number of COVID deaths in Scotland. From Public Health Scotlands own data, we know that Scotland reported 5,000 'COVID' deaths before the vaccine roll out, yet we suffered a further 10,000 'COVID' deaths after the vaccine roll out.

The majority of those 10,000 deaths were amongst the vaccinated. Public Health Scotland Confirmed this at the time in their weekly reports titled ‘COVID19 & Winter Statistics Report’. This report would cease publication in February 2022 after it became clear that +90% of COVID19 deaths being reported were actually amongst the vaccinated, making McMenamin's claim about the vaccine efficacy a false statement.

Data all confirmed by Public Health Scotland themselves. National COVID testing would also stop in Spring 2022 and then, obviously, the number of 'cases' being reported seemed to fall. But was was just a result of the testing having been stopped? The number of excess deaths being recorded in Scotland continued to rise through 2022 and 2023. Something else was killing Scots in excess after the pandemic had been declared over - the inquiry should be investigating the root cause of these excess deaths.

Professor McMenamin also made the misleading statement that there was no correlation between the discharging of 5,000 patients from Scottish Hospitals into Scottish Care Homes and the subsequent spike in excess deaths in our Care Homes. No amount of statistical trickery can hide the facts shown in the table below. During the 10 weeks of National Lockdown, there were 2,478 excess deaths in our care homes. A 84.3% increase over 10 weeks. Then after lockdown ended, care home deaths returned to normal levels - actually went below average over summer 2020. There is clearly a causal link here between the implication of lockdown & treatment protocols (including hospital discharges) and the spike in all-cause excess mortality seen in our Care Homes.

During the cross examination of Prof McMenamim the inquiry counsel raised concerns with the findings of Public Health Scotland's report on Discharges from NHS Scotland Care Homes to Hospitals between 1^st March 2020 and 31st May 2020. The report confirms that in that time period there were 5,198 discharges (4,804 individuals) from hospitals into care homes.

A subsequent Freedom of Information response from Public Health Scotland confirmed that of those 4,804 patients discharged, 1,159 of them died in the Care Home they were discharged into that summer (between 1^st March 2020 - 30 June 2020).

If those patients were deemed fit enough to discharge, why did so many of them die? 675 died within 30 days of discharge. Public Health Scotland act as a Scottish Government Agency, their own report claimed there was no correlation in the spike in deaths with the hospitals discharge . This is Public Health Scotland marking their own home work here and misleading the public and the inquiry with a false claim that there was no statistical correlation between hospital discharge and increase in deaths in care homes.

Can I ask the inquiry to review the data provided here - all sourced directly from official Public Health Scotland or National Records of Scotland data - and ask Professor Jim McMenamin to correct the record.

Scotland - and the rest of the UK - continues to suffer elevated levels of mortality post-pandemic. Why?

Why after a pandemic, when the UK lost 250,000 of our most vulnerable members of the population, do we continue to see elevated levels of death - and most worryingly elevated death rates amongst our younger age groups?

The ONS and National Records of Scotland became so concerned with the elevated levels of excess death that in February 2024 they CHANGED the methodology for calculating and reporting excess deaths. The previous 5-year-average method - based off actual death figures in previous five years - was replaced by a statistical model of 'Expected Deaths'.

This new methodology raised the mortality baseline by +10% and in doing so now hides the elevated mortality levels. Death rates should have fallen after the pandemic, instead they have remained elevated above the pre-pandemic average. No amount of obfuscation or statistical tricks can hide that fact.

Thanks for reading & please share - we cannot allow the truth to be buried.

Please also see the video post of Prof Jim McMenamin’s evidence on the Biology Phenom Substack - link provided below - which inspired me to write this article and write to the Inquiry

.Biology Phenom Substack

Also see link to the YOUTUBE Video YouTube Video