The row over school openings rumbles on. The Mail cites ‘‘evidence from 22 countries on the continent” at an EU briefing which suggests that reopening schools has not been harmful to children and teachers. Millions of pupils in Germany, France, Denmark and Norway are now back at their desks; even hard-hit Belgium has told primary and secondary schools to restart smaller final-year classes:
The decision to reopen schools in 22 EU states, including France where 1.4 million pupils went back to their classrooms, has not caused an increase in coronavirus cases across Europe.
The revelation piles pressure on unions resisting plans to send younger children back from June 1st.
The National Education Union yesterday even claimed it was not safe for teachers to mark workbooks.
The Mail quotes Alan Smithers, Professor of Education at the University of Buckingham: ‘The unions have been asking for evidence, and this is it. So they should start cooperating fully with the Government so that our schools can open again as soon as possible.”
Back in the UK Labour-run Bury Council yesterday became the latest local authority to reject the Government’s timetable for sending children back to class, joining Hartlepool, Liverpool and Stockport. You can watch Julia Hartley-Brewer arguing with a Bury Councillor on her Talk Radio show this morning here.
The Mail‘s online edition adds remarks from Tony Blair on last night’s Newsnight in which he backed calls for pupils to go back to school, saying some children were receiving no education at all.
The Times also has a story about the European education ministers being briefed by the EU at a meeting chaired by Blazenka Divjak, the Croatian Education Minister, who said that social distancing and hygiene measures appeared to be working. The paper points out that many of the UK councils considering delaying reopening are in deprived areas where children are suffering more from school closures.
In the Times‘s Letters pages, Kenneth Baker – Education Secretary for three years under Margaret Thatcher – is one of a number of readers concerned about the effect of ongoing school closures on children’s education.
SIR – The Sutton Trust has shown that 64% of primary school teachers have been giving just three hours of teaching a day during the lockdown. Teachers should go back to working a full day on June 1st.
Already two months of education have been lost; disadvantaged children will find it very challenging to catch up in a year. Hence, the sooner children return to school the better. Other countries are managing to do so safely and so should we.
Former Labour MP Frank Field, writing to the Guardian as chairman of the Frank Field Education Trust, agrees: “To allow this gap to develop unnecessarily, with the closure of schools, will be bordering on the politically criminal.”
Lockdown Isn’t Working
The newspapers are finally starting to take seriously the economic impact of the lockdown.
Today’s Telegraph notes that two million claims for grants, amounting to £6 billion, have been made in the past week under the Self-Employment Income Support Scheme.
The number of workers on the separate employee furlough scheme has gone up to eight million, an increase of 500,000 since last week. That brings to around ten million the total number of people now having their wages funded by Government borrowing, with a third of private sector workers wages currently paid by the state.
At the same time, with shops and businesses forcibly closed, claims for unemployment benefits soared by nearly 70% in April, according to the Guardian. The number of unemployed people claiming benefits has increased by the most since records began to reach almost 2.1 million in April. The Office for National Statistics says about 856,500 people signed up for Universal Credit and Jobseeker’s Allowance benefits in April, driving up the overall claimant count by 69% in a single month. It’s the biggest monthly increase since records began, while the overall number of people claiming benefits due to unemployment has risen above two million for the first time since 1996. They may shortly be joined by the 6,000 employees of the high street restaurant chain Bella Italia, which has called in the administrators.
Meanwhile, the number of employees on company payrolls plunged by 450,000 at the start of April. The number of vacancies posted by companies looking for new staff has also halved.
By way of contrast, the pre-lockdown headline measurement of unemployment had fallen to 3.9% in the three months to March, with the percentage of people in work at a joint-record high.
The Times reports that “the amount of work done in Britain crashed by a quarter in the final week of March as lockdown came into effect… The figures provide an early glimpse of the wreckage being caused to people’s lives”.
The Mail quotes Martina Kane, from the Health Foundation charity, on the worrying long-term effects of lockdown, especially on the young:
It is concerning that the current crisis is disproportionately affecting employment opportunities for young people. This could have worrying ramifications for young people’s longer term health outcomes. There is strong evidence that unemployment and poor quality work can have a negative impact on young people’s mental health. Financial insecurity can result in poor health both now and later in life.
We’re Not Going On a Summer Holiday
The summer holiday picture remains confusing. The Sun reports Transport Secretary Grant Shapps’s comments in the Commons yesterday that ministers are looking at “travel bridges” so people can fly to countries with low numbers of Covid infections. But it wasn’t all good news: he also warned that the Government is planning to fine travellers £10,000 if they break whatever quarantine restrictions are put in place.
But if you’re thinking about staying in the UK for your holiday, better not leave your home just yet. The Spectator’s Kate McCann told an alarming story on Twitter yesterday: “Ros Pritchard, Director General of the British Holiday and Home Park Association, says they have had ‘vigilantes’ reporting people staying on holiday home sites. The ‘tourists’ were in fact NHS staff who were being given accommodation to help them do their jobs.”
Trump’s Miracle Cure
The Mail and others report the news that Donald Trump has been taking hydroxychloroquine as a coronavirus prophylactic. The paper publishes a letter written by White House physician Dr Sean Conley in which he says, “After numerous discussions, he and I regarding the evidence for and against the use of hydroxychloroquine, we concluded the potential benefit from the treatment outweighed the relative risk.”
Common Cold May Provide Immunity
The Times reports on research published in the academic journal Cell which suggests that merely having suffered from the common cold in the past may confer some immunity against the virus:
Scientists have found cells that can fight the new coronavirus in the bloodstream of people who have only been infected with other coronaviruses that cause colds. The finding raises hope that some may have a degree of protection already and could explain the apparent randomness in how severely the virus strikes.
The research looked at ‘T-cells’ which spot other cells that have been infected.
Dan Davis, professor of immunology at the University of Manchester, said: “When a cell is infected with a coronavirus, the virus’s protein molecules are chopped up into very small pieces. And those small pieces are put up at the surface of the cell. When T-cells see these molecules that have never been in the body before they multiply, then they go and respond to those infected cells.”
Nightingale Dead On Arrival
Why is a new Nightingale hospital being built, given that almost none of the ones that have been built so far are being used? According to the Midweek Herald in Devon, work began on transforming a HomeBase in Exeter into a Nightingale on May 6th.
“NHS leaders in Devon say that they hope that Nightingale Exeter will not be needed but if or when it is, it will be ready,” reports the paper.
Lord Gumption Speaks
Watch this YouTube video of Jonathan Sumption setting out the case against lockdown on the BBC. “The current rationale for the lockdown is incoherent,” he says, matter-of-factly.
This appearance, like Sumption’s comment piece in the Sunday Times, led to ignominy being poured on his head. (Welcome to the club, m’Lud.) Read his robust reply to his critics in today’s Spectator.
Tory MP Likens Government Response to Morecambe and Wise Sketch
The Telegraph‘s Camilla Tominey reports on some rumblings of discontent from Conservative MPs at Boris’s first meeting with backbenchers since the lockdown was put in place which took place yesterday. One disgruntled MP came up with a good analogy to describe the Prime Minister’s response to the pandemic:
Summing up the mood on the back benches, one former minister on Monday likened his own party’s handling of the crisis to the famous Morecambe and Wise comedy sketch featuring legendary pianist and composer Andre Previn.
The respected MP told the Telegraph: “It’s like when Previn turns to Eric and says: ‘You’re not playing the right notes’ and Eric grabs him by the lapels and replies: ‘I am playing all the right notes, but not necessarily in the right order.’ Everything has been the wrong way round.”
Citing the newly-introduced 14-day quarantine period, the MP added: “That should have happened at the beginning of the crisis, not at the end.”
Is the Nation Suffering From OCD?
Interesting email from a psychiatric nurse who liked my suggestion yesterday that there’s something cult-like about the behaviour of those who’ve enthusiastically embraced their incarceration:
The citizens of this country are going to have huge problems in the phases of loosening lockdown with OCD and risk assessment.
Some background. I am a retired psychiatric and general nurse, with a sociology degree gained when sociology wasn’t a load of lefty nonsense (1970s). I had an unusual career. I left my job as an NHS Community Psychiatric Nurse (CPN) in 1996 to become self-employed as the first independent CPN in the country, working as a contractor to the NHS alongside a small private clinical practice. Having previously been a training officer in the NHS, I gradually developed the training side of the business, which became my sole focus for the last few years until my retirement two years ago.
About nine weeks ago, our Government said: “500,000 of us are going to die.” We all experienced terror. If we are told something powerfully and often enough, we will believe it. If we link what we are told to an emotional state, we will believe it more. If we link it to a negative emotion, such as fear, we will believe it so much that we don’t feel the need to question it.
Which brings me to OCD.
People with OCD believe that if they think something it must be true and, as a corollary, what they think is what will happen. On several occasions, I saw new mums with OCD who believed they were going to smother their babies because, crucially, they were thinking how awful it would be to do such a thing (the “obsession”). They thought, “If I’m thinking it, I will do it.” So they tried not to think about it. How? By developing behaviours designed to block such thoughts, or to keep themselves away from their baby (the “compulsion”). In therapy (if they will come, which they usually won’t), we ask them to do what seems crazy: think about smothering their baby more, not less. If they’re brave enough to do this, they find all the reasons why they don’t want to, and won’t, smother their baby. Think it through properly, don’t avoid thinking about it.
In my early career, I made the mistake of arguing with OCD sufferers, trying to convince them that terrible things were not going to happen. This is pointless, as they will always reply: “But it might happen!” I learnt to say, “Yes, it might,” which, of course, freaked people out: “Don’t say that! What kind of a therapist are you? You’re supposed to make me feel better!” I followed up, though, with: “How likely is it? What could stop the terrible thing from happening? What’s the evidence? Rather than others calming you down with pointless reassurances that nothing terrible will happen, how can you calm yourself down?” (People with OCD are far too reliant on others to provide them with reassurance.) And, crucially, “As you can’t be 100% sure that the terrible thing won’t happen, how can you get along with life while living with the remote possibility that it could, like you do with so many other potential dangers?”
We are abysmal at risk assessment. I used to run courses on positive risk management with care and health organisations (why it’s OK to take risks, because they have benefits). The Covid crisis is the ultimate and logical conclusion to our risk-averse culture. How often do we hear the words: “You can’t do that! It’s against health and safety!” And yet, the Health and Safety Executive is about the only Government body I know which has a sense of humour. It used to send out a regular “Health and Safety Myths” email, analysing all the things workers had been told by their bosses they couldn’t do because of “health and safety”, but pointing out that the danger was minor, and, importantly, not doing whatever it was created more danger. Example: teachers at a school were told no longer to use step ladders to access books on a high shelf, in case they fell off the ladder. Results: (a) they stood on chairs instead and fell off; and (b) the children’s education was damaged, because they couldn’t read the interesting books on the high shelf.
On risk management courses I used to talk about fear of flying. Someone in the group would always say they were terrified of planes, but still went abroad for holidays. I would ask how they got to the airport. “Eh? We drove!” I would point out that far more people are killed driving to airports than they are on planes, but this cut no mustard, because, of course, we only read in the news about plane crashes (precisely because they are so rare), not about car crashes (because they are so common). Also, newspapers don’t report safe plane landings. So, as in so many other aspects of life, we end up with completely erroneous notions of how dangerous things are.
As a nation, we are going to need to be taught effective risk assessment and risk management skills if we are to succeed in coming out of lockdown. We keep looking for a “no risk” route out, when in reality reducing one risk almost always creates another. We tend to believe that a hazard in the present is always worse than a hazard in the future; that a physical hazard is worse than a mental or emotional hazard. We rarely ask the key risk assessment questions:
How likely is it?
How soon will it happen?
How serious is it?I used to call these the “PIG Issues”: Probability, Imminence, Gravity.
Pulling this together, it’s as if we’ve suddenly become a nation of OCD sufferers: fuelled by our Government and our awful media, we’ve been taught to be mindful all the time of the terrible things which could happen. We’re presented constantly with images of mass graves, accounts of what happens in Intensive Care Units, etc. and so ruminate on these dangers. The more we think of these things, the more we believe them to be important and true – probable, rather than improbable. And our anxiety reinforces them: “I feel frightened. What is there to be frightened off? Yes: that!” Our anxiety “proves” our belief that we are in danger. Our danger-reduction strategies – like mask-wearing – prove, by temporarily reducing our anxiety, that we are right to feel danger. Then we seek certainty that the feared things won’t happen: “Unless the Government can give me absolute 100% certainty that my child will not get COVID-19 at school, I’m not taking the risk” Boris asked us to do our own risk assessments – “Stay Alert” – but we have become, over the past few years, a nation dependent on others to manage risks for us.
Unless we can undo years of mollycoddling, over-management and disempowerment, we will never go back to work or to take off our masks.
Staying Sane
For those of you beginning to go insane in virtue of being lockdown sceptics, rather than enthusiasts, this website seems to be quite therapeutic. I get several emails like the one below every day. This one is from a wine merchant in New Zealand:
Each morning when I awake (from a night of restless, worried sleep, clutching my pillow tight) the first thing I do is load your website and spend an hour or so, reading your latest daily missive and as many of the links as I have time for. It feeds my soul. It helps my mental state immeasurably to get through the coming day with the correct amount of grim humour at the sheer absurdity of where we find ourselves, and to know that there is also shared common outrage among the global rational and well balanced. Simply put, it is the one of the few thing keeping me sane at the moment – along with my family. My wife and I are libertarians and have been struggling to understand how so many of our fellow citizens can hold their liberty so lightly, and with such great irrationality throw away what looks like it could end up being a generation of progress and burden our children with indulgent profligacy, over something that, while terrible, in the big scheme of things is so innocuous that it is not, or rather it should not be, a threat to our systems of freedom and economy – our way of life.
Chin up, mate. If the worst comes to the worst, you can always drink your stock.
Shopping Aint What It Used To Be
A sad email from a reader who’d just visited his local garden centre:
I’ve just read your piece on the future of our High Streets. Today I visited our local garden centre, which isn’t exactly momentous news. But it got me thinking about what the short term future holds for retail in general. My visit was not pleasant, which I’ll come on to, and that concerns me. Once the lockdown is further lifted we will need to get our economy moving. But the salient point is that, thinking back to happier times, most of the retail places I visited was in part or wholly, for pleasure. For example – coffee. I can make this at home but I go to our local café for the atmosphere, to meet and be with people. And it’s a similar story for restaurants, nik nak shops, you name it.
Coming back to today, my wife and I were faced by a young chap in the car park wearing a surgical mask, even though I understand the risk of infection in the open air is negligible. Inside the garden centre we were greeted by the usual tape on the floor to keep us the required distance apart but again, everyone sported the sinister masks. And this is the truly bizarre part – several also wore plastic visors of the type a groundsman might wear for strimming duties. The reason for this flummoxed me. When it was time to pay there was a single till with a chequerboard area marked out in front. We were instructed, admittedly very politely, to deposit our trolley in this area and move away. The lady on the till then emerged from behind her plastic screen, reached for the trolley at arm’s length and, after drawing it back to safety, totted up our purchases.
The reason I think this rather odd experience is important is that for most of us shopping should be a pleasure. If it isn’t, who will go? Supermarkets and similar will survive as we all need provisions. But what of the others? Will we really be piling in and kick-starting the economy if the experience is anything like mine today?. I suspect many will either do without or shop online. That’s a terrible thought and I hope I’m wrong.
Alternative Daily Briefing
Interesting suggestion from a reader about how sceptics might get their message across more effectively:
As an alternative to the daily Government press briefing have you considered doing a Lockdown Sceptics press conference? Three people to present the case against the lockdown in a similar format to the Government’s daily briefing, but with the opposite message.
It could be led by Jonathan Sumption, Simon Dolan, you, Dan Hannan, Luke Johnson. Lead presenter puts forward an 8-10 min powerpoint setting out the case. We have a scientific expert just like the Government (Dr. Giesecke? Knut Wittkowski?) Then we could have questions… started by Peter Hitchens? Brendan O’Nielll? James Delingpole? then open it up and deal with flak from the MSM.
A dissenting press conference with us acting as the real opposition would bring publicity, offer a direct counterpoint to the Government propaganda, and allow us to present the full case in its entirety rather than piecemeal fragments on Twitter.
Quite a good idea, but doing these daily updates and maintaining this site, not to mention my three other jobs, leaves me with no time for anything else. If someone else wants to organise it, I’d be happy to do one of the presentations.
Has the NHS Stopped Buying Drugs?
A reader writes:
Just on a call with a colleague who mentioned a call she’d been on with senior [major drug company] UK staff who are forecasting an income squeeze till year-end because, quote, “The NHS has stopped buying drugs.” This team is in oncology, so the assumption must be that cancer treatments have taken a huge dent, because elective treatments are being put off, and because new diagnoses are not coming into scope. If the treatment downturn is significant enough that it is already feeding through into pharma sales and orders, it must be huge.
Lends credibility to Professor Karol Sikora’s claim that if the lockdown lasts six months there will be at least 50,000 extra deaths from cancer.
Latest NHS App Woes
In news that will surprise NO ONE, the rollout of the NHS’s tracing app has been delayed. Apparently, the version being tested on the Isle of Wight will not be the version rolled out nationally. They need to wait for the second version to be completed. Didn’t Matt Hancock say it would be launched nationally in mid-May? Looks like that’s one target he’s not going to meet.
A survey by the British Computer Society finds that 75% of IT experts predict the NHSX coronavirus app won’t work.
In any event, it looks like the app is on its way to being sidelined, with Matt Hancock’s announcement in the Commons yesterday that track-and-trace will now rely on people reporting when they’re ill and who they’ve had contact with by… making a telephone call:
Today I can confirm that we have recruited over 21,000 contact tracers in England. This includes 7,500 health care professionals who will provide our call handlers with expert clinical advice. They will help manually trace the contacts of anyone who has had a positive test and advise them on whether they need to isolate.
The work of these 21,000 people will be supported by the NHS-COVID 19 app which we are piloting in the Isle of Wight…
How will the app “support” those workers exactly, given that what is being piloted in Isle of Wight isn’t what will be rolled out nationally?
Meanwhile, the Health Service Journal has a story about an email sent by NHSX’s Chief Executive, Matthew Gould, which suggests he knows who’s going to get the blame for this fiasco. In an email leaked to the Journal with the subject “Launching websites and apps”, Gould writes: “We are losing goodwill and credibility because we keep doing non-compliant builds and launches. We have to do better.”
Time to dust off that CV, Mr Gould.
Did a 14 Year-Old Schoolgirl Invent the Lockdown Policy?
Yesterday, I pointed out that no country locked down its citizens in response to the flu pandemics of 1957-58 or 1968-70 and, as I’ve said before, quarantining whole populations in response to a pandemic has only been tried once before – in Mexico in 2009 in response to the H1N1 scare. And the policy was abandoned after 18 days due to rising social and economic costs. Moreover, numerous public health bodies advised against indiscriminate quarantining to mitigate the impact of a pandemic before 2020, including the World Health Organisation (WHO) in 2019. The WHO specifically recommended against whole-population quarantining as a strategy for managing the outbreak of a flu-like virus in a report it published in 2019. The WHO report, which you can read here, even stopped short of recommending the quarantining of exposed individuals.
So why the last-minute change of plan?
I’m clearly going to have to devote a chapter in my book to this mystery – and I suspect the main culprit will be the WHO for praising the Chinese authorities’ better-late-than-never over-reaction, which involved mandatory testing of millions of people, imprisoning those who tested positive in purpose-built “hospitals”, and boarding up those who tested negative in their homes for weeks on end. Because the WHO’s Director-General, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, is in thrall to Xi Jinping, he encouraged governments around the world to mimic China’s response. In this way, a totalitarian dictatorship called the tune that the rest of the world danced to. Incidentally, the Chinese authorities have agreed to an “independent” investigation into the origins of coronavirus on the condition that it’s led by the WHO. Isn’t that a bit like getting the monkey to investigate the organ-grinder?
But a post on the blog of the American Institute for Economic Research has drawn attention to another suspect in the investigation into this mystery: a 14 year-old high school girl. Her name is Laura Glass and in 2006 her dad, Robert Glass, was working as a scientist at the Sandia National Laboratories. He and his daughter, then 14, co-authored a 2006 paper entitled ‘Targeted Social Distancing Designs for Pandemic Influenza‘ and this paper, apparently, was referenced in a proposal about how America should respond to a pandemic drafted by by two doctors working for the US federal government in 2006, along with a team at the Defense Department. The New York Times has more.
So how did a 14 year-old come to co-author an influential academic paper? According to the Albuquerque Journal, she conducted a high school science experiment that leant weight to the idea that quarantining populations, including shutting schools, would suppress the spread of a flu-like virus:
Laura, with some guidance from her dad, devised a computer simulation that showed how people – family members, co-workers, students in schools, people in social situations – interact. What she discovered was that school kids come in contact with about 140 people a day, more than any other group. Based on that finding, her program showed that in a hypothetical town of 10,000 people, 5,000 would be infected during a pandemic if no measures were taken, but only 500 would be infected if the schools were closed.
The fact that the lockdown policy was based, in part, on a high school science experiment is symptomatic of how how little real scientific expertise was involved in devising it. The two doctors who took up this cause were a Department of Veterans Affairs physician and an oncologist turned White House adviser, and the Defense Department officials were just garden-variety bureaucrats.
I must try and interview Laura Glass for my book.
YouTube Censors Epidemiologist Knut Wittkowski
YouTube has appointed itself the world’s censor-in-chief during this crisis, but even our own Lord Chamberlain would have hesitated before muzzling Knut Wittkowski, former Head of Biostatistics, Epidemiology and Research Design at Rockefeller University. (You’ll recall that I linked to his excellent interview in Spiked a couple of days ago.) The New York Post reports that YouTube removed a video of him talking about the virus that had racked up more than 1.3 million views.
The video was produced by the British film company Journeyman Pictures and YouTube hasn’t informed them or Wittkowski why it’s been removed. ”They don’t tell you,” he says. “They just say it violates our community standards. There’s no explanation for what those standards are or what standards it violated.”
Fortunately, the American Institute for Economic Research has put the video back up. You can watch it here.
#IDAHOBIT
Sunday was International Day Against Homophobia, Biphobia, Interphobia and Transphobia, or IDAHOBIT. As Douglas Murray relates in his latest Telegraph column, the Metropolitan Police spent part of Sunday broadcasting their support for these causes. “We truly value and respect the unique qualities of everyone in the Met and are proud to celebrate this day”, the Met tweeted, following up with the hashtag #IDAHOBIT.
BBC News marked the occasion with a piece by Ben Hunte, the corporation’s LGBT correspondent, entitled: ‘I’m scared of being buried as the wrong gender.’ Here’s an extract:
Lucy, 21, from the north-east of England, is transgender and has severe heart issues. After years spent living as a woman, she says she has “no doubt” her parents would bury her as a man if she was to die from coronavirus.
“They’ll shave my long hair, put me in a suit, use my birth name and call me ‘he’ all the way through the funeral. The thought of my family doing it makes me feel so sick, but I know they will.”
Someone should tell Lucy to stop worrying – her chances of dying from coronavirus are less than one in a million.
A Military Fast Jet Pilot Writes…
Bullish email from a former military fast-jet pilot. He thinks he could have made a better decision about how to respond to the pandemic than the British Prime Minister:
I have spent most of my life in aviation as a military fast jet pilot and then as a captain for Thomas Cook until I was forced into redundancy last year. As aviators we have many skills including decision making in difficult situations. We have many tricks of the trade and most processes involve some sort of pneumonic. The latest one in Thomas Cook was FORDEC. It all starts with FACTS – you must must must start with as many facts from as many different sources as possible. Next comes OPTIONS – scope out how you can play the scenario out whilst considering the RISKS and BENEFITS of each option. Finally DECIDE, EXECUTE and then CHECK constantly to see if stuff has changed – the FACTS, for instance.
I’m guessing you know where my story fits into the current situation? This is not rocket science (ha). If required, a fast jet pilot can run through this in about five seconds!
I was also a CRMI crew resource management instructor and we had a whole history over 110 years of past accidents and incidents to learn from.
My common thread is that we have simply lost sight of the big picture. There is no voice of reason breaking through in the MSM. Where is Nigel Farage when you need him?
At the end of the day, as my father used to say, “Life Is A Near Death Experience”. Enjoy it as much as you can and let’s get on with the show.
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:
- ‘Sorrento IDs Antibody Against COVID-19 That Appears 100% Effective‘ – US-based pharmaceutical company says it’s found an antibody that blocks Covid
- ‘Putting a value on life seems wrong but it’s the only way out of this crisis‘ – IEA Director Mark Littlewood in the Times on why there’s nothing wrong with placing a value on human life
- ‘Professor Karol Sikora: fear is more deadly than the virus‘ – The NHS oncologist interviewed by Freddie Sayers for UnHerd
- ‘The warped thinking behind the world’s lockdowns‘ – Dan Hannan with another excellent column in the Washington Examiner
- ‘As the world battles a pandemic, the UN fights “gendered language”‘ – Libby Emmons and Barrett Wilson skewer the UN’s obsession with identity politics in the Post-Millennial
- ‘New Yorkers are throwing “corona potlucks” and visiting “speakeasies”‘ – Report of shockingly outrageous behaviour in the New York Post. Alas, flights to New York are less frequent than they were
- ‘Sweden’s Coronavirus Strategy Will Soon Be the World’s‘ – Three Swedish academics explain why their country’s strategy is going global in Foreign Affairs
- ‘Vaccine hopes send airline and travel stocks soaring‘ – News of a successful human trial of a vaccine developed by US biotech company Moderna prompted investors to buy shares in airlines and travel companies
- ‘Should UK abandon two metre social distancing? Iain Duncan Smith urges Boris Johnson to relax rule to “get economy moving” as Britain is “only country in Europe” using measure‘ – The quiet man turns up the volume on the ludicrous two metre rule
- ‘Now we see that Covid lockdowns aren’t the only solution‘ – Fox News host Tucker Carlson, now a fully-fledged sceptic, reminds us that the predicted armageddon that would befall the state of Georgia for not locking down hasn’t occurred
- ‘We shut down the economy to make progress against COVID-19 – and then made no progress‘ – Depressing column by Michael Hiltzik in the LA Times
- ‘The growing evidence on vitamin D and Covid‘ – Matt Ridley’s latest in the Spectator
- ‘Africa and the pandemic panic: Facts not fear‘ – New comment piece by Professor Ramesh Thakur, leading Australian sceptic
- ‘We have been lied to: 6 facts that change everything we know about SARS-CoV-2‘ – Daniel Horowitz doesn’t pull his punches in the Conservative Review
Small Businesses That Have Reopened
Last week, 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. We’re up to 500 now – keep ’em coming. And if you want a laugh about what to look forward to when the lockdown us over, check out this video.
Theme Tune Suggestions
Just one today, but what a corker: ‘Throw the R Away‘ by the Proclaimers.
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. I’ve now got two journalists helping out and I’d like to pay them 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. The site’s total page views have passed one million and it’s averaging 54,000 visitors a day. We’re having an impact…
And Finally…
Listen to James Delingpole telling me about being threatened with arrest at Sunday’s Hyde Park rally in our latest London Calling podcast. And watch this spoof of the daily Downing Street press briefing by comedy due Larry and Paul. Wait for the Peston question…
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I went for a run yesterday evening as Boris has allowed us unlimited exercise. I was hoping the mass hysteria was abating . During the run I observed that all the buses were still empty and even more people were wearing masks .The building site was working but I have been told that there is a 70 % absence Most of the workers are too scared to go back to work . I also obseved grown adults turn to face the wall when I ran past so as to avoid the corona !
The terror engendered by the corona porn propaganda has turned this nation into quivering wrecks. What has the government done ?
‘quivering wrecks’, Very polite!
Created a nation of zombies, that’s what.
I’m finding that even a few seconds’ conversation, particularly with a shopkeeper, can reveal a fellow sceptic, though naturally both parties will speak with caution for fear of the Gestapo. Fortunately, the real zombies are very easy to recognise from that dull-eyed, brain- dead stare and shuffling gait.
God, they’re everywhere. It’s like Saturday evening on the Horror channel.
Don’t forget the ostentatious showing off of their masks and gloves.
I’ve noticed more people wearing masks and scarves one had a kerchief tied around her face though positioned underneath her nose, another had the mask around her neck because she was talking to her friend. The human race has become far too stupid to survive!
What’s funny is many of them look like bank robbers especially with sunglasses. There are less and less people in my area wearing them, those who seem to be wearing them come from low income groups.
It gets funnier. Apparently some people are using dust masks, designed to let air in ( while keeping dust out, obviously) and then to expel every single particle when you breathe out.
BTW, did you read last week about the spike in A&E admissions they always get after the Thursday act of worship, owing to the enthusiastic faithful falling off the bollards, etc., they’ve climbed on to in order to demonstrate their fervour? I haven’t stopped laughing since I read it.
Interesting point, i’m a supermarket worker and lots of us don’t but the social distancing and the fear, i’d say 3/4’s don’t. After all ten weeks into lockdown and not one of the over 250 staff at our store has come down with it, another of our stores within five miles of mine has over 500 staff and not one of them has come down with it most people are thinking maybe this isn’t what they say it is. I don’t wear a mask and i’ve had customers question me and i just tell them i was born without a mask and i’ll never wear one to walk this earth or to please others so scared they’re prepared to cover their face thinking it will prevent a virus when it’s nothing more than a kids blanket to help them sleep.
Brilliant comment – thanks. My wife was wondering about the staff in shops who are presumably coming into contact with hundreds of people every day. I suggested to her that maybe they become immune without necessarily becoming ill. It would fit the idea of the human immune system building up resistance due to repeated low level exposure to viruses – the more types the better. Maybe supermarket workers have particularly well developed immune systems as a result..?
(I agree with your views on masks too)
In order to gain immunity we need to mix with others. The government has made an absolute blunder. I’m very angry with the way this has been handled,.
Well said. My husband has observed the same thing about supermarket workers and wondered if it was like what Edward Jenner noticed about milkmaids never contracting smallpox as they were repeatedly exposed to other types of virus especially cowpox which is a less lethal form of small pox.
Hello Annie. That’s what my wife and I call them Covid zombies or walking dead.
Snap! Except that they don’t do much walking, too busy s…..g themselves with fright at home.
More like sleep walkers. WAKE UP BEFORE IT IS TOO LATE.
We should analyse how certain countries with very low death rates per M have successfully treated it (eg Germany & Australia) use the method and then publicise it to the hilt. Fear would pretty much evaporate. Or would it? Nothing will reassure people blinded by OCD.
It’s making me feel like some sort of alien for not giving a fuck.
Like…. are we weird? Are our brains somehow immune to brainwashing?
In a word, Yes. Your mind is too strong.
We’ve taken the red pill and don’t believe anything any more without double checking. We read alternative viewpoints, not just what the government and msm tel us. And I don’t understand why the general public do, considering they don’t trust the media or government the rest of the time.
Exactly, I don’t want to even try to imagine our world in its current state but with this website missing.
Yep. It’s as if there is a brain virus which has effectively lobotomised most of the world.
Just because you (we) are a minority does not make us wrong.
It’s bizarre. All through the lockdown I’ve been walking through the park and along the river and there have been small numbers of people, not all paranoid.
The other day I walked on a nearby common and there were several walkers out.
Today I walked on another common and there was no-one, not even the usual dog walkers. Oh well, I sat on a seat in the sun and watched a hobby wheeling through the air.
It’s not everyone… I assure you. There are very few masked goons around my area. Didn’t see a single one today – for the first time.
Also, very interesting. Basically every company has been doing their best to persuade you not to call them haven’t they…
Well, my WiFi has been playing up recently… On off etc. – cue various bouts of covid cyber attack paranoia from me (don’t discount that by the way…)
So thought sod it, called the provider. Yeah all the shite on the automated message, then just like that, put through, next day engineer.
Even the better the young chap who came out sorted it out great, was really switched on and knew this whole thing was bullshit too – normal pub going, holiday abroad wanting type.
He said that their team is at 40% for normal callouts because the stupid cowards don’t want them in their house.
They are out there.
So, if you ever want to get a plumber, electrician (always a nightmare pinning them down), or anything like that…. Now is the time folks!
Interesting as 2-3 weeks ago one of our blinds came crashing down so we had to call for an emergency repair via one of those task websites.
A nice young bloke came, apologised for having to put on a mask did the job well then when my husband asked him the possibility of a future job, he removes his mask and talked us through what could be done.
We also chatted a bit about the current situation and he pretty much said that he’s not been really following the news and thinks that the over all death count is vastly inflated.
So yes I agree with you all here as there seems to be a silent majority now forming The question now is will the MSM and the government listen? Or will they continue to insist on leading us to a zombie apocalypse?
JoThe attempted manipulation of public opinion, and the single view that is common across the main stream media throughout the lockdown, has much in common with the Brexit battle post the referendum result, however this time we have no Brexit Party nor ERG fighting on our side.
Much of this propaganda seems to be created by ‘charities’ linked to both the Home Office and the FCO.
An additional problem is that the security world now grows (in the manner of so many government departments) to fill and ever expanding brief. Partly this is connected with the digital world, no decent employer would have opened up an ‘internal mail’ envelope sent between two of his employees, and it was (and is) illegal to open someone else Royal Mail post. Yet, the corporate world routinely monitors, and records the emails of all its employers, this is a huge cultural shift. These days, the civil service, the EU, and the corporate world are very happy to be in bed together
Thus the security services are in a world in which prying and spying (monitoring in corporate speak) have become, at least amongst the new establishment, routine and acceptable, and not confined to genuine threats to the lives and liberty of freeborn Britons.
Thus we have a charity linked to the FCO https://www.statecraft.org.uk/ , which in turn runs an organisation called the Integrity Initiative whose stated aims are to deal with ‘Russian disinformation’, whilst the aims are sensible, why has it become ‘charity work’, and what influence do they have over countering what they see as ‘false information’ about lockdown and corona virus, and what we see as a much needed debate about shoddy computer modelling, and its effects upon our lives. Much like the Behavioural Insights Team and their parent organisation, another ‘charity’ NESTA https://www.nesta.org.uk/ , it all seems unaccountable and anti-democratic.
The Mail are a joke. Yesterday they had a scare story about how babies were dying due to covid, and they act surprised when people don’t want to send their kids to schools. This paper more than any other is responsible for covid hysteria.
Weirdest thing is how by hosting our hero Hitchens(Peter) they have an excellent anti-lockdown columnist working for them. And despite his influence they manage to cover their front pages in rabid panic generating coronaphobic rubbish.
It must be because they know the fear stories sell newspapers.
I don’t get how they keep publishing Peter hitchens serving sense AND this crap
It confuses me that so many of the population reject reason and insist, demand and push a fiction of panic in the face of reason. I think Peter Hitchens is right when he says that the population need to be convinced they got it wrong.
For now, we must stop giving people incentives for prolonging the lockdown. Pupils or no pupils, teachers need to be back in school full time. Being kind and not wanting a confrontation, I would grant those who want to stay home discretionary UNPAID leave of absence. Though I wonder why they should be employed at all for the harm they are doing to our children and our nation’s future. It’s sickening that teachers are sitting on full pay at home whilst hundreds of thousands are suffering losing their jobs.
Particularly when as key workers, lots of their own kids have been in school the whole time! Schools did not shut, just ran a skeleton service for key worker children, and vulnerable children – uptake was much lower than predicted, but nevertheless, schools have been ticking along all this time without mass slaughter (one would think if kids were super spreaders, the kids of NHS workers, spending all evening and all weekend at home might have carried it in?).
Considering what is being taught in schools, the kids might be better off not going back:
https://www.hulldailymail.co.uk/news/education/mum-disgusted-hardcore-porn-homework-4142348
Hull Daily Mail: Hull mum disgusted as 11-year-old set ‘hardcore porn’ homework
Archbishop Sentamu Academy has apologised after children were asked to define different types of pornography
That’s extremely disturbing! (So is the photo of the mother if I’m honest.)
They’ve run out of crisis actors, and used a full-size Barbie doll instead.
I have long wondered if the furlough scheme has the unintended consequence of prolonging the lockdown because that’s human nature – if you’re still being paid even if you’re doing SFA why would you want to haul your carcass back to work especially as the media still continue to pump apocalyptic stories about infections and what people should and should not do?
Its not just teachers but I think that’s what companies should do – people who still want to stay at home should be given the option of unpaid leave (save for those with legitimate health concerns – they can avail of statutory sick pay) with the understanding as well that they are not guaranteed annual leave later in the year.
There is also the problem of malingerers and I can imagine all this talk of social distancing at work and other measures will just be abused by this lot.
Absolutely Bart. These people have the government over a barrel. To confront people with the truth now would be admit they were wrong and were deliberately fear mongering the whole time and so it goes on.
Allison Pearson from The Telegraph wrote an interesting article and provided this amusing sentence regarding the teachers – it should become a slogan.
[quote] …getting dressed for Ebola when facing Crayola. [/quote]
The Larry and Paul spoof of the daily briefings is just hilarious and so accurate.
Telegraph running with the story today that Rishi Sunak reckons the country is facing a ‘severe recession’ – you don’t say?! What really makes me sick is that a) this recession has been caused by the government’s own policy and b) they won’t acknowledge that it’s their fault and try to fix it, just prolong the agony instead.
I find it utterly disgraceful and revolting that this pack of sociopaths are willing to put political face-saving and their own careers above the wellbeing of this country and its people. Sure, you’d get a few screamers on social media if there were more dramatic lockdown-easing measures, but we desperately need a politician with backbone to make decisions which might be unpopular at times like this. As someone rightly pointed out on this site, populism is fine for small day-to-day policies, but not significant situations like this which will have far-reaching consequences. These unpopular decisions are those which will be more beneficial in the long run. Cruel to be kind, as it were – but the lockdown is far, far crueller.
That’s a good point – what we need now is a politician with a backbone who will look at this issue from a wholistic and a long term perspective. Essentially to drag this country kicking and screaming back to the real world.
I know he’s crap, but he is the Prime Minister. So has he gone to ground again?
Anyone interested ? Nightingale Exeter – looking for more expressions of interest
The new Nightingale hospital in Exeter is looking for Medics, Registered Nurses, Therapy Support Workers and Healthcare Assistants.
Staff from across the region have recently been invited to complete an expression of interest to join Nightingale Exeter. There was an excellent response and thanks to everyone who has applied so far. The first inductions are taking place this week and an additional induction programme will take place the week of 1 June to support demand.
There is now a specific need for applications for certain roles including Medics, Registered Nurses, Therapy Support Workers and Healthcare Assistants. As a result, the closing date for all expressions of interest has been extended to Wednesday 20 May at 2pm
“The first inductions are taking place this week and an additional induction programme will take place the week of 1 June to support demand.”
Demand for what exactly?
Choreographers, camera men, dancers the usual sorts of things the NHS requires.
Fabulous. They’ll be able to sit around waiting for something to happen like the rest of us.
You should add mental health professionals to that list. I reckon you could fit a hundred ‘nightingales’ with a steady stream of patients
Get ready to work on those dance routines.
Loved the “pneumonic” in the pilot’s tale; very apropos!
I have been released! I live in a “zone” of Michigan in the US that has a very small population and we’ve been cleared to reopen most businesses. Surprise for the governor, everyone already started working and going out and about a few weeks ago.
I was also cleared to get an antibody test this week. I’m sure it will show that I am immune – I’m sure I had it last December. Confirmation will be great though.
Best wishes Amy, enjoy your freedom!
Good luck Amy! Hope all goes well.
Congratulations, Amy! Your governor is off the rails, sorry to say. I’m happy at least some of you have been released from house arrest! Good luck with the antibody test. I gave blood yesterday – the Blood Connection is doing COVID antibody tests on all donors. I should have a result next week, for whatever that is worth.
I wouldn’t bother with an antibody test if you’re not forced to have it. Don’t let that little fear cockroach back into your life
Ruin the economy. Destroy everything. Vote for us next time.
Yep, one-party (effectively) socialist rule.
Alright, I know it’s super difficult sticking up for Boris, it’s all been a total fucking orchestrated sham.
But just remember this is happening throughout the world.
New Zealand and it’s 15 fuckin deaths or whatever, and they still stayed in lockdown after all that
Hi ianp, that’s quite true. Makes it worse, obviously, but you’re quite right.
I’m the Kiwi mentioned in today’s post. We’ve had 21 deaths in total and only 2 new cases in the last 9 days and we are still in a partial lockdown.
Insanity.
Hi I am a Kiwi too. My suspicions are that NO ONE has actually died of Covid19 in our country (???). I have noticed that very few medical details have been mentioned of each death since the press revealed that the first West Coast “victim” in April had actually had a severe lung disease!!!! She did not die of Covid and no responsible pathologist would ever state that the underlying cause was Covid19.
I think that even the imbeciles in the MSM have figured out that it is far scarier to imply that some healthy people have died.
Hello brothers and sisters in sanity! Being in this site is like taking a deep breath of sweet, fresh air.
I see that Lord Gumption is under attack from the egregious Melanie Philips in The Times, first for criticising the lockdown rules and secondly for obeying them because they are the law.
Jonathan, go rend her asunder – if you think it’s worth the bother.
Oh, and apparently we sceptics are putting Britain ‘on the road to tyranny’.
Excuse me! WE are!?
I find it disorientating. People like Melanie Phillips and Rod Liddle! What on earth is happening?
Rod Liddle has totally lost the plot. His pro-lockdown rant in the latest Spectator didn’t even have any internal logic (let alone consistency with his previous views). Another one who’s been felled by the Brain Virus…
Conspiracy? Considering the nutters involved in conspiracy theories it’s always helpful to have some distance but when you find them clickable (see below) in front of you?
https://twitter.com/az_reason/status/1262626015509049345
Look in Wikipedia Disease X exists also in Mach 2020 Lancet
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3099(20)30123-7/fulltext
DT also reports that today ‘Boris Johnson discussed the UK’s contribution to the global coronavirus effort in a call with Bill and Melinda Gates today, a Downing Street spokeswoman said:’
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/global-health/science-and-disease/coronavirus-news-vaccine-testing-lockdown-deaths-cases/
Is that the same Bill and Melinda Gates who have funded UCL to the tune of 250 million?
That couple have bought out everyone in positions of influence… why is nothing done about this?
If these rats appear with a ‘vaccine’ this summer then I actually do predict riots.
On the contrary, the evidence suggests that people will be lining up in their (socially distanced) droves, eagerly waiting to be injected with a rushed-through vaccine that’s barely even in the experimental stages.
So much for fearing for their health. But as the Milgram experiment has shown, people have a tendency to defer to whatever a perceived authority figure will tell them.
I fear you’re right, Gossamer.
David Starkey talking about the foolishness of lockdown: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=8S8Js-tEmlg&feature=youtu.be
Something for the next press briefing from the science led government?
https://www.nbcdfw.com/news/coronavirus/inventors-develop-mask-to-let-you-eat-and-stay-safe/2372046/?_osource=SocialFlowTwt_DFWBrand
Omg it’s like when he tried to eat through his mask in the Cory Hart video
I laughed out loud, more in shock and incredulity than anything else.
What the fuck.
But these things are like absolute golddust… Send them on to your friends with a neutral question about it. Try not to be sarcastic.
You’ll easily weed out which of them is a death cult zombie. Normal people will laugh about it, therefore you know who isn’t a raving lunatic
There’s definitely money to be made from these stupid, selfish cowards. You could sell them anything as long as it claims to keep them “safe”.
WINSTON CHURCHILL, JUNE 1940
Even though large tracts of Europe and many old and famous States have fallen or may fall into the grip of the Gestapo and all the odious apparatus of Nazi rule, we shall not flag or fail. We shall go on to the end. We shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be. We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender,
BORIS JOHNSON, MARCH 2020
Even though large tracts of Europe and many old and famous States have fallen or may fall into the grip of the virus and all the odious apparatus of Nanny State rule, we shall not flag or fail. We shall go on to the end. We shall impose 14 day quarantine before we can go to France, we shall isolate ourselves from the seas and oceans, we shall close our airports and bankrupt our airlines so they may never again take to the air, we shall shutter all business on our island, whatever the cost may be. We shall close the beaches, we shall barricade the car parks on the landing grounds, we shall bring in some Poles to work in the fields and in the streets, we shall hide and cower in our homes, we shall surrender.
Point of order; regarding the 14 year old with her lockdown paper – a computer model is in no way shape or form a science experiment!
It could conceivably form a part of one, but that would involve testing a variety of models against reality, not merely running a single amateur’s (attempt at a) model and calling the results science. Please do not repeat this nonsense as it is plain there are already rather too many people in places of high influence and authority who believe it.
Yesterday I noted the inherent incoherence of the phrase “social distancing“, observing that distancing is antisocial by definition. Social is a synonym for gregarious, which means to assemble (flock) together in groups. Today I want to mention a couple more oxymorons I’ve seen around the lockdown traps lately.
For example, here in Germany it has been illegal to home school since the 1930’s. No guesses where that policy came from. During the lockdown it is also mandatory to home school. Go figure.
Or how about this excerpt from Trump and his doctor, above:
“he and I regarding the evidence for and against the use of hydroxychloroquine, we concluded the potential benefit from the treatment outweighed the relative risk.”
Notice that he gets to decide based on his assessment of the trade-off between relative risks presented by the different options available, he gets to practice informed consent, but he simultaneously has denied that choice to his fellow citizens by forcing people out of work, out of business, out of school, in order to placate his own fears over one possible course of action.
Notice the various videos of idiotically hyper-charged police officers shouting in lone pedestrian’s faces at close range that “you’re killing people!” while themselves gathered in significant numbers and wearing no protective apparatus at all. Or the video of James Delingpole being threatened by an equally zealous idiot in uniform who is equally unprepared for the threat from which he claims to be protecting us all.
For the record, this is how the agents of government dress when they believe there is an actual biological threat.
Noticing the breaking of patterns is as critical a thinking and analytic skill as is pattern recognition itself. There’s a simple truth here: when people contradict themselves then at least one of the things they’re telling you cannot be true. It hardly matters which, the relevant insight is that they are unreliable sources and you have absolute warrant for heavily discounting anything they say as you make up your own mind.
You do have one, and it is there for a reason. For a purpose. Never let anyone browbeat you or hoodwink you out of using it.
Noticing contradictions is both good practice and good policy.
Please do reply if you have noticed other such contradictions.
The police officer who came into my work asking to use the toilet, one of my younger colleagues let them in. The police officer who came straight into my work past all the queues to within 2m of staff and customers to ask about some commotion outside. Police coming within 2m to tell me to move along while sitting down having a cigarette during a hectic stressful day at work. Three police to a panda car. Many police to many riot vans.
Only government officials I see are police..
They crash around like bloody rhinos with the absolute convinction that the rules don’t apply to them. Because apparently they don’t.
Hello Scuzzaman. Spanish government spokesman on Saturday, the best mask is 2 metres distance. Same spokesman on the next day, compulsory masks and social distancing.
“Notice that he gets to decide based on his assessment of the trade-off between relative risks presented by the different options available, he gets to practice informed consent, but he simultaneously has denied that choice to his fellow citizens by forcing people out of work, out of business, out of school, in order to placate his own fears over one possible course of action.”
He pushed the FDA to allow doctors to prescribe hydroxychloroquine “off label,” i.e. medics could prescribe it even though it hadn’t yet been tested and approved for treating for CV19. It was the MSM and other politicians who ridiculed him and the use of hydroxychloroquine. Nick Ferrari and his guest yesterday, a doctor, dismissed the use of hydroxychloroquine to treat CV19, because of “dangerous” side effects, and because studies had found that it wasn’t effective. The doctor didn’t make clear whether the studies he was referring to also included azythromycin and zinc in the treatment protocols.
Trump left it to the individual states to treat the epidemic as they saw fit, i.e. left it up to the state governors to decide whether lock down or not. He did not mandate a countrywide lockdown.
It’s notable that it’s the Democrat-run states that have gone with inconsistent, illogical lockdown. It’s also the Democrat-run states that have high numbers of deaths in care homes, e.g. New York (Cuomo, Democrat), Michigan (Whitmer, Democrat) versus Florida (De Santis, Republican).
It’s the Democrat-run California that’s pushed lockdown for another three months, despite a relatively low number of deaths.
https://m.youtube.com/watchv=fboynwftxfa
Why did Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer order patients to be housed in nursing homes?
https://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2020/05/09/us/ap-us-virus-outbreak-new-york-nursing-homes.html
NY’s Cuomo Criticized Over Highest Nursing Home Death Toll
“And they are second-guessing a state directive that requires nursing homes take on new patients infected with COVID-19 — an order they say accelerated outbreaks in facilities that are prime breeding grounds for infectious diseases.
“The way this has been handled by the state is totally irresponsible, negligent and stupid,” said Elaine Mazzotta, a nurse whose mother died last month of suspected COVID-19 at a Long Island nursing home. “They knew better. They shouldn’t have sent these people into nursing homes.””
It’s not Trump that’s put people out of work. That was the Democrat state governors. Trump wants people to go back to work, but it’s the Democrats who want to stretch this lockdown out. Maybe they think people will vote for them if they do….
Ah those plastic strimming visors!
I did my weekly shop in Lidl this morning where a very large elderly lady was pushing a shopping cart around with her latex gloves and a perspex face mask (bit like a nuclear scientist). I was nearly wetting myself with laughter at the nonsense.
Clearly way past her brain capacity to understand that gloves are about as pointless as it gets, a perspex visor might be useful if she keeps a spitting cobra as a pet and that one of the biggest risk factors is obesity (one of the things she could actually have done something about during her imprisonment if she seriously wanted to reduce her already small risk).
After this entertainment I checked today’s updated ONS figures which informed me that if you are under 45 you probably have a similar chance of dying from drowning as from Covid-19 (or indeed more chance of dying from drowning as the figures don’t say who has died of Covid 19 merely “Deaths where COVID-19 was mentioned on the death certificate”). On checking out last year’s suicide figure’s this age group is probably twice as likely to top themselves though – although I suspect this year’s suicide figures will be much higher.
My elderly dad went to a doctors appointment last week,you have to press a buzzer at the outside door and wait to be admitted one at a time,when the door was opened he was greeted by the GP in head to toe PPE,apron,gloves,plastic visor,surgical mask etc,my dad’s immediate response was to say ‘I’m not ready for my postmortem yet’ !,surprisingly the GP actually thought that was funny,some of them at our surgery have had a humour bypass.
sod the doctors they’re mostly useless. A quick internet search and you’re good. Stay away from the NHS at all costs. Basically unless you’re bleeding to death there are other solutions to queuing like school kids at lunch to see some useless doctor who’ll probably just prescribe a drug they promote because they’re all getting backhanders and perks from the drug company
Biker. Just about sums up what medical science has become. Prevention, screening you’re going to die if you don’t medicate yourself to the eyeballs. Medicine, as it’s currently practiced bears a lot of the responsibility for creating this risk averse mindset in the population.
“Wi-ers going on a welding course.” PMSL! I’m going to use that one.
Hello fellow sceptics! The Guardian article has pushed me into posting, what absolute trash! To dispel thier stereotype myth, I would consider myself left, anti consumerist, a believer in man made climate change and a public sector worker…on paper thier dream reader! Problem is I am also a free thinker and can make my own mind up on things! Love the way they state that we can’t apply critical thought and don’t look the science… quite the opposite. Insulting to Carl Sagen too pontificating what he ‘would’ have thought. Any one with critical thought can look at the raw data and see that a number has well and truly been pulled off!
Back to the lockdown, it’s like everyone is under a spell, even normally intelligent people seem to be under it and unable to see for themselves and are lapping it up fueled by the gutter press.
On another note what also angers me is the faux concern for others which actually, in my opinion, boils down to self preservation. If people actually cared they would be putting the data into perspective and thinking hang on let’s put our efforts into protecting the vulnerable and let everyone else get on with it. As a result of this mass hysteria we have millions plunged into poverty, children deprived of a education, food chains broken where millions could starve to death, suicide, domestic abuse etc but hey who cares about them ‘im in lockdown as I am protecting others’…oh the irony. When I have tried to raise this with others I get a reply that that this is an unfortunate outcome but lockdown was needed… People have lost all perspective.
I am actually quite scared of where this is going, there seems to have been a big attempt at a power grab and what seems to be a sinister push of a health agenda, big tech surveilance and stamping out of free thought being pushed through in the guise of this virus, sinister stuff.
Rant over.
anyone who considers themselves a free thinker while holding left wing views isn’t a free thinker
That may, or may not be true. However, for the sake of harmony we must put our party political differences on hold, at least for the time being and use all our collective intellect to counter the establishment narrative on this.
no because left wing thinking has given us the piss poor NHS and led the nation to think that the government knows best and we should do what they tell us. eft wing ideas are a hideous virus that ned countered at every opportunity
Spelldispel. Self preservation is a human instinct that I can understand, but when they dress it up as concern for others it disgusts me. This policy of house arrest has only “protected” the healthy and low risk while shunting the most vulnerable groups into care homes to die. When they talk about “can’t put a price on a lfe” they are talking about their own. Despicable.
Driving around town today I noticed several car and motorcycle dealerships have now re-opened. Their websites say it is only for servicing but they also say you can purchase new vehicles via email or by phone. Might be wishful thinking on my part, but have they decided enough is enough?
I noticed the same around here yesterday,looks like they reached the end of their tolerance of this madness.
Yes I noticed a garage open today too. I’ll check if mine is back in business.
My car was getting screwed up due to the pollution control gubbins while I’ve only been pootling to the shops and a few other places. Fortunately a couple of long fast runs seem to have sorted it.
MOTs were suspended a while back, I wonder if they are letting the garages reopen to recoup the MOT fees. Every penny counts when you are this far in debt.
With petrol stations are their toilets generally open??
Yes, I have already re-booked my Mazda for the service it missed on 7 April.
Hello fellow sceptics! The Guardian article has pushed me into posting, what absolute trash! To dispel thier stereotype myth, I would consider myself left, anti consumerist, a believer in man made climate change and a public sector worker…on paper thier dream reader! Problem is I am also a free thinker and can make my own mind up on things! Love the way they state that we can’t apply critical thought and don’t look the science… quite the opposite. Insulting to Carl Sagen too pontificating what he ‘would’ have thought. Any one with critical thought can look at the raw data and see that a number has well and truly been pulled off!
Back to the lockdown, it’s like everyone is under a spell, even normally intelligent people seem to be under it and unable to see for themselves and are lapping it up fueled by the gutter press.
On another note what also angers me is the faux concern for others which actually, in my opinion, boils down to self preservation. If people actually cared they would be putting the data into perspective and thinking hang on let’s put our efforts into protecting the vulnerable and let everyone else get on with it. As a result of this mass hysteria we have millions plunged into poverty, children deprived of a education, food chains broken where millions could starve to death, suicide, domestic abuse etc but hey who cares about them ‘im in lockdown as I am protecting others’…oh the irony. When I have tried to raise this with others I get a reply that that this is an unfortunate outcome but lockdown was needed… People have lost all perspective.
I am actually quite scared of where this is going, there seems to have been a big attempt at a power grab and what seems to be a sinister push of a health agenda, big tech surveilance and stamping out of free thought being pushed through in the guise of this virus, sinister stuff.
Rant over.
Welcome to the club
The deletion (which occurred May 8) was all the more devastating because Dr. Wittkowski had been posting comments there, replies to people’s criticisms and questions, for almost a month. He was writing these replies semi-daily, some of them very substantial. Thousands of words worth, in the end. (This was the best way to get out the word, as the US media refused to interview him.) They are now all lost at their original source.
Fortunately, they are NOT lost forever: I foresaw this deletion coming (“a matter of when, not if”) and worked to copy the Youtube comments written by Wittkowski, re-hosting them at my humble website and thus preserving them. Many are excellent, informative, addressing common criticisms of his ideas. He answers all with good spirits:
Find these “Updates from Knut Wittkowski” here:
https://hailtoyou.wordpress.com/2020/04/27/against-the-corona-panic-pt-v-a-hero-of-the-hour-dr-knut-wittkowski/#updates
A public service – well done!
You are a legend.
Thanks a lot Hail. Dr Wittowski is fabulous.
Top notch. Thank you.
Agreed
Excellent. Thank you. Been taking screenshots and downloads of a number of things myself.
He is far from the only one being censored… every qualified person who contradicts the desired political narrative is being removed from social media…it’s obvious why..
Nice one, Hail.
Thank you!
The world’s first geriatric pandemic. In country after country, state after state in the US, the same pattern. Pennsylvania has more COVID deaths over age 100 than under age 45. More deaths over age 95 than under age 60. More deaths over 85 than under 80
https://twitter.com/kerpen/status/1262783822925647872
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. The WHO’s own description of pandemic in 2010.
CDC, the UK government scientists, PHE and the whole establishment scientific community knows that this death pattern in Covid-19 is completely opposite to a new pandemic flu. We would have thousands and thousands of deaths in younger persons in a flu pandemic at this stage. They all know that the response with lockdown was totally counterproductive and most likely increasing the deaths amongst elderly which should have been the main priority at the start of the pandemic.
The figures are stark, and should be simple for anyone to grasp. Yet the hysteria in the media continues – Sara Tor’s outrageous analogy of teachers going back to school with WWI in today’s Times. How to convince the masses, more so since our Dear Leader mentioned the 500k death projection in Ferguson’s original, non peer-reviewed model in his outings last week, and has since gone to ground (again)?
This is the real scandal and horror of this insanity.
I know it is grossly unfashionable to believe “they” (“who are ‘they’?” my skeptical friend always asks) did this to us but I have to ask a counter-question:
What would have been done differently if there really was a “they” who wanted to do this to us on purpose?
Wanted to frighten the world into voluntarily giving up our freedom, begging to be imprisoned, enthusiastically rubber-stamping the overturning of a thousand years of legal developments and liberal governance, and aggressively policing our own dissenters?
What more could “they” have done?
The country that brings out the skeptic in me is India. Population 1.8 BILLION. Number of CV deaths circa 2800. Anyone that has ever been to one of that country’s mega cities will know that social distancing in cramped, crowded buildings would be impossible. Then there’s multi generational households and general poor hygiene. Why hasn’t this ‘deadly’ disease ripped through thst country?
And as much to the point, why has India imposed a lockdown for so relatively few deaths?
They have nearly 900,000 deaths a year from lung disease including TB, yet people aren’t forced to stay at home for that.
No old people in the cities?
No, that’s definitely not the case, many generations live in the same household, in cities and everywhere else…
The average life expectancy in India is 69 compared to 81 for the UK. They’re not living long enough to die of Covid.
I also don’t know how they’re testing and reporting etc. It’s very hard to compare reported death rates between different countries.
Possibly.. there are also reports that a lot of people are being infected when already in hospital for other conditions. So that could account for fewer deaths – a lot of people may live miles from a hospital and also not be able to afford to go to hospital for other conditions.
I believe this could also be the case in Africa and where death rates are surprisingly low and at odds with the “wait until CV-19 hits the continent” scares of a few weeks back. Yet, it has had little impact.
And let’s praise President John Magufuli in Tanzania who announced yesterday the total opening of that country’s airspace and no quarantine for arriving air passengers.
Because (according to the independent experts on the internet – as opposed to those ‘advising’ the government) we actually *need* social contact to keep our immune systems functioning properly. Note too that the New York governor expressed surprise that there were so many cases turning up at hospital who had actually been isolating at home…
India average age in 2015:
26.8 years old
‘It may not simply be that the older you get, the more at risk you are, though. As we show in the next section, the CFR for people with underlying health conditions – such as cardiovascular diseases, respiratory diseases or diabetes – is higher than for those without. Elderly people are more likely to have those conditions, which is likely to be part of the reason why the elderly are most at risk from COVID-19.’
https://ourworldindata.org/mortality-risk-covid
So, essentially, similar to something the splendid Sir David Spiegelhalter said, your risk of dying this year is in no way altered by Covid 19, pretty much whatever age you are.
‘Life is something that happens to you while you’re busy making other plans’
They are all quite simply, criminals.
Yes – and in Sweden practically a quarter of the deaths have been of people who were 90+.. I hadn’t realised there were so many people in that particular age group. They were not merely ‘elderly’, but actually extremely elderly.
This could actually be a big contributor to their death figures- the fact they have a very long-lived population has actually worked against them lol
True for Italy too I think.
We have some longevity here in Suffolk too, my mother was 95 and one of our neighbours was 106. I recall a few years back probably in winter there were more ambulances than buses going past for a while, most of those who died were at least eighty plus.
I haven’t seen anything like that at all during this “crisis”
It seems that it is due to most of these people living in care homes and not being properly shielded there
Although to be fair people of this age would have been at a high risk from any ‘normal’ flu or other illness.
Are there any figures comparing tha average age of people who died of Covid and average life expectancy?
In Sweden about 2/3 of all Covid-19 deaths are over the life expectancy in Sweden. I think in Western Europe most country’s median age of Covid-19 death is about the life expectancy age but the only link I have is Germany,82 years
https://www.rki.de/DE/Content/InfAZ/N/Neuartiges_Coronavirus/Situationsberichte/2020-04-28-en.pdf?__blob=publicationFile
Old people get a different flu vaccine from younger people. Some sort of reaction with it..?
Do they? That’s interesting
From here: https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/vaccinations/flu-influenza-vaccine/
“There are several types of flu vaccine.
You’ll be offered the one that’s most effective for your age:
children aged 2 to 17 in an eligible group are offered a live attenuated quadrivalent vaccine (LAIV), given as a nasal spray
adults aged 18 to 64 who are either pregnant, or at increased risk from flu because of a long-term health condition, are offered a quadrivalent injected vaccine – the vaccine offered will have been grown either in eggs or cells (QIVe or QIVc), which are considered to be equally suitable
adults aged 65 and over will be offered either an adjuvanted trivalent injected vaccine grown in eggs (aTIV) or a cell-grown quadrivalent injected vaccine (QIVc) – both vaccines are considered to be equally suitable.”
Just found this, too, from 2018:
“A flu vaccine that was licensed in Italy 20 years ago is to be used for the first time in the UK this winter in a bid to cut the death toll among older people from the infectious disease.
Public Health England says the vaccine, only now available in England, could reduce GP consultations by 30,000, hospital visits by more than 2,000 and prevent more than 700 hospital deaths. It is an adjuvanted vaccine, which will boost the immune system of the over-65 age group and give them better protection than in the past.”
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2018/sep/12/over-65s-to-be-given-more-effective-flu-vaccine
And how about this?
“the odds of both coronavirus and human metapneumovirus in vaccinated individuals were significantly higher when compared to unvaccinated individuals (OR = 1.36 and 1.51, respectively)”
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0264410X19313647#!
Turns out that in 2017-2018, military service people were 36% *more* likely to contract a coronavirus disease if they had previously received a flu shot. So what would that be for old people if they had received the higher dose flu vaccination..?
It doesn’t receive much publicity, but if it was true that old people had fared worse with Covid 19 because of the flu vaccine, it would be dynamite, surely? And would (should) certainly put the proposed Covid vaccine in a new light.
Govt and NHS policies actively increased the danger to the old and sick – the most vulnerable – by pitching them back into care homes and leaving them there to die.
One day soon there will be a reckoning.
After the last week, its finally dawned on me that we’re not going to get out of this, we’re simply too outnumbered by inbreds. I saw Sadiq Khan and TFL suggesting the way to ease overcrowding is to reduce capacity. When I run out of space I always look for something smaller… Is this covid law of inverse capacity mathematics calculations? I despair.
George Eustace then announces we’re “trying” to get to stage 3 of whatever the hell their corona alert system is, claiming that because we were 2-3 weeks behind other countries were not their yet. If so then why can’t hospitality industries open before July, like in these said countries, which are doing now? July is 6 or so weeks away, not 2-3.
What is it with the UK? Its like coronavirus has stripped IQ’s. We’re paying for people to stay at home, in the process slowing killing everyone’s future. We selectively kill the very people lockdown was supposed to protect in care homes. We have all become the kid in school who was allergic to everything and we’ve accept state mothering en masse. As for government, I’m convinced they’re actually remedial. There are characters in cabinet who are comic book, but infinitely more retarded. What swamp did Matt Hancock come from? In my school he would have been battered within a week. Boris Johnson has simply vanished, in body and mind. Vacuous springs to mind.
I can’t envisage my daughter ever going to school again, ever. Parents, teachers, unions, all morphed into the shittest version of the Health and Safety Executive ever.
I simply can’t see any way out. All those people who are trying in the scientific community and media are snuffed out, there’s just too many twats to get past or convince.
If I could, I’d happily be locked away in a lockdown sceptics commune, in Corsica, Devils Island or Alcatraz, just to get away from the dickheads we’ve now been doomed to live amongst, based on recent evidence, for the rest of my now miserae life.
What’s going on is not far removed from the crazy dystopian world in the film ‘Brazil’!
There is such an astonishing level of incompetence and political idiocy that you have to wonder whether they really are that stupid, or is there another motive?
For example, Grant Shapps announcement about all of us cycling or walking to work. It’s straight out of the Extinction Rebellion, Carbon Zero playbook. The government has budgeted £2 billion for this. That’s £2 billion of taxpayers money that we don’t have, on top of the other £billions that Sunak is merrily spending that we also don’t have. Is it stupidity, or another agenda?
How much did all the fuss about Cameron/Osborne’s austerity programme save? Maybe £35-40B?
Sureley this rate of spending increase, tax revenue falls, unemployment.. will wipe it out several times. What a change in heart for a party that went on and on about Brown’s reckless gambles.
Remember the letter left for the conservative gov,t say no money left. What are the current gov,t going to leave for the next lot.
Watch UK column online to see what is really going on….
Of course it’s part of the agenda, a worldwide one as is 5G in some way, oh and digital currency at some point. I just can’t see how things will align, pretty sure there are 2 paths at least. We are not going to stop it, and there will be mass disorder before we get there.
But, pretty much the people need to choose… Come out of their fucking houses, and ditch any thought of a mask. The apathetic need to be brought to a breaking point.
London is spread out widely. How the heck are we supposed to walk or cycle over long distances? At this rate it will take me over half a day to walk to work then back again. I might as well not bother.
My husband is thinking of buying a bike after he saw on Google maps that it will take him only an hour to get to work. I told him that its highly doubtful since we live in NW London (where there is no direct bus link to central London) and his workplace is on the other side of the river. I don’t think trying to dissuade him will work so hopefully either he arrives at that conclusion before buying a bicycle or the novelty of cycling to work wears off faster than you can day Covid 19 or we are due for a washout weather when we emerge from lockdown.
Borrow a bike, if possible, for a short trial period ?
That’s a good idea. Another thing my husband was considering is the bicycle would only be for exercise and not to commute to work.
Unfortunately,this is the horrible conclusion I have reached as well after seeing the increasingly paranoid and frankly bizarre behaviour of a lot of our fellow citizens,authorities and government in the past week,it’s like they are under some kind of spell cast by a witch in a fairy tale.One of the things that has really shown me that the country has gone mad is the sight of 600 seat trains heading off to London with a maximum of 60 passengers !.
There is a way out – look for a job abroad.
Except that Brexit has ended the right to live and work abroad. Just like the lockdown, everyone is forced to do what the majority wants no matter how cruel that is to the individual.
Depends where you want to go…
Nobody ever had a “right” to go and work in any other country. EU membership created a privilege granted by the governments involved to do so in other member countries, but of course that came with the price of accepting all the costs of EU membership, including all the future consequences of membership in the developing United States of Europe.
We will no doubt disagree on those costs and whether they were a price worth paying for the benefits, and this is not the place to go into all that. I just wanted to address the particular inaccuracies in your comment directly.
Also your suggestion that brexit is somehow a matter of the “cruel majority” inflicting something on others, assumes incorrectly that brexit was somehow an aggressive new initiative, when in fact it was a defensive response to the policy of inflicting the EU project upon us all.
Isn’t the majority inflicting something on the minority known as……. democracy? :oD
Yep. Aka mob rule.
Democracy is becoming a problem in its current form. We need to place hard limits on what powers a majority may exercise over a minority, so that liberty can be preserved for all. The idea of a “democracy” where whatever the majority wants is done and the minority is crushed is exactly how the likes of Putin, Jinping, Erdogan and Orban like “democracy” to work. A democracy is only worth having if it is kept a liberal democracy, and our socieities haven’t had enough care for liberty for a long time.
Sounds like a Constitution would be a good idea ?
Until you think about the kind of people who would write it….
Ahem. “We the people …”
The ones we don’t write favour the state over us.
Eh? So you’re saying that the person who gets the most votes shouldn’t win?
Indeed, this is where the whole idea of democracy becomes tricky and one of the reasons why a democratic system requires a shared moral basis that is common to most at least of the citizens, so that limits to the tyranny of the majority can be agreed.
But the important point to recognise here was the one about correctly attributing the active and the reactive. The people trying to impose dramatic change on the nation were the supporters of the EU project. The brexiteers were acting defensively, in response to that attempt at profound and probably after a certain point irreversible change.
Except nobody mandated the lockdown in the largest democratic vote in British history.
Also to me it’s kinda the opposite. The vast majority of people who are not in danger are suffering in order to ‘protect’ the vulnerable people they’re not even in contact with (those in care homes and hospitals) and the rare outlying young person who will get it and die.
I do believe you need to run away.
I ran away in the eighties when the Government made my building businesss unsustainable by loading on more and more regulation, taxes and levies. (Just to rub salt in the wounds they did this during a recession). Elfandsafety had just started and they put me in jail for a day for not signing the right form. That was before the extraordinary level of regulation both from the EU and self imposed you all live under now.
I built a boat and sailed off into the sunset and ever since life has been sweet…..until now….. where the decisions your politicians have made have just broke the economy of my little Caribbean country.
At this stage I’d accept your idea of a sceptics commune. I’m really starting to hate those people who are welcoming dystopia with open arms.
This line, along with your substantial comments yesterday on the COVID Cult essay by Dr. Willbourn, leads me pitch the following link:
Is Corona a literal religious cult? An anthropological study. (Or, Corona as virus-centered apocalypse cult; its ascent to state religion; the mass-conversion event to the cult; a study of the cult.) (May 17-18).
I began to realize the need for an anthropologist’s approach to “understand” Corona. We can draw on expertise in the fields of anthropology and even archaeology on the nature of religions/cults here.
I hadn’t seen a full, serious take on “Corona as a Religious Cult,” so I wrote one myself. It is investigative and generally not polemical. Calling something a “cult” sounds inevitably polemical, but in anthropology “cult” is a neutral term. Don’t box yourself in with what you think a cult (or a religion, both heavy words) “looks like.”
Drawing on anthropology’s understanding of cults, the surprising finding is that Corona aligns with virtually all the indicators of a religious cult. A cult in the literal sense. (I started off thinking “cult” was a good metaphor. Slowly I realized it is not metaphorical.). If you’re interested in what these alignments are, according to the ideas presented in my humble investigation, see here:
https://hailtoyou.wordpress.com/2020/05/18/against-the-corona-panic-part-xii-an-anthropological-study-into-the-corona-cult-pro-panic-hardliners-and-the-media-succeeded-in-erecting-a-virus-centered-apocalypse-cult-as-state-religion-and-in/
Thanks for your efforts and for this great resource (LockdownSceptics).
For someone who grew up in a Catholic neighbourhood in the late 60s/early 70s, the control tactics and mechanisms seem very familiar. It works on fear, and is orchestrated through the compliance of women in large part. This is the same as Climate Change. They work on women’s (apparent) over-sensitivity to the safety and needs of the children. Seems to work!
Biggest supporters of lockdown were women also – been saying for ages, women have been stuck in compassion (female socialisation) and worry for others against their own interests, particularly since those most hurt by austerity, abuse, etc are women and kids (plus who’s doing all the unpaid and low paid grunt work currently?). I have also wondered what we’d be doing if it was 70% women who were snuffing it. Shutting down the world? I very much doubt it.
I had hoped the stories of vulnerable kids, domestic violence, carehomes, animal welfare crisis, and lockdown suicides etc, might snap them out of it. I’d also love to see the demographic data for lockdown supporting women, I’d guess they are affluent enough to either to be able to forgo one salary or are already affluent enough that mum doesn’t need to work, and these women are still in a la la lend of fairly cakes and fuzzy felt, and haven’t quite copped on yet to the pain that’s coming. If you’re poor and on zero hours, or work in a supermarket, or in some other shitty ‘key worker’ job, I very much doubt your reality has been any different through all this, except you’ve been working much harder, panicking about childcare, and still being paid junk wages.
BecJT you are so right. The metropolitan liberal type who looks down her nose at the working class woman in the regions is the Climate Change, natural childbirth promoting type who likes nothing better than emote, without either understanding, or genuinely caring about her plight. They are the ones who have pushed for, and facilitate this lockdown. But, hey, they got the restrictions on their cleaners and nannies lifted early. They have not yet clocked, however, where this is all going – with fewer top-end jobs, who do they think will get them – the boys or the girls?
Tyneside Tigress. Wonder how many of those who fit your description are home schoolers.
“I have also wondered what we’d be doing if it was 70% women who were i snuffing it. Shutting down the world? I very much doubt it.”
Just as it isn’t helpful to view this through party political lenses, it’s also wrong to make it about other prior convictions. I’ve barely seen reference to the fact that it’s majority men who have died, and the lockdown wasn’t instituted to protect the lives of men only.
Yes it is a cult. They worship the NHS with weekly services on a Thursday at 8pm. All must bow to their rules and anyone who questions the rules must be silenced.
The essay makes some excellent points on Corona as Cult. In addition, I have long believed this cult is messianic. The Messiah, of course, is the Vaccine – and the doctrine is that we will wait, even if it takes a lifetime, we will wait.
BBC Radio 4’s File on Four has just done an excellent documentary on Carehomes (I warn you, you’ll need a tissue, it’s heartbreaking). What they don’t do, of course, is link the ‘worried well’ clamour for lockdown, quaranting perfectly low risk hypochondriacs, to what happened in care homes (the government listened to those who shouted loudest and chucked the old under the bus) https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m000j81c
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.05.13.20101253v1.full.pdf+html
Infection fatality rates ranged from 0.03% to 0.50% and corrected values ranged
from 0.02% to 0.40%.
I posted this as one of the last comments yesterday. Too important not to be missed.
This is Prof Ionnadis Stanford Univ with a analysis of twelve studies just published.
You will not hear about this from MSM/BBC and they have tried from Day1 to stop him
although he is a world known epidemiologist. Worth reading in detail.
I wrote to my MP today with some info from the CEBM which I’m sure you’ve already seen, I pasted it on yesterday’s chat, but will repeat here just in case useful:
Infection Fatality Rate IFR
All of the above would be understandable if Covid 19 were as lethal as we were first led to believe. However, the largest study in the world conducted by Ben Goldacre’s team at Oxford, with a cohort of 17.4m people, tracked by their NHS number, clearly shows that for those who are healthy, and under 60, the risk is zero. There is no justification for quarantining the well, and it is extremely unfortunate that the concept of herd immunity was weaponised by the media and the opposition in the way that it was, when resources could have been diverted to shielding the vulnerable, whilst the rest of us sensibly got on with it. The Study is here https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.05.06.20092999v1 (page 11 is the crucial bit re risk).
Carl Heneghan’s team at the CEBM have also done good work via their excellent Covid 19 evidence service. As they say about the IFR, “We could make a simple estimation of the IFR as 0.38%, based on halving the lowest boundary of the CFR prediction interval. However, the considerable uncertainty over how many people have the disease, the proportion asymptomatic (and the demographics of those affected) means this IFR is likely an overestimate
In Swine flu, the IFR ended up as 0.02%, fivefold less than the lowest estimate during the outbreak (the lowest estimate was 0.1% in the 1st ten weeks of the outbreak). In Iceland, where the most testing per capita has occurred, the IFR lies somewhere between 0.03% and 0.28%.
Taking account of historical experience, trends in the data, increased number of infections in the population at largest, and potential impact of misclassification of deaths gives a presumed estimate for the COVID-19 IFR somewhere between 0.1% and 0.41%.*” See here: https://www.cebm.net/covid-19/global-covid-19-c
Well done, but s/he will respond, if at all, with a bland fob-off reply telling you to stay home in total isolation because We’re All In It Together.
That’s my third volley, he’s already done that twice but I was so enraged by the comparison he made between covid and the civilian casualties in the second world war, that I couldn’t let it drop. He’s actually a good MP, been very helpful on other issues, but if you look at his voting record, he’s never, ever, ever rebelled. Which is probably why he’s tootled along for so many years in this seat (huge margin, I’m in a Jam and Jerusalem Tory seat).
Even more significant is that the IFR for people of working age is negligible. It’s extremely low even when you include comorbidities. 2000 or so of people aged under 65 dead “with Covid” in UK including comorbidities out of at least several million infections, fewer than 300 without comorbidities, somewhere between 0 and 300 where Covid was actually the cause of death.
This is a problem for hospitals and care homes. Getting everyone else back to work will not only help with all the (much worse) problems created by the lockdown but will make sure the epidemic burns out (which it probably has already anyway) and this will actually protect the vulnerable and save more lives.
Exactly, which is what the Goldacre study says, it tracked who died in hospitals and worked out the risk, page 11 of the first link I posted is really illuminating. I still don’t understand why that study was not front page news.
Sorry yes reading your post again I realised you’d already said all that and I wasn’t adding anything
I guess I just wanted to rant. I’ll have a closer look at that paper as I was just trying to work out a bunch of those things for myself.
No worries! Goldacre doesn’t talk about IFR as far as I recall, but doesn’t lay out that the risk is ZERO unless you have the risk factors. For kids the risk is so low, they couldn’t measure it.
Something Cummings said at one point [citation needed] while patting himself on the back for orchestrating Brexit and being so much cleverer than everybody else was that the way to turn public opinion was not with a single bolus dose of shock headline but by gradually planting ideas over a few weeks.
I think the idea is if you see something starkly contradicting your current belief system you’ll dismiss it as an anomaly. But if you see something that seems to confirm something you saw a few weeks back, but can’t really remember what it was exactly (and what cracks there may have been in it) you will start to change your mind. I keep hearing things about how Covid wasn’t that bad after all you think, somebody else was just saying that, seems like everyone is saying it now… Hopefully this is what they’re now doing via the Daily Telegraph and their other usual channels, and something about these actual risks will appear in a little while.
“Clever girl……”
Jurassic Park..?
Yup. My favourite <3
There are facts and then there is The Agenda. See also, low fat diets, statins save lives etc. etc.
I have some devout Christian mates, they’re not nutters, they are however true believers. They have, more than once, pointed out the book of Revelation, and their worry seems to centre on mandatory tracking and vaccines (“Let the one with understanding reckon the meaning of the number of the beast, for it is the number of a man. His number is 666.” – as anyone who has seen the Exorcist will know!). Given the Catholic Church has already raised the alarm on the cost of lockdown, I sent my devout friends this interesting little gem about Microsoft:
CRYPTOCURRENCY SYSTEM USING BODY ACTIVITY DATA – Microsoft Patent, “A sensor communicatively coupled to or comprised in the device of the user may sense body activity of the user. Body activity data may be generated based on the sensed body activity of the user. The cryptocurrency system communicatively coupled to the device of the user may verify if the body activity data satisfies one or more conditions set by the cryptocurrency system, and award cryptocurrency to the user whose body activity data is verified.”
Make of this what you will (maybe the developers have a sense of humour) but if you knock out the zeros, guess what the publication number is? 060606
Publication Date
26.03.2020
https://patentscope.wipo.int/search/en/detail.jsf?docId=WO2020060606&tab=PCTBIBLIO
Being serious, suspension of people’s right to practice their religion is a really major breach of liberty, and I’m surprised, particularly now the poverty that’s coming is really apparent, that the church isn’t making more of a noise about what we are doing.
PS not a tinfoil hatter, I’m just trying to think of ways of generating a bit of leverage, C of E in particular in the UK is an incredibly powerful and influential institution, I really wish they’d start campaigning.
I signed an appeal online by a group of Catholic cardinals. I noticed that one of the signatories was Robert Kennedy Junior! https://veritasliberabitvos.info/appeal/
Thank you for that, I’ve sent it to my Benedictine Nun friend, she’s lovely (sort of a Sr Wendy, totally exploded all my prejudices and stereotypes), I’ll be interested to know what her opinions are, and what is her perspective from inside the Church.
Expecting the CoE administrative and leadership structure to do anything that would require taking actual Christianity seriously is absolutely a lost cause. These people are post-Christians, and their primary concerns involve pushing modern political agendas, not anything that could be taken seriously as religious in any traditional sense, except where it supports those agendas.
As witnessed by their prompt and total submission to the covid cult.
I fear you are right, the Roman Catholics on the other hand seem very on the ball (laying aside my concerns about skeletons on their own closet) and is extremely influential, all over the world, particularly the developing world where famine really will be on a biblical scale.
The C of E for instance, provides and funds nearly all homeless provision in this country, and the biggest overseas aid, and food bank charities in the UK are Christian, it’s so frustrating they are not putting two and two together.
I’m very opposed to mandatory tracking, not for the same reason as my religious friends, and had hoped the church would lead the charge.
Without wanting to offend anyone, aren’t the CoE mainly lead by academics, experts in fairly obscure matters of theology or philosophy. Busy trying to apply them to the latest thoughts in gender or environmentalism?
Happy to be corrected here, but haven’t they quite willingly allowed ALL of their churches to be closed without any word of concern?
I dont just mean services stopped, but actually preventing parishioners to use their buildings for prayer and private worship?
There must be people who have worshiped in a church every sunday for decades, suddenly banned from their buildings by their own leaders.
In communities like mine, nothing would function civic society wise with out church halls, youth clubs, aerobics classes, WI, U3A, drama groups, elderly lunch clubs, playgroups, toy libraries, the lot. In fact, across the denominations, the churches here all club together to fund all youth outreach, as our local authority slashed their youth budget, so apart from a rickety child protection service there is no youth provision at all. They also fund the foodbank. I don’t get why they aren’t shouting from the rooftops about the poverty and suffering that is coming?
The Catholics, on the other hand, put up a fight, and are continuing to do so. I’ve just written to my Benedictine nun friend, to get the lie of the land from her. In the UK, massive swathes of the voluntary sector (also being hammered and going bust) are founded and run on Christian principles (in the love in action sense, not proselytising sense), Christian Aid is very visible, but you’d be surprised how many trusts, foundations and service delivery charities are actually religious. I really don’t get the silence.
But yes, I’m not religious really (well I have an interest, I’m not a worshipper in the churchy sense) and have been frustrated of late with all the woo-woo they seem caught up in.
The organisation Christian Concern are doing a lot of positive work!
Lots of Christian charities seem to be stepping up to service the lockdown, my point was really why they are not questioning or lobbying against the policy.
Christian Concern took the government to a judicial review because they changed the abortion law (to allow home abortions) after Parliament closed, despite Matt Hancock stating clearly on the floor of the House that there were no plans to do so. Parliament neither got the chance for a debate nor a vote.
It is essential that we keep a close eye on what other law changes they try to pass, hoping we will not notice until it is too late…
I missed the abortion thing, I’m pro choice myself, but hadn’t clocked that at all, will have a look
It is the precedent that this move sets which is worrying – ie changing a law with no Parliamentary debate or chance for MPs to vote – also blatantly lying on the floor of the House..
Roger that, no matter the law they shouldn’t be doing that! I know I’ll upset the brexit supporters by saying this, but Boris is a bit cavalier with how things are supposed to be done, that’s always worried me about him with this.
I have worshipped in a church every Sunday for 27 years, I am heart broken. For the first time in 800 years we didn’t have any churches open for Easter. Many of the Church leaders are believe the best way to love their neighbour is by not silently killing them with Covid. Their ignorance on the sceptics position may be contributed to by their new schedule. They are spending many extra hours a week editing online sermons and services and phoning every parishioner to check they are ok, for lonely old ladies this takes a considerable time. I don’t think they have the time for wonderful websites like this. I am gently trying to help my fellow Christians to see that we need to love our neighbours globally, by ending the lockdown contagion, which is killing so many in the third world from hunger. This is my first approach, I am praying about my tactics for phase 2 of ‘wake up church.’
The local clergy must be working so hard trying. Really tough time being a vicar. I gather our local church is burning dozens DVDs and CDs every week for elderly parishioners who don’t use the internet. They have also been doing food parcel deliveries as well. The CoE has unconditionally accepted the government’s “advice”, and that is disappointing. I suppose I have to be thankful that at least church staff were given “key worker” status – which I guess means at least those with children can continue to work.
At the beginning of the year I returned to church after a long break. The first few weeks of “lockdown” I watched all the online services and helped out with some recording. I was also one of those people that thought the lockdown might be a good opportunity for reading and reflecting. These past couple of weeks I have had no motivation to watch or read. The past couple of Sundays, Sunday has felt like any other day. It might just as well be.
This is church without community. No communion of believers. Nothing Jesus did was at a social distance.
“Nothing Jesus did was at a social distance.” not quite true (eg :time in the desert) but maybe you know what I mean!)
You are not wrong – there are definitely moves afoot in this direction (courtesy of Mr Gates).
I and someone else tried to post a link regarding forthcoming international travel restrictions on here yesterday, but despite the supposed freedom of expression championed by the host of this site, our posts were removed… So I will now try to write in such a way as to not trigger any block!
The link concerned a spreadsheet on the website of the organisation-that-the-UK-is-in-the-process-of leaving, showing a clear timeline stretching back and forward several years, for the implementation into the document we all have to carry when we travel (!) a certificate showing whether or not we have had all required jabs. On page 9 of the spreadsheet there is a reference to the need for mass procurement of doses of a jab for a mass outbreak of the type of illness that we currently find ourselves in. Clear signs of the agenda to restrict travel to only those who comply. If you want to see the spreadsheet go to Simon Dolan’s Twitter account (the guy taking the government to court re the lockdown) – someone called Ruth Romano posted it there yesterday.
Thanks, I’ll look. And that sounds odd, did you email Toby?
No, I did not dare! I don’t know whether weblinks with particular prefixes trigger some algorithm?
Probably, they gave up moderating as we’re all so nice! I’d drop him a line, I don’t share his views on everything, but I think he means it when he says he’s pro free speech!
This is the document on Simon Dolan’s twitter https://ec.europa.eu/health/sites/health/files/vaccination/docs/2019-2022_roadmap_en.pdf
Good to see it has not been removed this time
That thing was veeeeery illuminating.
As a devout Christian and loather of the lockdown I am heart broken by the devastation brought upon our world in the name of ‘good’. This lockdown is a classic ‘wolf in sheep’s clothing.’ It might look good, but scratch the surface and it bleeds evil. The fact that we can sit within 2m of many complete strangers in a park, but we cannot worship God in any place, with our fellow believers, is wrong. In New Zealand strip bars and cinemas have opened but churches can’t. On a Sunday in the U.K. I would have to sing hymns in the B and Q queue because churches cannot open. Cathedrals can’t have anyone in even to pray alone, despite their vast sizes, but it’s ok because we can buy some essential rattan furniture. We are made to worship God and people are worshipping the NHS instead. We are blessed though that the church is not limited by walls. We are still phoning and praying with each other daily and we are serving our communities; with food banks, prescription collections and providing online support to families in crisis. Many Christians can see the chain of events occurring which are taking away our freedoms, but we are yet to see many of our church leaders in Britain finding the courage and conviction to make a stand, but if they do they will most probably be silenced. If we want to worship as a church today we would have to meet in secret underground churches. This scenario would fit in better in a communist state than the U.K..
I might be tempted to return to taking UK politics seriously if there were a Dangerous Party. At least there would be one party that is directly addressing an issue in our culture that I have long been concerned about. And I may say here that I feel I have been comprehensively vindicated by the covebola panic – the immense costs of this panic can be largely attributed to the unchecked spread of risk aversion through our society, which is a problem I have been pointing to for decades.
Assuming Toby’s role in the Party is as leader/figurehead, leaving the education brief available, can I propose your psychiatric nurse correspondent for this role? His task should be to devise suitable methods and materials to incorporate the following into the education curriculum at an early age, with annual refreshers right through to tertiary level:
courses on positive risk management
why it’s OK to take risks, because they have benefits
in reality reducing one risk almost always creates another.
The objective being to:
undo years of mollycoddling, over-management and disempowerment
Plus how to think critically, evaluate evidence, consider differing perspectives, construct an argument and debate, with special modules on: the world will not end if someone disagrees with you, and: feelings are not facts.
Yes!
Hang on, aren’t teachers supposed to be doing this kind of thing?
When was your last perusal of the National Curriculum, Chris ?
Some of them are, I know a few, they are drowning under dictats, paperwork, obsession with results league tables, forced to teach all sorts of nonsense (genderbread person if you’ve ever seen that absolute twaddle), and on and on. It’s miserable for kids too, so much pressure, lots of extra curricular stuff dropped – arts, music, computer club etc. I think lots of teachers would be love to teach, and understand the value of a education, which is not the same as shuffling kids through on a conveyor belt. They plot kids on a graph now, calculating their GCSE grade from the moment they walk through the door at 11, weekly conferences, parent interventions, etc etc, it’s all about grades (exams), and not actually about learning (and learning to think).
I had four children go through the state school system and as far as I could tell from watching their education their “critical thinking” and “PSHE” lessons were basically indoctrination in the dogmas and taboos of the Guardian-reading classes from which the teachers were drawn. I used to refer to PSHE as “state indoctrination classes” when talking to them about it
I have a friend who gets the PSE lesson plans from the school (you can get them if you request them). He goes through them, and then does a little lesson of his own basically counteracting all the tripe they got taught in the school lesson. Heh.
Disappointed to see that the main argument in favour of reopening schools revolves around class victimhood. Yes, it’s probably true that poor kids will fall further behind wealthy kids, but is that the best we can do? Does it always have to boil down to identity politics?
There are loads of good reasons, apart from education, why children from all backgrounds are better of in a classroom than incarcerated at home. The social aspect for a start. Interacting with different people. It’s part of growing up.
There are probably just as many good reasons not to imprison a child in their home for six months solid, which is what many parents seem to favour.
What will it take to make parents see sense?
The nonsense I read on Facebook suggests a form of group virtue-signalling. “Look what a good parent I am! I love my children so much that I’m not going to risk their lives, no matter what the government says.”
Yes. Agreed. Folks bend the Covid slapdown to further their pet grievances whether that’s identity politics, feminism or whatever. I’ve seen the suggestion in the commentaries tonight that if women had been most affected there would be no lockdown. This stuff is unhelpful and, as always, divisive.
Yes, a few weeks ago the BBC and Guardian started talking about how the lockdown was unfair and increasing inequality. Naively I thought that meant they were saying the the lockdown was bad.
It was only later that I realised that in fact they still think the lockdown is terrific. It’s just that they want to continue their normal practice of baiting, agitation and virtue signalling.
I despair of these parents! Here in Sweden there has been *one* death of child under 9 and as the authorities have not released the age of the child, it might have been a child below school age. And they said it is uncertain whether this death was even from corona. There have been no reports of mass infections of children, their parents or teachers and if schools being open was thought to be contributing to the death toll here then they would have been shut.. Government advice has been for children to not visit their grandparents for the time being, and people seem to have been respecting this.
Our sixth form equivalents (16-19 year olds) and universities have been shut, with comprehensive distance teaching instead, but those age groups have been socialising outside of school hours and here again – no mass outbreaks or deaths. There have been a total of only 8 deaths in the age group 20-29, which may have included some university students, but may not – those deaths might have been in the older part of this age group.
I just can’t understand why parents in the UK are so paranoid…
https://www.cebm.net/covid-19/covid-19-a-way-out-of-the-maze/
One of the very few scientists with a bit of common sense
Horizon ( I think, I had to switch it off quickly as it made me feel sick.) programme tonight. Siting encephalitis and strokes in young people as a new symptom. Why?! Why are they doing this? How can the Media now be in charge? The government will never be able to unlock with horror stories like these on prime time tv.
That condition in children that’s been in the papers, doctors warn all parents about it after ANY virus, my sis in law has five kids, and she said when they all went down with something, she remembers the doctor explaining what it was, and what to look out for.
My daughter had chicken pox when she was a baby. Had a few spots, was a bit grumpy, got over it. My son had it when he was 18 months and was in hospital on a drip for a week! I asked the senior ward nurse what it was he had, and she said” chicken pox! It can be a nasty infection if it gets you the wrong way.”
I watched it through to the end. Usual BBC doom and gloom, accompanied by appropriate doom filled music. Only once, I think was it pointed out that the vast majority of people will have only a mild illness.
Well at least they pointed that out. I couldn’t watch it, too depressing.
I too had to switch off but not before noticing the female infectious disease specialist could not look straight at the camera. When discussing the lung xray and heart image she would look left which suggests memory and truth (script). When talking about the encephalitis and strokes she kept looking left suggesting lies:
https://www.learning-mind.com/eye-movements-when-lying/
I am really annoying the fear mongers on Yahoo right now.
I just posted this comment on the story regarding Ian Duncan Smith saying that the 2m social distancing rule should be relaxed. It’s already got 2 thumbs down in less than 10 minutes.
My post below
“
This has totally been blown out of all proportion.
The fear & scaremongering regarding this normal flu virus is insane.
People are NOT dying at a rate of 20,000 a day, dropping dead on the streets, if they were, then by all means be scared, but come on that is not happening.
All you scared of a stupid flu virus people should stay locked up in your homes if you wish, but I find it unacceptable to have your statutory freedoms & rights removed on a whim & you all accept it & nobody actually questioned it.
This is all fake people, wake up here.
The world has always had viruses & it has never stopped, people do die everyday all over the world from illness, accidents etc, yet life goes on, economies don’t stop, but now? Silly silly people.
This is bang out of order, the sooner all you scared of a flu virus pansy’s wake up & see this the better.
Cue the thumbs down brigade, I genuinely don’t care, comment all you like about being selfish etc, but people always died before all of this nonsense & it didn’t bother anyone then.
Also, clapping the NHS??? Really? That’s their job & before this flu virus was blown out of all proportion, who cared about the NHS then? Did we clap for them before all this nonsense? No we did not.
Social distancing? Hahaha right then, yes, the man on the street is a killer & just by walking past he could kill you with the flu virus, get real.
I am not doing social distancing & I do not move out of the way for anyone, I also do not wear a stupid face mask & continue to live my life as I normally did prior to all this nonsense.
Get back to normality now, get the schools back & get back to work.”
Should start a war on yahoo me thinks, or I will get banned, but it’s really annoying now.
Also, I posted this reply to this stupid comment on the same story (I know about IDS, but it was the comment that annoyed me)
Comment
“ Sir Ian Duncan Smith, Doctor, expert in virology, epidemiology. The chap who claimed that he could live on the job seekers allowance of £54. What a guy
My reply
“ @The Scientist – you could say the same about Neil Ferguson, the idiot (now ex) adviser to the government, the man who claimed 500,000 would die from this common flu virus, but has been proven completely wrong, the same man who claimed upto 400,000 would die from bird flu, yet there were only 440- deaths in the end.
Wake up & smell the coffee here.
Look up last years UK death statistics, people die from all manor of things & the country doesn’t stop or get shut down.
Coronavirus is no worse than a common flu for 90% of people who get it. Those who die already have underlying health problems & would have died at some point regardless of this totally over blown & over hyped silly virus.”
One thumbs down already. Lol.
It’s getting better folks, already had a comment that someone (that one of the posters who replied knows) died from it but had no underlying health conditions.
Honestly, you couldn’t make this up. The fear is insane.
Well they have to win their argument. Can’t let you inject some common sense into the discussion. No evidence or citation of course from whoever posted. So just in passing I’d like to say I played singles tennis today with Serena Williams on a closed Centre Court. (Bit worried about picking up that ball. Damn Covid can last 72 hours on surfaces without a drink.)
That’s very true Nigel. & LOL at playing singles tennis today with Serena Williams, that actually did make me properly laugh.
A comment in my Facebook feed yesterday was “Schools WILL be the next care homes when they open their doors. I can tell you that MY kids will not be sent to the slaughter” Spreading fear of the disease and fear that your peers are watching and judging you on what your priorities are… getting your kids back to school vs your kids lives, all laid out in a ‘it really is that simple’ style.
Crazy! If that were true then schools here in Sweden would have been shut ages ago and it would be all over the news… whereas it is only care home deaths here that are being reported.
People are scared shitless. Not about Covid, not really… they are scared of what others think of them and their opinions on literally everything. Any argument that has a more complex moral stance than immediately obvious virtue signalling is ‘fascism’. They intentionally wade in with insidious comments like the one this week from Phillip Pullman on twitter to bait and provoke in the hope of backlash so they can slyly say ‘See what I mean’.
This. I hate to say it but….
It really does remind me of the B word. Like….. People rubbing their hands together salivating at the thought of the impending doom that never arrives.
Who’s the one who’s supposed to care about the future of country more than being right again?
Nobody with any sense believed the 500,000 figure. I’m amazed anyone did.
Trouble is the 50-million-odd ( for a guess) zombies in this country who would believe anything.
Had a chat with a friend and we got talking about the lockdown and how its affecting everyone both physically and mentally. The two things she said that stuck in my mind are:
1. going out and about is good for our mental well being – not just going to our local parks but going away; eating out; going to the theatre, museums, shopping; meeting family and friends
2. given the weather we’re having we should be out and about to help boost our immune systems
It’s amazing how this message seems to have fallen on deaf ears as people that one of the keys to developing a healthy immune system is to live!!
Later when I was walking around my local park I stopped to chat with a nice woman who was sitting on the grass with her child. I stopped to complement her on her kid (he was very cute) and we asked each other how we’re getting on. She replied that she was fed up with the lockdown and was itching to get back to work. As she added, its all well and good to have this lockdown but at some point we have to start living again.
The problem is that the zealots cannot see a distinction between staying alive and living. Which makes me wonder how dull their lives must have been before the lockdown if they cannot make said distinction.
Kind of sad really
Absolutely. I’ve always been scathing of “first world problems” and always joked that the wokeratti should be sent to third world countries to make them realise how lucky they are and that what they’re constantly bleating about such as sexism, racism, etc are far, far worse elsewhere.
I sometimes think that maybe if they simply want to stay alive they can move to a third world country then allowing us to get on with our lives.
Lionel articulates what most of us are thinking https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=18A017yqQGU
In his Natural History, written in the mid-60s AD, Pliny the Elder discussed disease, noting how remarkable it was that diseases were inclined to pop up unexpectedly in different parts of the world, each usually afflicting a different age group or type of person ‘as if a plague chooses its victims’.
Pliny estimated that there were over 300 known diseases known to the Romans, all of which caused fear among human beings, but added that ‘no fewer either are the troubles which man brings upon himself by his own agency’ (reference is Book 26.4, 9).
There’s a lot of frustration in the comments here and I can certainly understand why. I, too, feel as if I am a visitor with a ringside seat to a madhouse. But when you read an observation like that from someone who died 1,941 years ago you realize that this bizarre era is just another episode in the story of man’s extraordinary ability to make his/her life harder than it already is.
Christopher Hitchens said, ‘we live only a few conscious decades, and we fret ourselves enough for several liftetimes’ (Hitch-22, p. 367).
As for Boris Johnson, never in the field of human leadership has someone who insisted he amounted to so much turned out to amount to so little so quickly.
Thank you very much for posting this. Really made me think. Agree completely about Boris, who is now hiding – again!
He’s having his Wilderness Years already
Seriously where the hell has he gone? They wheel him out for PMQs to bomb spectacularly, then wheel him off again and he what? Vanishes? I suppose he has a new kid but like….. yeah…… country…..imploding……
As the Dear Leader, perhaps he gets a body double! Seriously, though, he was so bad answering questions from members of the public at the press conference last week, I suspect ‘the minders’ thought he will do less damage if he stays in the bunker.
Cummings has him tied up in his basement.
He seems a changed man since his ‘virus’ experience…
He does!
David Starkey said the same thing in his recent interview. The combination of illness + newborn child + soppy spouse has made him seemingly reluctant to consider unpopular measures to drag us out of this mess.
Either that or he has been ‘got at’… I saw he is now planning to meet Bill Gates (which is hardly surprising since BG has ‘bought’ Patrick Vallance, Chris Whitty, Neil Ferguson and Matt Hancock, amongst others)
An interesting update on the possible hospital spread considered on this site a few days ago:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/may/19/fifth-of-patients-with-covid-19-may-have-caught-it-in-hospital-study-finds
It’s in the Guardian so for those who might hesitate to click the link just in case they get a sudden urge to smash their laptop/phone against a wall (hasn’t happened to me this time, thank God) the main points I think are:
“The study, which has yet to be peer-reviewed, was released by a team of researchers from Public Health England (PHE) and is based on computer models of transmission of Covid-19 within hospitals.
The findings chime with recent revelations that an NHS England official told senior hospital figures in late April that 10-20% of hospital patients with Covid-19 may have caught the disease while in hospital for another reason. Concerns have been raised that asymptomatic healthcare workers may have played a role in spreading the virus.”
Undoubtedly true. Trouble is it’s fuelling the “Well you may not know you’ve got it but YOU’RE KILLING A GRANDMA!!” hysteria. Despite the fact most of us never go within 50 miles of a care home or hospital on any given day.
Best countered by the “well you may not know you’ve got it but YOU’RE SUPPORTING DOMESTIC ABUSE AND SUICIDE RISK” retort.
Two can play that game…
Well, I don’t think it should. Quite apart from the point made by Sumption that everyone, including the elderly is entitled to take their own risks, and apart from the fact that staying away from vulnerable people isn’t that unreasonable – that’s what they’re doing in Sweden, it demonstrates a MASSIVE failure on the part of the healthcare system.
Clearly, if the chances of catching our favourite virus in a hospital were thee same as outside of it much lower proportion of patients would catch it in hospitals – we certainly haven’t had 20% of the whole population hospitalised in the last 2 months.
This means that the number of cases is inflated by the incompetence of hospital staff (however unpleasant this is to write). If it weren’t for this incompetence tens of thousands of people would not have the virus – which means that it is actually significantly harder to catch it.
Most importantly of all, however, it means we would have considerably fewer deaths as people who are already in hospital are obviously much more likely to have serious pre-existing conditions (especially now with so many ‘non-essential’ treatments cancelled) and therefore are much more likely to die form the disease which is, in fact, harmless for most.
The hospital situation is dreadful. I don’t know why they could not have carried on with a certain amount of appointments and treatments. I have lost two friends in the past week. Both had cancer but first had her treatment cancelled because of covid and instead of an expected three years ended up with less than two months. The other was absolutely horrendous. His grieving widow cried through telling me the story which took an hour of how he had been treated. Lack of care and insensitivity was incredible. He walked in to the hospital, they decided that his oxygen levels were low so were going to send him home with some but they didn’t have the right equipment in stock so said he would be admitted for a day or two until it arrived. My friend drove home, she only lives 15 mins from hospital. Phone was ringing, told to come back to hospital he is dying. She rushed back and he was not even conscious and died without speaking to her a few minutes later. To me, that is just bizarre. He had been due a CT scan in March but it had been cancelled. Seriously wondering if there is a plot to kill off oldies.
Thanks 4096 for the summary. The mere thought of looking athe Grauniad makes me want to throw up.
Hi all, first time commenting, long time reader. I was so grateful all those weeks back when I learned of a comprehensive lockdown sceptical website, thanks so much Toby for all of your time and effort.
Leading into lockdown as the virus rumbled towards us I was as nervous and anxious as anyone, I truly feared the potential loss of life from this novel virus. Needless to say my natural contrarian instincts kicked into action as soon as I started contextualizing the daily ‘death clock’ our media overlords insist on barraging us with. What has followed is weeks of frustration, bordering on anger for this ludicrous global situation, and I believe it is worse here than almost anywhere. How have the brits become such a pathetic populace of Karen’s and curtain twitchers?
My previous anxiety regarding the potential health disaster this virus could cause has converted to a deep fearing for what the future holds, an eradication of the freedoms we previously needn’t have worried about conserving, but now seem acutely at risk of eroding permanently. I loath the nanny state and power being exerted on me and others.
My question, is there anything to be hopefully of? Will the previously great British public eventually awake from their furloughed passive slumber? I fear greatly that we are entering a new world of suspicion of others and sterile interaction through Zoom only. Will I ever enjoy a crammed pub again?
Any ‘light at the end of the tunnel’ someone can provide would be most welcome.
Cheers again Toby. We need to find a way to ‘mainstream’ your arguments and evidence. We are still very much the minority.
Hello George. I’ve been considering the same questions as you (and utterly dismayed at the way so few seem to care … I can hardly bear to look at Facebook these days). I’m not sure what the solution is, though I seriously believe that cult de-programmers might have some useful skills to share. But I’m unsure how well this would work for freeing entire societies rather than just a few brainwashed individuals.
In my game of fantasy politics, I like to imagine a scenario where one national leader admits, very openly: “Sorry, we cocked up big time. It’s not the bubonic plague after all, or anything near it. As you were, everyone.” And then, imagining the domino effect as PMs and Presidents the world over clamour to perform their mea culpas. But even if that were to happen, the public wouldn’t be appeased – they’re too far gone, locked in the prison of their own terror.
I wonder about what can be learned from the denazification of Germany? I hesitate to apply lessons from history to very different social contexts- but it might be worth examining how an accepted (and even embraced) ideology came to be considered abhorrent, with efforts made to ensure that there would never be a recurrence. Perhaps this can give us hope for some kind of awakening?
Hi Gossamer,
Thanks for the response. Facebook has become even more unbearable these last few months, I’ve come off all social media excluding reddit. I would recommend you do the same. I have barely missed them, apart from the addictive urge that still remains to flick through news feeds, i certainly do not miss the content.
I’m lucky that no one in my immediate friend group could be considered one of the cultists, however, they all seem alarmingly apathetic with regards to this situation. They simply do not want to hear the possibility that lockdown has been a massive waste of life, life meaning the activities and freedoms that previously made life worth living. Life meaning months of valuable(!) education lost for millions of school kids, not necessarily the value of the education, but the value of human interaction, 3 months for a child who is 3 -6 is a substantial proportion of their lived lives. How are they supposed to develop into well rounded adults whilst ‘social distancing’ through their education? We are in danger of raising a new human who has been brought up to suspect any human interaction as dangerous, and the only conduits through which they see the world and interact are social media platforms and algorithms.
I’m starting to consider the possibility that most people do not view civil liberties as something worth holding dear. As long as they have enough money to pay for Netflix and buy frivolous items from Amazon, they are more than happy to be bossed around by our dear leaders. Nanny State knows best.
I sincerely hope that one of the world’s more ‘esteemed’ leaders fesses up to this cock of of massive proportions. The only thing ‘unprecedented’ about this virus has been the response, the response mind you that was originally drafted by a 14 year old student – https://www.aier.org/article/the-2006-origins-of-the-lockdown-idea/. But as you rightly say, the cognitive dissonance that such an announcement would cause amongst the population will most likely only make them angrier, and double down on their convictions. Everyone shies away from any comparisons with the nazi ideology, how it came about, etc, but i believe one would be foolish to deny that inherent human characteristics have changed sufficiently to deny its enduring relevance. Unfortunately, it seems people need to be brainwashed out of this, in much the same way as they were brainwashed into it.
Spot on, George. The willingness to give up the most basic freedoms is something I could never, ever have predicted.
Thanks to everyone who directed me towards Andrew Lawrence’s channel. I just watched all his Covid videos. Just what I needed. Detected strong undercurrent of rage in his Covid songs.
I was thinking about the sheer ineptness of this Government’s response since day one. Instead of protecting the elderly and vulnerable whilst letting the healthy working age population build herd immunity, they have protected and shielded the healthy (through lockdown), and let the elderly die en masse.
They discharged the elderly sick from hospitals back into care homes to die, and refused to accept sick people from care homes into hospital unless they met a specific threshold. It’s basically genocide of the elderly, and house arrest of the healthy. Oh and then of course there’s what they have done to the economy.
They’ve literally done the exact opposite of what they should have done at every turn. It’s like the perfect car crash.
Yup, but think further: they needed as many deaths as possible to justify the lockdown and that’s exactly what they achieved.
Yup, and this why I’m hopping mad, as they did it because it was popular, they pandered to the shrieking, worried well, entitled people, and killed our oldies. And, from what is coming out, they KNEW they were doing it.
And in Scotland they are trying to put the blame on care home staff.
https://www.heraldscotland.com/news/18457430.coronavirus-care-home-staff-blamed-scotlands-deadly-wave-infections/
It looks like they did the same here in Spain. Shunted elderly patients from hospitals to care homes where they died in droves. Read an interview today with a lady whose mum was moved to a care home and they didn’t even tell the family. When she inquired about her mum’s whereabouts, nobody could tell the family where she was. The government in Spain are a bunch of cowardly, criminal scumbags.
New blog from the ever reliable Dr Malcolm Kendrick. Well worth a read in full but this paragraph sticks out: The main point is why the bloody hell, how the bloody hell, did this man – and his group – come to hold so much sway. His figures underpinning the original model could not be verified, because he would not release the source data. Even if the figures had been available for scrutiny they kept swinging wildly about the place and have already been proven to be blindingly inaccurate.
The IFR of 0.9% is clearly, quite clearly, wrong. It is at least four times too high. The truth is that you could have given me a fag packet and a pencil, and I could have given you a more accurate model. Or we could have used Paul the Octopus whom you may, or may not remember:
‘Paul the Octopus (26 January 2008 – 26 October 2010) was a common octopus used to predict the results of association football matches. Accurate predictions in the 2010 World Cup brought him worldwide attention as an animal oracle.’5
Another good source of data and analysis is Ivor Cummins’ fat emperor channel on YouTube. He’s an engineer by trade but his main focus is on nutrition and low carb diets. If that’s not your cup of tea, watch his videos on Covid. Excellent stuff. Another good channel is Pamela Popper. Funny enough, she’s a Vegan and on the opposite side of the spectrum than Ivor but both are well worth watching.
This entire shambles has shown unions up for what they are. In no way to they represent the “interests” of their members or try to ensure the service they “represent” is somehow better for the consumer.
They are a bunch of shameless, unrepentant Commies who revel in doing as much harm to their industries as possible. The fact that we now have a “far right” Government simply enhances their desire to bully and disrupt the general public, causing immeasurable harm to live, livelihoods and society.
All the while their leaders draw annually increased 6 figures salaries, inflation proof pensions and live in houses their average member couldn’t dream of owning.
See my comment above, I don’t like our government but this notion slung at them that they are ‘far right’ is just insane, meanwhile the actual far right, are gearing up for a fight in the states, it’s really extremely worrying. https://www.economist.com/united-states/2020/05/17/americas-far-right-is-energised-by-covid-19-lockdowns I’m so frustrated (for some time now, not just with this) as any doubt at all being framed as ‘right wing’. It was the same with doubt over Corbyn, doubt over their love affair with the gender wars, the more militant wing of Remain (which as a bog standard remainer, was just embarrassing) and on and on and on.
I think what’s happened is the gentrification of Labour, it’s now posh, and it’s all a game of whack-a-mole with the Tories. It’s just sport. It’s shameful. The ‘working man’ is now just some kind of cipher, the ‘noble savage’ reimagined, a useful idiot for their games (which is why he voted Tory).
“The actual far right” ? Because a piece in the Economist says that’s what we should think of them as.
I was wearing a Hawaiian shirt today – does that make me a boogaloo-er ?
As others have said, we should not get into Left/Right, Men/Women, Leave/Remain stuff here, as it will dilute our collective focus. Please leave the Right to Bear Arms out as well.
I am capable of independent thought John, and no I don’t base my opinions on one article. I do follow American politics. What would you call removing the right to abortion, even if raped? That is not middle of the road, it’s the Handmaid’s Tale.
PS I do know the difference between the civil liberties and right to bear arms argument, and nutters also.
Please to evidence that in your posts then.
I’ve seen no evidence that anyone protesting in the States while armed caused any grief whatsoever. Have you ?
Abortion ? Yet another issue to avoid perhaps ?
there is no far right, most people aren’t racists sexist and all the rest of the utter drivel put forth and believed by lefties. You’re accused of being far right if you don’t believe the media or leftwing science and left wing speech patterns and any number of things they expect you to do. The left are a pox on all our houses and personally speaking i am looking forward to the civil war that is being engineered with this bullshit virus.
Swedish flags from now on please!!!
BecTJ. I’ve been a leftie since my teens but what the left has developed into scares and disgusts me in equal measures.
Paulito, I’m with you there.
I’ll ‘third’ that
I keep wondering when and if the tides will turn and if anyone on the left will start to see the sense in switching and establishing some sort of anti-lockdown stance. If it becomes apparent that the government have got this all wrong then Keir and his hapless Covid cultists are going to be even further over into the wrong side of history. I wonder if any of them have the brains, the nous or the courage to do this. Surely one or two of them must be thinking it… maybe I am massively overestimating their ability to think rationally and independently.
This is a personal test of mine for Starmer. If he’s as toady as I think he is, he’ll wait until the tides are turning and switch – he’s already started criticising the government on the right talking points, but he’s kinda done it behind the media clamour.
He’s a shrewd operator, but he’s now the leader of the loony party, I can’t imagine he’s getting much sleep!
This is what is baffling me. I’ve been disillusioned with the left for a long time, but whoever thought we’d see the day, four months after their 4th crushing election defeat, that middle class Labour activists would be bashing left leaning doubters over the head with a Tory policy, and Tory slogans, and when said people pipe up about jobs, poverty, deprivation, and the vulnerable they get shrieked at as ‘right wing’ and told to ‘go and vote Tory’. Which is crackers, as it’s the actual extreme right wing that ought to bothering all of us (see: theocratic, white supremacist nutters with automatic assault weapons circling the wagons for the ‘big boogaloo’ in the States).
If said doubter has the temerity to be an actual working class person, they get roared at to refuse to work, told to opt for mass unemployment, crushing poverty, and their own ruination. The left are currently campaigning for poverty.
Meanwhile our Tory government are spraying money around like a fire house, bankrupting the merchant classes, who create 23m jobs, and making a bonfire of civil liberties. Their natural allies are dismissed as ‘impatient’, and ‘frustrated’ rather than recognised as boggling in intellectual and political disbelief at the crushing economic harm that’s coming.
I can’t make head nor tail of it. Labour do need to reverse ferret, but what I will not forgive, is their first instinct was to hurt the Tories, and not help their own people, not once did they say ‘hang on, this is a brutal policy, are you sure?’, they just nagged about doing it sooner, or quicker, or harder or with more flippin’ PPE. Which is why we have this pathetic picking at ‘safety’ and ‘health’ and no recognition that they’ll have neither if we don’t stop this health pantomime immediately.
Oh and in it all, in their braying, honking madness, they all forgot the old and now all our elderly are dead, or isolated.
A plague on both their houses. What’s worrying me, is what comes after, it seems to me to be a vacuum of leadership, nature abhors a vacuum. We need an adult in the room, pronto.
“(see: theocratic, white supremacist nutters with automatic assault weapons circling the wagons for the ‘big boogaloo’ in the States).”
You’ve avoided all the bullshit about the covid, Bec. But you’re sounding like Prof Ferguson on steroids here.
I disagree, America is a different planet not just a different country, we do not have, thankfully, hard line evangelical ‘Christians’ infesting our politics. Once glance at a history book (try: Germany 1938) warns us that depression + inflation + political complacency + recrimination = very bad news. I’m equally as worried about the authoritarian extreme left. My point, with a moral and political vacuum, we ought to be worrying about extremists, rather than labelling perfectly ordinary, sensible, democractic, intellectual concerns as extreme and ‘right wing’. The fact that labour activists call the current shower in the cabinet ‘far right’ shows just how ridiculous people are being, they are to the right of the Tory party, they are hardly black shirts.
“My point, with a moral and political vacuum, we ought to be worrying about extremists, rather than labelling perfectly ordinary, sensible, democractic, intellectual concerns as extreme and ‘right wing’.”.
Exactly ! You are labelling perfectly ordinary, sensible, democratic US people as extreme. Mirroring the line pushed by their controlled MSM.
You got there first JohnB. I was going to write something similar.
Additionally, theocratic Christian influence in US politics kind of waned after Reagan.
I’ve been dissed and dismissed as far-right myself when nothing could be further from the truth. I’m certainly not going to tar anyone with that brush unless I’m absolutely certain of its truth. You end up diluting its significance. Plus you can attack authoritarianism without resorting to far-right/far-left mudslinging.
And don’t get me started on the most acceptable form of xenophobia in Europe: anti-Americanism.
John, I am not going to argue with you whether the alt right exists and whether they are bad news, they do and they are. This is not me labelling ordinary Republicans as extremists.
Obviously we are arguing. Cognitive dissonance ?
This is important from The Oxford Evidence Based Group, Beginning of cracks in the establishment response. This group has always been cutious critical but now is full out.The lockdown must go.Hope it can influence BMA
https://www.cebm.net/covid-19/covid-19-a-way-out-of-the-maze/
Oxford-based scientists have been crowded out throughout this crisis, and there is a classic academic bitch-fight in full play between Oxford and Imperial. There is much history in this. Although this is a different group of researchers, and note Prof Heneghan speaks as an active GP in the local community, the various research groups in Oxford are all known to each other both professionally and personally (kids in one of four main schools).
Yep. The bitch fight between Oxford and Imperial is summed up here:
https://hectordrummond.com/2020/03/30/soap-opera-science/
I’d hardly call it a ‘bitch fight’ considering he set out to destroy her career and reputation by the tried and tested misogynistic method, the telegraph article at the times lays it out https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1344293/Oxford-scientist-wins-the-battle-for-her-reputation.html
Anderson sounds like a pig, and it sounds like Ferguson (who’s own moral behaviour is hardly tip top) was OK with it provided it advanced him up the greasy pole.
There’s no ‘both as bad as each other’ side to that story as far as I can make out.
While I agree with you at the micro level – and certainly I would not discount a Watson/Crick/Watkins -type motive either (in that regard, it is also interesting to note that Prof Gupta is a Rosalind Franklin STEM ambassador), this is now an institutional bitch-fight revolving around prestige, and the funding bandwagon.
Thanks for this. I had not realised there was more to it than the personal and unwarranted slander of Prof Gupta.
Sorry I really think those responsible should be brought to account. If they want to try to take my liberty then they have to tell me why.
Agree Hugs. To The Hague with the lot of them.
(Ooh err, a serious post from me. Normal service will be resumed asap.).
Anyone puzzled/frightened/worried about the state of mind of the lockup supporters should read Hail’s piece – an anthropological analysis of their collective illusion. Excellent research and analysis.
I think it (this aberrant mindset) is by far the biggest single problem we face in our return to normality. A real national disaster. One thing has become quite clear over the past few weeks – correcting the situation using logic, rational discussion, and/or evidence, is a non-starter.
Some people think they (the deluded) will all get better when dismissed or made redundant. Sadly, that is not the way mental issues usually resolve themselves. Some will, I hope. But the majority will only sink deeper into their frightened states.
My solution – the only relatively swift one that might work (short of putting LSD in the water supply) – would be to reopen all the pubs immediately. The communal atmosphere, assisted by several pints of laughing tackle, would make any long-winded dissertations about masks, gloves, ‘distancing’, aerosols, safety, or ‘trusting the government’, evaporate quite soon. Which is why the current covey of rascals (and worse) in Westminster will try to leave opening pubs for as long as they possibly can.
We might well decide to effect this ourselves. Piss-ups-in-the-park, Bring your own Beer Quizzes, Wine Tastings, Real Ale Rambles, Music and Muscadet, Bolly & Skittles, etc. etc. The essential prerequisites being a reasonable sized group of people with some degree of prior acquaintance, and some alcohol. ‘Social distancing’ (hack spit) could be offered to those who want it – our VE Day do started that way, then got more relaxed and normal as the prosecco flowed.
Although there are disadvantages to alcohol being our national drug of choice, there are positive aspects as well. Supporting this lockdown would not have been popular in any of the traditional ale houses I used to frequent. Nor even in the more civilised town and country pubs I am more likely to be found in these days.
Although we can ignore the government to a greater or lesser extent, we cannot ignore our brothers & sisters who have been infected by this err um contagion. The necessary mental/emotional healing has to happen, that’s for sure.
True words… There aren’t that many of them as people think. Most people are fairly apathetic about it all, and do see reason, but for some reason are scared to take that little step, just go and see someone. They can be turned with a bit of one to one.
For those that are truly in the death mask cult club, I am finding it very very difficult not to hate them with an extreme passion. Anger and fury at their mental weakness, when the real truth has been in front of their noses all along. It’s not as if any new material facts are emerging. It was pretty much all there, day 1.
Hiding in their midst are the momentum communist loonies who see this as their big moment to ‘shine’, these are the vile maggots that need stamping on and squashing very quickly.
Attacking just isn’t going to work with the brainwashed, as today’s post says, they double down on it. I would imagine it’s like treating dementia… No idea.
I have just gone to the local shop for milk and bread. I very much limit my shopping these days as I invariably end up fuming at the pointlessness of these restrictions. I try to educate people but most have had the life sucked out of them and they are in the complete control of the state and don’t want to hear.
There seems to be an almost complete absence of joy in our land and it is so sad. I don’t know how we will recover from this.
I live in the country, the May blossom, lilac, apple blossom is in full swing. We’ve got spring lambs, birds nesting (the noise is amazing, swallows, starlings, the chatter of sparrows), baby rabbits are everywhere, horses snoozing in the sun, hedgerows suddenly so green, cow parsley, spring wild flowers, crops are through in the fields, the garden has suddenly just exploded, the hens are cheerful, dust bathing and pottering about, and I keep thinking ‘Wow, LIFE, everywhere, it’s amazing’. I totally agree about joy, I’m choosing life, not this gloomy melancholy about death.
I’ve seen this starting to happen. A rural pub near where live has opened for takeaway beer in milk containers. It’s on a popular walkers route. Last weeked loads of families and people from different households were there, drinking and sitting by the river. It would have been safer if the beer garden was open! If the nice weather continues and more people get outside then hopfeuly the fear will start to subside.
Sounds perfect Gbir. Whereabouts ?
It’s a pub in Kent. I’m pretty sure what they are doing is legal as there are others serving beer in takeaway containers and you don’t drink on their premises. However, because of the location and the nice weather it is inevitable that people sit to enjoy the drink and may bump into others they know. It seems like people are making a gesture of sitting about a metre away from people not in their household but only for show. I think many are more scared of an awkward social encounter with a disapproving lockdown supporter than the virus itself.
Can I come and live with you BecJT?
Haha, maybe I should start a lockdown refugee camp, bring your own goat and tent?
I’m up for that as long as you don’t have any midges.
I think one reason they don’t want to open pubs is because they are place where people share a lot of information, in a setting that cannot be policed in the same way internet sites and social media can..
That’s actually a good point. Like I said the other day – why allow people back at work, socially mixing there, but not allow them to visit family and friends? It should have been the opposite way round, surely.
Because work is professional and people are worried about what they say there.
They don’t want us socialising and…… talking about *things*. They don’t want us gathering in groups. They don’t want us *organising*
Honestly I think they’re shit scared of civil disobedience once everyone realises they’ve been had. Especially because people have been so obedient so far- the backlash is likely to he quite extreme from those who have lost livelihoods.
They’re not going to open the pubs JohnB because those who will willingly (and immediately) go are going to be Lockdown dissidents and information is infectious. Before you know it we might have started to infect some of the sheeple cowed in their homes when they see we are not all dropping down dead.
I fear you’re correct, and that we’ll have to make it happen ourselves. GBir’s post above is very encouraging.
“Save the nation – drink loads of beer !”
1. Why has Greece got such a low level infection rate? Its social background is similar to Italy: lots of intrnational tourism, lots of elderly-and-young households but also a big polluted city (Athens) just like Milan. Greece’s death rate is something like 1/40th that of Italy’s. Our useless media have no interest in these sorts of disparities. Why is Belgium’s death rate so appallingly high (more than double ours)?
2. Why is Sweden, which refused to put in place a total lockdown, experiencing a death rate about 28% lower than the UK’s? Why is Sweden’s death rate so much lower than Belgium’s?
3. Why do the mainstream media keep bigging up South Korea when its tests per million figure is 72nd in the world – behind the UK, USA, Sweden, Italy and just about every advanced country in the world?
4, Why do the mainstream media never point out that under the lockdown (prior to the recent relaxation) there were still some 11 million people going to work and they have probably been mixing with another 20 million people in their homes and also mixing in shops and supermarkets with people who are officially on “lockdown” . Despite us having a lockdown that is highly effective at destroying our economy we don’t in the UK have a lockdown that prevents tens of millions of people passing on the virus to tens of millions of other people.
4. How can test, trace and contact be effective when, according to WHO, something like 25% of people infected are asymptomatic, when it is such a highly infectious disease, when it can survive on many surfaces up to 72 hours and when there are known “super-spreaders”?
5. Isn’t it highly likely that just about everyone has already been exposed to the virus? Probably most people have seen it off at the first line of defence e.g. tonsils and nasal mucus. A large proportion have had asymptomatic or mild versions of the disease. A minority, mostly people with serious pre-existing conditions, have got sick.
4. is the key point, absolutely that.
Look at ‘Peerless Reads’ channel on youtube. he is a statistician and makes the very valid point that a virus does not ‘know’ where in the world it is, and should therefore behave in the same way everywhere. But it is in places near ‘seats of power’ where there have been most infections and deaths. Everywhere else the virus has behaved how viruses do; there is a usual virus pattern with a rise to a peak and then a fall. He shows how the numbers are clearly being fiddled near ‘seats of power’ for political purposes..
A great set of questions indeed – is there a source for the ’11m going to work’ figure. I’m off to the golf club and would like to sow some seeds of reason where I can. Of course, I’ll probably get barred, or ‘dis-membered’
Dis-memembered?!@#!
I was scanning Facebook again yesterday and I noticed that there was a post on my timeline from the WHO, it was a piece offering health advice for people working from home, basically it was a typically nanny piece advising us that when we work from home we spend to much time sitting down and they advise that we should get up every now and again walk about
What was extremely encouraging were the comments, there were about 250 comments to the posts and almost all of them went like this
“We wouldn’t be working from home if wasn’t for you clowns, please go away (go away was not the term used)
“Tell the dear leader Thank You for his advice”
My favorite was this gem
“Wow, i would never have thought of that on my own, Thank you, you will be telling me next that COVID 19 is transmittable between humans, Oh wait”
Very encouraging!
https://www.spiked-online.com/2020/05/19/nicola-sturgeon-is-turning-into-a-demagogue/
A road map is being prepared by She Who Must Be Obeyed.
I asked a friend to consider resuming our weekly long walks- for health and sanity reasons- reply’ wait and see what Nicola says’.
yes i’ve heard wait and see what Nicola says too. I’ve got friends and colleagues who think she is fantastic and can’t see how they’re losing their freedom which is ironic when you consider the average SNP moron has been banging on and on about freedom ever since Braveheart. I always used to despise Scots what with me being from Fife and Pictish but i absolutely find Scots who support her disgusting and a very large threat to my liberty. Time for the Kingdom to rise again and declare independence from Scotland.
I can’t bear to watch ,or listen to her; she’s a little pint sized minder bender who now seems to have more or less complete thought control of the masses to add to her list of ‘achievements’! Grrrrr1
Rant
I can’t believe that anyone would ever listen to what wee Burney would say. She is a temple of vacuity. Wind her up and she will spout nonsense all day long. Yet my own neighbours are hanging on her every word.
Those, who are not us have been terrorised and infantilised in the process. The sad thing is we are going to have to exist with them when all this madness is over.
And, if the MSM is to believed-pinch of salt required- the EU in the person of Von der Leyen, is going to ‘open the door’ for a Scottish bid to rejoin as an independent nation.
I live in Scotland but after this is over I will be moving over the border. Boris may not be the best, but at least he isn’t a dictator.
Give him time!
Again another reason why my husband and I are thankful that we moved out 4 years ago.
That said I feel badly for my father-in-law who is turning 80 this year, he’s fed up with the whole lockdown and wants his life back. Ironically he’s in better shape this year than 2 years ago!!!
I’d really like to know what her hair styling routine is: carefully coiffed and highlighted, while the rest of us plebs make do with cutting razors, thinning scissors and reliance on luck when looking in the mirror!
So, lots of slap,as you say, and immaculate barnet.
Double standards ?
That little jumped-up nobody! Incidentally, WendyK, no reply to the letter I sent to Wings overScotland begging him to help stop the farce.
No surprise there Jane, regrettable though it is. They are a cult; no ifs, no buts: the exemplar of cultish behaviour as described in one of Toby’s links recently.
Goodness knows what the future will bring if this lot win the next election: rise in border crossings as Hammer says, I think.
Maybe what we need is a sort of sceptics’ island – capital, Sanityville – that we can move to
and get on with living, away from Zombieland.
Good idea for a short story, maybe. *sigh*
As long as we include some telephone sanitizers !
A bit obscure maybe – Hitchhiker’s Guide, the B Ark ?
I was examining the ONS statistics release for COVID-19 deaths,link to them below:
https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/deaths/datasets/weeklyprovisionalfiguresondeathsregisteredinenglandandwales
One thing I noticed was that there had only been 2 deaths in the age range 1-14, and both of these deaths were Females. Yet on the 1st April 2020 the main headline in all the media was that the youngest person yet had died from COVID-19, a 13 year old boy called “Ismail Mohamed Abdulwahab”, the link to the Sky News article is below:
https://news.sky.com/story/coronavirus-healthy-boy-13-is-youngest-uk-victim-11966526
There are further sensationalised stories about this boys death, such as from the Mirror: “Heartbreaking pictures show lonely funeral of boy, 13, who died from coronavirus” and from ITV: “Family of boy, 13, who died with Covid-19 can’t attend funeral due to symptoms”, but according to the official figures this death never happened.
The ITV article on states “He tested positive for Covid-19 last Friday, a day after he was admitted to King’s College Hospital.” but this can’t be true as it’s not in the figures.
We are being led a merry dance by the media on all this.
Also, I have found that there is a GoFundMe page setup for this boy, that has raised £71,634. Surely this is fraud as this boy doesn’t appear to have died from Covid-19.
https://uk.gofundme.com/f/Janazah-Expenses-for-Ismail
It seems he died before too:
https://oye.news/news/psychological/the-boy-with-3-names-who-died-3-times-in-3-countries/
https://www.clareecho.ie/leave-us-alone-sixmilebridge-family-horrified-at-being-falsely-linked-to-uk-covid-19-death/
The family of the actual deceased (Conor Wilmot) are aware of the scam and are not happy (understatement of the year)
Yes, and initially the family said they would not be releasing a photo of him. Oddly there was some statement about him from his school – were they in on this fraud?
I wonder if anyone knows what became of Tara Jane Langston, aged 39, fit and healthy, mother of two, who put up a selfie a while ago which went viral, showing her bristling with tubes in a hospital bed and urging us not to take chances with covid. The young woman was in a pitiful state and would arouse anyone’s sympathy. However, the article I read about her in the Guardian mentioned that she had gone to hospital a week earlier with a chest infection. She was prescribed antibiotics and sent home. Now if Tara Jane was down with a virus, then antibiotics wouldn’t work. In addition, a severe allergic reaction to antibiotics can cause coughing and difficulty breathing.
https://www.healthdirect.gov.au/allergic-reactions-to-antibiotics
At the time I wondered what really went wrong with poor Tara Jane.
Chris
Never usually post on forums so go easy on me . When this all first kicked off i was trying to tell my friends not to worry as it does not affect young people or the under 65s any worse than a severe flue. I was then bombarded with the Tara Jane vid on wats app with comments like ” look see it does affect young people you fool ” anyway after watching it myself my spidey senses went off the charts , something didn’t ring true what with her pouting into the camera in full makeup and then making a miraculous recovery to appear on GMB days later. I saw a vid on bit chute in April ( yes i know ) saying she is an bit part actor from the late 90s early 2000s . I went and checked it out for myself and there was nothing on her facebook bio about acting but if you try her maiden name Keatley she has an IMDb listing .
She was in a BBC comedy called Chalk and a few small British films Reckoning day and The Penalty King.
Crisis actor maybe ?
Video deliberately put out to terrify young people into conforming with this madness ? .
Well done Christopher, good research.
Thanks John , should have been a PI , Clearly wasted as an electrician.
Britain has a parliament lobotomised by the eu, a massive, heavily unionised, public sector, a uniform state education system and state dictated curriculum, a monolithic and centralised state health service, a state broadcaster and a huge, centralised state bureaucracy.
What could possibly go wrong?
Well, in the worst case I suppose some sort of vaguely threatening-seeming disease could appear and we could find our leadership and institutions so addled and useless that they are unable to respond rationally and they could plunge us into a disastrous collective panic.
But surely things aren’t that bad?
https://www.cebm.net/covid-19/covid-19-a-way-out-of-the-maze/
Full of respect for the work the CEBM has done in this crisis, and their willingness and ability – seemingly quite rare within the medical community (at least, the media-facing part of it) – to question and to resist the descent into panic.
I also absolutely understand where they are coming from with this “let’s focus on stopping digging, rather than recriminations” suggestion. In the short run, there is a desperately urgent need to end the process of actively making things worse for ourselves with every day that passes, and to begin the long and hard grind of rebuilding what has been thrown away.
The problem with this is that it is likely to mean that there will be no honest review, no recognition of what a disaster lockdown was, no proper discrediting of those who advocated it, and no collective insight into the underlying cultural maluses that laid us open to what has been a truly remarkable collective delusion. And what that is likely to mean is that those responsible will ensure that as we move forward there is a general vague idea that the policy was ok in theory but tactical mistakes in implementation were made. There will be no recognition that it is inherently both morally and practically wrong to lockdown an entire society in the face of a disease, or that the spread of undue levels of risk aversion through a culture opens it up to this kind of mass panic and collective hiding under the bed response. And at the first hint of a new flu-type virus, or a resurgence of this one, we will be right back where we are now.
In reality, for the moment there’s no sign of any collective will to follow the course suggested anyway. Both the major sides, which are pro-lockdown moderates versus pro-lockdown zealots, are pretty much spoiling for a fight. The full anti-lockdown position is mostly in the form of a Bolshevik fringe. And if we are to avoid a future as an entire society modelled on the attitudes and behaviours of those pathetic germ-phobic hygiene obsessives we used to view with pity, it’s probably still a case of “the worse, the better”.
But can we afford it?
I also read it as an appeal to science and to protect the integrity of their discipline, the opening few paras are pretty scathing, “There also signs that scientific advisors may be in the line of sight of a vengeful public opinion once the immediate threat is thought to be over.” and “We have the impression that politicians boxed in a corner are reluctant to let go of the strings and the media are incapable of seeing a bigger picture” – almost a ‘come on Sage, we know you know’.
I do wonder what will come out about Sage, at the moment Ferguson is the bogey man, but we know there wasn’t consensus and they’ve been fighting (it was rumoured it was fellow scientists who chucked him under the bus, he’s disliked for his vanity and arrogance), I also wonder what will come out about Cummings and Co, and whether there was some overruling of consensus to do what was popular, which was lockdown? The minutes would be interesting to see who really pushed for it, and who fought against it.
I mean, either they are incredibly arrogant, given they keep briefing about ‘almost nobody will get serious symptoms, of those that do, almost no one will die’ and the clarification of covid deaths and how they are recorded or it’s like a cry for help (blink twice if you are being kept against your will), if they aren’t just a bunch of nincompoops, they must surely know that this is irreparably damaging everything they ever worked for? If you read their assessment of non medial interventions (schools, events, airports, etc) their docs are clear about the huge social and economic damage. Ditto if you read the Government’s road map for easing lockdown, if you ignore the Nandos-ometer nonsense, it hammers home what lockdown is doing. I have wondered how much pressure they are under – from the Gov, and from the dominant members of the committee – to press on with a ‘we’ve started so we’ll finish’ situation?
“Microbial agents do not care much about party politics and *scientific divisions*. When this is done we should move forward with renewed confidence and a spirit of collaboration which has been lacking at present.” – I’d imagine Henegham has got the gossip, I read that as a rebuke.
We have a pretty clear idea of how the aftermath of this debacle will be handled.
The Chilcot enquiry into Britain’s part in the Iraq war gives a clue.
The report took seven years to report, by which time all the major protagonists had long since moved on.
I see no mention in the CEBM reference above of the far reaching reforms now so clearly required in the British health service:
1. A politically independent English health authority modelled on that of Sweden with a broad remit for reform to include politically independent county health authorities tasked with implementing localisation of health services along the lines of the decentralised German health service.
2. A mixed funding model to provide increased funding for health via mandatory health insurance (state provided to those not in work) similar to that in place in The Netherlands.
3. Independent not for profit hospitals (also in place in Germany).
4. Limited size and increased quality control/regulation of care homes.
And so on ………..
We now officially have a new Neil Ferguson – Professor John Edmunds, another infectious disease “modeller”. A member of SAGE, he stated a week or so ago that about 20k were being infected everyday. He also states, or warns, or orders, that schools shouldn’t open before a good track and trace app is working and that lockdown also should not be lifted before track and trace.
Arise Sir John, another leader in the pantheon of arrogant dick head, publicity hungry, London based shit modellers. Have a look at this interview, and the contempt and arrogance coming from him is almost touchable. Twat.
https://skwawkbox.org/2020/05/19/video-this-is-one-of-the-governments-sage-experts-on-herd-immunity-watch-and-be-afraid/?fbclid=IwAR3iVjqdFARtfRQEmOtrX_iKDX2GEY_8vg_NVcCIl1HuV6p8S1IiU1y6Ifg
How dare you!
Greta said that we need to listen to experts.
Where did they find this clown? Even Trump sounds more convincing.
This idiot is now everywhere, speaking yet again outside his advisory role to put pressure on government. He’s more of a tool than Ferguson, and that’s quite and accomplishment. He is from the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine. Like Ferguson also, he has done a twats photo, where he tries to look eminent – second picture down.
https://www.lshtm.ac.uk/research/research-action/features/maths-maps-modellers-tackling-covid-19
Just saw the photo and yes he does manage to look like Professor Lockdown minus the glasses.
Jesus wept. First identikit celebs now identikit scientists!
As they say down in the west country: he do look a bit up himself!
‘Track and Trace’ is just another way of saying ‘permanent digital surveillance of the population’… They want social distancing because it is easier to track people that way and use things like facial recognition.. Prolonged lockdown just buys time to implement all this…
Useful idiot
Save us, Cocksbridge, save us
Following on from yesterday I have received this email from the Chief Medical Officer’s Office and include my reply:
Thank you for your email to the Chief Medical Officer, I have been asked to reply on his behalf.
Shielding is for your daughter’s personal protection, it’s entirely her choice whether or not she follows this advice.
The recommendation for shielding the highest risk group is just that. We appreciate some patients may decide, on weighing up the risks, that they would prefer not to follow the restrictive, stringent measures however it is important she understands the risks and should discuss those risks with her GP.
She may decide, having weighed up the risks and the implications of shielding, that she does not want to follow the guidance. Before deciding, we would ask her to discuss the matter with her GP or hospital specialist and those that may provide care for her. Government advice is that she talks to somebody before she decides what to do.
If, having discussed the matter with her GP or hospital specialist, she decides not to follow the ‘shielding’ guidance, we would ask her to follow the same physical distancing measures and hygiene measures as everybody else, i.e.
• wash your hands more often with soap and water for at least 20 seconds, or use a hand sanitiser
• wash your hand when you get home or into work, when you blow your nose, sneeze or cough, eat or handle food
• avoid touching your eyes, nose and mouth with unwashed hands
• avoid close contact with people who have symptoms
• cover your cough or sneeze with a tissue, then throw the tissue in a bin and wash your hands
• clean and disinfect frequently touched objects and surfaces in your home
I appreciate your continued support during this difficult time, by staying home as much as possible you are protecting yourselves, your loved ones and those working for the NHS. Thank you.
I hope this is helpful
Kind regards,
Thank you for your swift reply.
If this was so necessary then why are we only being advised of it now when the virus has peaked and is all but over?
We will of course follow the basic hygiene measures we have done for all our lives, nothing more nothing less.
We will continue to hug. A HUG IS HEALTH!!!!!!
There is no scientific evidence to for the physical distancing measures you are recommending unless you can provide it for me.
Obviously if I developed any symptoms I would stay home and protect my loved ones but it is not my job to protect NHS workers, it is theirs to protect me and the thousands of other people who, to the shame of the NHS are being neglected at this time.
It is a national disgrace.
Yours sincerely
I read their reply as you have a little sceptic writing to you, I laughed at ‘prefer not to follow the restrictive, stringent measures ‘. Well done though, that’s really interesting.
I noticed that too! I’m wondering if the CMO isn’t also somewhat sceptical of the whole situation regarding lockdown now too. Remember that lovely sound bite he gave us during the daily update the day after Boris Johnsons’s recent speech – the one telling us very quietly that this virus really isn’t the plague? And giving percentages?
Yep, plus they say ‘weighing up the risks’ twice, which is also quite telling!
In my opinion, a crack appeared between Chris Whitty and Patrick Vallance about a month or more ago. At one of the press conferences (it might have been Whitty’s first or even second one after he returned from his own CV quarantine), the body language, and Whitty’s almost sudden request to add something after Vallance had spoken was telling. I characterised this at the time in private communications with a friend as querying whether Vallance was having his chain pulled by the vaccine proponents.
This is a clip from Patrick Vallance where he actually admits that the death certificates are being fiddled! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EkpzLmFHV7o
Whoever told the doctors to put Covid down as reason for death without knowing it was Covid should be arrested. Its falsifying information!
The question was asked yesterday, where is Boris? I think he is most probably having some sort of nervous breakdown. He knows he is responsible for this shambles and I don’t think he will be able to live with that.
Our wee Burney on the other hand is so far up her own backside she will just keep going like a duracell bunny.
She really is like a wee dicator.
Is she popular? Is she trying to show how great she would be at leading and independent Scotland?
You may be right about Boris. He started the fire, and it seems to be out of control, with parts of the union running away with the policy.
Somebody I know read out a comment sent to her from a former doctor friend – tallies exactly with what you have said about Boris. If this is the case, the rest of the Cabinet is surely duty bound to have him removed – they owe their allegiance to the Crown, not to him personally. Mind you, they are a total shower with backbones in short supply!
I’m an expat Scot whose husband supports Scottish independence and for the sake of household harmony I did too until recently. However, the SNP and the independence bloggers have totally discredited themselves with their attitude towards covid. Instead of saying Westminster are idiots for insisting on lockdown in the first place, they say Westminster are cruel for ending the lockdown too soon. The Wee Ginger Dug came out with words to the effect that stopping furlough pay will mean that Scots either have to go to work and die from the virus or stay at home and die of starvation. Yet the real statistics are there for all to see. Westminster is bad; Holyrood is worse. I’ll be there in spirit with you at Glasgow Green.
That should have been: Westminster bad, Holyrood badder!
Baaah!
Just some random observations and thoughts I’ve had this morning.
The blame game seems to be starting. I thought something like this might happen as soon as politicians started repeating “we have always been guided by the science”. In recent years I’ve noticed a trend towards repetitive mantra to embed an idea into the general populous. The first I noticed was use of the phrase “in the national interest” around the time of the last financial crisis. Maybe it’s been going on long before that but it’s the first time I became aware of it.
This one may be slightly controversial but to me the worldwide death numbers seem ridiculously low relative to the total human population. I guess because I’m a bit of a Vulcan in terms of empathy I don’t see the numbers are actual people so have no problem saying things like this. Of course it would be different if one of those numbers was somebody I knew and cared about but then I don’t pretend that I care as much for total strangers as I do for people close to me. Throughout all this I’ve never really got a sense of any outrage at the numbers of dead. If people were truly concerned with the numbers surely there would be more calls for urgency. Instead we have a general mood of just let the government get on with it, it must be serious if they’re willing to shut down the country, I’m just thankful it’s not worse. Where’s all the anger? Could it really be that people are as indifferent as me on the numbers?
Regarding vaccination or the general mindset that people need something that will save us from this deadly disease. Have a think about why people “need” this vaccine. Is it to save themselves? No because we know that for most people it is not a deadly disease. People now think that everyone needs to be vaccinated so they don’t pass it on to somebody else. Clever people like to state that vaccines have successfully eradicated other deadly diseases and if we’re to eradicate COVID-19 then everyone needs to be vaccinated. Really? It’s not even considered a High Consequence Infectious Disease in the UK. It’s apparently our duty not to pass the virus on to somebody else, for “the national interest” of course. Imagine if the strategy was to properly shield the old and vulnerable with a view to everyone else getting herd immunity. In that case it would be the duty of everyone to get the virus. I can’t remember experiencing it myself but I’m aware that in the past (maybe it still happens I don’t know) if a child got chickenpox all the mothers would bring their kids round to catch it to develop immunity. Why were they never scared it might kill their children?
That’s it for now. It’s early so some of this may not have been well thought out.
No, you’re not being controversial re death numbers. Most people don’t realise that 57 million die each year worldwide so for the four and a half months this has been going on we would expect about 21,375,000 deaths.
It’s not even not caring about strangers, it’s just a basic ability to do maths, and having some sense of humility that not everything is about ‘me’. I’ve always cared about what was clearly hurtling towards the old and frail, nobody should die without dignity. Obviously I’m in the minority.
Vaccination, I think people are so well defended against reality (although a bit of them must know by know) that it’s the graceful exit, it’s the climbdown without admitting you were wrong (plus if you believe in vaccines you do actually bang the drum for herd immunity, but we can’t say that as herd immunity is obviously evil and a Tory plot to murder everyone)
Smallpox was eradicated by the use of a cow pox vaccine. It’s the only virus disease that’s been eradicated. Polio, Mumps, Chicken Pox, etc, etc still exist despite having vaccines. Ditto TB.
There’s never been a common cold vaccine, a flu vaccines can be hit and miss.
Why should this new virus be any different from all other viruses bar smallpox?
Plus it doesn’t have a high mortality rate. It’s not Ebola or Marburg. A lockdown would be reasonable if there was a worldwide outbreak of either of those two diseases. For the UK, it’s killed 0.05% of the population. The plague, or Black Death killed 30-50% of the population by the time it was over. This coronavirus is nothing like that.
Personally I think both Chris Whitty and Patrick Vallance are now subtly telling us this is all a scam, but only to protect themselves from possible prosecution later. Both are bought and paid for by Bill Gates, but nonetheless I think they are choosing their words carefully now, in the interests of self-preservation should there ever be any court cases over this..
Following on from TJN’s post yesterday regarding his heroes, it got me thinking about the groups of people for which any respect that I once might have had for them has now completely evaporated.
1 Governments worldwide (with a few exceptions, Sweden being one) who in four months have completely destroyed everything we hold dear in an attempt to be seen to be doing what everyone else is doing and thus painting themselves into a corner from which escape is impossible. Take NZ for example, which relies on tourism-who will want to holiday there now? Back pedalling on a massive scale is taking place everywhere.
2 This government and PM who sold us the idea that lockdown was simply to protect the NHS then proceeded to move the goalposts. When new evidence came in which completely undermined their position, they refused (or were unable) to change course, just like the whistleblower in the German report said had happened in Germany.
3 The NHS which has shown itself to be completely at odds with the “First do no harm” rule of medicine. Even forty years ago when my father worked for it, he would often say there were far too many chiefs and not enough Indians. I refuse to clap for its ineptitude.
4 Those teachers (and I was one in a past lifetime) who refuse to see the bigger picture and claim it is too dangerous for children, locked up in tower blocks with abusive parents, to go back to school, even though the same teachers were in schools up until the 20th March when infections must have been at their highest, (if April 9th was the peak for deaths.) It is far safer now as the epidemic is all but over.
5 Scientists, who are constantly fighting for their fifteen minutes of fame so that they can get funding for their latest little project such as studying the drinking habits of football fans!
6 Mathematical modellers who having proved to be so accurate in the past, rushed out a model in a desperate attempt to be first to do so, then hypocritically decided that the rules created as a result of this model did not apply to them and the threat wasn’t that great anyway so it was OK to put another family at risk.
7 MSM for being at their most appalling in the utter garbage they have printed and broadcast. There are of course obvious exceptions like Toby and I would mention that Nick Triggle, the Biased Broadcasting Corporation’s health correspondent, has been more rational than most in some of his articles.
8 Closer to home, the care providers for my 96 year old M-I-L who told us that if we continued to visit her to provide extra care, they would withdraw the care packages she had from them, even though we had printed out the government advice for carers and were following it to the letter!
9 Friends and some family members that I regarded as rational, thinking human beings but have refused to read beyond the click bait headlines simply because other sources of information might just tell them something that they don’t want to hear-that their fears are unjustified and they are not actually “caring for others”
Anyway, these are the ones that have disappointed me most. I’m sure there are folks here that could add to this list.
Excellent list. To this I would add a miscellaneous bag of “experts” and commentators who’ve shown themselves to be variously quite stupid, cowardly and alarmingly authoritarian.
The whole experience has been devastating in terms of loss of trust in, and respect for, a range of groups, institutions and individuals.
Well, although it is sort-of covered by your post, I would add a special place for Boris, who has turned out to be even weaker than May: especially disappointing in the abrupt u-turn after the initial sane and impressive reaction to covid.
Oh yes, and Melanie Phillips, who is normally rather sane on most issues!
I really can’t work out what happened there!?
Here’s one line from something she wrote ‘…those who claim the number of those dying from the lockdown will exceed the number who would have died of the virus had these measures not been taken are living on another planet.’
Her article was positively Libertarian compared to the musings of Sara Tor – comparing teachers going back to school with the order to go over the line and charge the German trenches in WWI. As someone with several ancestor casualties in the Tyneside Irish regiment, I found that especially offensive, knowing what happened to their families for generations afterwards.
Its the friends and family bit that is going to be most difficult to resolve for me personally.
I consider everyone on this site and those I met on Glasgow Green on Saturday as my friends and family now.
We will be meeting again at 12.00pm on Saturday. Hope to see a few more of you there. It really is food for the soul to meet up with sane people.
And I would add to this list the majority of Remainers, who have failed to see that this is a far bigger attack on personal freedom than the ending of EU free movement.
Remainer here, and I couldn’t agree more that this curtailment of freedom is far worse than anything Brexit could have brought about.
Churches, judiciary, any so called celebrity, social work, WHO, all MPs, all so called human rights lawyers, the British Medical Association, the Police the list goes on and on and on!!!
Churches, aye .. cowards, quitters, bishops of straw.
And honourable mention must go to the Catholic clergy, who have put up some sort of fight.
Agree with everything that you’ve said. Don’t forget as well the virtue signallers who want to continue the lockdown because they somehow think its good for the environment and talk about the so-called “new normal” without seeing how this so-called benefit to the environment is actually making developing countries even poorer and that the careless disposal of masks and gloves negates whatever benefits there are.
Whilst the so-called “new normal” will have the effect of lower standards of living and more poverty as this will hasten the demise of several businesses and decimate sectors leading to suicide, domestic and child abuse as well as mental health issues and abuse of drugs and alcohol.
Excellent comments. On the subject of NZ and tourism, have you seen the video of track and trace being (mis)used as a requirement to enter shops over there? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xUC2PRxDzyI
My thoughts exactly, except that I’ve loathed the NHS ever since they left my dad to die of thirst on the ‘Liverpool path’.
I just cannot imagine the teachers if my youth, in the 1960 s and 70s, walking out in their charges, or treating them in the sadistic ways now being proposed for little children. I just can’t. But I can imagine my mum. arching me grimly in at the school gates, even jf it was detested PE day.
This will give you a giggle.
https://twitter.com/i/status/1262817554986401795
” Flu vaccination may increase risk of corona virus infection” according to Dr Judy Mikovits in Pandemic documentary Censored by YouTube. https://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2020/05/20/plandemic-documentary.aspx
Which is precisely why Google censored it.
And many other YT videos. Apparently they know better than practicing medical staff, virologists, immunologists, etc.
I’ve heard that those who have the flu jab and are then tested give a false positive for Coronavirus.
I don’t know if Judy was referring to the potential ‘Wu-flu’ vaccination, but I’ve read that the more flu vaccinations people have had, the more susceptible they become to all coronaviruses. Not surprising if you look at what is in vaccines there days – there is a list on the Centre for Disease Control’s website..
I’ve never had a flu jab and don’t intend having one ever.
Are the teaching Unions that are advocating keeping kids out of school indefinitely the same ones that are keen on fining parents for the temerity of taking their children on holiday during term time? I seem to remember claims that even a single day of missed education was a disaster, but now many children have had no real education for two months, and the unions want to keep them out of school for even longer, and that’s somehow ok?
Interesting observation, the one I made was that the ones stopping kids getting an education are:
A) Unions who supposedly should be protecting those less well off
B) Councils in areas that are over represented in deprivation of students who are less likely to be having a decent education in lockdown.
“Scientists propose a 50 days on, 30 days off coronavirus lockdown strategy”
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/05/19/study-proposes-50-days-on-30-days-off-coronavirus-lockdown-strategy.html
Read it and weep.
Not a hope! I won’t be doing another lockdown, not knowing what I know now.
can’t decide what I find harder to believe: the fact that some complete moron came up with that modelling or the fact that all papers picked up on a story and decided that it’s important to publish it.
I’m so fed up with this nonsense. These pseudo-scientists should be court marshalled.
What the hell is going in here? I thought that it should be bloody obvious for everyone by now that lockdowns aren’t effective. Lockdowns until 2022!
I can’t believe this nonsense.
More about that here:
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.thesun.co.uk/news/11659417/lockdown-rollover-50-days-on-30-off-2022-beat-coronavirus/amp/
Haven’t we learnt something about models? What did you say? Ferguson? Who he?
Who are these jokers? Good god almighty. These people should be allowed to come up with these things, then rounded up for doing so and shot. They need cleansing from not just the media, but society, along with the chronic damage they purvey as a solution.
And if it takes the likes of John Lewis for example 4 weeks to reopen, it’s not going to work anyway is it? Big stores and factories simply wouldn’t be able to open for just 30 days. Who pays these idiots to come up with such stupid schemes?
Whether ‘they’ planned this a long time ago or not, they have been subtly hinting at longer/repeated lockdowns for quite some time. My suspicion is that they have now realised that enough people are ‘awake’ that it will be difficult to avoid accusations of a ‘plandemic’ if a vaccine is miraculously developed too quickly, when this has not been possible for other illnesses that have been around for much longer. ‘Amazing Polly’ (think that’s her name?) on youtube showed a plandemic document regarding a second virus, so I’m wondering if to add coercion, another virus will suddenly appear in the autumn, disguised as a second wave or mutation, in order to be able to say ‘we told you so’….
https://twitter.com/JohnDStats/status/1262848813540298754
Highly probable that 543 cases already present in Lombardy on 26 January, weeks before first positive test on 21 February. Graph by onset of Covid symptoms. Source: http://corriere.it
https://www.archyde.com/covid-19-traces-of-the-virus-detected-on-scanners-from-november-16-in-colmar/
“This ant work allowed several radiologists from the hospital to pinpoint two cases of “typical anomalies caused by Covid-19” from November 16, 2019, then 12 others in December, January 16 2020, “and so on until the epidemic phase”, details Pr Michel Schmitt, head of the medical imaging department at Colmar hospital in his press release.”
Early on in China in the severe cases of Covid-19 was noted a specific pattern on CT lungs.
If they had severe cases already in Nov and Dec how many milder cases could they have had?
What does this mean? Enormous spread early on in several countries and perhaps what we are seeing now might even be the second wave. Nobody knows but this information should have serious consequences that we are always outsmarted by this virus.
Prof Giesecke was right again in his Lancet article the invisible pandemic
https://www.thelancet.com/pdfs/journals/lancet/PIIS0140-6736(20)31035-7.pdf
One of the Cambridge research teams has the origin back to September, based on the footprint of mutations. This correlates with the World Military Games ‘outbreaks’ in October. It is hard to believe that Porton Down did not know this several months ago. Wonder why we still haven’t heard anything from the random antibody sampling PD was doing, bearing in mind we are ‘following the science’?
Because we’re only “following the science that suits our arse-covering agenda”
Antibody studies are a tricky business. Ioannidis’s paper that came out yesterday said that even in crowded environments like cruise ships seroprevalence never seemed to get much above 45%. This may be to do with asymptomatic cases not having many antibodies– noone really knows.
The herd immunity threshold for antibodies is looking like it may be only around 20% because of this (and also because of other factors such a mild voluntary social distancing). You also have to account for the time it takes antibodies to appear (two weeks or so but other sources say longer) and for how rapidly immunity grows up to near the herd immunity threshold once it passes around 5%.
If you publish that only 10% had antibodies at the end of March (which is in the ballpark of what might actually be the truth) you will see a lot of alarmist headlines saying things like “Nowhere near to herd immunity!” People will treat the results as indicating the state of immunity now, and will also assume that the herd immunity threshold is 80%. This is what’s happening in Spain and France.
So I can understand if the government want to control the narrative on that. I think they are trying to get us out of the lockdown but insist on dragging it out to “manage the psychology” of de-escalation.
I accept what you say, although back when Diamond Princess was making headlines, the testing was only for antigens, not antibodies I recall (?). The New York random study a few weeks ago now, showed around 23% antibody-positive in NY city, although much lower in NY state. Given what we can now speculate about the likely timeline (and PD will know!), it seems more likely the figure will be high, rather than low, therefore questioning the fundamental basis of lockdown.
Good morning. There are a number of interesting links via Judith Curry’s blog here:
https://judithcurry.com/2020/05/19/covid-19-discussion-thread-vii/
Judith Curry’s blog draws attention to a South Korean study which shows that hydroxychloroquine plus antibiotic is an effective treatment for “moderate” covid patients, which is what the much maligned Dr Didier Raoult in France also says. One of the articles linked to at the top right of Lockdown Sceptics: https://dailysceptic.org/what-are-the-most-effective-treatments-for-covid-19/
mentions hydroxychloroquine, but cautions that its use by Dr Didier Raoult has been “heavily criticised.” So I clicked the link to see who was doing the heavy criticising and found it was a certain Leonid Schneider, an “independent science journalist” who also has this to say about Sweden’s refusal to close down the country: “A death toll in the tens of thousands affecting all age groups would not be inconceivable in Sweden if such a strategy continues to be followed, due to the inherent risks of pursuing a herd immunity strategy with a highly deadly live pathogen/virus.” If that is what he has to say about Sweden I shouldn’t think he would be reliable on Didier Raoult or HCQ either. HCQ has to be discredited at all costs: if a cheap and effective treatment exists for this “deadly pathogen” why is the whole world making such a fuss? Why the rush to find a vaccine? Besides, Trump likes it so it must be bad.
http://covexit.com/50-science-references-supporting-hydroxychloroquine/
50 Science References Supporting Hydroxychloroquine
Posted on May 17, 2020
But talking about it on YouTube or Facebook will get your video removed for “breaking community guidelines” without saying specifically what guidelines are being broken.
Excellent link – thanks
Look at this death statistics from US according to age group. You can’t believe your eyes but take a look at the last line where they have put the number of deaths of Covid-19 to compare, especially for the children.
https://twitter.com/Avik/status/1262712546773041152/photo/1
Yes – context is all: if only the media and shambolic government would provide some!
Someone needs to do this for the UK!
Couple of articles I found of interest. First one is a few days old and may have been seen before.
https://www.aier.org/article/imperial-college-model-applied-to-sweden-yields-preposterous-results/
https://www.aier.org/article/did-the-lockdown-save-lives/
An interesting piece on modelling (bit heavy so you may want some caffeine before starting): https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14461242.2020.1764376
I remember the Oxford modelling for estimated level of infection being highly scrutinised and thinking why isn’t the same level of scrutiny afforded to the Imperial College model.
YES! Yes it was!
Here in my little town in the Puy de Dôme I’ve just come back from the producers’ market which stayed open during the lockdown by letting only six people at a time into the shop and putting a bottle of handwash at the door. During the lockdown most of the producers who also do the selling did not wear masks. Now they do. Maybe it’s simpler for them; maybe the customers insist. But when the virus was supposedly raging, and you took your life in your hands going shopping at all, and messages went out ten times a day telling us that one person could infect three more each of whom could in turn infect three more, there were fewer masks than now. I’m beginning to hate the place. At least if I were in Scotland I could join a protest on Glasgow Green.
I’ve been exchanging emails with my local MP pointing him in the direction of the latest lethality studies from Covid on Swiss Policy Website ( they changed it from “Propaganda” to “policy” recently and asked him to look at the median age of all deaths for a range of countries-it was around 82 on average which in some cases was higher than average life expectancy for that country!
He in turn sent me a load of stuff he had asked for from PHE after I had questioned the statistics. The first two links said “page not found” and the third link from the ONS said “The webpage you are requesting does not exist on the site”
I gave up at that point after telling him that it does not inspire confidence in an organisation that can’t even check on its links!
Admire the effort. Haven’t even bothered with my MP. Part of the new Tory intake and very very PC.
So’s mine but not sure about the PC bit yet!
Sorry if you know this already but you can get a feel for how they’re operating by seeing how they act/vote in the commons via this link https://www.theyworkforyou.com/mps/
My MP already has a record of asking the PM/Government sycophantic/softball questions. On that basis, I knew that I was wasting my time.
Thanks for that. I was aware of the site but had never really looked at until now.
I can see that my MP has been quite a busy boy this year already!
Mine is ihn NG my emails (which I send every day at 9am.) He too is a new Tory, but he seems completely batshit crazy. I’ve found footage of him skydiving and rock climbing and all sorts. Bit Borisish – but Asian.
IGNORING my emails.
I have a small phone and fat fingers
Well at least your MP has bothered to communicate with you. Mine hasn’t replied after nearly 4 weeks. Fortunately I didn’t vote for her.
The snowflake generation has morphed into a snowflake nation.
And now wait for the meltdown; what will become of the snowflakes then?
Yep, there’s going to be a lot of angry people when they finally awake. Alas that it will then be too late …
Anybody remember the people curled into balls crying when Trump got elected?
“This is the worst thing that’s ever happened in my life”
What a life that must have been.
Just had a really interesting conversation with my 80+ year old neighbour. He was taken to our local hospital over the weekend having collapsed at home, thankfully not Covid related but he said he was terrified of catching it inside the hospital due to the lax hygiene conditions he witnessed on the ‘geriatric’ ward as he put it. More interestingly he experienced really poor care despite the ward being fully staffed, and on a trip to the loo at night, on his own despite calling for help, he badly cut his foot. He called at the nursing station for help and was directed back to bed and told they’d be with him shortly.
Needless to say hours passed, blood all over the floor and no action until the morning shift came on. I’m going out this Thursday to clap – are you? I asked him the same question, he said not…..
I thought we were saving the NHS to enable it to cope with the 63% (our local hospitals figures) capacity they are currently operating at? We’ll never get the NHS we deserve until serious change takes place and we recognise how poorly the system operates now.
I’ve only recently found this website and it’s restored my confidence in my own sanity, I was beginning to think it was me who was acting/thinking irrationally. Keep up the great work.
My dad hated going to hospital, you had to badger him even to visit family! I now know how he felt.
I have a new NHS slogan,
BE SAFE STAY AWAY FROM THE NHS!
Like it. One I thought of last night was:
– Stay at home
– Protect the Tories reputation as defenders of the NHS
– Destroy lives exponentially
Clap like a seal
Be refused emergency treatment by a half empty hospital
Die.
Two Frenchmen, a mathematician and a modelling engineer, have published a study comparing the mortality results for countries that put in place no lockdown (Sweden), a casual lockdown (Holland) and a strict lockdown (Belgium). They concluded that “General confinement, strict and undifferentiated, despite a health system twice as large, achieves a perverse effect on the marginal cure rate: hospital overload and increase in deaths. The opposite of the imagined effect.” This is because they look at the contact rate and the cure rate rather than just the R(0). They also point out that although Sweden has higher mortality than other Scandinavian countries at the national level, at the local level, the city of Göteborg, just over the border from Oslo, and the city of Malmö, just over the bridge from Copenhagen, have similar or even substantially lower infection rates.
The site covidinfos.net gives the gist of the report in French and provides a link to the full report which shows some interesting graphs. No mention of Britain though, except for our fine citizen Neil Ferguson whose model they blame for the mess.
“Two Frenchmen, a mathematician and a modelling engineer, ” i was expecting a punchline after that!
Interesting information on the cities though, any links?
You can find the gist at covidinfos.net It’s in their most recent article from 19th May. If you go to the bottom of the page there’s a link to the PDF with the full report.
Oh, I’ve just seen what you mean! Bit slow on the uptake today.
Isn’t it long past time for numpty Neil to be placed in front of some sort of inquiry. After all, if he’s the only one to blame for this disaster , shouldn’t the powers that be trying to get to the bottom of it.
Can we substitute court-martial for inquiry (enquiry, whatever)?
Nigel You’re right it’s enquiry. Maybe bad spelling is yet another Covid symptom
I am sure you have noticed all sorts of privacy updates recently. I have, massive uptick.
I have never bothered reading them before like most people I assume.
Netflix for example. I got a copy sent to me.
Is there anyone (lawyer types) out there with more patience than me able to highlight the key differences between this one and the previous terms? Could find something ‘interesting’ ?
Re: Schools reopening
This may come across as slightly flippant but the basic argument for not opening schools is thus – I don’t want to pass the virus to somebody else and I don’t want anybody else to either.
In fact, this is the general argument for imposing lockdowns. They’re not there for the safety of the general populous as the virus is not deadly to the vast majority of people. But somehow it’s become a health and safety at work (and everyday life) issue.
Hi RDawg,
I have added this bit to your excellent letter I’m planning to send to my own MP:
6. Fallout and long term effects
Has anyone thought of the fallout from all this when we emerge from lockdown and the long term effects? Based on the several news articles coming out over the last few days with the continued insistence on social distancing this will have negative and long lasting damage to the following sectors: hospitality, retail, arts and culture, film and television, museums and heritage, tourism and sport. Many shops, pubs and restaurants have permanently closed never to open again and the future of many regional and small museums and visitor attractions are in doubt such as the following:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-52704754
https://www.southwarknews.co.uk/news/florence-nightingale-museum-faces-permanent-closure-as-revenue-dries-up/
And as mentioned above with the economy and mental health, we could see a spike in suicide rates as more jobs and businesses will be lost following the lockdown. Not to mention as well a rise in divorce rates, domestic and child abuse as well as drug and alcohol addiction. Is this what we want as a society? A broken one with millions of lives unnecessarily harmed all because of a virus that had already long reached its peak?
Apparently yes.
Love your username!
A hug is health… there is a reason why babies who are neglected and don’t experiment enough touch suffer from developmental problems, failure to thrive and can even die.
We are an interactive species that has always lived in communities.
University and College Union survey finds that one in five students would rather wait until next year if classes are delivered online and activities curtailed. Also one in four applicants want to switch their applications and change institutions, which suggests they’re willing to go to a less prestigious university if it can offer more of a normal social experience.
https://www.theguardian.com/education/2020/may/20/uk-universities-facing-760m-hit-one-in-five-students-plan-defer
Good on them!
That doesn’t surprise me. Given the issues over the lack of contact time even with the high fees that they pay, why would students want to pay the same sum then have all the lessons online?
Gave blood yesterday. Apart from the extra questions about Covid and the staff wearing masks it was reasonably normal, very relaxed and a pleasure as always. I do recommend it.
I commented that it was the first time in 9 weeks someone other than my immediate family had held my hand. Will it be another 12 weeks before I get that pleasue again? I so hope not.
Another song for these times: King Crimson’s Indoor Games”:
“One string puppet shows amuse
Your sycophantic friends
Who cheer your rancid recipes
In fear they might offend
Whilst you loaf on your sofa
Sporting falsies and a toga
Playing Indoor Games, Indoor Games”
Here in NZ we are out of lockdown but no handshaking…Very sad. I went to a stressful, corporate three hour meeting today and the “healing handshake” at the end had been eliminated. What have we done?
Go and hold their hands then. I haven’t followed any of their facist rules and me, my daughter and my 88 year old mother are still very much alive.
The Petition on the Government Petition website is now at just over 2,900….. Not bad after 4 days but needs a big push.
It would help to post the link
https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/315979
Yes! Thanks.
Thank you, duly signed though dislike giving gov my postcode, expect the rozzers on the doorstep
I always use SW1A 1AA. No way they can cross-check.
Signed
On a more positive note, someone is coming to clean our carpets and sofas this weekend! I was surprised that people like him were still able to work. He told me he would wear a mask and bring sanitisers etc and we would need to be in a different room. I think he was relieved when I told him that we weren’t worried about that sort of stuff.
Likewise Green Flag came out to us the other day as my car hadn’t been used for weeks so wouldn’t start. The lady at the call centre gave us all sorts of “Covid instructions” but when the mechanic came, he was as relaxed as we were about the whole thing!
Progress!
Now that the economy is officially in the shitter (shock), it does seem that the MSM are changing tack from supporting the wholesale continuation of the lockdown to defending their previous defense of it.
The Daily Mail online this morning barely features a coronavirus article above the fold, yet attacks on the Swedish approach abound, despite Sweden still having lower deaths per million that lockdown zealots like the UK, France, Italy etc.
Are they begging to worry that doggedly advocating for the policy that is going to ruin the livelihoods of half the country was a mistake?
The thing that keeps me going is knowing that they know they have ruined their own futures, too. Every exaggerated scare story designed to terrify the feeble-minded that they published has backfired on them. They face a dystopian future, just like us – and unlike most of their readers they probably realise it.
Indeed and yet they still continue to dig their own graves.
This may have already been posted but just in case: re the track and trace app. Since this virus is supposed to be active on various surfaces for 72 hours (I don’t believe a word of it, Aids virus is generally 99% inactive after a couple of hours outside body but, hey, it’s their model so they can get hoist by their own petard) then is the app going to track and trace every bit of mail you pickup, every parcel you receive, every bench you park your arse on, every item you pick up from the supermarket? If indeed you can pick this virus up from surfaces won’t they need to know which blade of grass I sat on that someone else might have gobbed on? (Sorry my sarcasm grows in direct proportion to the length of my solitary confinement – screw the lot of them.)
I have also been thinking about the ‘Track and Trace’ aspect of the government’s response. What is the point of ‘Track and Trace’ for a disease which has such a large proportion of asymptomatic infection – up to 90% in some studies. How would they propose ‘tracking and tracing’ the contacts of these cases? Why on earth would you bother? I can’t see how it could possibly help to ‘contain’ a disease. Especially since the fact that so many cases are asymptomatic would suggest that the disease isn’t as lethal as they are constantly leading us to believe.
The idea is not total eradication but just to cool things down enough to keep R below 1. Iceland did this strategy successfully even though they only managed to quarantine about half the cases. That’s enough to stop it spreading out of control.
In the UK it’s not going to spread much more anyway because it’s been and gone, but theoretically if we were at as low an infection rate as Iceland, track and trace could help to keep it that way.
Yes occasionally someone might get infected after touching something 72 hours later after it got sneezed on, but it’s so rare that it doesn’t make any difference. It’s not about what’s possible, but also about how probable it is.
An app doesn’t add much over just taking a few days off work if you’re ill except an awful lot of hassle. By the time you got your PCR test result back you would have symptoms anyway.
If you did want something like an app just tying a bell around your neck would work a lot better anyway, due to the much lower latency. People could actually get out of your way when they heard the dreaded bell instead of being alerted two weeks later on an app that they might have Covid.
UNCLEAN! UNCLEAN! lol
But…… yeah maybe it works
But an app feels so much more techy and proactive and modern than just taking a couple of days off when you’re ill….
And you can monetise the data if not the app itself.
Maybe I disguised my contempt for the app (and the idea itself) too much in my post, it wasn’t a query that needed a scientific response but I appreciate it anyway Guy
Do you remember which Institute put out the 72hrs idea? Just wondering because I know that the German Science / Virology Team headed by Prof Streeck did a field research study in a CV hotspot in Germany and they did hundreds of swabs of surfaces like door handles mobile phones etc in hundreds of houses and took them to replicate in a lab, but the result was: all inactive / non-infectious. I’d need to find the link to the study, which is being peer reviewed at the moment, but I remember that as early as beginning of April they stated that infection threat via surfaces is almost non-existent. Their findings and surveys of Covid-19 patients also revealed that transmissions happened indoors, after long exposure, ie care home, parties etc. Very early on he got bashed for calling Covid-19 utterly disproportionate and said if we hadn’t known about it we wouldn’t have registered anything else but a flu with a small spike in numbers…(like Prof Knut Wittkowski). Writing this from memory with a caveat but thought worth mentioning…
Gosh I wish there was an edit button:
after long exposure of people close to each other in situations like care homes or indoor parties with lots of screaming and singing etc
Covid-19 response utterly disproportionate
This one I think Pebbles https://www.zeit.de/wissen/gesundheit/2020-04/hendrik-streeck-covid-19-heinsberg-symptome-infektionsschutz-massnahmen-studie/komplettansicht
Sorry I pressed that too quick. Wish there were an edit button too. It’s in April 7th entry of ‘Facts About Covid ‘. https://swprs.org/a-swiss-doctor-on-covid-19/
Someone seems to be sticking up for the kids:
https://www.usforthem.co.uk/
It looks like a campaign group promoting a return to school without social distancing.
I love the hashtag #NotOK!
just signed it! Thank you for the link.
WOW!
Cambridge are moving all lectures online until next summer (2021).
https://twitter.com/ProfKarolSikora/status/1263028585113280517
Oh dear. I wouldn’t be payin dem fees
Prof Sikora, who tweeted this, said that Oxford university remained open even during WW2.
Some of the lockdown zealots who responded to his tweet said things like ” without going into whether it’s a good decision or not, do you really think a comparison with WW2 makes sense? A virus is a bit different to a war”
And one of them accused some of the commenters of wanting him to die.
Jesus wept.
Mind you …
According to this calculated relative risk of dying of influensa pneumonia versus Covid-19 in the US calculated on pandemic death total 150000
https://twitter.com/Avik/status/1262485481532637186/photo/1
1-4 years old 20 times more likely to die of flu or pneumonia than Covid-19
15-24 years 1.26 more likely to die of pneumonia or influenza than Covid-19
As we have influenza each year should we close Cambridge University permanently and go on line?
“Daycare, kindergartens, and primary schools should be reopened ASAP with no restrictions,” said – German Society for Hospital Hygiene /
Pediatric Infectiology –
Academy for Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine –
Professional Association of Pediatrician
https://www.spiegel.de/panorama/bildung/corona-krise-mediziner-fordern-komplette-schul-und-kita-oeffnung-a-4d1a0336-680d-4259-818e-7a263732f811
No discussion about the R
Latest post from Brendan O’Neill on Facebook:
Brendan O’Neill
13 mins ·
I see the left-wingers who agitated for the shutdown of the economy are now shocked that people are losing their jobs. This is what happens when everything is just a pose or a tweet or a virtue-signal — you never think through the consequences of what you are calling for. The instant hit of taking a position, the cheap thrill of putting pressure on the Tories, the adrenaline rush of tweeting ‘Let’s close down society!’ — these are all that matter in our flimsy political culture. So now the pro-lockdown left looks at the unemployment figures and wonders what went wrong, like a bull in a china shop asking what happened to all the plates.
Love him when he does the Sky paper review – especially with Christina Patterson, who he as an amazing ability to wind up before he even mutters a word! He is such a gentleman too – I would find it very difficult not to ‘chin her’ (to mis-quote a great Tynesider, Lawrie McMenamy)!
But every unavoidable death is one too many. You can’t put a price on life. Even if it takes 7Billion people to save 1 life it’s worth it.
Isn’t it? Let’s just clap and damn consequences.
He’s not wrong. Even before the lockdown I was telling people the response to the disease would quite possibly cost more than the disease could ever inflict on it’s own, and when panic overtook the government and the lockdown was imposed I was telling people this would be a huge economic disaster that we would be paying for for years to come. Response? Blank looks and disinterest, mostly. Even from intelligent, educated people. They just thought it wasn’t important because all that mattered was “saving lives”, and they assumed any problems would be sorted out by the government dumping money on it.
They’re gradually starting to realise, as the double whammy of the disease’s true, relatively minor, nature and the sheer size of the looming costs start to sink in.
Now the squabbles over who pays begin. Do we go full managed economy with a universal basic income and make “the rich” pay (while destroying the economy completely in the long run), or do we try to deal with it in a more traditional manner with a long period of general misery and constant fights over how much in tax increases and confiscations, how much in spending cuts, how much in inflation and how much unemployment?
Exactly and you still get that from some people. One of my colleagues is afraid when we go back to work because of “infection”, I just groaned inwardly because I cannot believe how someone who is so well educated and multi-lingual behave like this. We live with the possibility of infection all day every day why should this be any different? This why we have an immune system.
Two days ago Japan announced that the country is officially in recession. It will be interesting if and when our government officially announce that we have joined Japan if there will be a U turn meaning that we reopen and go back to normal as it was before 23 March or continue along the path of financial hara-kiri aided and abetted by the lockdown zealots.
Bart. The US Democats do the same. They hammered Trump for not imprisoning everybody sooner, and then blame him for the mass unemplyment their insistence on imprisonment caused. I’m no fan of Trump, but the hypocrisy of American liberals is quite astonishing.
The hypocrisy of most of the current crop of liberals is astonishing
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/the-snp-s-media-war-conceals-their-covid-failures
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/beware-scotland-s-hate-crime-bill
And this; dystopia beckons, brought to us ,all wrapped up in pious double speak by the Holy Holyrooders.
https://www.ft.com/content/2b62c3fb-7e52-45c1-a5c0-8970fa3f6a5b?shareType=nongift
Cannot copy the exact quote due to FT’s IP rights but this article talks of any future wealth tax that might be needed to pay for this total abdication of government responsibility being rebranded as an ‘NHS surcharge’ in order to win popular support.
Jesus wept, we’re in Orwellian doublespeak territory now. ‘NHS surcharge’?! I am honestly lost for words. You mean the same NHS that barely anyone used due to the lockdown out of either fear or cancellation of consultations/appointments? The same NHS which dumped elderly Covid patients into care homes to make space for imaginary Covid patients that never materialised? Why the hell should we pay for something which actually contributed to this disgraceful state of affairs and broke the first pledge of ‘Do mo harm’?
Once again, the numinous beacon of the Church of the NHS and its immunity from any criticism is being weaponised to brainwash the lazy public who cannot and will not inform itself of the facts. The UK has so much more to be proud of than its pretty average health service – but the way the country is going, there will soon be very little to take pride in.
Sorry, typo above, should be “Do no harm” – but perhaps “Do mo’ harm” would be more appropriate here anyway…!
Well put Poppy, and I fear that ‘ NHS surcharge’ will be a get-out-of-gaol-free means of imposing another dose of austerity, all dressed up, as you say, in double speak.
This will have to be paid for eventually, but why should the NHS be ring fenced again?
Tax revenues will probably be well below the level needed to maintain public spending for a very long time and this will compound the costs arising from the increase in benefit and other payments.
How will mass unemployment,especially amongst the young, be addressed?
How on earth did our so called leaders and experts get us into this mess so precipitately? Why did they rely so heavily on Prof Strangelove’s disastrous modelling?
We will need a Martin Luther at this rate and its long overdue. Unfortunately anyone who even remotely dares to suggest that the Church of the NHS should be reformed is denounced as a heretic and in league with the Devil (i.e. privatization or wanting healthcare like America)
I think David Starkey has nailed his colours to the hospital door on this, pretty much.
I’m inclined to stand outside on Thursday evenings and yell derision, but I’ll probably get lynched. (That’ll make a comeback soon, like pulling your own teeth.)
Went looking for a replacement bike tyre this morning. What a miserable experience. Halfords have a manned sentry post where you have to give your instructions to a hi-viz bedecked staff member who then ambles off to see if what you want is in stock. Evans Cycles allow 1 person in – but you have to stand in a 1m sq box while they do the same. Then went to a small High St store who allowed me in as far as the till and enacted the same pantomime. I came away empty handed. So back online where I got what I wanted in 2 clicks. OK I’m going to have to wait a week or so but after today’s depressing and dispiriting outing to businesses who seem to think they’re doing us a favour by being open at all – surliness and apathy were predominant- I’m unlikely to bother going to shop in person anytime soon.
Surely going to be the end for most high street shops? I mean, they were under pressure from online as it was.
A friend said recently that she would do most of her shopping online from now on.
My small town had many empty shops before the panic started; no doubt there will now be many more.
The advantage of shops is being served by someone, being able to browse and look at the products. Instead you go into a shop feeling like a huge inconvenience to all the staff
like you’re putting people in danger by being there. If this continues much longer retail is finished.
This is what I said yesterday in response to that article about Waterstone’s planing to “quarantine” books touched by customers. At the rate we are going, shops will go in the way of the dodo and the high street will be decimated even more.
A bit like the children’s toy library that disinfects returned toys and then quarantines them for a week.
I’m determined to find joy in my life every day, even if it’s just sitting on a park bench in the sun or opening a cold beer at night. They can’t kill the spirit and we shouldn’t even let them try. As the women of Greenham Common used to sing ‘You can’t kill the Spirit, She is like a mountain,
Old and strong’.
Curious what the covid-correct response will be toward shop lifters …
Main dealers are usually bad news anyway.
Well, so my small independent garage tell me.
Excellent read, made my day, share widely https://thecritic.co.uk/were-all-in-the-big-numbers-now/
Agreed! Should wing its way to Westminster and devolved administrations
Says exactly what needs to be said, except that I’d add one to his “Next time” list:
5 Coercive lockdown should be absolutely excluded from consideration in response to any future disease short of something plausibly on the level of the 1918 flu, and preferably much worse. Probably safest just to flat rule it out, and worry about rehabilitating it if and when such an unlikely emergency actually appears.
Thanks for sharing this. Exactly what I needed today after reading all the latest nonsense coming from scientists and other experts. It made my day too!
Thanks BecJT. This is going straight to my MP.
Excellent find, 29th April deaths below 5 year average! Nobody has said anything about that….
Where have the Gov’t hired these 20k track & tracers from ? I’ve been looking on jobsites including the Gov’t civil service job website since the middle of April and haven’t seen one ad for a job.
Ok, someone downthread mentioned snowflakes, which is not a term I’m in the habit of using, but I was just accused of speaking to someone in a way in which it is unacceptable to speak to a human! I think this was because I suggested that if he/she didn’t understand the costs of the lockdown then he/she is ignorant of economics. I’ve reread my comment a couple of times, because I genuinely was baffled by the response.
I mean, I am very used to very robust online exchanges, far more robust than is the norm here, for certain. I thought I was being very civil and controlled. Am I just desensitised? Have I become a brute without realising it?
https://dailysceptic.org/the-reaction-to-a-petition-to-reopen-schools/#comment-10577
Please, someone with time on his or her hands, reassure me….
Reading the exchange I don’t think there was anything wrong with your tone and how you put your argument forward.
You mean – I’m not a monster…?
Phew!
A robust and frank exchange of views Mark. Keep calm and carry on.
Cheers, wendyk.
Nothing wrong at all. Depressing thread though. Perhaps if all those posters trying to bash the author spent an equivalent amount of time trying to educate themselves on actual data and real harms being done to children as a result of the lockdown we wouldn’t be in quite such a mess.
Pretty clear the piece must have been posted to the original forum, with a call for members to come here and defend the forum.
I thought the exchange was perfectly acceptable. Nothing remotely offensive. I suggest Alex goes on YouTube and makes a comment if he/she wants to experience real offense.
First time commenting, just wanted to say, having read it, I didn’t find your words, in any way, brutish. It is easy to second-guess oneself after an exchange with the delicate flowers of the world
They’re “just because I care about people” line made me want to vomit. Vacuous shite.
Nothing wrong at all with what you said,the person is definitely a ‘snowflake’ and a virtue signaller of the highest order,unsurprisingly resorting to the cliched ‘you don’t care about anyone else’ argument.
Jut read more than your comment and am horrified and terrified in equal measure. How have we managed to get so many snowflakes in our teaching profession? Where are these people getting their information? and whilst I’m very sorry for Leila having suffered so badly with Covid, sorry but that does not mean the economy and lives have to be ended.
Am so fed up.
“I was just accused of speaking to someone in a way in which it is unacceptable to speak to a human!”.
You always come across as polite and rational to me, Mark.
(But then, I am from Alpha-Centauri …).
A short article about the Neil Ferguson phenomenon:
https://hectordrummond.com/2020/05/20/thaddeus-michaels-my-criticisms-of-ferguson/
There’s this comment after the article:
“After the world has calmed down, there might be grounds for a corporate manslaughter charge against some advisors and politicians for the unnecessary deaths their panic has caused.”
And this is how it looks to me. Neil Ferguson must surely worry about his future. Even if he is protected from prosecution as I imagine he could be, his name is known everywhere, and he is blamed (or acclaimed depending on your point of view) for having created the lockdown. He’s going to have a lot of explaining to do in select committees and the like.
And regardless of his legal position, at some point in the future it may become apparent that Joe Bloggs’s granny died as a direct result of his recommendations. Or someone’s son committed suicide. He really is in the frame for having caused some serious sh*t. If I were him, I would certainly be seeing dark clouds ahead. However, I just don’t think he will be bothered. He seems to be immune to self-doubt – probably the reason he seemed so persuasive to Boris and Dominic and why he was so sure of his report.
The same should apply to the clowns that proposed 50 days on, 30 days off lockdown running until 2022! They should be banned from any academic work for life and live on universal credit.
I would also suggest that all those ‘scientists’ should be going outside at 8 pm every Thursday night and shout “sorry”.
– universal credit
+ dog food
Interested to know what people make of the Spainish serology study ( https://www.aa.com.tr/en/europe/study-5-of-spanish-population-has-had-coronavirus/1839965 ).
It seems to show an Infection Fatality Rate of 1.1% It was quite a large survey – 60,000 randomly slected subjects.
Nil desprandum!! https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.05.13.20101253v1 This is a paper by Dr John Ionannidis of Stanford University who took IFR rates from many peer reviewed articles which looked at sero-prevalence. He found IFRs of between 0.02 and 0.4%. Also it seems that many peoples’ immune systems deal with Covid without producing antibodies. I saw a study for La Jolla, California where they found around 50% of people who had never had Covid-19 had in their blood T-lymphocytes (cells which kill viruses) which reacted against Covid. It seems there is cross-reactivity due to previous exposure to other coronaviruses (e.g. the common cold)
Good news Doc. But will anybody pay the slightest bit of attention?
If there is cross- reactivity, wouldn’t this imply that most healthy folks won’t be at risk, since we nearly all catch colds?Especially in the cooler latitudes.
So immunity is already wide spread, but difficult to confirm?
Here is a link to the tweet by Prof Shane Crotty whose Dept did the study.https://twitter.com/profshanecrotty/status/1261052353773363200. I did read the actual paper. I’m not an immunologist but it’s pretty clear that this could well be the reason we are getting so many people with no or very mild symptoms to a so-called novel coronavirus. Also it would also mean that the herd immunity level would be much lower than the 60% they used to talk about.
That’s incredibly interesting – it could explain why the Swedish seroprevalence study whose results where presented by Tegnell earlier today found that only about 7% of people in Stockholm had antibodies despite their modelling showing that it should be at least 15% -something that the media lockdown zealots will surely very soon use for they condemnations of the Swedish approach.
Oh, sorry – “In our study, 100% of COVID-19 cases made antibodies” but at least, as you say, herd immunity level could be much lower
God, that constant roller-caster of news makes it difficultly to think straight – of course if there is significant cross-reactivity then the immune systems of these
exposed to some other coronaviruses would be quicker and more effective in destroying Sars-CoV-2 making those people less infectious than some models might predict, and even if 100% covid patients develop antibodies it doesn’t change any of the above so my first comment is correct -hope I got this right this time
You have to look at the details: “We specifically chose to study people who had an average COVID19 disease course—non-hospitalized—to provide a solid benchmark for what a normal immune response to SARS2 looks like.”
“Disease severity was defined as mild, moderate, severe or critical… Mild disease was defined as an uncomplicated upper respiratory tract infection (URI) with potential non-specific symptoms (e.g. fatigue, fever, cough with or without sputum production, anorexia, malaise, myalgia, sore throat, dyspnea, nasal congestion, headache; rarely diarrhea, nausea and vomiting) that did not require hospitalization.”
So it looks as though there were no asymptomatic patients, or those with symptoms so mild they hadn’t been tested. Nor do they know about people who were never ‘infected’ as such but are nevertheless were resistant to the disease up to a certain level of exposure.
Someone here yesterday (guy perhaps, or DocRC?) posted the following extract from the Stanford study mentioned above:
“An interesting observation is that even under congested circumstances, like cruise ships,
aircraft carriers or homeless shelter, the proportion of people infected does not get to exceed 20-45%. Similarly, at a wider population level, values ~33% are the maximum values
documented to-date. “
I was just going to post a similar comment.
Somehow, it seems that we at Lockdown Sceptics are more in touch with the latest research than, for example, the director of the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/may/20/top-eu-doctor-europe-should-brace-itself-for-second-wave-of-coronavirus
She is still working to the standard SIR model, yet we now know recent research shows that:
– immunity and resistance don’t necessarily require the production of antibodies;
– some people may already resistant/immune due to previous exposure/infection to colds;
– the commonly accepted SARS-Cov-2 R0 values may be wrong (for example biased towards hospitals, care homes rather than the outside world);
– given a value of R0, differences in susceptibility between individuals results in a reduction in the herd immunity threshold, even if we accept the basic SIR model.
It’s amazing that governments are prepared to ruin their own economies based on ridiculously basic assumptions rather than studying the latest findings!
One thing that has struck me is that when I know a lot about something (experienced Doctor with degree in physiology) I realise that our Dear Leaders have got it completely wrong. It’s a scary thought that they probably also get it wrong on things I know little about!
Especially useful to remember that whenever they are concocting some bollocks to justify another war…
What’s even more scary is that they are never likely to admit to any mistakes.
It’s another (deliberately?) misleading article which doesn’t mention how skewed the overall IFR is by age.
From 0-49 years old, the IFR ranges from 0.002% – 0.042%
From 50-59 years old the IFR is 0.137% – comparable to seasonal flu.
Thereafter it’s:
60-69. 0.486%
70-79. 1.661%
80-89. 5.789%
90+. 10.337%
I think this is going to turn out to be less than seasonal flu.
Which is why of course you will get rather different figures for ifr according to the age breakdown in the population in question.
I made a more detailed comment about it a few days ago when it came out.
Long story short I would estimate they are pretty close to herd immunity in Madrid and surrounding areas, Valencia and Catalonia look like they’re a bit behind.
There is quite a bit of uncertainty around estimating IFR from this because deaths were changing rapidly at the time the study was done. But it does look high.
We often see high IFRs in places that had a lot of cases. The most likely reason is not so much lack of hospital resources or bad treatments but a high level of nosocomial infection. The virus burns through the hospitals killing the vulnerable people there and infecting a much greater proportion of them than is found in the society outside where the antibody tests were done.
Someone earlier brought up about the 13 year old boy that died not being in the ONS statistics. I asked Nick Stripe of the ONS about this on twitter and he has replied:
Hi. A very tragic case. Yes, Ismail’s death was referred to the coroner. Full death registration does not take place until any coroner’s inquest is complete. This can take weeks, months or even longer in a few cases.
Now the virus is on the decline ramp up the fear message https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/05/19/keep-distance-new-coronavirus-slogan-quietly-pushed-replace/?utm_medium=email&utm_source=CampaignMonitor_Editorial&utm_campaign=LNCH%20%2020200520%20%20Facebook%20%20SM+CID_51a26dfb9f542831020c1f75fd33e4e8
My MP says the Government have been quite “transparent” and “clear” in outlining the evidence for their policy response. I must admit I restrict the amount of news I take in. This site has become a key source of information for me, I feel like I get the main-stream news by osmosis (conversations with my mother!) It’s completely possible I haven’t seen it.
What have I missed? Do you know which documents are being referred to? I know there is a lot of information out there about the 250-500k deaths prediction but is there a comprehensive summary of all the modelling conclusions, lock-down risk factors, options analysis etc… Or would this be asking too much?
This is a reasonable place to start: https://hailtoyou.wordpress.com/2020/04/29/against-the-corona-panic-pt-vii-swedens-vindication-is-complete-graphing-the-actual-coronavirus-epidemic-in-sweden-against-the-pro-panic-sides-wild-projections/
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/may/19/uk-to-test-hydroxychloroqine-as-coronavirus-treatment
UK buying hydroxychloroquine.
Don’t give a shit what it is…. I am going to be as far back in the queue as humanly possible
Well that’s hilarious
In Prof Michael Levitt’s second video about the pandemic curve was mentioned the Gompertz curve. The interesting with this curve is that, contrary to the Bell curve you have a longer tail and about 2/3 rd of cases on the right part of the Bell curve. This would be interesting to fit both of Covid-19 cases and especially more relevant Covid-19 deaths implying that this pandemic curve has its own path whatever we do.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uw2ZTaiN97k
Now in his twitter account this post
https://twitter.com/plaforscience/status/1263065671673446400/photo/1
The Covid-19 deaths in Spain seems to follow that curve
“we have made the log scaled redraw of Spain’s official data, and shows that clear straight line, nonchalant to any human measure. No change in tendency when imposed, no single hair move when released”.
Not good news for the lockdown zealots.
Unfortunately the zealots have built up herd immunity to logic and reason
The reason for a Gompertz curve would be that we have an enormous expansion in the beginning and then we hit a roof which is substantially lower than 60 % herd immunity probably in the region of 15%.This is most likely immunity to the specific infection and much more a latent immunity in the population due to other coronaviruses we already have been exposed to. I am not a mathematician but to me both the UK and the Swedish Covid-19 death curve looks a bit like Spain’s
I haven’t watched the second Levitt video yet but I thought the long tails on the death curves might be because we missed the start and only started classifying deaths as “Covid” after it became a thing and we started testing. They would be more symmetrical if we had begun recording earlier.
OK having watched the video he’s finding this Gompertz growth right at the start of outbreaks so it’s not to do with missing the beginning. We have to wait until the next video to see what the theory is of why it’s Gompertz growth.
I am by no means an expert, but I took the numbers for UK cases by specimen date available here https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/ and used the Gompertz model as described here https://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/2003/2003.05447.pdf, and by tweaking the parameters (a=617500, c=0.068) was able to get what looks like a good match.
This suggests that number of daily cases should fall to about 1000 by the beginning of June, and for it to have largely disappeared by the end of June. But it would be better if Prof. Levitt could look at it himself!
PS I would post a pic of the resulting plot but don’t know how!
https://inews.co.uk/news/health/menthol-cigarettes-ban-2020-may-banned-uk-filters-law-why-new-when-date-1353678
Hello… What did I say about a health agenda?. From may 20th. Coincidence? I bet there is more sneaking through under the ‘corona’ camouflage. Keep alert to this, as is the tip of a very big iceberg heading our way
This is the beginning of a large scale nanny state.
I mean, on my recent visits to the supermarket, I have noticed that so called ‘bad for you’ foods and drink have begun to dwindle whilst there has never been a shortage of fruit, veg etc.
Now I eat quite sensibly, balanced diet, pretty healthy overall, and have a few vices like everyone… But this is leading down a true big nanny state nazi path
Had a visit from a customer/collaborator at my business today. Afterwards, I realised how weird it felt to be talking to someone different. For almost 3 months I’ve only spoken to my kids, my partner and the 2 people I work with.
You should be chatting to people in the shops, at least, Mark ?
Sounds like you have become a haven for the psychologically battered.
Wish there was somewhere like that round here
Yes me too. Oh for normality and social interaction!
Amazing how out of date and desperate the covebola panickers are starting to look, both the experts and the media propaganda outlets.
Europe should brace for second wave, says EU coronavirus chief
“It has been the unenviable task of scientists to tell it as it is through the coronavirus pandemic. “
Neil Ferguson, anybody?
“While politicians have been caught offering empty reassurances, the epidemiologists, a job title new to many, have emerged as the straight shooters of the crisis, sometimes to their detriment.”
Oh really, Guardian? Here are a couple of epidemiologists who have actually been telling it as it is, but with precious little promotion by the likes of the Guardian: Anders Tegnell, Johan Giesecke.
“[Dr Andrea Ammon, director of the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC)] speaks frankly in her first interview with a UK newspaper since the crisis began.
“Looking at the characteristics of the virus, looking at what now emerges from the different countries in terms of population immunity – which isn’t all that exciting, between 2% and 14%, that leaves still 85% to 90% of the population susceptible”
So let’s get this straight – the director of the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control still thinks that around 90% of the population are basically susceptible to this disease?
“People who are perfectly healthy are also getting severe illness and they die. Knowing what we have seen in Europe with approximately 10% of the population [infected] I think there is for me not an option to let this go. If the the other 90% would have come as well, I think we don’t want to think of this.”
She should be sacked, frankly.
Sacked and prosecuted.
Add Knut Wittkowski to your list of the honourable Mark. What I don’t get is this thing would have been at its most contagious before the lockdown so why didn’t those 85-90% get it then?
See my posts earlier. But to repeat: https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.05.13.20101253v1 This is a paper by Dr John Ionannidis of Stanford University who took IFR rates from many peer reviewed articles which looked at sero-prevalence. He found IFRs of between 0.02 and 0.4%. Also it seems that many peoples’ immune systems deal with Covid without producing antibodies. I saw a study for La Jolla, California where they found around 50% of people who had never had Covid-19 had in their blood T-lymphocytes (cells which kill viruses) which reacted against Covid. It seems there is cross-reactivity due to previous exposure to other coronaviruses (e.g. the common cold)
The latter study by Sean Crotty is referred to in this tweet; https://twitter.com/profshanecrotty/status/1261052353773363200
So if 50% don’t produce antibodies (because they have T-lymphocytes which get rid of the virus), then bingo! you get to herd immunity with lower percentages of the population with positive Covid-19 antibodies. I’m pretty sure we are there already. But how to persuade our Dear Leaders who have paddled us to the upper reaches of Shit Creek that they should admit they were mistaken but the science has now changed (hardly surprising with a novel coronavirus!).
This nearly made me cry. So refreshing and kind hearted. Truly kind hearted, not just pretending to be at face value.
Had the joy of going to Brighton beach yesterday. Bars are serving takeaway beers. Fish and chips and ice creams on sale. Not much social distancing going on and mask wearing , hedge jumping, body swerving lockdown zealots were very much in the minority. 5 ice cold takeaway Amstels was probably overdoing but who cares.
Sounds like heaven!
Piers Morgan wetting himself and banging on about 1918 because people went to the beach. Sorry for my French but the sooner he f*cks off the better.
The twat is indeed one of the fear-mongers in chief.
Well what a day, I have a problem which needs to be properly diagnosed by either GP or NHS. Called my GP practice to ask for an appointment, was told GP will call me back for a telephone diagnosis. Reception called back a couple of hours later to say from what I had told receptionist, GP says I need a face to face appointment.
All well so far, then they drop the bomb, I will need to wear something over my face whilst at the practice, I say would rather not they say it is the law, I say it is not the law, they say it is guidance, quite a bit different to “the Law” I would rather not restrict my breathing with something over my face and nose.
No face covering, no treatment. Spoke to practice manager, same story. I asked several times, and they ultimate reply was not face covering, no treatment. Tried NHS 111 to see if I could get a diagnose elsewhere, they refer me back to my GP.
Lost for words, I am not displaying any of the symptoms of CV19, I was not asked if I was showing any symptoms, just told that I have to wear a face covering, they are not concerned what that covering is (old pair of Y fronts is looking good right now)
We have to stop this, or society will never recover. My wife and myself do not have children but we want to try to stop what is happening for everyone who does have children. What a world to live in.
I am putting together a letter to my MP. I need some solid research to say masks are unnecessary, or if they are necessary, they need to be to a certain standard, not just any old piece of rag.
Angry for the East Midlands.
The madness is becoming beyond control now,I’m with you,I’m not wearing anything that restricts my breathing,I’m sick of people resorting to the ‘it’s the law’ defence for every stupid bit of guidance they are trying to inflict on us.You are right,society cannot function like this,we are rapidly reaching the point of no return,I pray I’m wrong but there doesn’t seem much hope left for us at this rate.
No one should be denied treatment because of what they wear or dont wear. This is insane! How can this be legal?
I’d go with the underpants, if only to demonstrate how ridiculous it all is. Or an old tea towel with a couple of holes cut out for your eyes. They haven’t specified the type of face covering required.
Then mumble incoherently at the staff until they ask you to remove the “face covering” so that they can understand you.
I’ve had a text message from my local surgery saying much the same, i.e. masks are necessary for face to face consultations.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-51205344 > this is the BBC (read: UK state propaganda page) outlining who should and shouldn’t wear a mask…
Note: anyone with trouble breathing should never a mask. I, for example, get lightheaded and dizzy after 10mins of breathing behind a mask, so I need to take it off otherwise I’ll get nauseous. Can you not claim the same?
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/may/11/what-is-the-uk-advice-on-coronavirus-and-face-masks
The ever so woke and proper Guardian with a recent write up on this…
https://www.businessinsider.com/face-masks-wont-help-avoid-illness-so-why-wear-them-mental-health?op=1&r=US&IR=T#we-overcompensate-when-safeguards-are-in-place-3
This article outlines there is no point to wearing masks other than the psychological effect (especially on others, the lockdown zealots)
https://www.businessinsider.com/americans-dont-need-masks-pence-says-as-demand-increases-2020-2?op=1&r=US&IR=T
Interesting article back from March US Surgeon General not recommending face masks…
Oh and the UK sticks to 2 meters social distancing whereas everyone else has less – in varying degrees, and WHO actually only recommends 3 feet. Neither WHO and CDC recommended face masks until very recently – and not because the science changed, no solely for psychological purposes (see second article)
But most importantly – they can’t refuse treatment if you say you are having problems with wearing masks (pollen maybe? hay fever?)… and basically I’d threaten to sue them. I doubt patients being admitted to hospital are getting masks considering emergencies don’t even get tested for Covid-19 because the tests take 5 days to come back thus too long for someone who only stays 3 days? Alternatively I’d say write to Simon Dolan who is leading the lawsuit and ask maybe one of his lawyers for a quick advice on this?
Hi everyone
Thanks for your replies, especially Pebbles who has gone above & beyond.
Absolutely nothing on the NHS England website about the need for face covering, only on gov.uk seems places can make up the rules as they see fit. Interesting when I was talking to the receptionist & practice manager earlier, neither of than seemed to be mumbling through a face covering. One rule etc.
I have to take the appointment tomorrow so I will go prepared with some sort of face covering, not happy or really willing to do it but I need this GP appointment
Simon Dolan may be the best direct of travel going forward.
Thanks
D.
Well I went for my appointment and it seems PPE (muzzles) are optional for staff, but not for patients. Only one nurse was wearing her face mask whilst I was waiting to see GP, receptionist who booked me in wasn’t wearing a mask until she came to unlock the door. Only other member of staff wearing a mask was the GP I saw. If it is optional, let it be optional for all not just employees.
The practice manager walked within about two feet of me so I asked why she was not wearing a mask, the response was I don’t come in to contact with patients and I practice social distancing. I am a patient and she was about two feet from me, who is kidding who here?
I simply used a microfibre cloth in front of my mouth & nose, I was going to tie a 1970s tea cloth with a map of Cornwall across my face but backed down. When they asked me to sanitise my hands the cloth dropped onto the floor. What a farce, but it was so lovely and quiet, no other patient in a practice which has six GPs, two or three practice nurses. Good time to recharge batteries for all concerned. Only five chairs in the patient waiting area, ordinarily there be about thirty or so chairs all full.
I do wonder what illnesses are going unchecked or diagnosed.
WTF
https://www.cebm.net/covid-19/covid-19-death-data-in-england-update-19th-may/
COVID-19: Death Data in England – Update 19th May
May 19, 2020
Today’s reported figure is 174 deaths in hospitals in England.
For comparison: the reported deaths in hospitals in England on the same weekday were:
12th May: 350 deaths
5th May: 366 deaths
28th of April: 546 deaths.
21st April: 778 deaths
14th April: 744 deaths
Consistent with previous analyses, the peak day of deaths was the 8th of April.
Deaths in Care home peaked later than hospitals on the 17th of April.
The reporting of deaths by NHS England underestimate those reported by the Office for National Statistics – One reason for this is NHS England’s data does not include deaths reported outside hospitals.
That sounds a more positive day for you than yesterday,keep up the good fight !.The people diving out of the way syndrome has encouraged me to see how many a day I can get to do it,only one today disappointingly.
I had a couple of road-crossers on my walk this morning. 4 points for a crosser, 3 for a hedge diver, 2 for a road pedestrian, 1 for an awkward and slightly scared “good morning”
The thing is I tend to give people their 2m and sometimes wait on a narrow path, as I’m always afraid they may be a COVID puritan. I got shouted at a couple of weeks back so slightly afraid of my fellow citizens.
If they are masked, at least I know they are to be avoided.
Bloody great, kh.
There was a discuss earlier on in this thread about corporate manslaughter charges against the likes of Ferguson.
I would also include whoever it was that made it public health policy to clear NHS hospital wards/beds by discharging elderly patients with CV19 symptoms, or positive CV19 test results into care homes. I would include anyone from hospitals or local councils who coerced the care home managers by threatening to withdraw funding unless they admitted the patients into their care homes.
This policy wasn’t merely unbelievably stupid and short sighted. Considering that multiple Democrat governors in the U.S. mandated the same policy, makes me start to think something more sinister was at play.
If it had just been the UK, or Andrew Cuomo in New York, you’d think it was just grossly irresponsible. But with so many instances, it looks more deliberate.
Someone tell me I’m wrong….
I don’t know what level of immunity the government have to prosecution (I’m sure setting a war footing affords more) but instinctively I would think there could be justification for class action from groups adversely and directly affected by government actions. If not the government directly then move down the hierarchy to department or organisation level.
Crown immunity ‘shields’ a wide range of what-would-otherwise-be-criminal behaviour.
The government shouldn’t have listened to Ferguson, so it would be unfair to make him the fall guy.
I wish there’s a shop like yours in my area
Why she got that dumpy tho