UPDATE: A follow-up to the below article was published in September 2023 after National Records of Scotland contacted the author regarding unusual data errors. A response to readers' remarks was published in November 2023.
Given what was routinely portrayed in the mainstream media in 2020 and beyond during the course of ‘the pandemic’, one would expect the death toll ‘from the Covid–19 virus’ to be abnormally high in the employed groups most in contact with the general public, namely shop workers, police and teachers. Covid was, after all, reported many times as a ‘once-in-a-century’ event.
You may have seen in my previous Freedom of Information piece that there were, astonishingly, zero deaths among all doctors and nurses in Scotland over a three-year period from Covid–19.
With that established, my curiosity was firmly engaged. We can see from official statistics that the total number of people employed in Scotland within shop work, the police force and education is around 300,000—there are approximately 245,000 jobs in Scottish retail; 16,600 are employed by Police Scotland; and 52,600 Scots work as teachers.
The professional hazards
In 2020, Scottish Police Federation (SPF) chairman David Hamilton said the police could be ‘super spreaders’ of the virus. He also raised concerns about attacks on his union members which deliberately sought to infect them.
‘Not only is it disgusting, coughing and spitting on someone, particularly at this time, it is absolutely appalling and essentially weaponsing the virus and using it to try and cause harm to other individuals,’ he said.
These attacks, reported by the Scottish mainstream press, were not just made on police officers. They were also reported to be commonplace amongst shop staff in 2020. This issue was considered so severe that the Scottish Government decided to legislate on it.
The Scottish parliamentarian (MSP) behind the legislation insisted that ‘enough is enough’. Labour’s Daniel Johnson said that attacks and abuse of retail staff had increased since the coronavirus pandemic began.
Moreover, it was reported that Scottish teachers were also being attacked during ‘the pandemic’.
The reporting above is quite disturbing, and those on the metaphorical front lines were most definitely at an increased risk from ‘the virus’ as compared with the rest of the general public, who were told to stay at home as much as possible and not to socialise outside their government-advised ‘bubbles’.
So it may come as a surprise just how different mortality rates from ‘the virus’ were among the above occupational groups over the ‘stay-at-home’ remainder of the Scottish population.
The death statistics
Here is a recent Freedom of Information response I have received on deaths involving Covid–19 for all shop workers, police and teachers in Scotland. I never would have expected such a dramatic result of reported deaths from ‘the virus’.
From all other causes, among people in the aforementioned occupations over the same period, there were 2,522 deaths. These were not reported, nor grieved by the Government, but every ‘Covid’ death was a tragedy, according to the First Minister.
Source: Archive | National Records of Scotland
The Scottish mainstream press was again, repeatedly, just as we saw with nurses, reporting deaths in shop workers as being from the virus—which these official statistics contradict. All the above other causes of death were not considered relevant to be reported.
Conclusion
The reality is that over a three-year period in Scotland, there were zero deaths from ‘the Covid–19 virus’ amongst the employment sectors most in contact with the public (including doctors, nurses, shop workers, police, and primary and secondary school teachers). It is now unarguable that these data demonstrate a ‘pandemic’ of fear and hysteria, not backed by science or evidence.
Professor John Oxford, one of the UK’s foremost virologists, said at the start of Covid hysteria in March 2020:
Personally, I would say the best advice is to spend less time watching TV news, which is sensational and not very good […] We are suffering from a media epidemic.
As a Scotsman, and in light of these unreported and (to me) jaw-dropping facts, I cannot escape the uneasy feeling that we are witnessing something truly grotesque occurring in our country and that ‘the virus’ has been and is still being used by our government in lockstep with unelected NGOs to instil dangerous behaviours and permanent changes in society that will not ever be in the public interest.
To take one local-level Scottish example, South Lanarkshire Council intones (emphasis added):
The Covid-19 pandemic has exposed major weaknesses in our economy […] As the world recovers, we have a chance to reset the clock and build back better than before.
Where is the voice of the people? I think it’s time to speak up—and loudly.
