PROFILE: Alasdair Munro - Paediatric Registrar
The Intersection of Pro-Disease Delusion & Pseudoscientific Conclusion
PREFACE - REQUIRED READING:
01: What COVID Does To The Body
02: Top 20 COVID Myths, Debunked
One of the most delightful aspects of Twitter is how one can compile years of vast, sweeping statements one makes about COVID-19, and then compare them to reality. You can then proceed to review someone’s credibility and claims against the facts. If one is going to present themselves as a public-facing authority on an ongoing pandemic, seen as a reliable source of information about a new, deadly, and disabling virus, to the degree of having a Substack where one solicits donations, then you had damned well be certain that you are getting the information you are putting out to the public correct. Or at the very least, have the humility to admit when you’re wrong. If you don’t want the responsibility, don’t bother putting yourself out there.
Which brings us to Alasdair Munro, a Pediatric Registrar (record keeper) (CORRECTION: a specialist who hasn’t yet become a full consultant. Pardon my lack of familiarity with the British healthcare system. -Ed) with the Southampton Clinical Research Facility in the United Kingdom. Since 2021, we have compiled an extensive record of ludicrous statements that Munro has made about COVID-19 which are not only entirely wrong, but not at all based in science. Munro has jumped way beyond the red line of his supposed fields of expertise, and planted his flag in the uncharted space of numerous fields chock full of experts more than happy to utterly humiliate him. But this overtly smug, cheerful little dullard insists that he knows better than all of them, and has grown quite a following - his most dedicated supporters being anti-vax and anti-PPE lunatics.
Which is fine with Munro, since they all share the same general thesis as him: that COVID is actually harmless (except in the weak and infirm) and we should all gleefully accept being repeatedly infected with a virus that damages nearly every part of the body, including the brain. So, let’s review his record of public COVID declarations and compare them to the facts:
In December of 2020, Munro is already on the “COVID is just the cold, bro” train, and even though this new virus has only been in circulation for about a year, has already begun assuming his complete and total understanding of it, making a mockery of an immunologist with bold, but early claims about COVID which… ended up being true. Don’t worry, we’ll come back to this.
In February of 2021, Alasdair Munro informs a colleague that the Koch-funded Great Barrington Declaration’s ideal of “herd immunity” via mass infection has been rebranded to the “Depletion of Susceptibles” - as in, the deaths of the vulnerable, the immunocompromised, disabled, etc. are simply… “depleting susceptibles.” This is a vocal endorsement of naked eugenics, one of the founding tentpoles of fascism and the Third Reich, the movement that nearly bombed Munro’s home of the United Kingdom into oblivion.
On May 28th, 2021 Alasdair Munro tweets out that there is “universal consensus” that children do not transmit COVID, are more at risk from “collateral damage” (which is code for non-pharmaceutical interventions & basic disease prevention), and do not need to be vaccinated against COVID.
All of these statements would turn out to be 100% false. In the 2021-22 school year in the United States, over 1000+ children died as a result of being infected with COVID. Hundreds of thousands of children lost a primary caregiver due to COVID, many of them because they were forcibly infected at school, brought the virus home, and transmitted it to a loved one, resulting in their death. There is zero logic or scientific basis that a virus such as COVID would somehow magically spare children - is it because they’re shorter or something? COVID remains the largest disease killer of children in the United States and United Kingdom.
To quote Dr. Jonathan Howard of Science Based Medicine in March 5th, 2022:
In their relentless quest to minimize the virus’s impact on children, the subjects of my criticism refuse to simply enumerate the number of children who’ve died of COVID. They instead distract their readers with irrelevant factoids, like saying only that COVID has killed many more elderly people than children. While this is true, according to the CDC’s COVID Data Tracker, 1,538 children (as of 01-26-23, that number is now over 2,000 -Ed) have died of COVID. That’s a large number to me, and it’s not a surprise that COVID minimizers don’t want their audience to know it.
Similar numbers can be found in the UK as well. Munro pushed out dangerous falsehoods about COVID to a global audience, and many children paid the ultimate price due to the consensus he helped foster. There is no shame, nor regret from Munro. A grown adult would accept responsibility for helping to get children killed, and retire from public life in disgrace. Instead, Munro has only doubled down on his falsehoods - as children continue to be repeatedly infected & watch their general health decline, including the development of cognitive and neurological issues.
Of course, we have a multitude of tools to prevent airborne transmission of COVID - including N95 respirators, HEPA air filters, Corsi-Rosenthal boxes, and other tools. Unless, of course, you were asking Alasdair Munro, who makes a stunning declaration on May 24th, 2022:
Now, is Alasdair Munro an aerosol physicist? Is he at all qualified to talk about the effectiveness of N95 respirators in preventing COVID infections? Does he bother contrasting the potential “downfalls” of COVID prevention tools with the long term effects of repeated COVID infections in children? As in, does he do any sort of relevant science? Nope! Munro simply declares “there is no feasible … solution” and makes some terrible, tortured cholera metaphor. Alasdair Munro is the final authority on all things COVID, according to Alasdair Munro. You cannot prevent COVID. We must all be repeatedly infected with the virus - this is Munro’s demand: complete and total submissiveness to a virus he’s on the record knowing nothing about. And to think they let this man work with children, apparently. If you’re okay with this, then you’re okay with your child’s school bus having a drunk driver at the helm.
In October 12, 2021 David Leonhardt, editorial minimizer at the New York Times, gives Alasdair Munro’s profile a massive boost by giving him a quote in the Morning Newsletter article “COVID and Age” - yet another naked eugenics molehill of ideological sludge. You should listen to the Death Panel episode on David Leonhardt, found here. Let’s evaluate this drivel:
“Covid is a threat to children. But it’s not an extraordinary threat,” Dr. Alasdair Munro, a pediatric infectious-disease specialist at the University of Southampton, has written. “It’s very ordinary. In general, the risks from being infected are similar to the other respiratory viruses you probably don’t think much about.”
A minimizer quoting another minimizer and misrepresenting his qualifications in order to mislead the public? Well I never! Let’s evaluate Munro’s claim with an actual doctor, the lovely Dr. Jonathan Howard of Science Based Medicine again in July 16th, 2021:
The numbers couldn’t be clearer. According to the CDC, 490 children under age 17 years have died of COVID-19 in the US. This number was derived from an analysis of 83% of the total number of COVID-19 deaths, so the actual number of pediatric deaths is certainly a bit higher than this.
In contrast, the CDC reported that just one child died of the flu during the 2020-2021 flu season.
Whoopsie. I’d hate to be quoted in the paper of record, for all eternity, being this factually incorrect. But Munro really just doesn’t care, and never bothered to put in a correction of his statement against the facts.
So let’s move ahead to 2022, and Munro’s screws begin to fully pop loose now. I mean full blown, naked eugenics- completely reprehensible in any moral and ethical manner that is a betrayal to every single actual doctor in Southampton who is forced to consider Munro a colleague - and lord, do I pity them.
On January 28th, 2022, Alasdair makes a massive claim about COVID reinfections being relatively harmless, based on zero evidence, and reinforces his deranged subscription to the Koch-seeded ideal of “hybrid immunity” via mass infection, and that there will be no lasting or long-term harm. Of course, followers of the PAI know this already is not the case; that the damage is cumulative, and infection is to be avoided, even after vaccination.
In “#Girlboss” culture, one of their catchphrases is to “Grant Every Woman the Confidence of a Mediocre White Man.” Well, here’s your confidence. Well, here’s that overzealous, unfounded confidence. It hasn’t gone well for Munro’s claims, when in November 10th 2022 the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis posts an article titled: “Repeat COVID-19 infections increase risk of organ failure, death - Researchers recommend masks, vaccines, vigilance to prevent reinfection” - gee whiz, that sure starts to sound like the precautionary principle of public health, if I’ve ever heard it. Maybe Munro should try looking that one up some time!
In February 19th, 2022 Alasdair Munro decides he’s also an excellent stand-up comedian, and begins to compare head-lice to COVID. Y’know, just like all of the lice-induced brain damage and chronic fatigue affecting countless COVID infected children in the United Kingdom - which according to Long COVID Kids:
Here, Munro also pushes the meme that COVID is now magically “endemic,” an absurdist statement made by people who had never even heard the term before 2020, and has already been thoroughly debunked - by the basic principles of epidemiology. Just like head lice, we must all repeatedly subject our children to COVID. Who cares about the long term effects - they don’t exist, because Munro said so! Your kid getting COVID four times a year is actually good for them! No, really. Munro seriously makes this argument at one point, which you’ll see later on in this piece.
Around this time, the gaggle of faux-experts around COVID with a pro-infection agenda start getting backlash from… people that have functioning brains, who understand the simple facts that “disease = bad,” and “new and unknown diseases with deadly and disabling effects are to be avoided” and Munro knew he had an opening to gain clout with his fellow minimizers - by jumping on his sword. So Alasdair jumps on Substack, and plops this banger out in May 19th, 2022:
Rest assured, it’s all worthless drivel, and doubling down on absolving Munro and his pro-COVID friends of any responsibility for misleading the public. The newly disabled, those who have lost family members, those who see bullshit and are calling it for what it is - they’ve broken the rules! They’re being uncivil! They need to be shut out of prim, proper, civilized scientific discourse, of which my contributions towards are quite important! This is your standard “tone policing,” a concept that has been understood long before COVID-19. Unable to refute the arguments of supposed “angry Zero-COVID fanatics,” Munro’s only answer is that they are to be simply written off, smeared, and dismissed - even if they’re mostly women, but alas. Many well off professional class personalities, most of which never had to work a real job, responded well to this, including Leana Wen - who we’ll get to one day, so Munro’s profile grew.
“Why are you so mad at us? We’re just telling you to shut up and get a brain eating bat virus several times a year, and that it’s somehow good for you.”
Now that Munro has had his Martin Luther moment with his demands for civility pinned on the Castle Church, the pro-virus engines in his little pod-person brain start to seriously kick into high gear.
On May 24, 2022, Alasdair Munro makes a deranged endorsement of “hybrid immunity,” the evolution of the Koch-funded (the same people who funded the racist Tea Party movement, which led to President Trump) Great Barrington Declaration’s ideal of “herd immunity” via mass infection. Even better, he does it with a snarky little emoji combo - even as people are already on their third reinfection, some already on their fifth - especially in children, and their health is rapidly declining. “Hybrid Immunity” has already been thoroughly debunked and is nothing more than a justification of support for mass infection, mass disability, and mass death.
On June 23, 2022, Alasdair Munro starts going after Long COVID (COVID-induced disability) in children - and declares, based off a single study from Denmark, that actually, children who got COVID had an improved “quality of life.” Oh, and if kids do get Long COVID, it all just goes away anyways - so stop worrying and learn to love the virus! This is what you have to understand - ever since 2020, Munro has never been wary of COVID. He has always had a singular conclusion - endorsing mass, repeated infection, and damn the consequences. The people that are dying? Weak, infirm, disposable. The people becoming disabled? Are just making it up, or it’s no big deal.
One of the major consequences of Munro’s constant minimizing and downplaying of the virus is that it builds a consensus that children do not need to be vaccinated against COVID-19 - and the rates of child vaccination in the United States and the United Kingdom are absolutely dire. Pathetic, even - minimizers such as Munro have played a large part in failing to inform parents of the need to vaccinate their children against COVID. Contrarian doctors such as Munro have secured themselves a great deal of clout, wealth, and whatever else by sabotaging and undermining public health and vaccination efforts, and the consequences have been dire.
On August 2nd, 2022 Alasdair Munro declares that everyone except him was wrong about Omicron reinfections, and in fact, being reinfected with Omicron was no big deal at worst, and at best is actually good for you, as part of his deranged “hybrid immunity” (eugenicist mass infection endorsement) agenda. Again - no humility, no remorse.
On August 17th, 2022, Munro doubles down on the eugenics of his pro-infection “Hybrid Immunity” endorsement, declaring the deaths of the vulnerable, or those dying from breakthrough infections, or kids dying from COVID to simply be the “depletion of susceptibles” because he knows he will catch heat for declaring his endorsement of mass death and disability in support of the rightoid billionaire backed “Herd Immunity” ideal. Especially considering the disproportionate impact of COVID on communities of color in the United States and the United Kingdom, this is arguably a declaration of support for white supremacy. Munro’s employers at the Southampton Clinical Research Facility should have the final say, frankly. They let this man work with children, may I remind you.
So we’re going to rewind a little bit, and get into the final (for now) chapter of Munro’s deranged fiction regurgitation exercise. In a previous article I already ripped into his claims of “Immunity Debt,” (combined with a dash of mansplaining!) but as this is Munro’s special profile, we’re going to go all the way through this little character arc, as it’s his most recent claim to fame as of November 26th, 2022.
On June 2nd, 2022, Alasdair Munro starts freaking out about his local children’s ICU being overloaded with cases of various diseases including RSV, part of the current “tripledemic” overwhelming hospitals across the world right now. His colleague Jonas Ludvigsson in Sweden, a nation notorious for it’s horrific & frankly murderous handling of the pandemic, claims this is a post-pandemic phenomenon. So how does Munro respond to this sudden crisis?
Alasdair Munro immediately declares it has A) nothing to do with COVID, and B) starts pimping his Substack newsletter. Incredible confidence! In June of 2022! Are we living in The Matrix, and Alasdair Munro has the power to immediately download all of the answers to infectious diseases to his brain before he starts smashing away on his Substack?
Where’s the humility? After repeatedly getting the pandemic and his understanding of the virus wrong, does Alasdair Munro decide to take a step back and get the facts right before communicating to his audience? No. Munro immediately leaps on his Substack so nobody catches him potentially endorsing the precautionary principle of public health. Munro will always be pro-infection, and he will always have an excuse to justify the policies that have permanently harmed countless children around the globe, many to a fatal end - the end of dreams, careers, life itself.
Worse, the real answer at this point is clear, and it dates back to the original exchange I opened this piece with. So many of us hoped that immunologist Anthony Leonardi was just a crank. Prayed he was wrong. But time has moved forward, science’s understanding of the virus has advanced, and Munro’s wisecracks in 2020 now do nothing but immortalize what a childish fool this smug little brat remains. You can see this understanding of COVID damaging the immune system crossing over into the mainstream discourse, including CBS Evening News from Dr. Aileen Marty:
However in the mind of Alasdair Munro, to quote the classic videogame Max Payne:
As the term “immunity debt” starts to take hold as an explanation from pro-infection advocates looking to demonize those who protected their children from COVID, they claim that COVID protections created an “immunity debt.” This is a completely pseudoscientific term debunked by actual scientists and immunologists, that never existed in scientific literature until 2021. All the while, as children who had a previous COVID infection start filling up pediatric ICU wards as a result of weakened immune systems, Alasdair Munro decides that this is his time to strike.
On November 5th, 2022 Alasdair Munro takes to Twitter to defend the term, where he proceeds to link to his own EDITORIAL (!!!) on the topic, as well as a few articles from fellow pro-infection advocates, none of which were written before the year 2021 - over a year into the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, as many pro-COVID influencers began to truly find their voice and grow a following on social media in the wake of the Great Barrington Declaration’s rightoid billionaire funded pseudoscience. The Counter Disinformation Project wrote a fantastic breakdown on this term.
Previous readers of the PAI will know this term was already debunked by actual immunologist Andrea Love of The Unbiased Science Podcast, who is sadly not a pediatric registrar nor a Substack grifter nor a white man, so her specialized knowledge is actually woefully inadequate to Supergenius Munro, as he explains here:
…In the most condescending and offensively misogynistic tone imaginable. I would be ashamed to be a woman & be forced to work in the same office as someone so utterly sexist & repulsive. So not only do we have Munro on the record being utterly wrong about COVID and “immunity debt,” but he has to talk down to women in order to defend his supposed genius. No humility, no remorse, no respect. This is turning a scientific discussion toxic. This is engaging in a negative way. This is looking like a jerk. This is making the common mistake of mansplaining. I suppose Alasdair Munro’s “Hidden Curriculum of Science Twitter” didn’t do Mr. Munro any good here.
What an insecure child, desperate for validation from the worst ghouls on social media, trapped in a grown man’s body. Again, they let Munro work with children at the Southampton Clinical Research Facility.
On November 18th, 2022 Alasdair Munro tweets out a completely ludicrous statement about your immune system that implies it is some sort of “muscle” that needs to be “trained,” and inadvertently makes an endorsement of infecting yourself with every single disease known to mankind. This is obviously ludicrous, and only goes to show that Alasdair Munro would flunk any Immunology 101 course.
For the better part of three years now, Alasdair Munro has made wide and sweeping statements about SARS-CoV-2 and COVID-19 that were not backed by evidence or fact, and were entirely incorrect, in various ways, debunked by specialists from multiple fields. The only thread these statements have in common is Munro’s commitment, since 2020, in support of a mass infection approach to the pandemic - that leads to mass disability and mass death. The former all fictional in his mind, and the latter all little more than a bunch of weak, infirm, and generally worthless human beings not worth caring about.
Alasdair Munro is completely unqualified to comment on the ongoing COVID pandemic, and has proven himself unable to operate in the medical field in any capacity - not even as a janitor, as the man clearly does not take disease prevention seriously. It’s time for the Southampton Clinical Research Facility to sever all ties with Mr. Munro and publicly rebuke the fantastical amounts of fiction he has excreted into the public discourse, directly sabotaging the efforts of his colleagues to manage this ongoing coronavirus pandemic.
It’s time to put a stop to this nonsense. Here is where you come in:
You can email tos@substackinc.com to report Munro’s Substack for COVID disinformation.
You can email UHS.SouthamptonCRF@nhs.net to report Alasdair Munro’s unethical misconduct and disinformation to Munro’s employer.
You can contact any of the journalists at the local Southern Daily Echo or e-mail them at newsdesk@dailyecho.co.uk to inform Munro’s community of the actual harms of COVID-19 and the importance of PPE during an airborne pandemic, versus his ludicrous claims.
You can tweet at the Southampton City Council that a known disinformation peddler has spread countless lies about COVID-19 amongst their community for personal profit and clout.
It is time for the public to start pushing back on the countless falsehoods Alasdair Munro has spent multiple years pushing on the public in support of mass infection, mass disability, and mass death. Become the change you wish to see in the world.