As week eight of the lockdown comes to a close, there are some rumblings of dissent – although it’s coming from people unhappy from the Prime Minister’s easing of the lockdown rather than the fact that we’ve been confined to our homes for two months. Opinium polling for the Observer over the past week has seen a significant drop in public confidence in – and approval of – the Government. Approval ratings have been dropping steadily since a highpoint in late March – and those who disapprove now form the majority for the first time since the lockdown began:
Anti-Lockdown Protests
What little genuine dissent there is was confined to a handful of anti-lockdown protestors yesterday. One such demonstration was in Hyde Park where, according to the Mail, 19 people were arrested, including Jeremy Corbyn’s brother. My friend James Delingpole attended and was threatened with a £30 fine merely for trying to report on the demo for Breitbart. You can read his piece about that here (includes video footage of him being confronted by a police officer).
I’ve received several reports from readers who attended the Hyde Park rally, including this one:
I went to Speakers’ Corner today. Britain’s traditional fee speech locale in London. I counted 255 people, but there were more than that, perhaps as many as 300. No “far right” evident. People from all sides of the political divide, including pro- and anti-Brexit. What the people I spoke to had in common was getting their news and info and trying to make decisions based on information from ‘alternative’ sources. All were dubious about the number of deaths from COVID-19 being recored by doctors in the absence of testing evidence, although most were also dubious about the accuracy of the standard PCR tests. Huge mistrust of official “science” and officialdom in general.
It was therapeutic being with these people. Heart-warming after these weeks of terror and house arrest. Odd looks from passers-by, as if we were all mad. Like being a Brexit-voter while working at a university. Some humorous looks, but others aggressive and combative. One cyclist deliberately accelerated towards some protesters who managed to avoid a collision by the skin of their teeth.
I was asked to move on by a police officer after being told I was “breaking the law”, even though I was just sitting on the grass in the sunshine with a few others. When I asked the officer which law I was breaking he got a bit twitchy. Said assembling with others not from my household was against the rules enshrined in the 1984 Public Health Act. When I challenged the lawfulness of these rules and mentioned Simon Dolan’s lawsuit, he said “don’t start being clever” and threatened to arrest all of us.
Spoke with many afterwards. Was told that weekly protests are planned from now on. All the people I met have gone from respectable to deplorable in a matter of weeks.
If you want to see some footage from the Hyde Park demonstration, including the arrest of Piers Corbyn, click here. This was shot exclusively for Lockdown Sceptics by a professional filmmaker who attended the event.
I’ve also been contacted by someone from For Freedom’s Sake, the Manchester-based anti-lockdown group, who attended the demo in Platt Fields Park. Smaller turnout than in Hyde Park and no arrests:
There was a turnout of around 60 people, mixed gender and ages and a largely ordinary working people crowd. Police presence was pretty heavy, including officers mounted on bikes and horseback, but thankfully there were no arrests or fines doled out (as far as we witnessed.)
You can see some footage on Twitter of the Manchester protest here.
Lord Gumption
One person who would defend our right to protest, even in the midst of a pandemic, is Lord Sumption, the former UK Supreme Court judge. He has consistently been the most high-profile public figure to criticise the lockdown – a great advocate for the sceptics’ cause. His lead opinion piece in today’s Sunday Times is worth reading in full (and sharing on social media), but his point about “Protect the NHS” being the main reason for shutting us all in our homes is particularly good:
It was never much of a rationale. The NHS is there to protect us, not the other way round. How could its unpreparedness possibly justify depriving the entire UK population of its liberty, pushing us into the worst recession since the early 18th century, destroying millions of jobs and hundreds of thousands of businesses, piling up public and private debt on a crippling scale and undermining the education of our children?
Since the Prime Minister’s broadcast last Sunday, the lockdown has found a new rationale. The Government has dropped “Protect the NHS” from its slogan. The reason is plain from the paper it published the following day. The NHS is not at risk.
Sumption’s conclusion is withering:
The Prime Minister’s broadcast was supposed to be his Churchillian moment. Instead, we beheld a man imprisoned by his own rhetoric and the logic of his past mistakes.
The lockdown is now all about protecting politicians’ backs. They are not wicked men, just timid ones, terrified of being blamed for deaths on their watch. But it is a wicked thing that they are doing.
Failings of Irish High Court
It’s a pity the High Court judge in the John Waters and Gemma O’Doherty case – they’re the two applicants trying to get a judicial review of the lockdown in Ireland – isn’t more like Lord Sumption. I’ve published a piece today by an Irish social scientist (whom I’ve given the pseudonym “John William O’Sullivan”) explaining what the judge in that case got wrong when he refused their application last week. Here’s the key paragraph:
Justice Meenan’s argument against Waters’ and O’Doherty’s case is rather simple: he claims they must prove that the Irish Government’s actions have been “disproportionate” in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. He claims, citing previous cases, that constitutional rights are not absolute and that if a government acts against them to deal with a threat “proportionately” then the government is allowed to trample on those constitutional rights.
The problem with this argument is that it implicitly sides with Government action as against the constitution. The Government is assumed to be in the right and the onus is on the citizen to prove not that the Government’s actions are unconstitutional, but that they are “disproportionate” given the threat of the pandemic relative to the constitutionally-protected rights they override.
Not So Rich List
Elsewhere in the Sunday Times is the news that the pandemic has wiped £54 billion from the wealth of Britain’s super rich in the past two months. “More than half of the country’s billionaires are nursing losses as high as £6 billion, with the combined wealth of the 1,000 wealthiest individuals and families plunging for the first time since 2009, in the wake of the financial crisis,” it says.
UK Government Petition Finally Approved
At last, the UK Government Petitions site has approved an anti-lockdown petition. Not as militant as some of us would like, but better than nothing. You can sign it here. If it gets 10,000 signatures the Government will have to respond; if it gets 100,000, it will be considered for debate in Parliament. Last time I checked it had just over 500.
Epidemiologist Condemns Lockdowns
There’s a great Q&A in Spiked with Knut Wittkowski, former head of Biostatistics, Epidemiology, and Research Design at the Rockefeller University’s Center for Clinical and Translational Science. A more sceptical epidemiologist you’re unlikely to find, and that’s going some given how many we’ve already featured on this site. Here’s one of the highlights:
Spiked: Have our interventions made much of an impact?
Wittkowski: When the whole thing started, there was one reason given for the lockdown and that was to prevent hospitals from becoming overloaded. There is no indication that hospitals could ever have become overloaded, irrespective of what we did. So we could open up again, and forget the whole thing.
I hope the intervention did not have too much of an impact because it most likely made the situation worse. The intervention was to ‘flatten the curve’. That means that there would be the same number of cases but spread out over a longer period of time, because otherwise the hospitals would not have enough capacity.
Now, as we know, children and young adults do not end up in hospitals. It is only those who are both elderly and have comorbidities that do. Therefore you have to protect the elderly and the nursing homes. The ideal approach would be to simply shut the door of the nursing homes and keep the personnel and the elderly locked in for a certain amount of time, and pay the staff overtime to stay there for 24 hours per day.
How long can you do that for? For three weeks, that is possible. For 18 months, it is not. The flattening of the curve, the prolongation of the epidemic, makes it more difficult to protect the elderly, who are at risk. More of the elderly people become infected, and we have more deaths.
Spiked: What are the dangers of lockdown?
Wittkowski: Firstly, we have the direct consequences: suicides, domestic violence and other social consequences leading to death. And then we have people who are too scared to go to the hospitals for other problems like strokes or heart attacks. So people stay away from hospitals because of the Covid fear. And then they die.
COVID-19 and the Cult of Anxiety
I published a piece last week called “COVID-19 and the Infantilisation of Dissent” by a maverick academic whom I called “Wilfred Thomas”. That went down well, so today I’m publishing a follow-up: “The Hyper-Rationality of Crowds: COVID-19 and the Cult of Anxiety“. This academic, a social scientist, is trying to understand why governments around the world seemed to panic simultaneously in response to the viral outbreak, gripped by the same irrational fear. But this isn’t a dry, academic paper. On the contrary, it’s like a rant delivered at 100mph by your best mate in the pub after he’s taken a superdrug that temporarily boosts his IQ to 200. Here’s a particularly good paragraph:
So how did we get here, to a world in which children can be herded into their little playpark Guantanamo cells not as a punishment but – remarkably – as an indicator of a society’s love and care for those same children? One word that springs immediately to mind is “madness.” “We must be mad – literally mad – to be permitting all of this,” you may very well say to yourself (if, that is, you have a fondness for paraphrasing Enoch Powell). Madness. It’s a good word, isn’t it? Rolls off the tongue. Helps to burn off steam. After all, who doesn’t like to channel their inner cab driver every now and then? “The world’s gone mad, mate. Take that wot’s-’is-name. Bonking Boris. That’s ’im. I had ’im in the back of me cab once. Screw loose, if you ask me. It’s all that sex wot’s done it. And that Ferguson? Shag other people’s wives all you like mate, but take your mathematical modelling back to the funny farm wiv ya when you’re done!” And yet, sadly, individual madness can’t really explain our current predicament. It’s a bit like blaming the invasion of Iraq in 2003 solely on President Bush and his family’s supposed mania for oil. Nice and comforting and all that, but hardly convincing when considered in light of the messy complexities of 21st century geo-politics. The problem with any individualised idea of madness is that we have a large group of people in the West right now who have allowed – have willingly and happily enabled – our lockdown societies to emerge. You and I may not be directly culpable. We may not agree with what’s happening. We may turn the cold eye of reproof upon our fellow citizens. If society were a golf club, we might even go so far as to write a strongly-worded letter of complaint to the club secretary. But whether we like it or not, right now we’re individual members of a society that, precisely as a society, has decided that battery-farming kids, playing football without tackling and hiding under the bed in order to avoid social interaction are all genuinely, 100% bona fide great ideas.
Please do read the whole thing.
Welsh Government Angling For First Prize As Most Incompetent Regional Executive in UK
A reader in Wales has got in touch to vent his despair about the idiocy of the Welsh Government, which seems determined to ruin the economy. “The tourism industry, and especially the holiday accommodation and sporting sector (which I am involved with), is being decimated,” he says. He points to this story as evidence of how brain-dead the official response to the pandemic has been – it relates to how police stopped people fishing at Cledlyn Lake Fishery in Ceredigion on Friday, even though the initial advice from Angling Cymru is that fishing is a permitted form of exercise and people are allowed to drive short distances to do it. The revised guidelines now state only disabled people can drive to go fishing. (They may have changed again since going to press.)
US Government Was Advised Against Closing Schools During 1951-52 Polio Pandemic
A reader has drawn my attention to a paper published in the Journal of School Health in 1951 on the US polio epidemic entitled “Should Polio Close Schools?“. Then, as now, one of the biggest questions was about the efficacy of closing schools to prevent the disease being spread. Here’s an extract from the abstract:
Anderson and Arnstein in “Communicable Disease Control”, 1948, in discussing poliomyelitis, say: “School closure, as well as closure of moving picture theatres, Sunday schools, and other similar groups, is frequently attempted in response to popular demand that ‘something be done’. Although tried repeatedly, it is of no proved value, never altering the usual curve of the epidemic: nor has the disease been more prevalent or persistent in those communities with the courage to resist such demands.”
The author of this paper comes to the same conclusion about the 1951–52 epidemic. For context, the number of Americans diagnosed with polio in the epidemic of 1948–49 was 42,173, with 2,720 fatalities. The 1951–52 epidemic was the worst in America’s history. Of the 57,628 cases reported that year, 3,145 died and 21,269 were left with mild to disabling paralysis. By contrast, the number of people aged 19 and under who have died in English hospitals after testing positive for COVID-19 in the UK is currently 12. For those aged 15 and under, it’s two, according to Channel 4 Fact Check. Professor David Spiegelhalter at the University of Cambridge estimates that the risk to children of catching and then dying from coronavirus is one in 5.3 million. In the light of this, might Anneliese Dodds, Labour’s shadow chancellor, reconsider her decision not to send her six year-old back to school?
Scottish Mum Starts a Petition Urging the Government to Reopen Schools… and is Cancelled
Last week, Kathrine Jebsen Moore, a journalist based in Scotland (and a friend of mine), started a Change.org petition urging the Government to re-open schools across the UK. In the hope of getting some signatures, she posted a message about it on a Facebook group she’s a member of called Edinburgh Gossip Girls. Perhaps naively, she was expecting this group of about 16,000 women in the Scottish capital – many of them mothers – to be sympathetic. I’ll let Kathrine take up the story:
Within a few minutes my post had 62 angry emojis, six stunned ones, three sad ones, and only 26 likes – and one heart. The comments reinforced the mood. As well as the simple “that’ll be a no” and “wouldn’t dream of signing this”, it quickly progressed to mud-slinging, strawmen and high tempers. Some comments were, worryingly, from teachers, who failed to show the professional pride that has been apparent among NHS workers and others who’ve continued to do their jobs during the pandemic. Although a few were supportive, I’ll include a selection which conveys the general spirit:
“Eh, not a chance. Most kids are fine without school.”
“Education matters but so does not dying.”
“Can everybody please report to admin and get this goady post taken down?”
Another accused me of having had “too many daytime G&Ts”.“Boo hoo, my kids miss their friends… they’ll miss them a lot more if they’re dead.”
That was the last comment before the admin switched off comments, with the words: “I’m not sure you’re going to get much support here, and this is a post that clearly stirs up a lot of angst and emotion which I’m trying to avoid. This is one for your personal FB, thanks.”
I’ve published the whole story on Lockdown Sceptics under “Is Shutting Schools Really Necessary?” on the right-hand side. You can read it here.
A Doctor Writes…
I received an email from a doctor today which notes that, among other things, the two-metre social distancing rule isn’t observed by doctors and nurses at her hospital. Nor do they wear masks when off the wards.
I’m a critical care consultant in a non-London District General Hospital and have been working throughout the pandemic.
There has been adequate PPE, which has been used in compliance with Government guidance, throughout this time by staff having patient contact. There has been a noticeable difference in how different areas apply this though, with some areas or specialties being extremely cautious, e.g. full PPE for procedures involving patients who’ve tested negative, making procedures slower, more difficult and more prone to complications.
As part of the escalation plan, more staff have been moved into critical care to assist with patient management. As our facilities have not increased, we have therefore had crowded coffee rooms and offices, with everybody sitting at a normal distance next to each other, without masks – it’s difficult to eat with a mask on) – sharing kitchen facilities and changing rooms. We then have the farce of going to the hospital dining room or coffee shop, and sitting spaced out two to a table, as we are visible to the non-clinical world. Several junior doctors at my hospital tested positive, and had a week off, returning once symptoms had resolved, although as they are not re-tested, and are allowed to return to work with a persistent cough, who knows whether they were still shedding the virus. My personal belief is that a significant proportion of the nursing and medical staff have had the virus, with either no or minor symptoms, and have some degree of immunity.
In my opinion, the hospital I work at did an admirable job of preparing and escalating, and managed well with a significant number of very ill patients. The de-escalation, now that we have far fewer patients, seems to be less logical, although this is probably due to the national guidance.
On a separate note, the news from NHS England earlier this week that showed that patients with diabetes have a higher chance of dying with covid was really unhelpful. Type 1 and Type 2 diabetes are completely different diseases, with Type 2 being associated with obesity, which we already know is one of the strongest risk factors for a poor outcome from covid. I’m not aware of any evidence showing an increased risk from having Type 1 diabetes. I haven’t seen any seriously unwell people with Type 1 diabetes, compared to Type 2. While it seemed logical before we had first hand experience to assume that people with Type 1 would be at increased risk, this hasn’t appeared the case, but statements like this from NHS England will continue to terrify those people with Type 1 who are otherwise fit and at low risk.
By the end of last week, we had no Covid patients left in critical care. As the pandemic dies down, paradoxically, the public’s paranoia and pointless mask-wearing is increasing. I have no wish to wear a face covering in public that will become saturated with the vapour I breathe out, including the many normal bacteria that colonise my nose. Face coverings are wrong for so many reasons – being a harbour for viruses and bacteria being one, but also for reducing facial recognition, contact and empathy with those we are interacting with, which I worry will cause increased friction between members of the community.
I was delighted to find your Lockdown Sceptics website, and know I’m not alone.
Latest on Slow-Mo Car Crash that is the NHS’s Contact-Tracing App
My correspondent who’s been covering the roll-out of the NHS contact-tracing app draws my attention to a leak over the weekend:
Can’t usually bring myself to read the Guardian but I may have to develop a tolerance as it seems to be the go-to paper for leaks from the Ethics Advisory Board overseeing the NHSx ‘public panic’ app. Not surprising, given that the majority of the board are legal and philosophy academics. Not a technologist amongst them as far as I can tell from the publicly available data.
The news is… the Board was not told about the development of a second version of the app (the Zulke developed one). According to the Guardian, which has spoken to some Board members on condition of anonymity: “Some members are particularly concerned that they were not informed about the development of a second, parallel NHS app that was being built in secret until its existence was disclosed by the Financial Times last week.”
If the Ethics Advisory Board cannot speak out publicly and is dependent on Matt Hancock reading the Guardian to get its message across then no wonder Parliament’s Human Rights Committee felt the Board was inadequate (as previously reported on Lockdown Sceptics).
The apparent lack of a tech member of the Board is astonishing. It means dropped balls – such as asking for all app code to be open sourced, but not asking for server-side, backend code to be included. Given the centralised data model, that’s a big deal.
As things stand, the Ethics Advisory Board appears to be a political fig leaf, whining about how powerless it is to the Guardian while Hancock charges ahead with his Big Brother apps.
Sue Denim Responds to Imperial College’s Statement to the Sunday Telegraph
The ex-Google engineer who reviewed Neil Ferguson’s code for this site under the name “Sue Denim” has sent me a response to today’s news story in the Sunday Telegraph – “Coding that led to lockdown was ‘totally unreliable’ and a ‘buggy mess’, say experts“. That story is based on a comment piece in the same paper by two senior software engineers. In response to their scathing assessment of Ferguson’s computer model, Imperial College has dug in. It gave the following statement to the Sunday Telegraph:
The UK Government has never relied on a single disease model to inform decision-making. As has been repeatedly stated, decision-making around lockdown was based on a consensus view of the scientific evidence, including several modelling studies by different academic groups.
Multiple groups using different models concluded that the pandemic would overwhelm the NHS and cause unacceptably high mortality in the absence of extreme social distancing measures. Within the Imperial research team we use several models of differing levels of complexity, all of which produce consistent results. We are working with a number of legitimate academic groups and technology companies to develop, test and further document the simulation code referred to. However, we reject the partisan reviews of a few clearly ideologically motivated commentators.
Epidemiology is not a branch of computer science and the conclusions around lockdown rely not on any mathematical model but on the scientific consensus that COVID-19 is a highly transmissible virus with an infection fatality ratio exceeding 0.5pc in the UK”
Sue Denim has responded as follows:
ICL is asserting here that once a few academics with the right kind of politics agree on something, that’s science. Replicability, accuracy versus observed outcomes and not being buggy are things that apparently only partisans care about. The claim about ideology is probably a reference to my comment about the insurance industry, but they then immediately prove the point by claiming “epidemiology is not a branch of computer science”. That’s exactly the sort of explanation for failure that companies can’t give to their customers, because nobody cares. Refusal to work cross-discipline is a mindset problem unique to academia, one that companies cannot and do not tolerate.
Finally, their claim about the Government never relying on a single disease model to make decisions doesn’t seem to match the official SAGE publication from March 9th, “Potential impact of behavioural and social interventions on an epidemic of Covid-19 in the UK“, which cites the ICL Report 9 paper and its assumptions as the only source of predictions for what would happen. The claim about consensus is equally dodgy: nearly as soon as the UK changed course in response to ICL’s model, a team at Oxford (Gupta et al) publicly contradicted them.
In my second post I asked if Imperial College’s administrators knew how out of control this department had become. Now we know the answer: yes, and they don’t care.
Worth noting that Imperial has just sealed a deal with with the Chinese company Huawei worth £5 million. The Mail on Sunday has the story.
A Banker Writes…
A banker has got in touch to express his astonishment that last weekend’s leak from Her Majesty’s Treasury (HMT), revealing how much the Government’s expenditure is likely to increase by this year, didn’t result in more comment:
I was a banker for 30 years and have worked with governments in the NL, France, Germany and the UK as well as major European corporates on privatisations and major capital raisings. Never have I seen a finance ministry send up what I can only describe as a distress flare to advertise the trouble its economy is in. Most finance ministries would avoid doing this like the plague (pardon the phrase). They all borrow internationally and the rule of the game is do nothing that damages your credit rating. If you damage it, not only does your cost of borrowing go up, but your very ability to borrow may be impacted. This matters when you’re going to have to rely massively on the kindness of strangers to finance your spending by massively increased debt issuance.
He can think of three possible explanations for the leak:
- There is serious alarm in HMT about the Government’s reaction to Covid and the economic cost of the lockdown, including Rishi Sunak’s expensive and over-generous bailouts. Maybe a worried official hoped the international capital markets could be used to put the frighteners on the PM.
- There’s tension between No 10 and No 11 and Sunak was trying to appeal to the international capital markets to put a brake on his boss’s recklessness by pointing out the financial and potentially political cost of an extended lockdown.
- HMT officials are scared shitless about the cost of Sunak’s crowd-pleasing and trying to put a shot across his bows.
He continues:
I’m astonished how little serious reflection this leak has occasioned. The FT barely noticed it. More tellingly, it didn’t spark a week-long comment war on Bloomberg, Twitter or the Wall St Journal. All it did was spark a straw fire about “no tax increases” with some sensible reactions from former Chancellors.
But it still puzzles me as to why it ever happened. And why it didn’t cause utter pandemonium. Because the economic cost of this madness will only be felt once we get out of lockdown’s phoney war and the “Blitz” proper gets underway later this year, by which I mean when all those who are unemployed and don’t know it yet have a bruising encounter with economic reality. I wonder what the Blitz spirit will feel like then? How many royals will have to be axed from the civil list so that Buck House can once again look the East End in the eye?
Or maybe the leak was just mistimed, premature. We’re still all too busy clapping Captain Tom and the nurses (God bless them) to cope with any likely reality 3-6 months down the road. Hence the damp squib?
Round-Up
And on to the round-up of all the stories I’ve noticed, or which have been been brought to my attention, in the last 24 hours:
- “Coronavirus offers another excuse for the New York Times to bash Britain” – Douglas Murray on the relentless Brit-bashing of the New York Times
- “Coronavirus in Switzerland: restaurants reopen but have diners lost their taste for eating out?” – Sunday Times reports that in spite of restaurants reopening in Switzerland, customers are staying away
- “Liberal Treated With Hydroxychloroquine Hopes He Still Dies Of COVID-19 To Prove Trump Is Stupid” – More laughs from the Babyloon Bee
- “Lemming Immunity” – Omar Khan says we need to stop worrying about herd immunity and figure out how to immunise ourselves against herd opinion
- “Lives vs lives – the global cost of lockdown” – Jayanta Bhattacharya and Mikko Packalen, two professors, argue that when assessing the costs of lockdowns we should consider their devastating impact on the developing world
Small Businesses That Have Reopened
On Monday, Lockdown Sceptics launched a searchable directory of open businesses across the UK. The idea is to celebrate those retail and hospitality businesses that have reopened, as well as help people find out what has opened in their area. But we need your help to build it, so we’ve created a form you can fill out to tell us about those businesses that have reopened near you. Please visit the page and let us know about those brave folk who are doing their bit to get our country back on its feet.
Shameless Begging Bit
Thanks as always to those of you who made a donation in the last 24 hours to pay for the upkeep of this site. A journalist called David Oldroyd-Bolt lent a hand today and I’d like to pay him something, so if you feel like donating please click here. And if you want to flag up any stories or links I should include in tomorrow’s update, email me here. Incidentally, hope you like the new format with sub-headings and more pictures.
And Finally…
I seem to have taken a leaf out of the News at Ten and begun to round off each daily bulletin with a funny bit beginning “And finally…” Today’s “and finally” is brought to you courtesy of our friends at Comedy Unleashed and features Meggie Foster, a performer who specialises in lip-synch comedy. Her Boris is particularly good. Until tomorrow…
To join in with the discussion please make a donation to The Daily Sceptic.
Profanity and abuse will be removed and may lead to a permanent ban.
Wow! I am comment number one today. Woo hoo. Er…that’s it.
Congratulations!
Please, brothers and sisters, sane in the midst of insanity, join me in the following toast ( you don’t have to be Scottish, I just like the style):
Here’s tae us, there’s gey few like us and the rest are all brain deid.
We’re possibly getting to the point where it’s all been said before and all that remains is to await the end of civilisation…
Yes indeed – I keep thinking (and showing my age) of That Was The Week That Was; you know (Millicent Martin, I think), ‘It’s aw-awll been said before, but so has every letter of the alphabet’.
I wonder if anything would change if every MP had to read every Lockdownsceptics article? No, probably not!
By this point I expect many of them must realise what they’ve done, but a hole so deep has been dug it’s almost impossible for them to climb out. It’s clear that it’s going to take much much longer to convince people it’s ‘safe’ (whatever that means), than it did to indoctrinate those people with the fear they are now housebound or paralysed by.
Perhaps the hundreds of thousands who demanded the lockdown by petition could pick up the bill?
Not any longer
Only way is down the numbers!
It’s all over, bar the politicking
Just one word: Lemmings.
But lemmings would escape (and then, admittedly, jump off a cliff).
Lemmings is an interesting analogy because they’ve never jumped off cliffs. That was a Disney scam that unfortunately is still believed 50 years later. http://www.bbc.co.uk/earth/story/20141122-the-truth-about-lemmings
So to follow the analogy, it’s the media-consuming public who are the lemmings, not the actual lemmings.
I am currently breaking lockdown by visiting my parents. Naughty me.
They might be coming round! Dad is a particularly fan of Lord Gumption.
We might be beginning to turn them guys! Although ‘them’ are the people who remain by and large still normal – the Comfortable Unbothered – rather than the Paranoid Bedwetters.
Absolutely right. The apathetic, the see what happens crowd… That’s a number of my friends. They’re not newnormalista hysterical lunatic turkeys voting for Xmas at all, they’re getting by, sliding around the rules when possible, not risking much.. but they will have a breaking point. There are a huge number of them out there, anyone not wearing a mask is potentially one of those people.
My breaking point was day 1. Break them down one by one using any means possible.
Oh, interesting to note on my drive down to the south coast today, there’s been a rapid infrastructure deployment plan undertaken I have to say. Low energy lights, ‘smart motorway’ work and signs about whole stretches of motorway being closed last week of May. This must be costing a fortune.
I have more of an idea of the endgame here but it’s going to painful to wait and watch as the primitives in society catch up, and at what cost to society. We’ll all end up in the same place, but the idiots will believe the path they were taken on, we on here will know what that path was.
Which motorway, Ian ?
So the idea (of some lockdown sceptics) that the young should freely gain their herd immunity while the old and ill are shielded is a non-starter in your opinion?
You’re getting results. Brilliant!
My gardener came to cut the grass this morning. At the very beginning of the lockdown, we observed social distancing, though last time he was here, I did criticise the 2m rule somewhat scathingly. Obviously, he has to respect his clients, some of them are very elderly and they hide in their house while he works outside. However, I noticed this morning that we were happily standing shoulder to shoulder discussing which plants to move where.
Chipping away ….
New video from Prof Dolores Cahill
https://youtu.be/U9ti6isM-NY
ESSENTIAL VIEWING!
Thanks for this link. I agree, absolutely essential viewing.
Because the sound is slightly distorted, I used the subtitle facility. Some of the transcript was clearly written by an autospell that had trouble with Prof Cahill’s accent. Oh dear, what a travesty but some gaffs were hilarious too.
YouGov poll on their “chat” function: Complete the sentence. “We should now start to ease lockdown restrictions for…”
Results so far…
No-one – 44%
Under 60s – 20%
Everyone – 19%
Under 75s – 9%
Not sure – 7%
Under 90s – 1%
People wanting the lockdown eased have their vote split four ways! At a glance it would appear most do not want lockdown eased when in fact they are outnumbered 49% to 44%. I suppose it’s positive news though as we have arrived at a point where opinion polls can’t get the result they crave so they split the unwanted answer 4 ways.
That’s rather a game changer, on the face of it. Seems like most people take it as read that a vast majority want lockdown to remain. Who ever would have thought that poll results would be misleading?
Isn’t that the point of polls? Ask the questions that solicit the desired response.
I don’t believe these figures anymore than I believe the deaths from Covid. Granted I mix with radicals, liberals and general anti-establishment types but I know of no-one who wants the lockdown to stay in place. (BUT, caveat, I also know no-one who is on a free holiday until October, sorry furlough.)
I don’t believe the figures either Nigel. Actions speak looser than words – more cars hitting the road, people queuing round the block at garden centres etc. My take on what is happening is that there are a significant number of people who are enjoying a taxpayer funded extended holiday, who don’t give a shit that their kids are not getting educated and are spending their days boozing and watching telly.The idiots don’t realise that they may already be unemployed – it’s just being delayed by furlough payments.
Or they don’t actually understand that you can be furloughed for a minimum of 3 weeks, then an employer is free to say ‘cheerio’ , redundancy which they will do if they don’t think the work wlll be there for them at the other side, especially as from June(?), an employer is expected to pay a larger proportion of this cost (who knows what that is yet)… BUT, here’s the gotcha:
You CANNOT furlough someone on sick leave.
So, the true wastrels will, on ending of Furlough period, immediately call in sick saying ‘I got da corona’ – no need to provide proof or anything, just any one of the million symptoms that seem to cover having this bubonic plague.
Job done, back on holiday (if on an employer occupational sick pay)… but only minimum SSP for those where that’s not in place.
We’ve all seen this happen at work with people on long term ‘sick leave’, their occupational pay runs out, and they then magically appear back at work the very next day, only to start feeling ‘dizzy’ towards the end of the day, and off they go again.
I feel a right old battle coming up soon… HR departments are going to be up to their eyeballs in ‘consulatations’.
This will not end well
Nothing in the universe works better due to the involvement of HR …
Just to add to that… I was happy to see there was an 11-a-side football match in the local park today. I doubt they were all from the same household
Opinion polls are potentially the strongest weapons of propaganda. I’ve noticed the wording on several of these lockdown surveys is “loaded”. It’s not as simplistic and straightforward as say the pre-Brexit polls of leave or remain or unsure. These are weighted to convey a pro-lockdown message, and pounced upon, by the likes of the Observer, as today’s headline above proves.
During the whole saga from 2016 onwards every Brexit poll was weighted cunningly, depending which side commisioned it, to give a desired answer. And given all the ways that people could chosoe to leave(hard,soft…) or all the different paths to stay remaining(referneumd, revoke…) there were plenty of ways to split that too. Brexit of course was close to a 50-50 split, so they didn’t have to do much to swing a poll either way.
Nigel, please can I have your friends?!
I think their real name is “Anything For You Guv”.
“We should ease lockdown restrictions for ‘Not Sure’…?”
I will keep referring to popular cinema culture, as of course ‘Not Sure’ was the name of the guy in the film Idiocracy, which is now been played out in real life, here and now.
…. Gave me a giggle anyway.
The most damning evidence against the lockdown in the UK – evidence showing that it had at best a marginal effect on the number of cases – is to be found in charts prepared by Carl Heneghan, Professor of Evidence-Based Medicine at Oxford, on the basis of data from the established syndromic surveillance of URI (upper respiratory tract infection), LRI (lower respiratory tract infection) and ILI (influenza-like illness) cases.
In the chart entitled “Respiratory infections per 10,000 population” at this link:
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8235979/UKs-coronavirus-crisis-peaked-lockdown-Expert-argues-draconian-measures-unnecessary.html
the numbers of URI and LRI cases are shown in yellow and red, respectively. It is clear that the lockdown came after the yellow curve had already dipped substantially. The last peak of the yellow curve (in the last of the three humps) occurred already in the first week of March. We can assume that the peak of COVID-19 infection occurred then. COVID-19 was in most cases a mild disease like URI and, therefore, classical ILI symptoms were reported much less frequently. But even the blue curve (ILI) peaked well before the lockdown.
The original chart, available at the following link, also includes the period after the start of testing and shows an exponential rise in the number of suspected COVID-19 cases:
https://www.cebm.net/covid-19/what-does-rcgp-surveillance-tell-us-about-covid-19-in-the-community/
Already in early March there was a huge number of COVID-19 cases (with patients requiring hospitalization and some dying). They were all recorded as something else (flu, pneumonia), since none of the patients then was tested for COVID-19. There is always an inherent bias when a new test is introduced. The test is at first used mostly on persons who were exposed abroad. When the number of tests conducted starts to increase exponentially, there is an exponential rise in the number of detected cases. However, the delayed exponential curve of detected cases does not describe the actual epidemic curve, which was already falling steeply. I shall describe the bias as I did in a very early posting on this blog borrowing an example from the following article:
https://www.heise.de/tp/features/Von-der-fehlenden-wissenschaftlichen-Begruendung-der-Corona-Massnahmen-4709563.html?seite=all
Let us assume that the epidemic curve has just left its exponential phase and started to flatten. There are now just 10 new infections each day for a period of three days (Day 1: 10 new cases; Day 2: 10 new cases; Day 3: 10 new cases). We may compare the infections to Easter eggs hidden by parents in the family garden for their children to hunt. On Day 1, a total of 10 eggs are hidden in the garden; on Day 2, the total is 20; and on Day 3, it is 30. On Day 1, the children are allowed to search in the garden for 1 minute and they find 1 egg. On Day 2, they are allowed 2 minutes and they find 2 eggs. On Day 3, they are allowed 4 minutes and they find 4 eggs. The children would conclude wrongly that the number of eggs(infections) was rising exponentially when it was in fact only rising linearly. This metaphor explains why the exponential increase in testing gave a false impression that we were in an exponential phase of the epidemic. We will always be slower than the virus which had peaked almost when we have started our mass testing.
How on earth is the Government going to use the R number (based on which curve?) to guide us out of our misery? How many cases recorded now are asymptomatic (found by contact tracing in hospitals, care homes, etc.) and how many are new clinical cases in the community?
If we consider the graph entitled “Daily new cases in Poland” at this link:
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/poland/
it looks at first like a typical epidemic curve, but on 12 May a spike appears that is higher than the one in the centre. As many COVID-19 cases were found in the Silesian coal-mining district, it was decided to mass test 500 miners working in one of the shafts. In this group, 90% tested as positive, yet the absolute majority were asymptomatic. This high number of asymptomatic cases contributed to the 12 May spike. How can one make sense of such curves, let alone use them as the basis for decisions on when to end a lockdown?
The whole enterprise is futile. The virus has spread everywhere and will follow its own trajectory whether we do anything or not. Most likely, there are 5 to 10 times more asymptomatic cases than symptomatic ones. If you place that number above the number of symptomatic cases in the yellow curve referred to above, this will give you an idea of the dimensions of the epidemic and how it is impossible to stop it. It will burn itself out in June and disappear but can reappear next winter.
Yup, I’m firmly of the belief now that testing is basically pointless. I think antibody testing could still prove valuable – with caveats – but of course as everyone on here has so expertly put the case together, how much value can that really have if not everyone who’s had it produces antibodies?
Hmmm, but what does being tested actually knowingly do… ? Gives your DNA to the NHS and by extension the government.
Let that sink in.
I suppose it makes things quicker if you end up murdering someone.
Yep… and I feel this is part of the road that we are on
When Boris waffles, I can feel quite murderous…..
Depends how the test is done, no such risk of DNA secrets going astray if it is a home test kit.
The figures I am now interested in are:
1) Deaths ascribed to Covid-19 in care homes.
2) Excess deaths, above the five year average, not attributed to Covid-19.
Given that the government ‘cleared the decks’, in the NHS, by suspending all consultations, diagnostics and treatment in other areas of medicine; and cleared the wards of Covid-19 positive elderly by sending them back to their care homes – to seed further infection amongst the truly vulnerable…
…It will give us a good idea how many people the government killed in order to ‘protect the NHS’.
Love your phrase there. “How many people the gvt killed in order to protect the NHS”. Yup. Gonna use that one.
So basically this policy failure wasn’t about protecting the vulnerable at all – it was about protecting the UK’s national religion and by extension, the government’s reputation. Says it all really.
David Starkey, in a recent interview, said that the government made the same mistake as the catholic church – when it was dealing with the paedophile priests scandal…
…it moved to protect the institution (in this case ‘our’ NHS) and not the victims.
Elderly Covid-19 positive patients were sent back to care homes, because care homes do not fall into the NHS remit.
And we couldn’t question it, that made us evil, because the Holy Catholic Church, sorry the NHS, is infallible.
Up to 20% of hospital patients in England contracted the virus while in for other illnessess.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/may/17/hospital-patients-england-coronavirus-covid-19
I always suspected there would be some.
To acquire additional infections in hospital is nothing new. Some years ago my father was in a geriatric ward in Addenbrookes hospital in Cambridge. The floor was so filthy that your feet stuck to it as you walked. Requests to a nurse to have it cleaned were rejected: it was a matter of ‘demarcation’. (I threatened to come back with a mop and bucket and clean it myself, at which a man with a mop was grudgingly sent for.)
My father was diabetic, a condition that makes the sufferer prone to foot infections. Allowed to sit in a chair, he had only open sandals on his feet.
He was sent home with an infection of the feet and legs that turned the flesh black. A delightful young visiting paramedic laboured for weeks to treat this wholly unnecessary and dangerous condition.
Protect whom…?
Imperial College: “the conclusions around lockdown rely not on any mathematical model but on the scientific consensus that COVID-19 is a highly transmissible virus with an infection fatality ratio exceeding 0.5pc in the UK”
Are we to take from this that our Official Science Consensus is now that we get a lockdown any time a “highly transmissible” virus pops up that might have an ifr above 0.5%?
Lol what scientific consensus?? There doesn’t seem to be one – has Imperial not noticed??
There might be no real science consensus, but that doesn’t prevent there being an Official Science Consensus that, remarkably enough, supports the policy the government wants to follow…
Whyever not. This one has been a roaring success. Imperial College modelling shows that it saved 70 million lives in England alone
Bet it’s pulled in some juicy funding support as well
That’s the really worrying thing, that we might come out of this only to see it repeat, and repeat…. I wonder if it’s an almost inevitable consequence of peace and material prosperity.
Re the ICL ‘rebuttal’: “lockdown was based on a consensus view of the scientific evidence, including several modelling studies by different academic groups”. Isn’t the key point that their serial ineptitude in predicting past health scares should have disqualified ICL from the “several” in the first place?
Let’s take a moment to remind ourselves that Prof Neil Ferguson predicted 200 million to die globally from bird flu in 2005, and a reasonable worst-case scenario of 65,000 UK deaths from swine flu in 2009.
The final death tolls were 292 and 457 respectively.
The fact that Her Majesty’s Government have allowed themselves to become so blindly seduced by the nonsense spewed forth by this utter failure’s totally discredited computer models, heralding the “science” as if it were some divine instruction delivered atop Mount Sinai, is not just a cause for grave concern. No, it is tantamount to a most appalling dereliction of duty.
A shambolic, rudderless and most of all cowardly approach to this public health crisis has resulted in a body of elected officials hiding behind a narrow-minded band of scientists. Terrified to indulge in any form of introspection, they are routinely passing up every presented opportunity to realise that the course they have charted has been completely flawed all along.
One can only assume that they are either completely unfit to lead the country or are committing these nefarious crimes against society to their own advantage.
Can’t escape the pandemic by watching normally uplifting programmes like Landward tonight. It seems that there is a major problem with fly-tipping in rural locations. One farmer has had to deal with 150-odd tyres dumped on his land. As it is private land he has to pay for the proper disposal at a cost to him of up to £1000. All because council disposal and recycling centres are closed (why?). Meanwhile a voluntary litter-picker has noticed a new form of litter degrading our landscapes: masks, gloves and other items of PPE strewn about the place. Utterly disgusting.
I’ve been litter picking in my area and I can confirm the amount of masks and gloves that I pick up. It is disgusting.
Increased fly-tipping and PPE strewn everywhere is another sign this whole Blitz spirit, “we’re in it together” and “looking out for each other” nonsense, is a fallacy. Everything about this lockdown from top to bottom, from statistics and models and surveys to claps and “togetherness” is a con.
And don’t forget a platform to “virtue signal”
Nothing to add really. Just throughly fucked off now. Met some friends today, was positive thinking they must be fellow sceptics agreeing to come for a walk across the downs with us. Nope, had to walk along with them keeping our distance. Was horrible. Made me angry To be honest. I haven’t met a single person that isn’t at least concerned, even if they’re healthy 30 year old fitness obsessive, they still don’t want to ‘risk it’. And most people are basically terrified that I come across. This could be pushed further and further, and from the people I come into contact with, most would accept it, some would welcome it, others would say it isn’t enough.
This has to stop. 300 odd people under 45! Bloody hell. Why isn’t that the headline of every paper!
I think the only thing that stops people in their tracks, sometimes, is statistics. How many people died of respiratory diseases (ie flu, pneumonia and lung disease) in the UK in 2017? Answer: nearly 65,000. How many people die every day in the UK in a “normal” year? Answer: 1600. That is the sort of information protesters should be putting on their banners.
I agree it’s messaging, and we haven’t got ours quite right yet. It’s also risk. We need some ranked ‘what are my chances of …’ league tables.
It is really bizarre isn’t it? I mean if your experience is like mine a lot of these actually scared people are very intelligent and educated folk – degree level at least, often professionally qualified and even doctors, ffs!
I mean, I expect them at least to resort to the second tier of fearfulness rationalisation – explaining that it’s not themselves they are afraid for, but rather for vulnerable people in their families or among their acquaintances. Or that they might go straight to the third tier and say it’s a general policy thing for reducing the spread overall and thereby protecting the vulnerable members of society in general.
But no, these people, whose personal risk of dying from the disease is basically zero even assuming they catch it in the first place, often actually admit when pressed that they are scared to risk it just in case they might die!
Crikey, if you have doctors in that group then I’m pretty certain I wouldn’t want a consultation with them. Makes you wonder who’s working for the NHS and how qualified they are really.
Don’t be sarky about the NHS or we’ll come round to clap outside your house for 5 hours a day until you recant.
Like it!
GPs mostly, but genuinely intelligent people. Intellectually they “know” the figures, as they will admit if you press them. They just have a nagging fear that they won’t dismiss.
Not all, I know a GP who knows it’s bullshit. This whole charade has revealed that a vast suave of the population regardless of age, IQ, and profession are, to put in harshly : Mentally weak
It also reveals that I can’t spell ‘swathe’… or at least my phone autospell can’t…;)
Couldn’t agree more. Some people I know were having a debate on whether R was greater than or less than 1, completely oblivious to the behaviour of respiratory diseases. They thought they were being clever using the epidemiological jargon, little realising that the joke will be on them for getting hoodwinked by the propaganda.
That’s it. It’s not intelligence, or lack of. It’s weakness. Lack of mental (and testicular) fortitude.
I agree, if the main symptom of this weakness is switching on the telly !
They had subliminals 50 odd years ago. What they can do nowadays with sound, colour, brightness, refresh rates, frequency adjustments, fades/merges, etc. must be quite astonishing.
My opinion, for which I have no evidence whatsoever, is that they broadcast the highest intensity fear-causing tools they have, back in March sometime. Repetition, and the absence of the opposing point of view, help, but nothing else seems to explain the intensity of fear being displayed by the many.
Those awful Newsnight “reports” with the gloom and doom music playing in the background!
Yes, the hyper-ratioanlity referred to in one of the above links
https://dailysceptic.org/the-hyper-rationality-of-crowds-covid-19-and-the-cult-of-anxiety/
Oooops, excuse my typo, ‘ratioanlity’: hmm!?
It might as well be the National Covid Service (NCS) for all it’s done over the past 8 weeks, and left the majority of those needing elective surgery for everything else high and dry.
This is what annoys me about the piety, they don’t mean ‘save lives’, they mean ‘me’. I’ve now started framing it as child rape (child sex abuse is off the charts, and I suspect trafficking will be the next awful thing to come out of all this) so I’m now saying ‘how many child rapes is acceptable so you can feel safe?’.
I agree, and even though you point these things out to these supposedly educated people, they’re all caught up in the mad herd mentality. Unfortunately, as a movement we have to maintain a critical mass, where there is more than a smattering of us challenging the ridiculous mainstream message. And this message is in your face, switch on any radio station and there is the propoganda every 10 to 15 minutes or so. Even the WHO had an advert on Talk Sport when I was listening driving in the car today. Kudos to the presidents of Tanzania and Burundi in Africa who have kicked the WHO out of their countries – of course that never made the MSM! I do sense the worm is beginning to move a little in our direction now, but I have to admit that it is frustratingly slow so far.
Exactly, this is what depresses me the most – are there really only so few people in the nation of 65 million and around the world that are willing to go again the crowd and make up their own mind, even when the relevant data e.g. mortality rates by age are so easily available? Or is complete innumeracy really so wide spread? Or are really that many people, to put it simply, cowards?
The need for acceptance or not stand out is actually quite powerful. I’ve seen studies where there’s a group of people, say 10, where everyone is in on the experiment bar 1. They’re then give a simple question and all have to say out their answer. The 9 give the wrong answer and more often than not the 1 person not in on it also gave the wrong answer despite it being obviously wrong.
It’s particularly distressing when scientifically-minded friends and acquaintances so readily buy into the whole miserable package. My assessment is that complex situations require thinking which is truly interdisciplinary, but people tend to think in a very, very limited way. Being educated is no guarantee of a critical and questioning mind: in fact, I’ve seen it have quite the reverse effect.
I actually don’t find it surprising. Majority of people are not capable of critical thinking. Taking things at face value is much easier than asking questions. It’s mental laziness.
I’ve also noticed that the majority of the people don’t read news articles in full – they will look at the headline and then maybe read one paragraph (and then post comments of course).
I’m sure that most of us here are spending a decent amount of time every day reading and researching online. It takes time and some mental energy. It’s also quite stressful – not quite the same as watching Netflix.
When I used to tell people I was studying History at Uni they use to often wonder why and ask me what use it would be to me. It taught me critical thinking. To analyse the sources of information I receive. Why is something being written? Who is writing and what’s was their intention or purpose ? Where did they source their information or opinions? Who was the intended audience?
It is now natural for me to question everything I read like this, but then I forget others do not. These are really skills which you shouldn’t be waiting to university to learn and should be taught at secondary school. I am taken a back by people’s willingness of equally educated people to take a BBC headline at face value.
As you said, I am one of those spending a lot of time reading and researching on line on a daily basis. But it’s worth it if I can increase the R rate of lockdown sceptistim! I want to be on the rightside of history when people look back and everyone finally sees what a massive cluster fuck of an over reaction this all is!
Agree totally, although I would go even further and introduce critical thinking at primary school level. Young kids are often really curious (“Why?” is one of their favourite words) and open to new ways of seeing the world. There’s no reason why it can’t be taught in a fun way, with plenty of puzzles and scope for creativity.
But socially distanced of course
Yes agree with all the above, somehow even supposedly intelligent people don’t think outside the memes.
Whether you’ll be on the right side of history, depends, of course, on who’s writing it !
Yes I am embarrassed to be a human. Presumably “mass panic” evolved early on to protect us from tigers etc.
It appears humans may not have evolved enough?
Social distancing is total rubbish anyway.
Lord Sumption’s BBC Interview Today is here
https://youtu.be/fayeKcjnDNE
Can anyone recommend a decent t-shirt fulfilment company? I want one that involves me doing as little work as possible, other than providing the designs for the t-shirts. It seems most require you to set up your own website first, (which I don’t want to do, nor do I know how to do) – and then link it to their “dropshipping” centre.
Basically I need one that can offer –
– Automated eCommerce shop online and payment
– Automated production of t-shirts
– Packaging, distribution and sending items to customers
– Returns options
I’ve come up with some lovely (but highly controversial) anti-lockdown t-shirt ideas, and want to start selling them online ASAP.
Your recommendations are welcomed. Thanks
R Dawg (soon to be CEO of The Downward Dawg T-Shirt Co.)
x x
I’ve used shirtinator before for my own designs personally and they were very good. I can’t speak for using them as a commercial partner, obviously.
https://shirtinator.co.uk/
I have found streetshirts.co.uk to be brilliant for personal designs (got one on its way) but I need a fulfilment centre that can take orders.
Yes, you need someone to advise you who’s done it as a commercial scale operation, I suppose.
I’ve ordered from streetshirts.co.uk too. Can’t yet vouch for them as I only ordered very recently so my print hasn’t been done or posted yet. Hope it turns up good quality and fairly soon, though I’d be overjoyed if the lockdown ends soon enough for any such shirt I’ve ordered to become a historical curiosity.
I don’t know of any but put me down for a t-shirt.
I’ll have one
I’ll have one that says
IT’S NOT THE FUCKING PLAGUE
Me for a couple – fat bastard size so nice and baggy.
Redbubble. Cafe press. There are quite a few. I want a T shirt that says Corona cowards- get s job. Or, Save lives – privatize the NHS etc
Think you’ll lose supprot if you propose NHS privatisation. Because really how the NHS is funded is not the sisue here, the issue is that all our freedoms and livelihoods have been sacrificed for a lunatic ideal of safety, and the NHS has merely (and perhaps against the will of most of its staff) been made the public figurehead of this.
Or, I like the old normal.
As for face mask wearing this from a recent letter to the BMJ
Just a doctor and epidemiologist’s view.
(1) Wearing a face mask may give a false sense of security and make people adopt a reduction in compliance with other infection control measures, including social distancing and hands washing.
(2) Inappropriate use of face mask: people must not touch their masks, must change their single-use masks frequently or wash them regularly, dispose them correctly and adopt other management measures, otherwise their risks and those of others may increase.
(3) The quality and the volume of speech between two people wearing masks is considerably compromised and they may unconsciously come closer. While one may be trained to counteract side effect n.1, this side effect may be more difficult to tackle.
(4) Wearing a face mask makes the exhaled air go into the eyes. This generates an uncomfortable feeling and an impulse to touch your eyes. If your hands are contaminated, you are infecting yourself.
(5) Face masks make breathing more difficult. For people with COPD, face masks are in fact intolerable to wear as they worsen their breathlessness. Moreover, a fraction of carbon dioxide previously exhaled is inhaled at each respiratory cycle. Those two phenomena increase breathing frequency and deepness, and hence they increase the amount of inhaled and exhaled air. This may worsen the burden of covid-19 if infected people wearing masks spread more contaminated air. This may also worsen the clinical condition of infected people if the enhanced breathing pushes the viral load down into their lungs.
(5B) The effects described at point 5 are amplified if face masks are heavily contaminated (see point 2)
(6) While impeding person-to-person transmission is key to limiting the outbreak, so far little importance has been given to the events taking place after a transmission has happened, when innate immunity plays a crucial role. The main purpose of the innate immune response is to immediately prevent the spread and movement of foreign pathogens throughout the body. The innate immunity’s efficacy is highly dependent on the viral load. If face masks determine a humid habitat where the SARS-CoV-2 can remain active due to the water vapour continuously provided by breathing and captured by the mask fabric, they determine an increase in viral load and therefore they can cause a defeat of the innate immunity and an increase in infections. This phenomenon may also interact with and enhance previous points.
Antonio I Lazzarino
Medical Doctor and Epidemiologist
University College London
https://www.bmj.com/content/369/bmj.m1435/rr-40
I have seen point 1 with my own two eyes. Like I’ve said before, I’ve always found those wearing masks have been the worst offenders when it comes to not observing basic hygiene. I’ve come across mask wearers not washing their hands after using the toilet or picking their noses.
And if you’re going to wash cloth masks, its like cloth nappies you have to wash them at really high settings to get rid of the germs – which ain’t good for the environment.
Lastly to paraphrase Jack Straw, masks also impede communication. Two weeks ago I had a run in with a post office worker who was masked and became rude when I asked her politely to repeat what she said to me twice because the mask was muffling her speech.
I have seen point 3 with my own ears.
(7) A huge amount of garbage even if they are disposed of “properly”.
Do they count as medical waste? In which case you can’t put them in your bin.
For me, one of the most frustrating things about this pandemic is the inability to test for antibodies. Judicious sampling of the population would tell us how many people have had the virus and which parts of the country are still vulnerable. It would also give some solid figures on which to do some proper modelling, without having to rely on worst case assumptions.
Are we anywhere near getting a reliable antibody test?:
I suspect they don’t want to do that because then the gig is up.
Agree. As I recall many weeks ago Chris Whitty said Porton Down had done a random study, and despite several journos asking about it at the 5pm press conference, no information has been forthcoming. One can only wonder!
Yup. And today’s talking head was on about The Vaccine again.
Loved that bit where (yes, my parents had it on– but I managed to catch God Emperor Sumption beforehand so it was worth it) he kept saying “The vaccine work has been accelerated and we’ve crammed ten years’work into six months! It’s amazing!”
Not at all reassuring dude. Not at all reassuring.
Wan’t there something in the media last week about a purchase of antibody testing kits from Switzerland. 100% accurate, if memory serves.
Never to see the light of day again.
I’ve come across a couple of things which might complicate matters (sorry, don’t have the links immediately to hand). One is that in some people, their T-cells might jump in and defeat the virus before any Covid-specific antibodies are even created. I’ve also read about the possibility of cross-immunity from other coronaviruses, such as the common cold. So *if* this is the case, then although someone isn’t showing the “correct” antibodies, it doesn’t necessarily follow that they are non-exposed and therefore non-immune.
That said, I’d still be curious to see what the serology tests find….
There’s some stuff here:
https://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674(20)30610-3
and here:
https://neurosciencenews.com/immune-response-coronavirus-vaccine-16405/
That Australian WHO spokeswoman (she of the long blond hair – sorry to be so vague) recently told the Beeb she thought children might not get it because they run almost constant colds.
If you really want to know about that I suggest that you listen to some of these long and excellent podcasts on the science. The answer would, it seems, be no.
https://infectiousmyth.podbean.com/
A pdf of the one relating to antibody tests is here
http://theinfectiousmyth.com/coronavirus/AntibodyTestingForCOVID.pdf
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8aHrx68IT7o&feature=youtu.be
This is the third video from Prof Michael Levitt, Stanford, Israel. Posted the other 2 videos yesterday. Here he describes the outbreaks in South Korea and New Zealand fitted the model used in video 2. The outbreaks are not truly exponential but hit a ceiling and then fast decline.
I like this guy and I hope he’s onto something. I think Prof. Sikora tweeted yesterday that he has seen similar signs from data: that outbreaks tend to level off quite quickly suggesting, he posited, maybe some sort of existing immunity in the population. Of course Sikora was then flamed on Twitter by the mob who will not see any light on this topic. My worry about Levitt’s theory (as I understand it) is this: as all countries who notice an outbreak immediately put measures in place, how do we know that the leveling off is not due to the measures? However, against this again, I have heard him point out himself that the effect seems to be fairly constant even though all countries don’t enact the same measures e.g. China’s lockdown was much tighter than Iran or Italy’s.
This is my first comment here so I’d like to say thanks to Toby for the site.
Also see other work suggesting a regular peaking of this disease at quite low levels:
https://www.timesofisrael.com/top-israeli-prof-claims-simple-stats-show-virus-plays-itself-out-after-70-days/
As you say, it’s not trivial to disentangle all the threads here, including the possibility that there are common epidemic responses short of lockdown that might explain this common epidemic progression, but still it’s very suggestive.
Early on I was assuming there must be much higher infectiousness and lower impact, meaning the disease ran through the population and played itself out before responses could get going. But as more info has come through that began to look untenable and the better option now seems to be that there are quite a lot of people who just don’t catch this disease and so it tops out at quite a low level of prevalence.
Anyway, the bottom line is that for whatever reason it just is not a particularly dangerous disease, on a societal level.
(Welcome to Toby’s site, by the way.)
Chris Whitty said in the daily briefing of 11th May, that the vast majority of people “won’t get the disease” that of those that do “80% won’t know they’ve got it” that “a small majority will feel ill but won’t need to see a Dr” and only a very small amount of people will need hospitalisation. He said that he had been saying this “from the beginning!” It’s at the end of the briefing, answering a very good set of questions from a reporter from the Sun. Can we just snip this bit of the interview and plaster it everywhere!!
https://off-guardian.org/2020/05/15/watch-uk-chief-medic-confirms-again-covid19-harmless-to-vast-majority/
https://www.zerohedge.com/health/study-points-covid-19-lab-creation-lead-author-suggests-forced-selection-vs-genetic
The actual scientific publication can be found in a link in the above article
MPs call for transport workers to get death-in-service payouts
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/may/17/mps-demand-covid-19-death-in-service-payout-for-transport-workers
Why?
What possible rational justification is there for giving special payouts to people who happen to die from this particular disease at this particular time?
I mean, giving people money is generally nice (especially when it’s other people’s money you are giving out). I get that. But if it’s the role of government to give extra charity to the family members of deceased disease victims, why isn’t that the case all the time, and for all diseases?
More to the point, what’s a dead person going to do with all that money?
That’s neither here nor there, surely? The point is for the politicians and campaigners to look good for their potential voters and various backers. What actually happens to the money is pretty much irrelevant, isn’t it?
Why specific workers anyway? Pay one pay everyone. Anybody could catch it during the course of doing their job.
Hey at least transport workers are actually among the most likely to get it. Along with security guards.
Not er…… doctors and nurses.
Yep – 0.0264% of bus and coach drivers and 0.0364% of taxi drivers up to 20th April, according to the article.
Taking that as over two months as a rough guide and assuming the numbers are constant rather than proportionate, we’re going to run out of bus and coach drivers in only about 630 years, and taxi drivers in only 457 years.
Is there time to set up a breeding program?
I should certainly say that more people have been relying on the efforts of transport workers than have actually needed NHS care in this crisis.
More people with Covid have literally breathed on bus drivers than on medical staff.
From my experience they’ll likely to be easily dispatched due to their appalling levels of obsesity and lack of fitness. Seems like rewarding failure to me.
Isn’t it because a precedent has been set with NHS workers?
Had to chuckle earlier today – my son said his kids had had a great time in the park as quite a few of their mates from school happened to be there at the same time with their parents. Son’s kids and all the others had played football together for an hour or more while parents sat in a group talking. No social distancing and no face masks anywhere.
Why did I chuckle……well, two of the parents are serving police officers.
Not surprised, give the complete lack of social distancing / PPE I’ve seen from gangs of police officers during lockdown.
But hey, good for them, long as they won’t be arresting anyone on monday for doing the same thing.
That’s good news!
This is how a cult works;
First we need a charismatic leader who knows how to control people. He/she invents an enemy, then gaslights his followers into believing there is indeed a real tangible enemy which they should be afraid of. They stoke this fear and convince their members that they can only be safe if they follow their leader and submit to his will. Only the leader will save them. Not only that but he will create something else for them to deify in addition to himself. Something to worship concentrates the mind.
Now the leader has control over his subjects he must be careful there is no questioning or dissent so he makes strict rules which must be followed. Anyone flouting these rules must be reported by the other now brainwashed members and punishments must follow.
Total control is close but there is one more thing to do. All members must give all their wealth to the leader and in return he will ensure that they have just enough food and shelter to survive. Of course the great leader is protecting us all from the enemy, given us something to worship and clap about, so we should be grateful for his generosity and his self sacrifice.
The Dear Leader is now fully enjoying his power, he is now wealthy, he can abuse his followers at will, take the women for himself and have a jolly good time. Nobody questions.
Then one, just one member becomes sceptical, he is reported by the others but is savvy enough to know what is coming and he escapes the camp to tell the rest of the world what is happening in the cult. Dear Leader is livid and imposes a complete ban on travel or movements and cuts everyone off from any contact with the outside world.
Then the money starts to run out, he demands more from his followers but they have no money left either. The Dear Leader himself is now trapped in his own dystopian world he himsef created, he needs to escape but has too many witnesses, mass poisoning? Fight it out with his loyal army of devotees with the machine guns he has been collecting just in case of such a situation?
Cults never end well.
Do I see any parallels here or is it because its Sunday and I may have had one too many?
So, who is the Dear Leader?
Can’t be Bill Gates, he’s got no charisma or charm. No-one else that appears from the believer side I can think of except maybe William’s kids.
The NHS?
Encouraging to see a fair few people out and about this weekend in groups obviously not just composed of one household. A long way to go though – still millions in a tizz about this. I won’t be signing the petition as it explicitly mentions distancing and face masks as options to help restart normal life. I think it’s dangerous to concede those points. If people want to try and distance themselves then that’s fine by me, or if people want to wear masks then they can if they want. If a private business wants to impose these things, well I just won’t go there. It might get awkward if for example all the big supermarkets do it. But I can’t accept any of these measures being mandated by goverment as a condition of being able to reopen, and I can’t accept any publicly funded organisation mandating these things unless there are special circumstances e.g. any setting with people vulnerable to the virus such as hospitals, care homes, maybe doctor’s surgeries. Maybe I am being unreasonable – happy to hear arguments against me. I also regret the wording focusing on restarting economic activity – this is terribly important, but IMO less important than the abolition of the Coronavirus Act which restricts freedom of movement, separates families and friends from one another, prevents breeding, makes public protest illegal and goes against nature. It’s beyond a human rights issue – it’s utterly immoral. Until it goes, every relaxing of restrictions will be presented as generous gift from a benevolent government to the people, for being good boys and girls.
I agree with you about distancing and face masks. Distancing is a practicality and productivity disaster for most aspects of normal life, and face masks are just a no for me. I simply won’t wear one, unless it’s at taser-point.
Also I agree about repeal of the legislation.
In my ideal world there’d be some tarring and feathering of those involved as well, but I recognise that’s not the done thing these days (call me old fashioned)….
How about nailing them to the church door? (even more old fashioned)
Pussies.
Hang, draw, and quarter them.
I must agree that the freedom argument is more important than the economic one. I also think that some careful wording to place limits on what “measures” are taken would have been good, to scope the risk of bureaucrtaic creep. I am happy to concede on the masks point if that alone can get us everything else back. I signed the peitition anyway. I did check up on some links I had to other anti-lockdown parliamentary petitions, seems that some of thsoe are STILL in moderation although this specific one has now become live. I don’t know if the eens still in moderation might have wording more focused on the freedom argment agaonst lockdowns.
You freaked me, cos I signed that petition without reading it properly (stupid to do, but felt Toby’s endorsement on my shoulder) and I am vehemently and almost irrationally (irrational in my vitriol not the science) anti face masks. Having read the petition properly it refers to ’employees wearing them if desired.’ Since I would resent someone coercing me to wear a mask I can’t endorse coercing someone not to wear one. Off the hook, phew.
That’s a fair point about mask coercion – I think it should be up to the individual, but I don’t think there should be anything from the government to push it. Maybe I should sign it as it is maybe better than nothing, but in the unlikely event it is debated in Parliament I would be concerned it could be portrayed as having been complied with at a certain point – PM talked about getting back to near normality in July but think he was talking about the “new normal”. I think it is crucial that at every stage any talk of this “new normal” is strongly resisted. The explicit and implicit messages from state propaganda and their media helpers are already starting to cement this in people’s minds.
“…distancing and face masks as options to help restart normal life. I think it’s dangerous to concede those points.”
Absolutely. I don’t want to see any concession to these measures whatsoever. I wasn’t keen on the non-disapproving inclusion of the ‘social distancing hats’ yesterday. They’re not funny or enterprising; they’re a symbol of acceptance of the New Normal.
Might I suggest we use instead the term the New Abnormal, to drive home what is going on here?
We should refuse to use the orwellian language used to describe this charade. It’s not a “lockdown”, it’s imprisonment or house arrest, supression of civil liberties. take your pick. It’s anti- social distancing. It’s the abnormal or anti normal. Masks are muzzles.
It’ll be interesting to see how many people accept queues outside supermarkets when the weather turns!
Interesting to see how when confronting the protesters the cops did not wear masks despite coming very clsoe to members of the public. I think this point can be used quite well to our advantage.
Did:
A) the cops’ bosses fail to provide the PPE needed to protect the officers from the public and hence abuse their employees (we all know that it won’t really make much difference but the zealots think otherwise and its them we have to convince)
B) the cops not care about the risk their breath, especially when getting right up in peoples faces, posed to the public (again the mask would do ltitle here, but getting in people’s faces like that is plain wrong even when there isn’t a pandemic on)
or
C) the cops not think PPE was necessary for preventing transmission in either/both directions and hence prove themselves to be hypocrites happily enforcing ministrial guideliens which even they realise aren’t really needed
They haven’t been wearing PPE in any footage I’ve seen, at any time during this ‘crisis’. They’re constantly hanging around together in large groups, not bothering about distancing among themselves either. When questioning members of the public they often aggressively get up in people’s faces (as they would before corona was a thing), despite having arrested loads of people for coughing at others or even ‘breathing’ near to others.
Obviously I think these measures are bullshit, but the point is the police have been flagrantly disregarding them both in relation to themselves AND the members of the public they’re supposed to be ‘protecting’ and setting an example for. We won’t even mention the Westminster Bridge debacle and all those ridiculous car cavalcade tiktok videos.
It’s rank hypocrisy. Which is quite typical of the police.
Oh yeah and ‘social distancing’ and PPE are recommending IN THEIR OWN GUIDELINES. They get PPE provided if they ask for it.
Clearly they don’t ask often.
Hopefully these rule-breaking police are actually sending us a coded message.
The cops are loving this gig. Loads of overtime and able to hassle law abiding citizens rather than deal with the scum.
Masks don’t do anything outside and social distancing is useless.
I would say the police probably agree.
Trouble is, they agree whilst arresting people for not respecting the bullshit guidance whilst they get off scott free.
Found a very good columnist article at:
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/my-fears-about-the-new-normal-
Regrettably she does get a bit partisan about Brexit, which might make the article less persuasive to remainers, but otherwise it is an EXCELLENT read. As a remainer myself I disgaree with some of her Brexit points and think she misunderstood why some of us voted remain (because we know Whitehall can’t be trusted and thought Brussels bossing it around sometimes helped protect civil liberties), and worry that such points might make this article less persuasive to remaienrs than it could otherwise be. The article talks about the dangers of a safety culture and how “my freedom must not end where your fear begins”. This article should be required reading for MPs.
As far as I can tell, she doesn’t mention what motivated remainers, only what *didn’t* influence Brexiteers: fear. Project Fear was a tactic used against potential Brexit voters; it implies no criticism of ideological remainers who had their own positive reasons for voting remain.
Remainers such as yourself are not in the frame for having perpetrated Project Fear (people are not responsible for every tactic adopted by their own ‘side’), so she’s not criticising you.
I think that would be good on a t-shirt –
My freedom does not end where your fear begins.
Now there’s a good t-shirt slogan!
James Dellingpole’s report from today in London village https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vhalwb-yHPM
DIARY OF A COVIDIOT Sunday May 17th
I had been both looking forward and anxious about leaving my family for a week and getting the work done on our Welsh home.
Looking forward to an escape from the thronging madness of London for the rolling hillls and open spaces ], anxious about being with I out my family fo a week. Funny I wonder if this Corona-era, makes that distance more difficult…
The highlights of my day was an early one. My no-hugging father calls. In the aftermath of a highly emotional exchange about lockdown, where I try and engage about the hysteria and the dangers being brought upon us by the reaction to this virus, both economic and liberty-wise, he called to tell me that he respects my opinion and considers it a valid and potentially true response. He merely stressed that it was possible that we would end things soon and that it wouldn’t be so bad for the economy, that we will recover and move on positively.
Much as I doubted his rosy outlook, in was hard not to credit him immensely for actually wanting to give me that. He is a big man and, given the onslaught of CNN, BBC and every other MSM that he listens to for most of his waking hours, a far bigger man than me or anyone I know.
He actually said I may be right and he would leave room on his mind for the possibility and he did not think I was crazy just a bit too negative and too engaged.
It touched me deeply and gave me hope and appreciation off my father.
This is interesting…and probably won’t gather much traction in MSM. Italy opening up earlier than expected. Tide turning?
“We’re facing a calculated risk in the knowledge that the contagion curve may rise again,” Conte said during a televised address. “We have to accept it otherwise we will never be able to start up again.”
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2020-05-italy-reopen-borders-june-restart.html
That’s good news. Same as Switzerland – they are opening up earlier too.
They all get it. They all know they buggered up. — interesting to see the different levels of climb-down happening in real time.
Or in our case, double down
I read somewhere that many Italian regions and cities are now defying the central government and basically going further than what Rome has decreed. Methinks this is a backlash from them as all throughout this crisis many local government officials have been decrying the “one size fits all” approach which has caused a lot of damage to their economies and livelihoods.
Time to leave Britain, maybe…
True – any passing planets around?
yeah, first job app to U S A posted today
I wouldn’t get too excited, it will still be masks compulsory in all public inside spaces…(you are allowed to remove it temporarily to eat apparently)
The argument that you shouldn’t socialize if you’re asymptomatic is utterly ridiculous, as anyone with half a brain would realize.
My favourite exchange with someone about this took place the other day.
“But what if when you go outside, you don’t know you have it and you give it to a grandma and they DIE?”
My response: “What if you coughed on a grandma last year, have her the flu, and she died? Are we gonna start keeping score of all the people we’ve potentially shuffled off the mortal coil with our breath during our lifetimes? Do people with the lowest scores get some sort of prize?”
Shut them up.
I mean. It’s kinda like saying I shouldn’t be allowed to drive (that we’ll used example) – because one day I might swerve to avoid hitting a cat, distracting a driver coming in the opposite direction, who slams into a fence, which falls over onto a passing pedestrian and kills them. Whoops! MURDERER
Yes exactly this! I have been using the same comparison myself. Is everyone sat at home now thinking about all the people they have potentially killed with flu in years gone by?!?!?
I think people forget as well that culturally we are very much a “just get on with” society when it comes to respiratory viruses in general. UK employers are not sympathetic at all to people taking time off for colds/flu. Kids are still encouraged to go to school. Only very occasionally do you come across someone who lightheartedly warns you not to get too close as they have the lurgy.
Feeling a bit fed up tonight for some reason.
I just want this insanity to stop and normal life to be resumed but it’s just going on and on with no resolution in sight.
Here’s hoping this week brings some positive news for us all.
Couldn’t agree more.
Me too Sue. Had more than enough of this nonsense now.
Yes, but don’t hope for anything like normal life. Massive debts added to our economy, massive fall in tax receipts until the first emergency budget which will have to ramp up tax levels, millions unemployed, many thousands dying from undiagnosed and untreated cancer etc, suicide levels surging, supply problems throughout any surviving industries, etc, etc.
We really haven’t seen much in the way of downsides yet.
This was exactly me yesterday. We try and make the weekend a bit “weekendy” with a takeaway and drinks, a game of cards… But yesterday I was not feeling it at all. Depressed, anxious and generally glum. I want it all to go away.
Does anyone know where Boris has gone? It’s like he’s hidden away and only speaks to the public via pre-recorded message.
As a “leader” he has been absent and shocking. No clarity, no direction, no transparency. It’s all a shambles. We are now entering into week NINE of lockdown. What the actual F**K?
I suspect he’s well aware of the mess he’s in and really doesn’t know what to do or say. It’s why I think it’s up to us to get out there, lead as normal lives as possible in this madness, and try to show the way.
…and look for a job overseas!
Suggest ‘Where’s Wally?’ posters are renamed ‘Where’s Boris?’
I think when he was mayor of London he recruited a team of senior advisers to help out with things like coming up with ideas, direction and having policies.
He likes to be in charge and for everyone to like him, but he doesnt like to lead.
My heck, he’s become Big Brother.
He’s practising for that paternity leave he’s going to take later.
OK now this is totally weird.
A friend’s sister, in her sixties but with rheumatoid arthritis, has until now been happily going to the shops and for walks, without catching anything, as you don’t.
NOW she has been sent a letter telling her to self-isolate FOR THE NEXT TWELVE WEEKS. WTAF?
“More than half of the country’s billionaires are nursing losses as high as £6 billion, with the combined wealth of the 1,000 wealthiest individuals and families plunging for the first time since 2009, in the wake of the financial crisis”
We should start a GoFundMe for the poor dears.
Agree with much of that – but the fall in wealth of the ultra-rich, whilst deserving of little sympathy, is a very real early indicator of the dreadful consequences to come from the crazy lockdown.
I hope your friend’s sister is going to ignore the advice.
Now they are “finding” new symptoms, such as loss of taste and smell, as a reason to self-isolate. Meanwhile in the real world covid is basically a busted flush, well on the way out. They are getting desperate to find excuses to continue the lockdown. IMO Boris and Sturgeon are racing to see who can have the longest.
The David Starkey interview is spot on. His comments about the political game and the NHS are completely accurate. However, I don’t see a way out. The Government will never admit their mistake, it would be the end of them to say they have over-reacted. Maybe we’ll get to mid June and they’ll throw us a bone of pubs a week earlier, but what use is that to anyone.
My social media is still overwhelmingly a hateful place. There is no thought process or counter argument to fact or reason, it is an outright rebuttal of anything to do with lifting restrictions, opening schools etc. They are filled with venom, there is no gratitude for anything that was given to appease them – the over-generous furlough deal which will set up back months – they will moan and they will complain and they won’t stop until it is over. Then they’ll go back to posting instagram pictures of beers in the pub and concerts, but ignore the hypocrisy in that. This is The Cult of Corbyn and now The Cult of NHS.
With the death toll where it is, no matter what the reason, there is no where to go other than to pay the price of this nonsense and hope we can get out of our self-imposed suicide as soon as possible. Pass me another beer.
Is it just a refusal to admit their mistakes or a fear of getting lynched when the truth about this comes out and we have to face up to the economic, social and public health disaster that their imprisonment of an entire country has brought about.
News in The Scottish Sun online that Nicola Sturgeon is to announce relaxation of the Scottish lockdown on Tuesday, along the lines of Boris last Sunday. The comments are hilarious and show anti-lockdown support combined with an an understanding of the nasty political game being played by Sturgeon. The following is the best:-
So, if you want to see our future, look at what England does and presume that after about a week of Krankie’s hysterical condemnation of the English position together with Piers on GMB, spittle flying all over the cameras and crew, we will do exactly the same.
Can’t wait for the elections Krankie. Everyone I know says they want you out now… no idea who does your 80% support polling (your hairdresser maybe, how is she? Does she get a pass to break lockdown? Can I get one before my businesses collapse?) but I can’t find a single person who supports you anymore. And I know a lot of people through my businesses.
Remember, Cameron, Clegg, May all defeated by the polls – all assumed things that weren’t.
How long will any remaining support take to ebb away when the furlough money stops flowing across the border? Then you’ll have to explain to the people furloughed what happened to their jobs whilst they were sipping drinks on the balcony, on 80% salary, on a government holiday.
You politicised a pandemic. People are dying and you either cover it up – Carlton Hotel and care homes – or twist it into an anti – English, pro independence narrative. Then you have the gall to call out anyone trying to save the economy as risking lives!
Not as many as will be lost by the long term effects of lockdown little missy.
Krankie out! Fandabydosy!
https://www.effiedeans.com/2020/05/scotching-snp.html
And so say all of us Gillian.
Here is an extract (sounds very grand) of what I wrote to Stuart Campbell of Wings over Scotland this morning. I really hope he’s more honest than the others.
In 2018,
58,503 people died in Scotland from all causes combined.
7128 people died from respiratory diseases.
3433 people died from respiratory diseases in the first four months
This compares to 2389 people who died from respiratory diseases including covid19 in the first four months of 2020…
76 per cent of all covid deaths in Scotland are in people aged over 75. Remember that the average life expectancy for men in Scotland is 77 and for women 81. 91 per cent of all covid deaths are among people with at least one co-morbidity. It is clear that covid19 is not an equal opportunity killer…
Boris Johnson is an idiot – I’ll grant you that – but for shutting down the country in the first place on the basis of poor science and panic. Now he is trying to save his political hide by refusing to admit he made a mistake. That is where the Scottish independence movement should be attacking him. So far your own blog has sinned by omission rather than commission. Either you genuinely believe that the virus is so dangerous it warrants locking up everybody, young and old, or you agree that the Scottish government’s strategy of outflanking Johnson on the compassion front will lead to independence and should be supported. This boils down to: “We’ll stay in oor hoose till Wee Nicola tells us it’s safe tae come oot!” What happened to Scots wha’ hae wi Wallace bled? What sort of freedom is that? Freedom has to be based on truth and there is very little of that in Scotland on the subject of covid19.
I find the criticism of Lord Sumption fascinating. First he shouldn’t criticise the government’s approach because he is no epidemiologist. Second he is rich and privileged and wishes to see the working men and women thrown into the virus’s path and third he is – the now banal criticsm of people who should know better – only thinking of the economy over lives. I support his argument because he is a citizen defending principles of freedom and the defence of social justice, to which he has dedicated his working life. We all have a duty as citizens in a democracy to uphold and defend those rights. The onus is on the government to supply evidence when it wishes to deminish those rights. One does not need to be a scientist to ask legitimate questions and criticize bad policy. Lord Sumption speaks for the working man and woman when he raises concerns about the impact and the efficacy of this non evidence based lockdown – he is a friend to low income workers such as myself who are on a precipice of financial ruin and will be paying for the resultant recession/depression for years. And lastly, there is growing evidence that the lockdown will be paid for in lives, ie cancer patients, mental health etc. Well regarded scientists are very critical of the policy of lockdown – from Stanford to Harved and Oxford. Where is the evidence that lockdown works, that the two metre rule works and that children are at risk never mind people without morbities under 50? However the main point is that since 1215 we are a nation of law and principle. Lord Sumption is correct. Principles of law and society connot and must not be simply erased over night. If they are we enter a world that endagers us all.
This was a reply to The Times web page to all the flack Lord Sumption got for his article. I just wanted to make sure that somewhere in cyber space it would remain intact as they edit replys and I think his intervention in the near non debate should be supported by all citizens. He has been insulted and criticized to an intolerable dregee. Thank you Mr Young for this website – I’m on the other divide from you in many things. But here we must stand together.
Appealing to an authority (ie. they are an epidemiologist) doesnt settle a matter. We should be be able to listen, question and examine a matter intelligently to see if we think it is true. The opposite is true as well, we dont dismiss and not consider a view BECAUSE of who someone is (ie. a Lord).
I think of Gove’s widely misunderstood comment in the referendum- about having had enough of experts. He was not saying that we should ignore all experts, but we should not consider a matter closed just because a particular sub-group of experts (economists) have decided that it is so. Experts from other fields matter too, and so does the ability to ask questions and test their ideas. Going on about which expert said this, and which expert said that… we know, but we ought to nurture the possibly that they may not be infallible, and that we have legitimate questions, and that in public policy we should consider more than one field of knowledge when making public policy. (Also applies in academia – I think of imperial’s comment about virology not being computer science – yes, but computer scientists may be good at improving your models, maybe talk to them occasionally!)
“I think of Gove’s widely misunderstood comment in the referendum- about having had enough of experts. He was not saying that we should ignore all experts, but we should not consider a matter closed just because a particular sub-group of experts (economists) have decided that it is so. Experts from other fields matter too, and so does the ability to ask questions and test their ideas.”
One of the great ironies being that is precisely what seems to have happened to this government – letting policy on this epidemic be set by an over reliance on not just the experts in one particular field (medical), but on a particular well connected and vociferous subset of those experts.
Sumption has been excellent through this, just a shame he couldn’t give some specific pointers to the people on how to seize their rights back.
I Wear My Face Mask In My Car (Corey Hart Parody)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G30M80YF81U&app=desktop
I can’t guarantee the link is alive. YouTube has apparently been removing this.
Wonderful! Thanks.
Yesterday, while waiting in the quick ‘baskets only’ queue, I did my bit for lockdown subversion by handing a basket to the bloke waiting behind me .
Shock, horror! He did accept it, even though I had to shorten the distance rules to hand it to him.
Human contact and a friendly face- whatever next!
Call the Sturgeon hot line; rules broken by an insurgent.
Disapproving glances from the maskerons waiting in the trolley area.
And Gillian- see below- is right: Sturgeon’s sniping is wearing thin, as is her engagement of notably obese public officials to tell us what we can and can’t do.
As for indyref 2: seriously?
I sent a letter to Stuart Campbell of Wings over Scotland today. So far, unlike the rest of the indpendence movement, he has sinned by omission rather than commission on the subject of covid19 by not mentioning it. I know he doesn’t worship at the Krankie shrine and is against woke politics so I’m hoping he will be honest enough to try to start a movement of lockdown sceptics for independence, or something. He could be fairly influential.
Good for you Jane; let us know the outcome.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/apr/28/sturgeon-urges-scots-to-wear-coronavirus-face-masks-for-shopping-and-travel
Sturgeon and the Maskonauts seeking the golden fleece of obligatory divergence from Westminster , combined with an insistence that UK plc continues with the furlough hand outs, should lock up Scotland be extended beyond the Chancellor’s cut off date.
Sturgeon and the Maskonauts seeking the golden fleece ….
Just brilliant.
I watched the David Starkey interview and he’s right about the UK (and the rest of the world by extension) committing economic suicide which means that we will be worse off than where we were before 23 March and will be picking up the pieces from this for many, many. many years to come.
As someone who studied history, I also agreed with him about this virus being minor if you compare it to the likes of the Black Death and even the Hong Kong Flu of the late 1960s yet the whole world didn’t shut down for that.
What I would like to see now is the government (and also MSM and scientists) doing a mea culpa (as Starkey suggested) and be man enough to admit that they panicked and that the reaction was disproportionate. However the government doesn’t have the guts to do it and we’ll be doomed to carry on with this charade in order to appease those who have been scared witless about this and expect the state to do everything for them. Unless the worm turns.
Yes, probably the biggest self-imposed tragedy ever caused by incompetent and feeble governments. The chance of a mea culpa however is probably less than the proverbial snowball’s.
I agree that a mea culpa is the only thing that could begin the process of trying to mend the damage that has been done by this panic. Without that, we are still digging deeper.
But it’s difficult to believe that any of the men and women who got us into this situation precisely because of their cowardice and lack of moral fibre are capable of such a response.
No one should be ashamed to admit he is wrong, which is but saying, in other words, that he is wiser today than he was yesterday. Alexander Pope
Read more at https://www.brainyquote.com/topics/admit-quotes
Admitting you’re wrong and coming clean can be a major catharsis, but you have to overcome your ego first: quite impossible for most politicians.
“They are not wicked men, just timid ones, terrified of being blamed for deaths on their watch. But it is a wicked thing that they are doing.”
Forrest Gump would repeat here his mother’s wisdom that wicked is as wicked does.
It’s a bit of psychological self-defense going on here; none of us want to admit that our rulers ARE wicked, nor that we collectively and/or individually have supported them in doing wicked things.
But I care not for their professed reasons for their actions, even less for the entrail-readings of people remote from them who yet pretend to know the “real” reasons.
I greatly appreciated the learned Lord’s article, but I strongly suggest he at least consider the possibility that some proportion of our rulers ARE wicked and that all their professed concern for our welfare and respect for our rights are simply their own personal propaganda.
I don’t KNOW, of course, any more than anyone else, what goes on in the heads of every single person in a position of power over us, but I do know some things about human nature, about history, and about the kinds of people attracted to politics. I know some things about statistics and the distribution of common human traits, including psychopathy and sociopathy, too.
Statistically speaking it is an absolute certainty that some proportion of our rulers ARE wicked.
I will not pretend otherwise and I highly recommend you do not either.
It depends how you are defining wicked, which is what I took from what he said. As the old saying goes, the road to hell is paved with good intentions, in the end it matters little what your intentions were when you end up in hell. I think what is going on generally is a kind of lack of morality (hear me out!), not just in our politicians, but in all of us. Even this fear of dying, and our pious incantations that we are saving lives, isn’t a concern for others, it’s a narcissistic self-obsession, and a kind of misanthropy, a fear of others as ‘diseased’, it’s immensely self centred.
There is huge intellectual laziness going on all also, and an infantile refusal to extend ourselves to understand anything properly, a sort of sitting like infants waited to be parented. Then, the other thing that is getting my goat is how indisciplined people are with their feelings, it’s supremely self indulgent (and links to the article published here about the infantilisation of dissent), I don’t think I’ve ever seen Brits EMOTE quite like we currently are, this vomiting of tedious feelings everywhere, without a hint of fortitude or forbearance.
The whole thing is played out on devices, we were isolated before this happened, consuming infotainment on the internet, that’s hardly knowledge, or wisdom, and it requires no effort.
Then, there is a simple refusal to accept our own mortality, this narcissistic God like demand that we can cheat death, that death itself is the disease. And in it all, what do we revere? Life? Do we revere anything at all? (I would point out that EVIL is LIVE spelt backwards!).
As for respecting our elders (Honour thy mother and father not being a bad bit of psychological information by which to order your life), we SAY we do, what we’ve done would say otherwise. I personally am feeling a little chastened that I didn’t do or say more to demand we sort out social care before this happened, we’ve been insulting our old for a really long time.
Then we have our hailed expert, sneaking around in the middle of the night, to covet another man’s wife (I’m not religious, I do think the bible is an extraordinary thing), a sexually incontinent idiot with dubious standards, unable to discipline his own desire for an orgasm.
I’m starting to think the whole thing is a kind of reckoning, our chickens coming home to roost. It’s all wicked in a way.
Emotional incontinence and conspicuous compassion replaced rationality, independent thought and personal responsibility with its attendant maturity many moons ago.
This ‘sceptred isle’ has become ‘this slavish pile’.
Sadly, I agree. And unless we buck our ideas up, it’s only going to get worse. People confuse what they want with what they need, and what they feel with what is true. It’s so entitled, a feeling of being unsafe, is not the same as actually being unsafe. With all this carry on you’d think we’re in Syria with barrel bombs falling on our head.
As for what we are now doing to our children, adults demanding that children make them feel safe, that really is wicked.
Well said.
Your comment about the refusal to accept mortality is spot on. I think as well that society has been a victim of its own success in prolonging the human lifespan and as Francis Fukuyama has pointed out, unfortunately the quality of life has not kept up with the quantity hence why we’re seeing more conditions such as dementia and issues with care homes and end of life provision.
Very true, I not long ago did a big research job for a hospice, they are future proofing now for what is ten years down the track in terms of who will need palliative care, elderly frail, particularly dementia, and life limited children with profound disabilities (all those prem babies we saved at the very edge of viability grew up). These are complex moral and ethical questions. What did we do instead? Stood in the street banging a saucepan with a wooden spoon!
We’ve also santised death. I was talking to my mum, born in 43, grew up absolutely rock bottom poor (poor in a way we don’t see now). She was telling me about the women in those communities who laid out the bodies, you’d have the body in your living room for days, we were much closer to life and death then. Children died in infancy, people died of treatable diseases too soon. I think also probably two episodes of total war gave us some appreciation for life.
I got shouted down with my comments about pornography the other day, with the advent of the internet, I’m sure I don’t need to tell you how depraved, violent, humiliating, disgusting it is now. Whatever your perversion, you can find it. But if you think about it, it’s really all about DEATH. Women literally are the bearers of new life, and pornography is the insult of it, the degradation of it, the humiliation of it. And that’s why I object to it. It’s EVIL (as in the opposite of ‘live’) in a very real sense imho. It abhors LIFE.
It’s the same with how we industrially farm animals for meat (I’m not a veggie, I have no overall objection to eating meat) but just the lack of reverence and respect we have for life.
I dunno, maybe I’m thinking too much, but I’m so angry and sad about this situation, and pretty disgusted with humans right now.
Fully agree that porn and industrial farming are an abomination-I am a vegetarian,for more than 30 years- but the refusal to accept death and the frankly irresponsible obsession with the prolongation of all life, at any cost, is one of the most fundamental problems facing our society.
We seem to have developed an entirely rights based, consumerist approach to all and every form of medical intervention, regardless of cost and how appropriate this might be.
The longevity nuts are some of the worst offenders; scientists trying to beat the ageing process, cryogenics cultists, mad women who demand the right to conceive after the menopause and ,of course, elderly men who wish to become fathers.
To repeat an earlier comment, when I asked for the right to refuse to attend resuscitation attempts, depending on the age, prognosis, morbidity, of patients, I was treated as a heretic and ostracised by some, although quietly agreed with by others.
And let’s not forget that amidst all the shouting about genocide and sacrifice, that those approaching the ends of their lives, need palliation, not heroic interventions in hospital wards, no matter what the MSM might demand.
Weaponising the deaths of the very old and frail to score political points does no good.
To be sure, the care staff should be properly paid and trained, and have qualified nurses in charge of palliative protocols,with GPs and geriatricians on call when needed.
This way, the residents can be relieved of pain and distress in a familiar setting and their deaths eased, with families allowed to visit where appropriate.
Unfortunately, as I know from experience, nursing homes can be very depressing, with an endless round of washing, changing of incontinence pads, heavy lifting and attempts to stimulate the more lively residents, this with limited success.
Many care assistants don’t stay long, worn down by poor wages, zero hours contracts and the messier aspects of the work routines.
Furthermore, so many homes are now privately owned, hence the conflict between running a profitable business while applying acceptable standards of hygiene and safety for residents and staff.
I really hear you, and I’d agree. And really all of the above is our refusal to really engage with what sustains life (whether we’re talking about what we do to our old, porn, industrial holocaust of animals or whatever, laying aside any scepticism about climate science, what we are doing to the planet) and that is respect, compassion, intimacy, love, kindness, connection, a willingness to confront things that are painful, or make us uncomfortable, and a total lack of discipline of our own appetites. Porn especially is the opposite of love or intimacy, it’s actually hate (death).
Weaponising of DNR was a disgrace, at the best of times only about 5% survive CPR, to do it to an elderly frail person, when you break all their ribs, it’s extremely traumatic, including for families, with very little hope of a good outcome. I wouldn’t put my mum through that, I’d much rather she slipped peacefully away. I agree with you about care, and I don’t know what the answer is, inter-generational living possibly, but that requires men to step up and share the care, I understand why women wanted to get away from endless unpaid, unappreciated dreary grunt work (ironically we now pay other women the minimum wage to do it). Our response to that should not be to privatise it and outsource it but share it (see point above about intimacy and respect!).
I feel sorry for kids too, we’ve even robbed them of youth culture, so obsessed are we with not getting old. They can’t even go and get wrecked at a festival without some ridiculous middle aged people also being there in a luxury yurt and designer wellies, botoxed to the eyeballs it’s all a bit embarrassing. How do you rebel as a kid, if you and your mum share clothes, and your mum talks about being ‘your best friend’ and not your parent and your dad is doing lines of coke on the weekend and w*nking into a sock?
Anyway, I’m in danger of starting to rant that ‘everything is rubbish’, but we are in a mess, I fear where we are now is just the culmination of it.
I stopped the resus attempts on my late Mum, as she had requested; a quick peaceful death was hers.
And you’re so right BecJt, about embarassing oldies ‘getting down’, or whatever the phrase is now.
Smug articles in the Guardian about gruesome 80 year olds who flaunt their ‘sexy’ vibrant selves get my cringeometer flying into the red zone-(they’re usually former models)-, along with such grotesque figures as some of our more ‘mature’ celebs, who appear to have transformed themselves into pneumatic aliens with joke shop lips.
Or the stupendously obese who proclaim that fat=fit?
I mean, what can one honestly say about a supposedly mature western democracy when so many of its female citizens appear to be under the delusion that alarmingly bizarre surgical enhancements and horrible tarty clothing confer equality, liberation and automatic respect?
Ah choicey choice fun feminism, don’t get me started, what a con trick that is. It’s tragic really. And yes I do wish some old rockers would retire gracefully, rather than clinging to cool like a desperado (and it all works back around to contempt for the old, so abhorrent to be old).
I’m wondering if all this snowflakery we criticise kids for is actually their rebellion, what with having such badly behaved, ridiculous parents? Haha. Lots of kids don’t even drink now, they’re quite a sensible lot. And here’s a fun fact, the age group with the most rapidly rising rate of STD infections? The over 50s (they call them Saga Louts), post menopausal, can’t get pregnant, box of viagra, wey hey!
Pleased about your mum, dying with dignity is really important (and is what has upset me about what’s gone on in carehomes). My parents are getting on now, all they keep saying is ‘for the love of God, keep us out of hospital’. I will do my best!
Yes, the creepy, crepey, Cougars.
And the old rockers: Sir Mick, Sir Elton, Sir Paul, what a ghastly bunch of old crockers.
It’s a symptom of a society that is scared of death and therefore of becoming old.
” I understand why women wanted to get away from endless unpaid, unappreciated dreary grunt work (ironically we now pay other women the minimum wage to do it). Our response to that should not be to privatise it and outsource it but share it (see point above about intimacy and respect!)”
You overlook the fact that women are not allowed to retire till they’re 67. My first reaction to this was who’s going to look after the aged relatives?
To leave a job and become a full-time carer, the state bestows a generous allowance of £66 per week. Even the paltry minimum wage is almost five times that amount.
‘I would point out that EVIL is LIVE spelt backwards!’ Only in English BecJT. In Spanish it’s malvado, try spelling that backwards. I think all your posts are considered, highly constructive, very reasonable and tolerant and mostly I concur, but that phrase has always got my goat. Probably because I was being lectured at the time by some new-ager who doesn’t know their chakras from their chapatis.
How do you feel about god/dog, Nigel ?
Much the same. I’d hate to try to pronounce ‘chien’ backwards.
Well of course, and don’t worry I think new age woo is partly what got us into this mess (which is a form of spirtual bypassing, if we’re on that subject, all trite nonsense, requiring no effort and absolving us of responsibility, I mean if we ‘attract what we radiate, it’s people’s own fault they are sick or poor or whatever). I’ve had people say to me in all sincerity about the economy, ‘it’ll be alright in the end, we’ll find the money from somewhere’. It’s imbecile ‘positive thinking’.
Although I do stand by my point that often all ‘evil’ is living back to front, or the opposite of life.
I accept that. Please don’t think I was being in any way critical. I really like your posts and feel you’re a kindred spirit. And I know what you mean about positive thinking. So all the woo brigade sit in a circle being positive whilst the powers that be carry on raping and pillaging. It’s useless to pretend ‘what is’ (bad stuff) isn’t. I want to change ‘what is’ (bad stuff) to ‘what isn’t’. Full disclosure: I’m a student of metaphysics but the concepts that are backed up as far as possible by science (quantum stuff sometimes) and if people start talking to me about ‘creating your own reality’ I challenge them to elaborate and they usually can’t. It’s far more complex. Multi-dimensional probably. Bit like someone asking you whether you believe in God. You have to have a mutual agreement as to what God is before you can answer that question. You might as well ask me if I believe in Clopyhopeydoodah. (That’s right, I don’t know what that is either.)
I think it is more likely the dreaded combination of ignorance and arrogance. However, I remember my old German teacher in the late 1970s explaining the dynamics of Nazi Germany as told to her by friends – a very small inner core of evil, an outer core of enablers, and the vast majority of the population ‘believing’ it was the right thing for them as a country. Of course we know how the latter happened – the genius of Goebbels. Scary!
But even that really was a lack of effort, a refusal to actually do any ‘work’, just wanting a big parent figure to come along and do it for us, simple certainties, these people good, those people bad, rather than grappling with a complex constellation of forces (that was Germany in 1938, or the UK in 2020).
2 (2!) new confirmed cases in Germany yesterday (after being out of lockdown for 3 weeks). This thing is over, it’s burnt it’s way through the European population.
The sooner the European governments admit this, the better. This is now bordering on scandalous, politicians putting their careers before the good of the country, why aren’t we surprised?
https://apple.news/AQXWfMxiGQUiHVuwCvUnpRw
It says 342 now
UK aiming for 30 million coronavirus vaccine doses by September if trials succeed, Business Secretary Alok Sharma says
http://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/coronavirus/uk-aiming-for-30-million-coronavirus-vaccine-doses-by-september-if-trials-succeed-business-secretary-alok-sharma-says/ar-BB14dcoW?ocid=ientp
One absolutely does not need to be any kind of conspiracy theorist to regard this kind of thing with profound unease.
I’m kind of meh about vaccines in general – not dogmatically for or against, but I will not take any vaccine against this coronavirus, for two reasons.
First, because it is unnecessary, and taking unnecessary medication is always foolish. The disease simply is not particularly dangerous, taking all the circumstances into account.
Second, because it has clearly been rushed in response to a panic, and sophisticated medicines need long term monitoring and testing to ensure they do not do significant harm. There is simply no way the potential consequences of a new medication of this kind can possibly have been properly tested in such a short time.
Anyone taking such a vaccine is behaving irrationally and taking an unnecessary risk out of fear of a danger that is probably comparable to or less than the inherent risk in taking an inadequately tested new medication.
Let’s not forget the original “Swine Flu SNAFU”:
https://www.irememberjfk.com/swine-flu-scare-the-1976-version/
Plus, as Knut Wittowski (now censored by bigtech) says, why would you need a vaccine, if we all go out there, it’ll just go away.
Well exactly. Though the same applies to flu and plenty of people take flu vaccines (mostly the vulnerable groups and health workers on whom it is pushed, but not solely those groups).
That said I’ve never taken a flu vaccine and have no particular plans to. I think when it gets to the point that it might make sense to take it I will be ready to accept the consequences if I get a bad flu and check out. Death is never a matter of if, always a matter of when and how.
The NHS has me down as asthmatic, and every year I am invited to have a flu vaccine. I never get flu, so for years I didn’t bother. Then one year I decided to go for it. Shortly afterwards I went down with really bad flu, which knocked me out for 4 or 5 days. I have not had the flu jab, or flu, since.
I read the other day that a study has shown that the flu jab could significantly increase your chances of getting a coronavirus. They concluded that further investigation should be done. I now wonder whether my flu was in fact a particularly bad coronavirus.
Similar experience – they said wife was asthmatic (she wasn’t just the inhalers she was on giving her the symptoms, it’s written in the side effects section of the leaflet). Gave her a flu shot, hospitalised and nearly killed her, No flu jab or inhaler since, no flu since. Just lots of fruit and veg, good nutrition, Vit C and sunshine for D3.
I was also asthmatic for many years, but cured myself with vitamin D and a not very strict paleo diet. This website gave me the idea. https://www.jdmoyer.com/2010/07/17/how-i-cured-my-asthma-with-one-simple-lifestyle-change/
Asthma can be cured.
Three different doctors told me a total knee replacement was only a matter of time due to osteoarthritis. Since going on a low carb diet I haven’t taken any medication nor visited a doctor for this condition in 5 years.
Similar tale here: hypertension developed after exposure of damaging familial tensions, complete breakdown and seriously challenging impoverishment.
Enough about that, but ,against my will, I was prescribed a variety of different antihypertensive drugs, all of which had horrible side effects: one caused such a severe reaction, that I sent off a yellow card report to the health authority.(No response.)
To cut a long story short, I stopped taking them ,had to deal with and overcome, rebound hypertension and then found that dietary changes, a herbal tea,and magnesium and linseed supplementation all achieved the desired outcome: no side effects, and a general all round improvement in mental and physical health.
It pays to look around, experiment and buck the medicalisation trend, provided it is done responsibly.
Exact same scenario here two years in a row. Haven’t had a flu jab since. No flu (or cold) since!
I’ve not had a flu jab in decades, but in the last twelve months had two colds which were extremely unusual in that they were just colds, i.e. lasted a few days, blocked and runny nose, then just went away with no after effects, i.e. cough that goes on a long time.
Did have a nasty virus in early March which gave me a raised temperature, then a cough that lasted weeks. I have no idea where i caught it from bar a Chinese pomelo that i bought in January but didn’t eat for a long while….
Here’s a question: does anyone know of anyone else who actually died from seasonal flu? I know people who have never had it before can become very ill, but i personally don’t know anyone who died from it. Does anyone else??
Wouldn’t put it past the Gov to inject the population with a “vaccine” of distilled water as an exit strategy from the herd panic situation which we are currently in.
Homoeopathy just in time!
I’d much rather be fobbed off with distilled water than that cocktail of toxic crap they even put in placebos in vaccine trials:
https://drmalcolmkendrick.org/2020/02/25/the-great-placebo-scandal/#comments
John McEnroe’s memorable ‘you cannot be serious’ comes to mind.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t0hK1wyrrAU
I don’t know how many doses of vaccine they are going to order but they can reduce it by one,I’m bloody well not having it.
The longer supermarkets and public transport continue their exclusive privileges for NHS staff, the sooner the returning to work public are going to turn against them. The crying nurse video that went viral several weeks back- it’s a shame she didn’t do a follow up video crying for non-NHS key workers who were afforded no such privilege, or perhaps a video of her thoughts on the multitude of dancing nurse videos that did the rounds. I noticed many of those dances were choreographed, implying the staff had quite a bit of time on their hands prior to the actual filmings.
I remember that video – debunked as fake a few days later and quietly forgotten. She was an actress with mental health issues if I recall correctly.
Lots of fake NHS profiles been put on social media, traced to PHE or other government departments, deleted when questioned.
It wasn’t fake, her name was Dawn Billbrough and she was/is a critical care worker from York. She’s all over the internet if you do a search. And apparently she developed symptoms thereafter.
Maybe we are talking about different videos?
But I find it strange the same scenario is played out in different countries at about the same time or am I being too jaded and cynical?
I rooted through my e-mail trash and found the link I sent to my friends and other unbelievers at the time and here it is (been slack in deleting everything regularly recently):
Original news report:
https://twitter.com/CBSNews/status/1246804028601896961- – unfortunately the message “page not found” now appears. It’s an official CBS page so why would they delete one of their own pages?
A reply once investigation done:
https://twitter.com/almostjingo/status/1247150535012044801?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1247152213488619527&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fthefederalist.com%2F2020%2F04%2F06%2Fcbs-news-posts-fraudulent-video-icu-nurse-crying-over-poor-working-conditions%2F
Then about the same time this came to light:
https://voxpoliticalonline.com/2020/04/20/more-coronavirus-propaganda-hundreds-of-fake-nhs-social-media-accounts-set-up-by-health-dept/
AG, I’m sure you’re right. It’s almost mandatory to set up false accounts now. But I felt as though I had to defend Dawn because she was genuine and it touched me. At the time I couldn’t buy anything either. I don’t have a car to load good up to the roof and can only buy what I can carry and by the time I got to the local Tesco Express (main supermarkets too far away) everything had gone. For four weeks I couldn’t buy soap or bog roll. (Fortunately I had a supply of the latter.)
If they’d kept to “keep calm and carry on” and herd immunity type messaging the panic buying would not have happened, well maybe it would still have happened for loo roll as that panic was a global one due to an untrue rumour that loo roll was all mae in Wuhan and the factory had shut, but not for anything else. Stocks of everything and availabilty of delivery slots collapsed within hours of the PM’s lockdown announcement on 23/03, had all been fine befre that coward succumbed to media hysteria.
Yeah, and I used to do a weekly online shop for my mother who is 96. No chance of doing that up to Christmas as all slots are booked by people scared to effing go out. So I have to rely on charity. And that won’t last forever. So when they lift the lockdown and the charity fades away as volunteers get back to their normal lives is my mother supposed to starve?
Good luck getting through this. I’m not quite as and a situation a you but for the 2nd time in 20 years I’m on the verge of losing everything – savings, company, pension etc – due to government greed and/or incompetence.
Supporting my son and his girlfriend, were due to got o France to do the season on they cruise ships, gave up jobs and house in the UK then bang, homeless and jobless and now in the spare room.
None os us eligible for any of the government’s schemes so screwed again.
Soup – I’m making that from the veg leftover from the evening meals. Sunday was a boiled gammon joint so Monday was the boiling water. leftover gammon and veg and some frozen peas. Quite a reasonable pea and ham soup. Took me back to my childhood with the week long stew on the stove changing taste everyday.
Don’t let the bastards grind you down.
Don’t you have local independent shops in your area?
If that question was directed at me, no. Not within walking distance. And none deliver.
Not really surprised CBS deleted a fake page, here they are caught faking a complete coronavirus testing line at Cherry Health.
The link:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3BUBTtUTOII
There was another nurse, in the US, I think, who was crying and wailing about lack of PPE, but whose video was debunked.
I don’t know about the nurse who was upset at the empty supermarket shelves. I don’t blame her for being upset. Too many of the public were being hysterical and selfish.
I think you may be talking about that American girl who said she’d resigned over lack of PPE?
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-glasgow-west-52646104?intlink_from_url=https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment_and_arts&link_location=live-reporting-story
Yeugh….coronavirus art! Imagine having to live with this from your window every day.
I am Scottish and have been horrified by the way Nicola Sturgeon is trying to outflank Boris Johnson on the compassion front by installing a totalitarian society. To think that street artists, who are supposed to be subversive, should be producing such images. It’s really scary.
My husband is Scottish and we lived there for 10 years. Everyday we thank our lucky stars that we are no longer there to put up with the SNP’s nanny statism.
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/scotland-s-chilling-new-blasphemy-law
You’re well out of it; see what’s in the SNP pipeline. terrifying.
Rebel Bear’s gratitude one is truly nauseating.
Protests in Spain against the Lockdown
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wjkl1-VPMcw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VC_Uaey26Do
These protests are spreading throughout Madrid and beyond. 100’s of people took to the streets in Burgos, Logrono and other cities. One of the protests in Madrid was at the headquarters of the PSOE, (Spanish Socialist Workers Party) the traditional party of the Spanish left.
On that video they are ALL wearing masks though – which gives out very mixed signals
I think you can believe there is a dangerous virus out there, but also feel like our liberties are worth fighting for, even if it risks infection. It actually reinforces their argument in one way. Of course I personally believe the whole thing to be a scam. But I’m a loony conspiracy theorist. They called me that when I said the government was monitoring every single cellphone communication as well.
Trouble is when, in the future, a ‘conspiracy theory’ turns out to be right those that once ridiculed it have conveniently forgotten they did so e.g. cellphones and, of course, Snowden
I go with the saying: Its not a conspiracy theory when they tell you what they’re doing, e.g. turning the EU into a single country, eliminating national loyalties, cultures, norms, etc; the climate change scam is nothing to do with the climate, but about destroying Western capitalism, and enforcing socialism in its place.
The rationale for this is that it gives the pólice less reason to break up the protest.
I was considering something on those lines. Depends how the law is written.
All you lockdown sceptics out there maybe you can help me understand the order of these actions and tend gates as to me they do not make any sense. I asked my MP to question the government and on gov.uk/ask but no reply from anyone.
What we have is:
– issue declaration of imminent threat 10th Feb 2020 (while they were telling us all was hunky dory)
– downgrade the disease 19 March 2020
– introduce the population imprisonment 23 march 2020
– introduce legislation 26 March 2020
To me it should have been:
– declare the disease high consequence
– introduce legislation
– issue the imminent threat notice
– introduce the population imprisonment
– downgrade the disease
– lift any restrictions
Isn’t this the wrong order of implementing legislation?
What it says in the coronavirus Statutory Instrument which came into force on or about the 26th March 2020 is:
Serious and imminent threat declaration
3.—(1) These Regulations apply where the Secretary of State declares, by notice published on http://www.gov.uk, that the incidence or transmission of Coronavirus constitutes a serious and imminent threat to public health, and that the incidence or transmission of Coronavirus is at such a point that the measures outlined in these Regulations may reasonably be considered as an effective means of preventing the further, significant transmission of Coronavirus (“serious and imminent threat declaration”).
(2) The Secretary of State may revoke a serious and imminent threat declaration by way of a subsequent notice published on http://www.gov.uk.
(3) Before making a declaration under paragraph (1), or revoking a declaration under paragraph (2), the Secretary of State must have due regard to any advice from the Chief Medical Officer or one of the Deputy Chief Medical Officers of the Department of Health and Social Care.
The statement relating to the above was issued and posted on the gov.uk website but without fanfare or any notification given on 10th Feb 2020 and amended 25th Feb 2020 which is about 6 weeks prior to the quick draft emergency legislation being read in Parliament.:
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/secretary-of-state-makes-new-regulations-on-coronavirus
Then surely the announcement about downgrading of Covid-19 on March 19th 2020 which says it is no longer a high consequence infectious disease which makes the Coronavirus Statutory Instrument unnecessary and therefore null and void illegal as it is no longer “serious and imminent threat” :
https://www.gov.uk/guidance/high-consequence-infectious-diseases-hcid#status-of-covid-19
The forced imprisonment of the nation started on the 23rd March 2020 – prior to the commencement of the Statutory Instrument supposedly giving the Government the powers to lock us all up.
Why this order of things?
Why put the announcement on an obscure page of gov.uk without any fanfare etc and with nothing on the MSM sites?
Where is the guidance from Whitty, Vallance et al as referred to in the S.I.? At this time everyone in Government was saying it was all OK, no problems.
The only thing that makes sense is it was all written planned and prepared in advance, scientists/medics who make the HCID decision (politicians were not involved in this decision making apparently) were telling us something that they will not say out loud but due to the lowering of education standards to the lowest common denominator no-one noticed that it was all done in the incorrect order.
I don’t have an explanation for you, but this has been bugging me too.
I’m surprised why the press never picked up on downgrading the threat on the 19th of March. I only know about it because someone here posted a link to this website https://evidencenotfear.com/
My other schizophrenic person.
My MP has not answered or even acknowledged my e-mail to him and neither has Boris Johnson or 10 Downing Street.
To me this alone says it’s all illegally done and they know it.
MSM has been in on it. It’s that obvious. Now manipulating us into a new position.
Interesting to note: the BBC charter actually says it can be used by the government (effectively as a propaganda arm) in times of ’emergency’.
Despite all the nit-picky ‘criticisms’ I think this is exactly what’s happening. So when Piers Morgan goes batshit about ministers not appearing on itv, he’s probably got a point.
I’ve heard it said that the downgrading was one way in which the government could cover its arse regarding the lack of PPE for medics. But I’m not aware of anyone being able to verify that.
https://www.zerohedge.com/health/2006-origins-lockdown-idea
Very interesting article about the idea of lockdown versus earlier public health interventions. The idea seems to be originated by computer simulations and not from formal epidemiologist. We all know that the WHO , even in their document in Oct 2019, did not find evidence for lockdown measures and they were also not feasible.
The lockdown idea seems to have been developed further in the Bush administration and the US military.
Normal epidemiologists spoke strongly against these measures and a long quote in the article.
Scary things.
Change,org – why bother? part financed by Bill Gates which is why the anti-narrative petitions get nowhere.
“My wife insists that my sceptical attitude toward this current paranoia, means that I am living in la la land.”
Well you may rest assured that the numbers are on your side.
Though it’s obviously always a good idea to check for yourself if you can.
I can’t bear to read articles from the MSM any more, not even for a laugh. So few websites appeal, fortunately I have now found this one as well as 2 or 3 others that were recommended. Frankly they are the only thing keeping me sane! Thanks Toby.
MSM are goading the public now. Look at the comments section for a telling view of what Joe public now thinks. They aren’t as enlightened as us , but the vast majority are now calling bullshit on it all.
People power WILL turn this around but I fear for the compromise this will leave us in to get to the agenda at play here which is health and green, and technology. I don’t disagree with any of those goals but the way this has been done is to plant an idea into the entire nation in different ways, with FEAR being the tool of choice
I’m surprised comments are still being allowed. That’ll stop soon, when the public tell the journalists they’re talking b.s.
Or they’ll only allow comments that support the article’s viewpoint, like the Daily Mail has done with its Tommy Robinson hit pieces.
Here are a couple more you may not have seen:
https://off-guardian.org/
https://www.ukcolumn.org/
At first blush you might think they are home to conspiracy theorists. I looked for the origin of the term “conspiracy theory” and found this:
https://projectunspeakable.com/conspiracy-theory-invention-of-cia/
This slide on new Covid-19 hospital admissions – from
https://www.cebm.net/covid-19/covid-19-uk-hospital-admissions/
needs unpicking; it gives ammunition to those who say it’s too early to exit lockdown.
The slide runs from 24 March to 13 May, and says that new admissions to hospital with Covid are running at a steady 1,000 per day, ie still about half the peak rate. I’ve always thought hospital admissions would be a better indicator of the impact of the virus than testing data – the more you test, the more you find – but am disappointed at these numbers.
Is this because:
a) the virus is still rampant
b) more people in care homes with the virus are being transferred to hospitals (and why hasn’t this been done throughout, since there’s always been ample ICU capacity?)
c) the figures include those in hospital with a broken leg, who have been tested +ve for Covid on admission but are not suffering the symptoms?
d) something else
I understand these stats are being/have been used in the daily briefings – I’m afraid I stopped watching them many weeks ago because the TV is expensive and I didn’t want to break it. I think I need to do so now, to be able to argue cogently as I meet more friends and colleagues face-to-face (or should that be face-to-mask?).
Does anyone at the coal face (and there seem to be many on this site) know the answer – I hope it’s not (a)!
PS – As..
…”It’s a sad, sad, situation
and it’s getting more and more absurd”
an apt song seems to be Elton John’s “Sorry seems to be the hardest word”
https://www.cebm.net/covid-19/what-does-the-evidence-tell-us-about-current-covid-19-activity/
This seems to be a more updated version of the above with much more data incl the enormous number of outbreaks in care homes. But difficult to know which persons are admitted now. Still clear signs of reduction ICU and hospitaladmissions even though a plateau now
Can anyone shed any light on these hospital admissions please? Are some of these patients going into hospitals for something else and then testing positive for Covid, (Kenny Dalgleish for example) or are they suffering Covid symptoms at home and then being taken into hospital?
Just curious!
From my experience as a medic most of my covid19 patients went into hospital with emergencies eg rectal bleeding or a myocardial infarct . On admission they were tested as covid19 negative .They then caught the virus in the hospital.
This tallies with evidence from northern Italy – a lady from Milan posted such a couple of months ago on Times online
It would be good if this was investigated so we can avoid the same problem in the future.
Thanks for that. I remember what Dr Wolfgang Wodarg was saying at the very beginning of all this, that if tests for Covid are being carried out in hospitals, clinics and waiting rooms where you will find the sickest people, you are bound to get a very high number of positive tests.
Up to 20% of patients in hospital with coronavirus contracted it while they were being treated for another illness, report claims
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8328707/Up-20-patients-hospital-Covid-19-contracted-treated-issue.html
This thing is becoming like MRSA.
Covid19, the latest hopsital bug!
“….the daily briefings – I’m afraid I stopped watching them many weeks ago because the TV is expensive and I didn’t want to break it”
I share your pain. It’s not quite so excruciating if you watch it on catchup at double speed. To be honest it’s the only way I can tolerate Boris’ ermy blustering – although he seems to have become the lesser-spotted bluetwit recently.
https://neurosciencenews.com/immune-response-coronavirus-vaccine-16405/
“The teams also looked at the T cell response in blood samples that had been collected between 2015 and 2018, before SARS-CoV-2 started circulating. Many of these individuals had significant T cell reactivity against SARS-CoV-2, although they had never been exposed to SARS-CoV-2. But everybody has almost certainly seen at least three of the four common cold coronaviruses, which could explain the observed crossreactivity.
It is still unclear, though, whether the observed crossreactivity provides at least some level of preexisting immunity to SARS-CoV-2 and therefore could explain why some people or geographical locations are hit harder by COVID-19.
“Given the severity of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, any degree of cross-reactive coronavirus immunity could have a very substantial impact on the overall course of the pandemic and is a key detail to consider for epidemiologists as they try to scope out how severely COVID-19 will affect communities in the coming months,” says Crotty.”
Very interesting. Persons who never could have been exposed to Covid-19 in 2015-2018 had a T cell response to the virus. Therefore the latest scare story of only 5% in Spain and perhaps 10 % in the UK have antibodies to Covid-19 could be just be a scare story. The herd immunity to Covid-19 could be much lower than 60%.
Believe nothing the Spanish Government say about this. They are quite shameless liars. Four different groups researching the economic impact of government policy of wrongful imprisonment, including the research team of of a large bank, have disputed government forecasts on economic outlook. The figure of 5% of immunity was based on only the first phase of an ongoing study which started while house arrest was still in place. Their conclusión – herd immunity will never be achieved. Makes one wonder why they’re bothering with the subsequent phases of the study if they already know what the results will be
Especially as they were actually at 11 to 14% in the worse affected areas (Madrid and surround regions) for an antibody study representing the state of immunity around the end of March or a week or two after that.
They probably are at herd immunity (for a population that continues to practice minimal “distancing”– i.e. just staying at home when you’re symptomatic) in Madrid and surrounding regions, but a little way off that in Valencia and Catalonia. The idea that “herd immunity will never be achieved” is completely barmy.
It does look like it’s lower than 60% but there are a number of possible reasons for this, including the effect of “distancing” measures– just staying at home for 2 days when symptomatic could reduce the threshold from 60% to 20%.
It could also be cross-immunity, and I would also like to see a test of a decent sample of asymptomatic PCR-positives to see if they developed antibodies. The only thing I could find on this was one family member related to a patient in China who was PCR positive, then PCR negative twice, then PCR positive again, and they found no antibodies. But they didn’t seem to be testing anyone else for antibodies.
https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/26/8/20-1016_article#r6
In particular this diagram:
https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/26/8/20-1016-f1
But it’s just one person… Why not test several hundred asymptomatic recovered cases in Iceland?
If we look at Germany, they did that one antibody study in Heinsberg after the “super-spreading” carnvial and found 15% prevalence. If we look at their daily maps in the PDFs you can download from the RKI, only a few areas (near Munich and the Czech border) have caught up to Heinsberg levels of ratio of daily PCR positive to number tested. So I would not be surprised if 15 to 20% is what is tops out at in a lot of places. But there’s quite a bit of guesswork because of doing antibody tests while the epidemic is still spreading bearing in mind that you approach the herd immunity threshold extremely rapidly once you’re past about 5% or so– whether that threshold is 20% or 60%.
The MSM especially in this country don’t want to go anywhere near Sweden or Iceland its like they’ve literally been wiped off the face of the planet.
Charge the rental rate for a private jet for the afternoon – they are probably quite familiar with that!
Went to sign the petition – saw this –
“… and employees can wear masks if desired …”.
Unfortunate wording – desired by whom ? I ain’t a wearing no mask, so very sadly will not be signing this one.
I do agree, but I have signed anyway as I thought it’s better to have a large number of signatures so that the government have to take notice.
I won’t be wearing a mask though!
We have just received this update from the RMT union:
https://www.rmt.org.uk/news/rmt-calls-for-new-compulsory-covid-19-protections-for/
We strongly supported their campaign to keep the guards on trains and have been on their mailing list ever since. However, we are increasingly horrified by the line they are taking on SC2 and their latest offering takes the biscuit.
We live in a rural area and rely on public transport links, including the railway. We have not been on a train for over 2 months now. We would not contemplate either wearing a mask anywhere or using any form of transport/shopping where it is made compulsory. It seems to us like the longer this goes on the more lunatic people who you’d think would know better are becoming.
We are really struggling with the unions’ suicidal/murderous line on easing the lockdown, seemingly based on no research or wide reading but on MSM fear-mongering. We can only assume their agenda is to bring down capitalism by this – fat chance! We can only hope that the louder they scream, the more the Tories will ignore them.
Thanks for being such a valuable resource and antidote to the madness. For the record, our other ‘vaccination’ is simply getting out. We are fairly old (67 and 71) and, as we don’t run a car, we have continued throughout the lock-up to travel on buses and walk/cycle everywhere. We have started (cheerfully) challenging the cringers by telling them you can’t catch SC2 by walking past someone. Weirdly, they nearly always agree, from a distance of about 8 feet (!) We conclude that we must look dangerous. . . .
Could we remind the anti-school lot that schools didn’t close. They have provided a protective environment for vulnerable children, like those on a child protection plan (as well as child care for a range of workers). I don’t recall any howls of protest from teachers, unions or parents at that point. The fear campaign has since raged and now a school is unsafe, helpful rhetoric for those parents still using a school place…not. The proposal is for a staged opening I believe. Sometimes I think I am the only person who has read this…in particular section 6 and 7. https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/closure-of-educational-settings-information-for-parents-and-carers/closure-of-educational-settings-information-for-parents-and-carers#critical-workers
I made this exact point a couple of weeks back… Teachers have gone from saying schools haven’t closed and are open to key workers, and they are still working, to basically admitting they’ve been caught out and desperate to keep the charade up until September (the only teacher I know is on a rota where he goes to school one day in four weeks).
The simple – and to the point – truth is, if Covid was as bad as has been made out to be, all of our ‘key workers’ would have already dropped down like flies.
“all of our ‘key workers’ would have already dropped down like flies.”
Ditto supermarket checkout staff. They have more contact with the public than most.
I’ve said this all along. If coronavirus was so dangerous they wouldn’t of kept schools open for vulnerable children or key worker children. These key worker children are surely at a higher risk of exposure of coronavirus due to the job their parents do. I have written to my MSP, John Swinney the education minister for Scotland and my MP asking for the data to show how many of these children have had the virus and so how many fellow children and adults in these schools have they then passed it on to. As far as I am aware there have been no outbreaks of coronavirus in these schools, as I’m sure if there had been the media would of been all over it.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/germanys-new-coronavirus-thinking-11589498695
Even Merkel and the Germans not so afraid of R numbers? Perhaps this virus of common sense should spread to the UK.
Levels of herd immunity may already be too high!
Seen elsewhere:
To those calling it selfish and reckless to reopen. You want a shutdown but expect your garbage to be picked up. You also expect stores to be open with food/supplies. You expect farmers, packers, and pickers to generate the supplies. You expect truck drivers to deliver them. You expect Amazon to ship your packages while you sit at home. You expect the driver to leave it on your doorstep. You expect your phone/cable to work, and power to stay on. You expect your mail to show up rain or shine. You expect doctors/nurses to be available, although many have been furloughed. The entire premise of shelter in place is based on the idea that “others” must risk their health so you can protect yours. There is nothing virtuous about ordering your Amazon packages and making trip after trip to the store while claiming we need to stay shut down. With common sense, we CAN go back to life as it was. We can go to restaurants and get our haircuts. We could catch the virus or any virus. We take risks every day. If you choose to stay home, that is YOUR choice. The rest of us do not want to see our economy crumble. If it collapses, so will every other economy worldwide. More people will die than Covid-19 and many other illnesses combined. If that happens, you will need to hide in your house. Those that want to reopen do NOT want people to die. We want to take measures to protect our people AND our country so people can live. We need to start the reopen in order to live. Share if you agree.
Hi, could you say where this brilliant quote is from? I would love to share it with attribution.
Sorry, don’t know – it’s as I found it on another site.
Three cheers for Jonathon Sumption. The voice of sanity in a mad world.
It seems to me that there are a few fundamental factors which have lead us to where we are today.
Firstly the continual need for politicians to “do something” and bow to hysterical red-top newspaper pressure.
Secondly the permanent need to give more money to the NHS. They complain every winter about how they can’t cope if anyone gets sick and routinely publish waiting time data to prove the point. So obviously if anything new turns up it is going to create a national disaster. Since the politicians (of all colours) have always felt the need to say what a wonderful organisation the NHS is, they have no choice but to pump in more money, even to the extent of building “Nightingale” hospitals that they didn’t need (but, of course, they might have needed them except for the heroic efforts of their staff doing the job they chose and for which they are usually reasonably well paid (£25,000 rising to £30,000 with experience for a qualified nurse)).
Thirdly the growth and promotion of the “Health and Safety Culture” which results in nobody except the “experts” being able to assess risk and act accordingly. There is no such thing as 100% safe, there never has been. There is risk in crossing the road and in driving (in 2018, 160,597 casualties of all severities in road traffic crashes – https://www.brake.org.uk/facts-resources/1653-uk-road-casualties , this does not stop me driving or crossing the road as I judge the risk acceptable;
in the UK every year, almost 6,000 people die in home accidents and 2.7million visit their local accident and emergency departments seeking help (ROSPA) yet somehow I manage to survive uninjured for most years; when I had chickenpox, I knew I was infectious and self-isolated without having to be told to do so.
How many “health and safety gone mad” articles have we all read!!
Somehow we need to find a way to return to a world where individuals recognise that they are responsible for their own actions instead of relying on the state to do it for them.
PS
Thought I would check on the risks of “mountain sports” – not that I intended to participate, I just wondered how they might compare to our present situation. I just had to share this research into the blindingly obvious from the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health.
The last sentence is a revelation!
Death rates vary dramatically between different mountain sports activities primarily practised during the summer season. Mortality in paragliding, mountain, rock and ice climbing, and especially in high-altitude climbing, is higher compared to that in mountain hiking, trekking or mountain biking. Risk factors as well as the characteristics of the practitioners vary across different mountain sports Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 2019, 16, 3920 10 of 13 activities. High-risk activities are characterized by an increased likelihood of fatal falls and the presence of considerable objective hazards such as avalanches, rock and ice fall, or rapidly changing weather conditions. Appropriate skill and fitness levels are of prophylactic relevance when engaging in those activities. Lacking fitness and pre-existing diseases put elderly people at special risk for non-traumatic death. The death risk is increased in remote terrains, e.g., high altitude, where rapid rescue missions are impossible. Thus, preventive efforts must more particularly focus on high-risk mountain sports and high-risk individuals.
When confronted with the awful “stay safe” remark in a shop recently I remarked that my hobby was BASE jumping so staying safe was not my biggest concern.
Oh dear! When people in t-shirts and pumps get stuck up Ben Nevis in January, my instinct is to tell the rescue people to let nature follow its course and remove them from the gene pool.
Another possible explanation behind the the HMT leak is that the Bank of England may be planning to monetise the entire Covid induced debt. This would mean we all pay via inflation rather than the UK borrowing money from elsewhere. This approach wouldn’t be noticed at first due to wealth destruction lowering demand, but would come to the fore in future years.
My mother is 96 and she can’t wait to get out and about. Goes for two rambles around the block every day as it is.
Was asked by a pub company to complete a quick survey.
One question about opening gave the following 2 options:
– open as soon as possible with social distancing
– stay closed until ti all blows over.
I got on their webcast (run by AI, not real people) and put the following:
You should change question 3 on the survey – it is very leading. There is no science about social distancing it was made up out of thin air, no laws about social distancing, Police admitted they cannot enforce guidance as has no force in law, guidance does NOT have to be followed. More and more evidence coming forward the whole time it is a big over-reaction and did not require the destruction of the country’s economy (as of last week only 238 under 60s dead with/from covid-19 who had no diagnosed previous health problems so is not a dangerous disease) so open without restrictions as soon as possible should be included as an option. Don’t believe me then research it yourself, Whitty the CMO admitted 11th May the data was in the open for anyone to look at and the disease was not that dangerous – watch the daily briefing.
Chat closed and no reply so AI decided to ignore it. Oh well.
Project fear BBC and MSM. They have always given the figures of the deaths from flu in the US Asiatic flu 1957 116000 and HongKong flu 1968 100000. But the population was much smaller than the 330 million in the US now. If we translate the above figures to US now we would have 223000 deaths from Asiatic flu and 165 000 deaths from Hong Kong flu. This gives you a perspective how lethal flu can be in a pandemic shift. And worse still many more younger persons would die than for Covid-19
“Half of influenza-related deaths during the 1968-1969 influenza A (H3N2) pandemic and large proportions of influenza-related deaths during the 1957-1958 influenza A (H2N2) and the 1918-1919 influenza A (H1N1) pandemics occurred among persons <65 years old.”
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9652423
So wait until we get the real pandemic flu in a coming antigen shift and it can come at any time. Then we will regret that we have spent so much effort on this pandemic “lite”. Imagine how the project fear would be then.
Now you’re getting me worried about actual bad pandemics… But maybe some of what we learn in this toy pandemic will be useful for the next real one. OK, unlikely I know.
The 1918 one probably wouldn’t be as bad if it happened now as most deaths were from secondary bacterial pneumonia which we could probably treat with antibiotics. They also didn’t have ventilators. And they were giving people enormous doses of aspirin (an early NSAID) which may have been making matters worse.
My guess is that the main thing learnt will be that we no longer have any money to deal with a serious pandemic, should it come within the next decade (or two?).
Estate agents are arseholes.
Another cliché to add to my list of clichés that are grounded in reality.
The first ever property I bought, in London, an architect friend came with me. The estate agent addressed all comments to him, he’d assumed he was my husband. He even did the patronising tour of the kitchen and the ‘look space for a dishwasher to save you washing up hahaha’ (that was directed at me). On it went, until my friend God bless him, said ‘why are you directing your comments to me, SHE’S the one with half a million to spend’. The look on the dude’s face. Priceless.
And money! I just enjoy myself with those men now, it’s kind of sport. Money and opinions, how very dare you. How very dare we live our lives answering to no one and making our own money. As for the gloves stuff, what a complete tool.
You know, people still ask me if I’m married (never ever aspired to domestic bliss, I’m not built for it), and when I say no, they say ‘never mind’. hahahaha.
One of my sisters, who is a director in a well known City of London institution, regularly receives chatty emails addressed as if she were a lowly secretary.
Her male colleagues never receive these.
A few years ago, her new boss-before her promotion-decided, unilaterally, to cancel one of her earned perks without any discussion.
A short, sharp discussion ensued, as she told me; perks reinstated; behaviour never repeated; boss suitably chastened.
I think ‘strident ‘ and ‘shrill’ are two of the favoured labels.
Many years ago, while preparing to participate as a witness in a particularly unpleasant staffing dispute, I was denounced as a ‘60s man hater’ by a decidedly thick male colleague, who, needless to say, wasn’t called upon to give evidence.
Look elsewhere KH; there must be a suitable house with rational estate agents/ owners in your area.
I should think it’s a buyers’ market, given the present circumstances, so you’ll hopefully be in a strong position
Some people have been asking by what law has the lockdown been introduced.
Can it be legally justified etc ?
It was introduced by a Statutory Instrument (SI), the one below :
http://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2020/350/made
Statutory Instruments pass without debate unless some MPs (not sure whether there is a minimum number)
request one. Statutory Instruments in turn are introduced by government under a previous Act of
Parliament, in this case the Public Health (Control of Disease) Act 1984.
Statutory Instruments are meant to be for minor technicalities that do not need a full Act.
That assuredly is not the case here and so one really has to ask for a reason as to why a Statutory
Instrument was considered sufficient for a lockdown.
Been asking similar for weeks.
Not got an answer from anyone especially a they procedures for isolating infected persons and putting operating restrictions or closure notices on to premises are not being followed.
This site deserves a lot of credit for highlighting this
The papers are finally catching up on the dodgy modelling
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/2020/05/16/coding-led-lockdown-totally-unreliable-buggy-mess-say-experts/
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/2020/05/16/neil-fergusons-imperial-model-could-devastating-software-mistake/?li_source=LI&li_medium=liftig
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8327641/Coronavirus-modelling-Professor-Neil-Ferguson-branded-mess-experts.html
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/11642959/neil-ferguson-stay-at-home-lockdown-advice-unreliable-code/#comments
Still waiting for it to appear on the TV so far BBC , SKY , ITV , CH4 have not picked up on it.
Maybe we will get questions in parliament. Expect bluster and bluff from Johnson.
I wonder how Trump will react if it reaches his ears
The amazing conflicts of interest of all concerned should also be exposed.
Feeling optimistic today. The tide is turning – slowly but surely. The MSM all report total non-stories now (bbc.com headline as I write this is ‘UK adds loss of smell to coronavirus symptom list’ – STOP THE PRESS) because the danger has passed as the pandemic gradually burns its way out across the world. I am heartened to read about other countries lifting their lockdowns as I know we will soon follow, no matter how hell-bent our leaders are on dragging out this confected crisis as long as they can. Better days are slowly coming into view now. Even though the unions, politicians, and the downright screamers are still pushing the social distancing and ‘new normal’ nonsense, I get the impression that the public is quietly pushing against it but doesn’t want to say that out loud. The silent majority will always win.
I know all of us on here want the lockdown to be lifted ASAP, but once it’s all over I will honestly miss coming here and commenting/ranting with all you lovely people. I love this little pocket of sanity on the internet – massive thanks to Toby for not only gathering all the evidence against this lunacy, but for bringing so many like-minded people together.
I hope , Poppy, that and your boyfriend will soon be reunited ,to look forward to a saner future which will offer young people like you the opportunities they deserve.
I think peoples” minds are starting to wake up too Poppy. I’ve been to 3 different garden centres in the last 3 days in my area, and each time everyone was doing the polite distancing – or trying to – and laughing about it with everyone else, including the staff. There was no sense of fear and not a face mask in sight – apart from one elderly couple and everyone was very kind to them. The one way system confused us all as we kept asking others to mind our trollies and popping back for something we’d forgotten. But – and here comes the really good part – once outside in the car park everyone was mingling, chatting and laughing about how absurd it now all seems. Distancing went out of the window and folk became much more natural. I think there’s less fear out there than I thought.
It IS hard to take those first steps out as you become institutionalised after so many weeks, but it’s obvious a lot more folk are doing it now. If Boris tries another lockdown I doubt it would hold.
We gardeners are far more intelligent than the average dudes !
Yes, I think you are right that the tide is turning. Unfortunately, there is a massive series of tsunamis heading our way as the economic, and consequent, realities unleashed by our disgusting government’s insane and hopelessly ill-considered policies start arriving on our (and every other country’s) shores.
Krakatoa, East of Java – a picnic!
If anything that is what should worry people not this virus. The aftershocks that would come in the guise of unemployment. business closures, debt, suicides, divorce rates, mental health issues and deaths from other illnesses should be a wake up call.
Unfortunately there are still more than enough Chicken Lickens out there – we need to keep banging on the drum to wake them up.
Hello Poppy. Loss of smell, god they’re getting desperate. I’ve got a huge spot on my left buttock. Wonder if it’s covid “related”.
Much as I’ve found this place vital to my sanity I look forward to not having to come here every day to see the true state of the world. I look forward to just being able to argue about the little things. Nonetheless when this lunatic lockdown is over the mission of this site will not be, we will need to keep in some level of cummunication and organise a campaign to ensure future lockdowns can never be committed against us.
But we knew about loss of smell several weeks ago – Matt Cockup said it was one of his symptoms when he had covid. Bottom of barrel scraping by the Beeb looks encouraging.
I’m not impressed by Imperial College’s response, especially this:
“We are working with a number of legitimate academic groups and technology companies to develop, test and further document the simulation code referred to. However, we reject the partisan reviews of a few clearly ideologically motivated commentators.”
That they’ve resorted to rewriting the code and testing it suggests they don’t have confidence in the original code. Then claiming that those who reviewed the code and found it wanting are ideologically motivated is disgraceful. They should address the specific criticisms of the code rather than try to brush them away as having no merit because the reviewer supposedly has a political motivation. Argumentum ad hominem is a pathetic response from a respected academic institution, but it does imply they see the world through a partisan lens.
Some info I found out today:
3 twatter feeds coronafraud, coronahoax and coronabollocks – can be read by those without twitter accounts like me
I’ll see if I can track down the exact quote/link:
In Virology you can’t test for something you can’t isolate
The current Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) testing was invented in 1983 and, according to the inventor Dr Kary Mullis, must never be used to diagnose dangerous contagions
FACT there is no test for Covid-19
Colorado just reduced the official number of covid-109 deaths from 1150 to 878 as these were confirmed as “with” and not “from” and were being counted the same -as if they died “from covid-19”.
I like this guy’s rant, I know exactly how he feels:
https://twitter.com/Joanne95535806/status/1262174419595735043
Interesting that the US has also gone from ‘flatten the curve’ to ‘wait for a cure’, exactly like our lying government.
Right, although in the USA it’s on a state by state basis – most don’t have lockdowns as far as I’m aware…
Maybe people will start moving state to state so they restart their lives?
Great link. Any MPs here? – please look at that!
Got bored waiting to watch today’s UKColumn so sent a FOI request to my local council for the hell of it:
In the Public Health (Control of Diseases) Act 1984 once the notice of a “serious and imminent threat” is issued by the Secretary of State for Health the onus in shutting down individual premises or to impose operating restrictions on them and for isolating infected individuals is down to doctors, a “proper person” employed by the local authority (in this region Newcastle-under-Lyme Borough Council) and Justices of the Peace, not central Government.
This notice was issued on the 10th February 2020.
Compensation is payable by the local authority to any business or individual that is shut down using this legislation.
A test specifically for the disease stated in the Statutory Instrument Coronavirus Act 2020 must also be used to confirm the presence of the stated disease as defined:
Meaning of “coronavirus” and related terminology
(1)In this Act—
“coronavirus” means severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2);
“coronavirus disease” means COVID-19 (the official designation of the disease which can be caused by coronavirus).
Under a Freedom of Information Request I would like the following information:
1 – the name of the “proper person” that is designated for this role
2 – how many notices has this person issued
3 – the names of the Justices of the Peace who countersigned the notices
4 – the actual reliable and accurate test used to confirm the individual or premises is infected or contaminated with the disease as stated
5 – how much compensation has been paid out to individuals and businesses by the local authority (Newcastle-under-Lyme Borough Council) under this legislation
6 – as notices must be posted on each individual premises closed or operating under restrictions under this legislation, how many have been posted as required as I have not seen one on any premises
Oh, you are awkward, but I like you!
This is brilliant. I doubt you’ll get a reply that’s anything other than a brushoff but it would be great to be a fly on the wall if they actually tried to answer your points.
Still amusing myself, sent a message to 10 Downing Street via the online link but not going to hold my breath for an answer:
Self-isolating is a guideline and therefore only guidance so does not have force of law. I think you are deliberately misleading people into voluntarily self-isolation as then you do NOT have to go through the due process as laid out in law to test and prove they have the coronavirus as stated in law as there is no test that can be used to confirm this and then to have a notice signed by a Justice of the Peace and served on the individual by a proper person of the local authority who are then liable to pay compensation. This also goes for premises or companies that are either closed or operating under restrictions.
Why is the government not following the law in this matter?
The onus on isolating individuals and restricting trading is a responsibility of the local authority, not central government.
I look forward to your answer.
Just don’t hold your breath!
I know, I know. I expect to be dead of covid-19 before I get any response (under 60, no co-morbidities). All this keeps me sane though and my way of fighting back a step wife won’t let me run amok with a big stick hitting idiots. Apparently this is anti-social and not a good idea.
I vote for the big stick approach.
If all fails …
Excellent, just sent one off to my council. Let’s see what occurs.
Sorry, meant the FOI post !
Looks like an opinion piece so likely to be dismissed for not being an expert. However, countries around the world are opening up to be more like Sweden whether they like to admit it or not.
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/sweden-has-pioneered-an-alternative-to-lockdown-and-it-works
Fraser Nelson (Editor of The Spectator) banging the lockdown sceptic drum very loudly today on the mag’s daily podcast.
https://audioboom.com/posts/7584867-is-labour-s-stance-on-reopening-schools-worsening-the-education-gap
If you look at the process of developing a vaccine, and if you read anything about ‘vaccine-induced enhancement’ (the possibility that a vaccine could make the virus worse, or might react badly with a future virus), and that humans vary in their previous vaccination history and the illnesses they have previously caught, and vary in their genetic make-up, and that people’s immune systems vary as they age, and the virus is mutating constantly, etc. etc. you would have to think that developing a safe, effective, universal vaccine in 10 years would be hugely ambitious, never mind by this September(!)
On the other hand, we know that the virus was never that bad for most people and that by September the epidemic will largely be over. Who agrees with me that the vaccine they will ‘develop’ will probably be a bit of sugar in some distilled water? It would solve a lot of problems for the government…
I’m not fussed about what’s in the vaccine. I’m not going to have it. Rushing through a vaccine as quickly as this year is likely to lead to a vaccine that’s ineffective or potentially harmful.
I’ve not had a flu vaccine since I was about thirty.
I’ve also not had flu since then either.
Yea, there was a discussion about this a few days ago in the comment section. I also never take the flu vaccine and never catch the flu either. The more you read about vaccines and about the industry around them the less likely you will ever take a vaccine again. Obviously if you criticize the vaccines or discuss about the worrying side of them you are labeled as an antivaxxer conspiracy theorist. Usually when media and the big money is eager to label or silence people, there is something to hide.
I wouldn’t worry about a COVID-19 vaccine! As I’ve been saying since this started, no vaccine against any other human coronavirus exists and this will be no different. The Telegraph reports today that the animal trials on Rhesus monkeys with the Oxford vaccine (the one they say they can produce 20 million doses of by September) have failed to demonstrate any protection.
Barney,I don’t think a vaccine is the endgame in all of this. It’s a stalling tactic and a distraction, spinning out this nonsense to prepare us for whatever they really have planned for us. As you say, they could offer us any old crap right now and the bed wetters would be lining up to take it.
I agree – you don’t need a real vaccine. Simply develop a sugar tablet, tell people it’s a covid vaccine and they’ll all feel safe again. They know people still get flu even if vaccinated so if one or two of them get covid in the future then it won’t be the vaccine’s fault, just one of those things that happens with vaccines.
Never touch sugar myself!
From the SAGE report:
“Modelling suggests that the stringent interventions introduced in Wuhan from 23 January (quarantine and movement restrictions) may have reduced the reproduction number to below one. However, there are differing views across the scientific community about whether other factors were involved in this.”
Note the use of the word “may”.
There’s not necessarily the consensus that Imperial College assert:
“As has been repeatedly stated, decision-making around lockdown was based on a consensus view of the scientific evidence, including several modelling studies by different academic groups.”
As Sue Denim points out, the only model referred to in that report is the Imperial College one.
At the point that government used the Imperial model to justify lockdown, the model and dataset had not been peer reviewed. The paper submitted to The Lancet (published online on 30 March) had a different IFR and modified dataset, if I have interpreted correctly. Somewhat problematic is the fact that The Lancet turns submissions round in 72 hours. In my opinion, as someone who referees academic articles, albeit in a different field, this is not sufficient time to have interrogated the model and data properly, if at all. Consequently, the first time this work has been scrutinised is by Sue Denim and the team at Edinburgh, and even then, the model had apparently already been ‘cleaned up’ before it was released to the outside world. Why?
The problem is that for non-scientists ( and a lot of scientists) peer review is seen as something being ‘correct”. It’s nothing of the sort. All peer review is for is to pass muster to be entered into the discourse. Something being correct has not changed for centuries: it doesn’t break when you try to break it, everyone can repeat it and see it doesn’t break and even with that it’s only as good as your last try to break it.
Publishing a paper isn’t a mark of correctness. The quality and repeatibilty of the work does
The argument that lockdowns work is a false one. Most conflate the result of isolating the virus with the effect of locking down. They use countries such as NZ to show that lockdowns work but ignore that the same result was achieved in South Korea without a lockdown.
They claim that countries like the UK saved thousands of lives by locking down on the basis that modelling predicted more death. Yet conveniently ignore that Sweden must also have saved lives without locking down on the basis of similar modelling. Excuses such as topography, demographics or population density are used to claim we cannot compare but are pretty much irrelevant.
The simple fact is that any virus can be controlled using different tools. If two countries get the same or similar results, where one country uses a tool such as lockdown and the other doesn’t, then it is fair to say that lockdown was not necessary.
Right. I found out the population density of Stockholm is about 13,000/sq mile, and of Greater London 14,500/sq mile (the City is 7,700/sq mile). Not much difference really.
And Stockholms where they had the vast majority of cases.
Also, they make a tremendous fuss about number of cases without emphasising that most cases will have mild symptoms or none at all. Why do you need to stop the progress of a virus that that isn’t really dangerous for most people.
https://www.cebm.net/covid-19/covid-19-have-we-forgotten-our-children-in-all-this/
An absolute read about the absolute insane school closures worldwide.
Strongly recommend anything coming out from CEBM Oxford. Last time during the swine flu pandemic 2009 they were the main group seeing how Big Pharma was shamelessly promoting vaccine (government had to pay for the adversary effects) and Tamiflu which dozens of countries were tricked to buy in enormous quantities. The whole thing was an enormous scandal but mainly silence now from MSM BBC (left wingers!) about this now. I didn’t know at that time that it was just the general rehearsal for the real thing now.
The most pertinent line for me:
“In a pandemic, the proportion of deaths among the young should increase, but this has not been the case”
Also, if you click on the definition of pandemic in the link:
Pandemic, as the definition goes, is the worldwide spread of a new disease. Most of the historical analysis point to those in younger age groups being disproportionately affected in a pandemic. **As opposed to seasonal outbreaks where older people are more likely to be affected**
This article and the transmission paper that it links to should be super spread as fast as possible!
Schools need to be open again, and without chalk play prisons.
Dr Wolfgang Wodarg also saw through that one and has been skeptical about covid from day one.
Two new official symptoms declared.
I guess that will help get the numbers back up a bit and help to provide more questionable data to justify continued lockdown(,
Sorry are Lockdowncynics allowed as well as Lockdownsceptics!
I thought the same thing!
Load of old pony really. Loads of viruses can cause loss of smell and loss of smell means, for the most part, loss of taste. I lost mine about eight years ago after a particularly nasty something or other (not flu, no fever) which went on for about ten weeks. Coughed like a trooper though.
Ah ha did you see the Kings story, they say we’ve under estimated infections by excluding other symptoms, here’s the article https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8302467/Two-thirds-coronavirus-cases-Britain-going-undiagnosed.html
I’m now looking overseas for the next job role. It’s not just the awful lock-down, it’s the falling earnings too.
What do you do? I’d consider going online if at all possible. It can be lockdown proof depending on the type of work involved.
Just received the following email:
Dear Sir,
Sorry, we can’t accept the petition you supported – “End lockdown immediately”.
There’s already a petition about this issue. We cannot accept a new petition when we already have one about a very similar issue.
You are more likely to get action on this issue if you sign and share a single petition.
You may wish to sign this petition calling for the same action: https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/315979
On 10 May the Prime Minister gave a speech about the Government’s plans for reopening society: https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/pm-address-to-the-nation-on-coronavirus-10-may-2020
The Government has also published a more detailed recovery strategy, and updated much of its coronavirus guidance: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/our-plan-to-rebuild-the-uk-governments-covid-19-recovery-strategy
You can find out more about coronavirus and how you can protect yourself and others here: http://www.gov.uk/coronavirus
https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/coronavirus-covid-19/
The Government has also created an online service to help you out what you can do if you’re struggling because of coronavirus: https://www.gov.uk/find-coronavirus-support
You can read NHS tips to help if you are worried about coronavirus here: https://www.nhs.uk/oneyou/every-mind-matters/coronavirus-covid-19-anxiety-tips
You can read impartial analysis of the Government response to coronavirus and policy developments here: https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/coronavirus/
You may also be interested to know that because of the large number of petitions that have been started in relation to coronavirus, the Petitions Committee has been questioning the Government about its response to the coronavirus outbreak. Find out more and watch the Committee put questions suggested by petitioners to Government Ministers and the Deputy Chief Medical Officer: https://committees.parliament.uk/committee/326/petitions-committee/news/145767/committee-question-deputy-chief-medical-officer-and-ministers-on-coronavirus-response/ Read letters asking further questions of Government Ministers: https://committees.parliament.uk/committee/326/petitions-committee/publications/3/correspondence/
Click this link to see the rejected petition:
View the rejected petition
We only reject petitions that don’t meet the petition standards:
https://petition.parliament.uk/help#standards
Thanks,
The Petitions team
UK Government and Parliament
Been to my local Lidl today. Was only in there for 15 minutes and heard the indoctrination/propaganda message about physical separation and washing hands five times. No one speaks, no one smiles much any more. Actually encountered trouble at the end of my drive on my way out. Older couple coming towards me practically jumped into the road because I kept on walking to go past them. There was the WHO 1m distance between us so what’s the problem? What science is physical separation based on? Why does UK gov. stipulate 2m? It got me a shake of the head from the old guy. Well, I’m an old gal and I asked him what’s his problem, not that I got a reply.
I’ve put Dennis Prager’s sign in my front window. It reads, ‘Until it’s safe means never.’
The large Asda near me is really quite relaxed. Don’t want to jinx it but once you get past the massive queue to get in most people are not bothered. No one is following the stupid arrows on the floor, most people are happy to reach across and squeeze by to get what they want. No being told off by staff. There are obviously a few mask wearers but even a lot of them you can see the mask simply becomes that false sense of security and they brush by without mandated distancing.
I almost look forward to the shopping trips there as it feels, well, normal. The old type of norma, the only normal I am willing to accept.
Same with our local Asda. Maybe it’s a “thing”
Good to hear.
I refuse to queue to get into a supermarket (ffs! – they expect me to wait in line for the privilege of spending money in their shop!?). I suppose I’m quite fortunate that my local mid-sized coop is quite spacious but not busy enough to have a queue outside most times of the day. I walk there most days and have only once found a queue – that day I just walked away and came back later.
It helps that my offspring are all grown up and my shopping needs are limited compared to what they used to be when there were four children at home!
Delores Cahill, an eminent scientist totally debunks all this rubbish in an interview on Highwire. Well worth a look.
Also UK Column news from today looks at the issue of the totally made up 2m diktat. It is of course, not enforceable.
Yeah saw the Highwire interview yesterday. It’s insane (though not surprising at the moment ) that she hasn’t received any airtime here in the UK, considering she is so close to home and hardly under qualified on the current subject.
Went to share a link to the interview with a like minded sceptical colleague earlier but YouTube had pulled it! Found another copy, but thats really not the point.
I watched her in an interview a few days ago. What I didn’t understand was how she is so sure that we have full immunity once we have had the virus, given it will probably mutate and no one would be immune to a new strand/mutation… similar to influenza? I wonder if “adaptability of our immune system” would have been more accurate, meaning our bodies won’t go into overdrive anymore…Or maybe I don’t remember it correctly but I am not sure I agree with her “it’s all a storm in a teacup and done and dusted” approach.
Similarly she fails to mention that many people ie African Americans can’t handle hydroxychloroquine as they are deficient in a particular enzyme, meaning it causes them more harm than good especially at higher doses. Prof Wodarg has blogged extensively on this…wodarg.com – She made it sound as if anyone anywhere just had to take HCL even preventatively… so maybe a bit of medical caution is warranted tho she is very solid but should be challenged in some issues.
She does say that the full immunity would only be in the care of it being the same strain, and that it could obviously mutate.
But of course she should challenged, as should anyone pertaining to speak with any authority on this subject. However this is really the issue at the moment, this discussion and debate is just not happening – this is partly what she is calling for in the interview.
Sorry lots of unspotted auto predicts in the above! But I think you can catch my drift.
https://twitter.com/profshanecrotty/status/1261052353773363200
To translate the science here- his study shows that about 50% of people who had not been exposed to Covid-19 have T- lymphocytes that react to Covid-19. In other words many people have some form of immunity from previous exposure to other coronaviruses such as the common cold. The may explain why so many people get mild or no symptoms and why the epidemic is going away with apparently low herd immunity.
‘Same thing in our local Morrison’s. Shopping seemed to trump fear and social distancing was nowhere. But the best was the Co-op. A slightly tipsy late-middle-aged man shouted right across the store, ‘What’re you wearin’ that for?’ at what was obviously an acquaintance wearing a filthy mask. We were the only people to laugh, everyone else looked embarrassed. We pointed out to the mask-wearer that it was doing him more harm than good and he mumbled that we could do what we wanted and so should he (fair enough.) The best bit though was, as we were leaving, Mr Shouty bellowed at another big bloke on the other side of the shop for not following the arrows and made him go back down the aisle and up the other one. A total piss-take of course but the guy obeyed – priceless!!
A few more symptoms are listed as:
Broken figure nail
Earwax
Lack of backbone
Gullability
Bed wetting
Paranoia
I wish there was a ‘ha-ha’ button as well as a like one !,your town really sounds fun,I bet it will encourage loads of shoppers to go there !,you probably don’t want to say,but what kind of shop thinks they need human traffic signals ?
Bedwetter Nudge Tactic:
So I just walked to my supermarket and back (hour round trip). Lots of people out. Most of them doing the ‘pause, wait for oncoming people to pass’ distancing bollocks. I’ve found that if I pause when they do, look them straight in the eye, beckon them forward, than say “It’s OK, I’m not scared”, then start walking forward slowly, they do the same thing and will pass me normally. I must have done it about thirty times today and it’s worked every single time. People like being nudged which means we can nudge them in the opposite direction.
(Disclaimer: I live in a big suburban town filled with lower-level working class/lower middle class (For Now) Comfortably Unbothereds. You might not get away with this in a big city without being stabbed)
MINDBLOWING FACT KLAXON:
122 million people are now unemployed in India. That fact alone should change people’s minds.
I have been deloying a similar tactic in SW London and haven’t encountered any problems to date.
I’ve started to shout “TROUSERS!!” at anyone appearing to be in the 20-40 age cohort who engages with me in the Dance of Death. This is in reference to Toby’s assertion on the falling London infection rate last week ,that that group were statistically more in danger of injuring themselves putting on their strides than they are contracting the virus. Perhaps if other readers adopted this we could start some sort of trend.
I saw a figure of 122,000 people who die in India every year of tuberculosis. No social distancing for that
We’ve suspended global TB and Malaria programmes as well! Due to lockdown, not the virus.
Some regions of India have actually seen death rates drop due to less accidents etc. Not sure they can argue the economical cost is worth it though. Which then begs the question if it’s not worth it for other types of death then why should it be more worth it for this virus.
It definitely won’t be worth it once they all start starving.
Stick your finger up st it every time you walk past. Blue light.
https://apple.news/AoUiOjn_aM-2tzVILtQsRoQ
They’re talking about you Toby!
This is everything I despise about The Guardian and more.
Glad Glenn Greenwald (my personal journalistic hero) took his bat and ball home. They’re a bunch of hacks.
A deliberately inflammatory opinion piece. All posturing with zero facts.
And noticeably devoid of a comments section.
It’s funny how conspiracy theorists (“Peter Geoghegan is…author of Democracy for Sale: Dark Money and Dirty Politics) use ‘conspiracy theory’ as an insult. The whole piece is about branding lockdown scepticism as a giant conspiracy (Arron Banks, booh!, ‘far-right’ activists – hisssss!) but they don’t seem to realise the irony.
That’s quite entertaining stuff. Yes, it’s all grossly hypocritical for leftist conspiracy theorists to use the conspiracy smear against others they disagree with, but also there is the shameless refusal to see their own complete failure to question authority on the fundamental level, even as they declare that to be the core requirement for journalism. Guardian “journalists”, as all too commonly the case, acting as wannabee enforcer’s for authority’s official truth.
They compare lockdown scepticism to euroscepticism, and clearly Toby had that comparison in mind when he devised the title of this site. And the similarities they point to are actually quite valid – both involved pointing to genuine societal problems with profound bias in the media, political and social establishments. “Elites” do exist and they do have biases on particular issues, which they push and on which they try to exclude dissent from respectable discourse.
The Guardian piece is too ignorant or too biased itself to recognise that the eurosceptic attacks on elite bias were proved to have had substance and force.
In the end, we can only hope that the lockdown story has a similar conclusion for Toby as the euroscepticism story had for one of its early supporters:
https://youtu.be/fNS5dQbun4s?t=13
All they’ve got is that the lockdown sceptics are sceptical of “experts”. It only takes one example of where experts were unequivocally wrong about something for their ‘argument’ (such as it is) to evaporate. I give you: the dash for diesel.
“From backroom deals between European leaders to the burying of the bad news of 23,000 premature UK deaths on the day Jeremy Corbyn was elected Labour leader, the scandal that has engulfed the diesel car is a startling tale.”
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/sep/30/emissions-scandal-how-the-drive-for-diesel-ran-out-of-gas
You see, that paragon of non-conspiracy theorism The Guardian is alleging a conspiracy involving the EU and car manufacturers, and highlighting how a recommendation by experts turned out to be disastrous, resulting in 23,000 premature deaths per year in the UK.
In the light of this, it is perfectly reasonable at any time for a person to be sceptical of “experts”, even if they are virtuous and read the Guardian.
“But in the comment sections of some of the rightwing press, a new, virulent strain of Covid-19 scepticism has emerged that is the precise opposite of journalism. Rather than holding power to account, it distorts and bends reality to serve elite interests – and to warp public debate.”
Wow, that’s rich coming from the Grad!
A case of a panicdemic morphing into a pandemic of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder?
Fear of going out, masks, hand washing, gloves, snitching on neighbours, aversion to the workplace, recitation of slogans… lives before the economy, protect the NHS… ritualistic clapping on the streets for a State run institution.
I’ve just been speaking to my cousin who is a lockdown sceptic too and she reckons over the last few days them stupid lockdown adverts on the t.v are becoming less and less, I haven’t noticed as I don’t really watch t.v so was just wondering if people on here have noticed it ?
I haven’t seen the very scary one with the ambulance and Mark Strong voiceover for quite a while, thank god!
https://youtu.be/9SqRNUUOk7s
They don’t make scary ads about viruses like they used to…. kids today don’t know they’re born!
I remember the scary measles ones from the early 1990s. They never admitted that was a vaccine-driven con, so don’t hold your breath re this latest fiasco.
That’s the one I believe terrorised the nation. If people thing they or their kids are going to die then I suppose if they haven’t the brains to look at the evidence this is what happens.
I try to reassure people but the government will have to admit they were wrong to deliberately exaggerate the threat before all this corona madness can end but we will never be the same in my lifetime I don’t think.
Can’t find it – do you have a link?
Thanks for this: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/2020/05/16/neil-fergusons-imperial-model-could-devastating-software-mistake/
Given its importance, I wonder if someone with a Telegraph subscription could nick it and put it in pastebin.com? Thx
Just copy and paste the url into the search box at outline.com.
Or easier still in the url after https:// type outline.com/ Easy as pie
Neil Ferguson’s Imperial model could be the most devastating software mistake of all time
The boss of a top software firm asks why the Government failed to get a second opinion before accepting Imperial College’s Covid modelling
DAVID RICHARDS AND KONSTANTIN BOUDNIK
16 May 2020 • 1:22pm
Neil Ferguson
Neil Ferguson of Imperial College London
In the history of expensive software mistakes, Mariner 1 was probably the most notorious. The unmanned spacecraft was destroyed seconds after launch from Cape Canaveral in 1962 when it veered dangerously off-course due to a line of dodgy code.
But nobody died and the only hits were to Nasa’s budget and pride. Imperial College’s modelling of non-pharmaceutical interventions for Covid-19 which helped persuade the UK and other countries to bring in draconian lockdowns will supersede the failed Venus space probe and could go down in history as the most devastating software mistake of all time, in terms of economic costs and lives lost.
Since publication of Imperial’s microsimulation model, those of us with a professional and personal interest in software development have studied the code on which policymakers based their fateful decision to mothball our multi-trillion pound economy and plunge millions of people into poverty and hardship. And we were profoundly disturbed at what we discovered. The model appears to be totally unreliable and you wouldn’t stake your life on it.
First though, a few words on our credentials. I am David Richards, founder and chief executive of WANdisco, a global leader in Big Data software that is jointly headquartered in Silicon Valley and Sheffield. My co-author is Dr Konstantin ‘Cos’ Boudnik, vice-president of architecture at WANdisco, author of 17 US patents in distributed computing and a veteran developer of the Apache Hadoop framework that allows computers to solve problems using vast amounts of data.
Imperial’s model appears to be based on a programming language called Fortran, which was old news 20 years ago and, guess what, was the code used for Mariner 1. This outdated language contains inherent problems with its grammar and the way it assigns values, which can give way to multiple design flaws and numerical inaccuracies. One file alone in the Imperial model contained 15,000 lines of code.
Try unravelling that tangled, buggy mess, which looks more like a bowl of angel hair pasta than a finely tuned piece of programming. Industry best practice would have 500 separate files instead. In our commercial reality, we would fire anyone for developing code like this and any business that relied on it to produce software for sale would likely go bust.
The approach ignores widely accepted computer science principles known as “separation of concerns”, which date back to the early 70s and are essential to the design and architecture of successful software systems. The principles guard against what developers call CACE: Changing Anything Changes Everything.
Without this separation, it is impossible to carry out rigorous testing of individual parts to ensure full working order of the whole. Testing allows for guarantees. It is what you do on a conveyer belt in a car factory. Each and every component is tested for integrity in order to pass strict quality controls.
Only then is the car deemed safe to go on the road. As a result, Imperial’s model is vulnerable to producing wildly different and conflicting outputs based on the same initial set of parameters. Run it on different computers and you would likely get different results. In other words, it is non-deterministic.
As such, it is fundamentally unreliable. It screams the question as to why our Government did not get a second opinion before swallowing Imperial’s prescription.
Ultimately, this is a computer science problem and where are the computer scientists in the room? Our leaders did not have the grounding in computer science to challenge the ideas and so were susceptible to the academics. I suspect the Government saw what was happening in Italy with its overwhelmed hospitals and panicked.
It chose a blunt instrument instead of a scalpel and now there is going to be a huge strain on society. Defenders of the Imperial model argue that because the problem – a global pandemic – is dynamic, then the solution should share the same stochastic, non-deterministic quality.
We disagree. Models must be capable of passing the basic scientific test of producing the same results given the same initial set of parameters. Otherwise, there is simply no way of knowing whether they will be reliable.
Indeed, many global industries successfully use deterministic models that factor in randomness. No surgeon would put a pacemaker into a cardiac patient knowing it was based on an arguably unpredictable approach for fear of jeopardising the Hippocratic oath. Why on earth would the Government place its trust in the same when the entire wellbeing of our nation is at stake?
David Richards, founder and chief executive of WANdisco and Dr Konstantin Boudnik is the company’s vice-president of architecture
Have we seen the London data from City Hall? Only 128 deaths in London with covid on the death cert! Despite 5k odd deaths where they tested positive, am I being thick, so that means only a handful of people died OF it, not with it (a bit like being eaten by a lion when you have a headcold)?
https://www.london.gov.uk/coronavirus/coronavirus-numbers-london?
That’s just for one 24-hour period. Not the total since March.
Arkansas, Iowa, Nebraska, North & South Dakota never locked down. Georgia came out of lockdown 3 weeks ago. Where is the predicted apocalypse in any of these states? The numbers are statistically insignificant.
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/
Boys and Girls, we are not going to like Melanie Phillip’s just posted comment on Times online (for tomorrow’s copy). She is having a right go at Lord Sumption for not backing up his stance against lockdown, by er, not backing up her stance in its favour (scientifically, that is). Suggest this usually sensible journo is showing signs of lockdown derangement syndrome in her bunker in Israel!
Looks like there’s not going to be any reconciliation between Peter and Melanie, then.
I’ve never had much time for her anyway, even though she’s on my overall side of the political divide. As far as I’m concerned someone who supported the attack on Iraq at the time could claim to have just been ignorant, stupid or deceived on the issue, but anyone who continued to support it after 2004 or so can only be deranged, dishonest or corrupt.
I agree with Peter Hitchens on most things, although not all. On Iraq, and lockdown, he is completely right. For those who had originally gone along with the Blair/Campbell stance on Iraq, the obvious point to jump ship was the change from ‘WMD’ to ‘WMD programmes’. Politicians, of course, have their speaking tours to think about, but journos?
I’ve always found her inflexibly opinionated and arrogant.
Melanie Phillips has always been a deranged loon. Weirdly she talks in the tone of The Guardian despite, of course, rreeaaaaaaaalllllllyyyyy not being on their wavelength
Check they’ve got the right shop, add delivery charge: 3 hours’ driving at £15 per hour. Take payment upfront!
I really feel for Kathrine Jebsen Moore. I was shot down this week for even raising the point amongst other parents that I believed that kids should be back at school. Opposing the fear-fueled view that we all must be safe 100% of the time and that the government is entirely responsible if things go wrong is tantamount to being a Holocaust denier.
Listen, a Facebook ‘friend’ of mine recently watched contagion and she knows an epidemiologist. She KNOWS that sending her kids back to school ‘this side of 2021’ is the dumbest thing she could do. She loves her kids more than that.
Oh and then there was this comment I saw recently which sums up the ignorance, the social media fear-mongering and the level of which virtue signalling trumps all rational discussion…
“I tell you this… the situation in care homes WILL happen in schools once their doors open and MY kids will not be sent to the slaughter”.
Sweden in the news again. Negative headline of course and no mention of other countries death tolls where the virus also spread widely:
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8332363/Sweden-suffered-deadliest-month-nearly-30-years-April.html#comments
> Worth noting that Imperial has just sealed a deal with with the Chinese company Huawei worth £5 million.
Oh great, now we’ll have an explicit feeder school/thousand talents loop in the UK. Thanks.