No prizes for guessing what story dominated this morning’s papers: Professor Pantsdown. A couple of weeks ago I dubbed Neil Ferguson “Dr Strangelove”, trying to capture the mesmeric effect he seems to have had on successive British Prime Ministers. But it turns out the “Strange Love Doctor” would have been more appropriate. According to the Telegraph‘s spellbinding scoop – a marmalade-dropper if ever there was one – Ferguson has been carrying on an affair with a married mother-of-two during the lockdown. Talk about breaking the social distancing rules! And the icing on the cake is that the name of his 38 year-old mistress is Antonia Staats! You couldn’t make it up, as we say on Fleet Street. The punning possibilities are endless. (Guido Fawkes: “Who could blame a boffin for wanting to massage his staats?“) Incidentally, if you can’t get past the Telegraph‘s paywall, not to worry. The story is also in the Mail, the Guardian, the Metro, the Independent, the New York Times… it’s everywhere. The BBC even has it, although in a very muted form. The latest development is that Matt Hancock says it’s now in the hands of the police. Are we about to see Imperial’s Professor of Mathematical Biology led away in handcuffs? The intellectual architect of Britain’s draconian coronavirus policy may be about to experience what it’s really like to be locked down. (He won’t, obviously, but I couldn’t resist that.)
One interesting detail: in his statement to the Telegraph, Professor Ferguson said: “I acted in the belief that I was immune, having tested positive for coronavirus, and completely isolated myself for almost two weeks after developing symptoms.” So not only does Professor Lockdown think you do develop immunity after recovering from COVID-19, but you don’t even need to take an antibody test to prove it. If only all of us who think we’ve had it were free to act in the same way.
I’m fascinated by the details about Antonia Staats. According to the Telegraph, she lives in a £1.9 million house in south London with her husband and two children and has an “open marriage”. Guido has dug up a podcast she did on March 31st (now offline), 24 hours after visiting Professor Ferguson, in which she complains that the lockdown is putting a strain on her marriage. But it’s her politics I’m really interested in. The Telegraph has her down as a “left-wing campaigner”, a reference to the fact that she campaigned against leaving the EU and is a long-standing environmental activist who supported Greta Thunberg’s climate strike. Many of the papers have included this picture of her standing outside Number 10 delivering a petition to the Prime Minister about ending fossil fuel subsidies:
Some of you may be wondering, what is the relevance of Ms Staat’s politics? The answer, obviously, is that her politics are likely to be Professor Ferguson’s politics. We know that he co-authored a paper in 2016 warning of the terrible consequences of leaving the EU, and we can see from his Twitter feed that he’s not exactly a Tory. For instance, he sent the following tweet to the Liberal Democrat MP Layla Moran when she won Oxford West and Abingdon in 2017: “Great news – so happy to wake up to hear you won! Fingers crossed that last night means at least a softer Brexit.”
The reason for looking into the political affiliations of the scientists and experts who’ve been advising governments across the world during this crisis is that it may throw some light on why those governments have made such poor policy decisions. Will the vast majority of those advisers turn out to be left-of-centre, like Professor Ferguson? I’m 99% sure of it, and I think that will help us to understand what’s happened.
I don’t mean they’ve deliberately given right-of-centre governments poor advice in the hope of wrecking the economy for nefarious party-political reasons, or because they’re members of Extinction Rebellion and want to destroy capitalism. Nor do I believe in any of the conspiracy theories linking these public health panjandrums to Bill Gates and Big Pharma and some diabolical plan to vaccinate 7.8 billion people. I have little doubt they’ve acted in good faith throughout – but that’s part of the problem. The road they’ve led us down has been paved with all the usual good intentions.
The mistakes these liberal policy-makers have made are depressingly familiar to anyone who’s studied the breed: overestimating the ability of the state to solve complicated problems as well as the capacity of state-run agencies to deliver on those solutions; failing to anticipate the unintended consequences of large-scale state interventions; thinking about public policy in terms of moral absolutes rather than trade-offs; chronic fiscal incontinence, with zero inhibitions about adding to the national debt; not trusting in the common sense of ordinary people and believing the only way to get them to avoid risky behaviour is to put strict rules in place and threaten them with fines or imprisonment if they disobey them (and ignoring those rules themselves, obviously); arrogantly assuming that anyone who challenges their policy preferences is either ignorant or evil; never venturing outside their metropolitan echo chambers, being citizens of anywhere rather than somewhere… you know the rest. We’ve seen it a hundred times before.
More often than not, the “solutions” these left-leaning experts come up with make the problems they’re grappling with even worse, and so it will prove to be in this case. The evidence mounts on a daily basis that locking down whole populations in the hope of “flattening the curve” was a catastrophic error, perhaps the worst policy mistake ever committed by Western governments during peacetime. Just yesterday we learnt that the lockdowns have forced countries across the world to shut down TB treatment programmes which, over the next five years, could lead to 6.3 million additional cases of TB and 1.4 million deaths. There are so many stories like this that it’s impossible to keep track. We will soon be able to say – with something approaching certainty – that the cure has been worse than the disease.
Neil Ferguson isn’t single-handedly responsible for this world-historical blunder, but he does bear some responsibility. His apocalyptic predictions frightened the British Government into imposing a full lockdown, with other governments quickly following suit. And I’m afraid he’s absolutely typical of the breed. He suffers from the same fundamental arrogance that progressive interventionists have exhibited since at least the middle of the 18th Century – wildly over-estimating the good that governments can do, assuming there are no limits to what “science” can achieve and, at the same time, ignoring the empirical evidence that their ambitious public programmes are a complete disaster. At bottom, they believe that nature itself can be bent to man’s will.
It isn’t an attractive, 38 year-old woman in a red dress that has brought down Professor Lockdown. It’s a nucleic acid molecule in a protein coat.
Okay, rant over.
Not all left-wingers support the lockdowns, of course. There are still plenty of sensible ones out there. I get quite a few supportive messages beginning, “I usually disagree with your politics, but on this occasion…” Here’s one I particularly liked from a reader in Australia:
As a man of the left, I have been as dismayed by the contemporary left’s fervent embrace of lockdown mania as by its failure to understand democratic national populism (Brexit, Trump, etc). Thanks for your sane, rational counterpoint to the remarkable hysteria and panic that has gripped the nations of the world over a reputationally-inflated bug. For lockdown reading, I suggest the real-life-based short story, ‘The Day the Dam Broke’ (in James Thurber’s collection of shorts, My Life and Hard Times) about a “frightful and perilous afternoon in March 1913 [in Columbus, Ohio] when the dam broke, or, to be more exact, when everybody in town thought that the dam broke” and “hundreds of people went streaming by our house in wild panic, screaming ‘Go east! Go east!’ … fearful of being overtaken and engulfed by the roaring waters – that is, if there had been any roaring waters”. The fleeing townsfolk included the town’s doctor, whose statements always carried conviction and gravitas. After the panic died down “people had gone rather sheepishly back to their homes and offices, minimising the distances they had run and offering various reasons for running” even though “there had never been any danger at all”. Thurber’s story is a wry study of unfounded fear, folly and foolishness. It should be required reading for all epidemiologists and politicians.
I’ve tracked down a YouTube video of Keith Olbermann, an American political commentator, reading aloud The Day the Dam Broke that you can view here.
I wrote about the shortcomings of Professor Ferguson’s computer model for my column in this week’s Spectator, but last night the editor got me to rip it up and write a new one about last night’s extraordinary news. I’ve done that, and it’s now online. Here’s an extract:
Why is it that the most zealous advocates for reining in human behaviour, whether it’s in Prohibition-era America or the midst of a public health crisis, always get caught with their pants down? I’m reminded of something the late Christopher Hitchens said: ‘Whenever I hear some bigmouth in Washington or the Christian heartland banging on about the evils of sodomy or whatever, I mentally enter his name in my notebook and contentedly set my watch. Sooner rather than later, he will be discovered down on his weary and well-worn old knees in some dreary motel or latrine, with an expired Visa card, having tried to pay well over the odds to be peed upon by some Apache transvestite.’
For those who find this sort of thing unenlightening and want a more meaty takedown of Professor Ferguson, a reader who’s an experienced coder – as in, worked as a senior engineer at Google for eight years – has written a review of the code underpinning the Imperial College model for this site that you can read here. Quite technical, but even a non-specialist like me can get the gist: ICL’s computer model is a great illustration of the coders’ golden rule – “garbage in, garbage out”.
In other news, an international survey by a team from the Winton Centre for Risk and Evidence Communication at Cambridge has found that Britons are more scared of coronavirus than anyone else in the world. Dr Sander van der Linden, who led the study, seems to think this reflects well on us. “The national stereotype is that British people are fairly reserved, but when something goes on people seem very willing to step in and do the right thing,” she told the Telegraph. The paper reports that Professor Sir David Spiegelhalter, the statistician who heads up the Centre, is less sanguine about the results of the survey. He has expressed concern that we’re “over anxious” and called for a campaign to get people “to start living again”.
If you are suffering from “coronaphobia”, this is a must read Twitter thread by Dr Muge Cevik, an infectious diseases researcher at St Andrew’s University. She cites numerous research studies suggesting that a close and prolonged exposure to someone infected with the virus is necessary for transmission, making a nonsense of social-distancing rules. The most likely hotspots are not sporting arenas, shopping centres, restaurants, cafés, etc., but hospitals and care homes. “Casual, short interactions are not the main driver of the epidemic,” she says, although she stops short of saying we should ignore social distancing rules. The technical way of putting this is that the virus is a nosocomial infection. Incidentally, this is Matt Ridley’s reason for becoming a lockdown sceptic, something he revealed in a webinar that he and I participated in yesterday for the Global Warming Policy Foundation, along with Inaya Folarin Iman. You can watch that here.
And while we’re on the subject of social distancing, here’s yet another reason to move to Sweden. The Nordic country’s Public Health Authority has put up this notice on its website regarding the two-metre rule. Remember, this is the rule that’s likely to be imposed on the entire population of British office workers, not to mention everyone else, everywhere. This is a verbatim translation:
There are currently no studies that show any exact limit for what distance is safe, but considering how droplet infection spreads, a benchmark could be at least one arm’s length distance. Another reason why the Public Health Authority only provides an approximate measure is that businesses such as restaurants, shops and other public places must be able to have some flexibility for the business to function.
I came across a great new website yesterday – Evidence Not Fear. It’s like a militant version of Lockdown Sceptics. It doesn’t just collate evidence about the ineffectiveness of lockdowns, it urges its readers to take action. For instance, it includes this template you can use to write to your MP. I’ve added a permanent link on my Introduction page.
Exciting developments with Simon Dolan’s lawsuit against the Government. Philip Havers QC has joined the team. Havers, a barrister and Deputy High Court Judge who specialises in public law, human rights and public inquiries, will be helping Dolan mount a challenge against the lawfulness of the Government’s restriction of civil liberties. You can contribute to the crowdfunder here. Last time I checked it was up to £75,000, more than halfway to the £125,000 target.
In Monday’s update I gushed enthusiastically about the imminent attack backbench Conservative MPs were about to launch on the Government over its mishandling of the coronavirus crisis. This was in a House of Commons debate that afternoon. Well, bad news I’m afraid. Attacks came there none. A reader has listened to a recording of the debate so you don’t have to. Here is his summary:
Not one MP called for an end to lockdown.
Not one MP said, ‘The epidemic is over, Secretary of State.’
Not one MP said, ‘Stay social distancing for two years before a vaccine is ready? You’re having a laugh.’
Not one MP said, ‘The lockdown has been the biggest mistake in history.’
A reader has sent me a comment he posted on the BBC News website yesterday. It was below a story saying “the maths” showed back in mid-March that the UK needed to change course or a quarter of a million people would perish in a “catastrophic epidemic”. To which the reader responded: “This is of course as inaccurate as Ferguson’s modelling. The model showed it, because the model was wrong. Box’s Aphorism says, ‘All models are wrong, but some are useful.’ I think it should be updated to: ‘All models are wrong, some are useful, but some are murderously toxic.'”
Another reader has sent this comment and I’ve received at least a dozen others like it:
Lockdown Sceptics has helped me retain my sanity through this mad period – thank you. The only other short, more emotional release came from the revelations about Neil Ferguson – rather like seeing your team score a goal but then having to knuckle down for a nerve-jangling second half.
I’m a QPR supporter so I know all about nerve-jangling second halves.
Two different people sent me this cartoon from an Australian newspaper:
A reader who’s an expert in cyber security has read the 4,000-word article published by GCHQ assuring us that the new NHS virus-tracing app is going to work brilliantly. He’s not impressed:
The whole thing reads like it has been written by a maths professor. It’s trying to say “so long as we are using Elliptic Curve Integration Encryption Schemes, ephemeral symmetric 128 bit keys and Advanced Encryption Standard in Galois Counter Mode, what could possibly go wrong?” All that theory is great but as politicians, civil servants and governments never seem to learn: In theory, theory and practice are the same, but in practice they are different. It is all the real-world, people-based problems that these schemes don’t anticipate and are their eventual downfall.
You can read the rest of his assessment, which I’ve published on Lockdown Sceptics, here.
A quick round-up of interesting articles I’ve spotted, or which readers have flagged up, in the last 24 hours:
- “The inside story of the UK’s NHS coronavirus ventilator challenge” – The Government doesn’t come out of this Guardian investigation well
- “Coronavirus lockdown could lead to nearly 1.5 million extra TB deaths, modelling study finds” – The story I referred to earlier, warning that lockdowns across the world have shut down TB treatment programmes which could lead to 1.4 million deaths
- “Germans Split Over Lifting of Lockdown” – Der Spiegel reports that Germans are becoming increasingly intolerant of restrictions on their movements
- “Models versus Evidence” – Good piece in Boston Magazine about how the argument over the effectiveness of lockdowns reveals two competing approaches to acquiring scientific knowledge
- “Sweden’s ‘Gentler’ Lockdown to Limit Economic Damage, SEB says” – Who would have thunk it? Not the IMF, apparently, which last month predicted a bigger hit to Sweden’s GDP as a result of the crisis than the UK’s
- “Now is the right time to start unwinding the furlough scheme” – Len Shackleton makes the case for ending the Government’s furlough scheme in CapX
- “Scotland will not recommend NHS coronavirus tracing app until ‘confident that it works’” – More woes for the NHS app
- “British Army goes back to training – but coronavirus measures keep tanks off limits” – Now would be a good time to invade, Vladimir
- “Is this a life worth living – or merely an existence?” – Great column in the Telegraph by the peerless Allison Pearson
- “Stress from virus response will destroy 7 times more years of life than lockdowns save: Study” – Another dog-bites-man piece, this one from the Washington Examiner
- “Is the Cure Worse Than the Disease?” – A useful round-up of sceptical articles from Straight Line Logic
- “Roadmap to Pandemic Resilience” – A guide to rebooting the US economy by Harvard’s Edmund J Safra Center for Ethics
- “Virgin Atlantic cuts jobs in a fight for survival” – Virgin Atlantic has shut down operations at Gatwick Airport and laid off a third of its staff
- “Why Precautionary COVID-19 Lockdowns Failed Humanity” – Good article by the Riskmonger on why governments around the world have become hamstrung by the precautionary principle
And finally, a story to brighten your day: police in Lancashire have withdrawn a fine imposed on a pair of sisters in Preston who had gone to the docks for some exercise. The sisters – members of the same household – had driven to the docks to take a walk around the basin for some exercise and fresh air, according to the Lancashire Post. An eagle-eyed local constable spotted them and promptly issued two, on-the-spot, £60 fines. Well done to Patrick Ormerod, the sisters’ solicitor, who forced the police to withdraw the fine.
Suggestions for this site’s theme tune continue to flood in: The Model by Kraftwerk (although Ferguson’s model isn’t “looking good”), School’s Out by Alice Cooper (horribly appropriate, given that it doesn’t look like secondaries will reopen until September) and From a Distance by Bette Midler.
Thanks as ever to those who made a donation yesterday to pay for the upkeep of Lockdown Sceptics. If you feel like donating, you can do so by clicking here. (Every little helps!) And if you want to flag up any stories or links I should include in tomorrow’s update, you can email me here. Incidentally, thanks to all those who’ve sent stuff in over the last few weeks. Some real gems there. Keep ’em coming.
Discussion
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[…] Covid, according to a medical student working on a new study of just four men. No wonder “Professor Pantsdown” is so keen on lockdowns! Sky News has the […]
[…] We are, I believe, in the middle of what my friend Toby Young describes as a ‘world-historical blunder’. […]
The government is at fault for accepting Ferguson’s model. Ferguson’s track record should have been a big red flag.
There should never have been any lock-down. It was a massive error that I believe will bring down the government in due course.
Wow looks like mandatory vaccines in Holland if you want to watch football
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.skysports.com/amp/football/news/11906/11984584/coronavirus-no-fans-at-dutch-games-until-there-is-a-vaccine-says-health-minister
This video from Eric Berg is well worth watching and sharing, especially in view of lockdown and its totally counter-productive effect on “staying safe” – not!
https://youtu.be/h26Izfi_hOA
Berg is a chiropractor which has made him the target of detractors – he’s not a “proper doctor” according to those who believe that health comes out of a drug bottle or a syringe. The comments on this particular video are almost universally positive; times are changing.
In the current pandemic we see that people such as Berg, who have long advocated the use of simple non-drug remedies – diet, sunlight, exercise, meditation etc. – may actually be presenting the BEST defence against a novel virus. A vaccine, if one ever comes, may arrive after we’ve achieved herd immunity nature’s way; cruel but effective as Mother Nature has always been.
So one thing that may come from this crisis is a re-evaluation of these cheap, simple methods to massively reduce the financial burden of healthcare. Charles Eisenstein, in his wonderful essay about the pandemic (“The Coronation” – I highly recommend visiting his site to read it, or watch his narration on YouTube) also suggests this approach, together with other methods of healing our… Read more »
What a great resource! Kudos to the host of this website.
What a great resource! Kudos to the host of this website.
https://twitter.com/RexChapman/status/1256366780223819778
Service expected in Phase 1 after Boris speach on Sunday.Watch.
This from our local council re the coming weekend:
“Please remember to follow the government’s guidelines over this bank holiday weekend and only travel for one of the three essential tasks – to work, to get food or for medical treatment.”
Wrong! I for one will be making a point of going or where I like, when I like and for whatever reason I like
Sorry, should add: as often as I like
I couldn’t agree more and I believe that there are a lot of people that feel exactly how we are feeling, but what do we do about it to make the rest of the country wake up to what is going on ? During the run up to the last election the anti Brexiteers staged a rally in London that received global recognition, how do we try and achieve something similar on behalf of lockdown sceptics ?
I couldn’t agree more and I believe that there are a lot of people that feel exactly how we are feeling, but what do we do about it to make the rest of the country wake up to what is going on ? During the run up to the last election the anti Brexiteers staged a rally in London that received global recognition, how do we try and achieve something similar on behalf of lockdown sceptics ?
Really trying to resist the temptation to write to the council and ask whether, if any of us has an open marriage (or indeed not), we will also be allowed to nip out for a quick shag
Really trying to resist the temptation to write to the council and ask whether, if any of us has an open marriage (or indeed not), we will also be allowed to nip out for a quick shag.
Does Sweden have any equivalent of the weekly total death statistics we get from the ONS? If so could someone post a link or better still a translation?
https://www.thelocal.se/20200310/timeline-how-the-coronavirus-has-developed-in-sweden
“Nor do I believe in any of the conspiracy theories linking these public health panjandrums to Bill Gates and Big Pharma and some diabolical plan to vaccinate 7.8 billion people.”
For us to take that sentence seriously there would have to be no linkage between “these public health panjandrums” and “Bill Gates” and “Big Pharma” and “plan to vaccinate 7.8 billion people.”
No one can seriously deny such linkage so all that is left to deny is that it is “diabolical.”
Therefore I think you were joking there.
The philanthrocapitalistic pharmaceutical network is currently blackmailing the world to accept mass vaccination or remain under lockdown in one form or another indefinitely. Honestly, now, what is not diabolical in THAT sentence?
https://www.bitchute.com/video/IB3ijQuLkkUr/
Plandemic – watch it quick, before they remove it again.
So that Mason Mills posted this:
Barring a second wave, the lockdown will be fully lifted by mid July.
Focus on saving lives and the NHS, let government worry about the Economy and the future of the country.
If you don’t believe they are fighting for you and your livelihoods, you are wrong.
Have faith.
https://twitter.com/MrMasonMills/status/1258390767816540168?s=19
Reason I’m sharing his tweet is because during the whole Brexit will we/won’t we before the election he was pretty much spot on with his tweets like he attends meetings etc, some actually think he is Cummings
I don’t like the cut of his jib!
I think you are right.Looking at his tweets looks very suspicious.Intresting to know that Boris Johnson’s two most eminent public health advisors were Neil Ferguson and Dominic Cummings
Have sent copies of the ‘evidence not fear’letter to both my MPs – my business MP is Rishi- hoping that he wants this fiasco to end as much as anyone!
In these dark times, we must cling tight to every snippet of good news:
https://www.standard.co.uk/go/london/attractions/notting-hill-carnival-2020-cancelled-a4420841.html
Worth comparing and contrasting:
https://www.aier.org/article/woodstock-occurred-in-the-middle-of-a-pandemic/
Yes – a smile came to my face when I saw that!
New video of Knut Wittkowski being interviewed by Dr Daniel Erickson:
https://youtu.be/Ftaq1lp5jOk
Apologies if someone else has already flagged this up.
Have just seen on the DT ( which is more sensationalist every day) that the lock down is going to be formally another 3 weeks- have I read that wrongly?
FM Sturgeon has extended house arrests up here for another 3 weeks, but, she might consider letting us out more than once a day.
Whether we’ll have to convince her that our elf and safety won’t be at risk remains to be seen.
This is like being in detention after school.
Some well-known Scottish independence bloggers have gone into full stay home to save lives mode and conclude with a leap of logic that since Boris Johnson did not follow Neil Ferguson’s advice soon enough, Scotland should become independent. Gordie Broon has been dusted off to tell us that we should come out of lockdown when London says so. The Scots aren’t having that. We’ll stay in our houses till Nicola tells us to come out and let that Boris try and stop us! It’s depressing.
You’d think that the Nats, could, just for once, see the sense in having a unified policy for the entire UK.
Some hope.
And how on earth would they manage the stupendous costs of this lockdown if they achieved independence?
EU hand outs? Don’t think so.
Scotland the Brave!
If Boris does relax the house arrest criteria and allows more folk out on licence, how will Nicola respond?
After all, she’s never lost an opportunity to have a go at Westminster and she might find that her followers start to get restive.
She has an obligation to do the opposite of Westminster so this might be good news in disguise for England at least.
Starmer is saying we need to do TTT which is kind of obvious really if you’re in opposition. The facts that it’s hopelessly impractical and too late aren’t problems if you’re in opposition because you only have to talk about it not do it.
She has an obligation to do the opposite of Westminster so this might be good news in disguise for England at least.
Starmer is saying we need to do TTT which is kind of obvious really if you’re in opposition. The facts that it’s hopelessly impractical and too late aren’t problems if you’re in opposition because you only have to talk about it not do it.
FYI
Update on Join the Legal Challenge to the UK Govt Lockdown
We have today accused Boris Johnson of “dragging his heels over the burning embers of the economy” after the Government said it needed more time to respond to his legal challenge to lockdown.
Our lawyers sent a Letter Before Action the Government on Thursday April 30, setting a deadline of May 7 for them to respond.
The legal challenge calls on the Government to urgently action the allowing of gatherings of up to 100 people, the reopening of schools, and to commit to a review the lockdown restrictions every two weeks
However, government lawyers have now written to our legal team requesting a further week to issue their response.
The initial deadline was also the time PM Boris Johnson was due to announce a review of lockdown. That announcement has also been pushed back – reportedly until Sunday evening.
“The Government is playing for time in asking for more time to respond to the Letter Before Action. Time is something ministers really do not have the luxury of – every day is estimated to cost the economy £2.5billion.
Just received my copy; grim. Lockdown extended up here by FM Sturgeon, who has said that ‘ she won’t be pressurised into lifting measures’.
“I won’t bow to sanity!!” Lol
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/hugging-china-hasnt-done-us-any-favours
Worth reading
Is it only ‘lockdown sceptics’ that are seeing the data here ? Seriously you would think this was killing 20 year olds that are fit and healthy within hours of being infected the way Piers ‘bed wetter’ Morgan is acting. He is literally driving fear into people.
It’s become a self-sustaining fear fantasy that needs no further input and is immune to reality.
Every single individual who has subscribed to the narrative has an enormous vested interest in maintaining it. The alternative is that they have to accept some degree of personal responsibility for the devastation that comes next. Much easier to say it is an ‘inevitable consequence’ of what ‘had to be done’
I have to admit that I feel increasingly responsible, given my belief that the narrative is severely flawed, for not speaking out further and louder.
I see that #keepthelockdown is trending on Twitter today. I honestly think some people have lost the plot.
Stories like this don’t help:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-highlands-islands-52572794
Joe Public sees a story like this and thinks “Oh my God, even healthy 20 year-olds can die from this!”. They don’t bother to check the stats and come to realize that the threat to the healthy young is absolutely miniscule. There seems to be a complete inability among most of the public to actually assess levels of risk. The attitude seems to be that if something can happen once then you should panic about it regardless of the actual probability of the event.
Any and every pandemic and / or flu season takes out a few young people, some of whom were previously healthy (or at least, they weren’t obviously ill – there’s a difference).
Articles like this https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21030071/
are easily available from PubMed. These should be collated and used as ammunition against the fear mongering (“OMG!! OMG!! A YOUNG person has died from a viral pandemic! This has NEVER happened before in the whole history of medicine! We’re all going to DIE! OMG!! OMG!! OMG!!” You get the picture.)
I think flu can be quite dangerous for young children, as opposed to this which doesn’t affect them at all. I think I read somewhere that’s true of all coronaviruses not just this one.
I hate to think what the media bleatfest would be like if this one was influenza and was affecting children.
And there are no similar eruptions when young people sadly die of meningitis.
Outbreaks occur fairly regularly at universities and colleges; I saw it happen when studying at Surrey University some years ago.
The article says that the girl had a kidney infection and initially tested negative for covid. I’m sure what she went through was traumatic, but if nobody had ever heard of covid then she would have been ill with a kidney infection.
Hi,
FYI, I have sent a letter to Sir Graham Brady (1922 Committee chair) and his office responds very promptly. They’ve said that they are only responding to constituents currently, which is fair enough, but that they will pass my comments on to Sir Graham. I’m just sharing to encourage you that you will get a response if you do email them.
Kevin
I don’t usually, even after contacting my local MP.
I did get a reply from my MP too, but it wasn’t as prompt as the one from Sir Brady. We just need to put some pressure on even though most people still seem to be oblivious to what’s going on.
Neither do I;she’s an SNP stalwart
This story has just broken on Sky Sport “No fans at Dutch games until there is a vaccine, says health minister”
It says supporters cannot attend football matches until there is a vaccine.
The Health Minister said: “We cannot yet mention a date for the last step, the mass gatherings. That is actually only possible if there is a vaccine and no one knows how long it will take. We hope of course soon, but a year or more is very real.”
So, it looks for definite that we will only be able to go back to normal once we have all had the vaccine, and no doubt have our app on our phones with our vaccine certificates on.
Just noise making. Once the danger is negligible they will have to relent. Especially because it’s highly unlikely a vaccine will present itself.
Or… When the realisation that bang on cue that the public have turned completely, then a vaccine will magically ‘appear’ and thus begin the propaganda cycle of forced apps and ‘immunisation’… Dear god I hope I am wrong
I hope so too… Why not just inject everyone with a placebo to cure the coronaphobia and job’s a good ‘un?
You do realise that placebos aren’t just composed of distilled water?
What? Don’t say that!
This is horrifying. We must fight tooth and nail on this until the bitter end.
I see a few of the papers are this morning running with the supposedly leaked government timetable for ending lockdown, culminating in finally getting bars and restaurants open by September (like there will be any left in business by then), just in time for next winter flu season to throw us back into lockdown. Give me strength.
My only hope at this point is that the tide of scientific evidence that is currently turning will finally break in the coming weeks, such than neither the government nor the MSM can obfuscate the fact that lockdown measure are as unnecessary as they are ill conceived.
It seems to me abundantly clear that the only people who need any form of shielding are the over 85s who, according to the ONS figures, make up 40% of all Covid deaths. Add in the 75-84 age group and it’s 70%, while deaths under the age of 45 are running at 1% of total. Even then, if I were a fit and healthy 75 year old, I’d want to decide for myself whether I needed “protecting”.
The site has been playing up this morning. I hope it will accept my comment this time. Or rather … it’s a question.
Is it moral to borrow money from people who haven’t been born yet?
Actually … that’s the wrong question. The question should be ….
Is it moral that we should borrow money and expect it to be paid back by people who haven’t been born yet.
BTW … who are these people that are lending us all this money?
One of them’s called Gutenberg, I believe.
https://order-order.com/2020/05/07/curious-case-nadia-whittomes-sacking/
Guido is on the case again
As I was engaged in yet another futile discussion with an acquaintance of broadly mainstream leftist leaning, I was struck again by the remarkable disinterest these people suddenly seem to have in the issues of government powers, civil liberty and state intrusion into people’s lives. These are people who usually have what I generally regard as a rather over-sensitive and almost paranoid obsession with defending against anything they perceive as encouraging big government in these areas (not of big government in terms of social spending, obviously, but certainly in terms of civil liberties). And especially so when, as with healthcare, there is any whiff of suspicion of big corporations being involved.
And yet here, in the midst of some of the grossest such intrusions we have ever seen [according to Lord Sumption: “the lockdown is without doubt the greatest interference with personal liberty in our history” – and that’s before we even start to consider the menacing long term implications of the threatened “new reality”], there’s a general air of disinterest, and a rather casual dismissal of it as just “necessary” to deal with the “emergency”. (Which frankly should in itself be ringing alarm bells for any student of… Read more »
The site has been very slow, last night and this morning. Is there a problem?
I’m finding the same sluggish response. Hope it hasn’t been hit by a DDoS
I think it’s just sheer weight of traffic. Make a donation so we can afford more bandwidth.
I already have
Yours is a good point since it might mean that more people are starting to question the limbo in which we’re stuck.
Perhaps the Prof’s debagging has done some good
More and more people being unplugged from ‘The Matrix’ I would presume
I suspect it’s people clicking on the link about Ferguson’s code, which has been widely reposted.
There’s a great interview on Off-Guardian with a German doctor and politician Wolfgang Wodarg linked in Oaks79’s post just below, and in it he mentions the way these viruses tend to see off older people. An important concept to bear in mind generally at the moment is the old description of pneumonia as “the old man’s friend”:
https://www.netdoctor.co.uk/ask-the-expert/cancer-faqs/a10366/why-is-pneumonia-called-the-old-mans-friend/
Perspectives
https://youtu.be/AzFb1nq4X08
Damn lies and statistics.
https://www.zerohedge.com/health/covid-19-nonsense-exposing-britains-once-reliable-office-national-statistics
The US and the UK leaders need the highest death rate as possible as fig leaves for a disastrous lockdown. Therefore the criminal, unethical and shameless falsification of deaths attributed to Covid-19 in both UK and US is in full swing.
It’s a great summary, thanks.
I just had an interesting chat with a family friend who Grandmother in her late 80’s has just died and it was diagnosed as COVID-19.
I asked her if she’d was allowed to go to the hospital to see her, but she said “Oh, she was never in hospital, she died at the Care Home.” She then told me that her Grandmother had been in the Care Home for 10 years as she had Dementia and could no longer recognise anyone. I asked if her Grandmother was tested for COVID-19, she said “No, but the doctor says she had it”. I asked her if she had any symptoms, she said “No, she just passed away in her sleep”
I’m really not getting the diagnosis here, a lady in her late 80’s with dementia who dies in her sleep, and with no COVID-19 symptoms yet a Doctor is allowed to class the cause of death as COVID-19. There will be no autopsy or inquest into the death so there is no way to disprove it.
There is really something wrong big time with this!
See the link I posted above….
It would be interesting to actually find out how many death certificates include “presumed COVID-19” on them.
As I understand it, the death certificates for Covid-19 has been simplified for just Covid-19. The new precautions we had in place after Shipman is not in place for Covid-19.So a new Shipman rampaging around would be difficult to spot.
Yes, I was reading that the procedures put in place to stop another Shipman have now gone.
For the people that have died, I wonder if wills are being examined to see if they have been changed over the last two months?
It’s standard procedure for care home deaths. Doctors have to put a cause and in the absence of a definite (eg she rolled down the stairs in her wheel chair and broke her neck) they put the most probable. Last year my Mum passed away in her care home. No idea from what. She had dementia and a month earlier had what was suspected to be a stroke. No actual diagnosis because you don’t send people in her position to hospital but it was considered most likely due to her medication and age. To everyone’s surprise a couple of days later she woke up, bright as a button, back to ‘her’ normal. A month further on she started refusing food and water and eventually passed away. Again no hospital and no diagnosis, but her death cert said cause of death stroke. If they can’t put a cause they have to do a PM, so it doesn’t surprise me that Doctors are using CV19 for people whose cause of death is unknown.