The Telegraph‘s Business section leads on Rishi Sunack’s warning to the House of Lords Economic Affairs Committee yesterday that the country is facing “a severe recession, the likes of which we haven’t seen”. That red line shooting beyond Sunack’s nose is the number of unemployment claims triggered by different financial shocks dating back to 1970 – and the 857,000 new claimants in shown on the graph for 2020 is just for the month of April. The Telegraph points out this is the biggest surge in benefit claims since 1947.
The same point was made more bluntly on Channel 4 News last night by former Conservative leader Iain Duncan Smith. “The longer we stay on lockdown, the more companies will go bankrupt,” he said.
The Express has the same story, as does the FT, which quotes the Chancellor warning the Committee that the economy may not “immediately bounce back”.
No shit, Sunack.
Excess Cancer Deaths Likely to Increase as Result of Lockdown
The Edinburgh Evening News looks at just one of many human tragedies caused by the response to the virus – the story of Dalkeith mother-of-one Karen Hilton, whose life expectancy has been cut from 12 months to six after cancer trials were halted as doctors prioritised patients with COVID-19.
Karen, 48, who has already had to cancel her wedding due to the lockdown, spoke out as UK charity Breast Cancer Now launched a campaign to help thousands of secondary breast cancer patients who fear their lives could be shortened due to changes to treatment, scans and trials:
At the moment I’m on chemotherapy, but because of the nature of my disease, which is triple negative and very aggressive, there are only so many options that I can get. After you’ve exhausted all of the chemotherapies… my only options left are trials. Trials haven’t been happening, they’re not going to be focusing on research, and there’s already 450 cancer patients dying every day – but you don’t see those figures published along with the stats for Covid. It’s heart-breaking and sanity must prevail, in that you can’t just cut off the lifelines of all these hundreds of thousands of patients. Obviously they’re diverting attention away from breast cancer trials on to Covid and our issue is that it’s just another disease. Covid is going to be around for a long time but cancer patients won’t if we don’t get access to these trials. It just feels like they’re cutting off the stage 4 cancer patient’s lifelines – so it’s literally life or death.
The Guardian deals more fully with the impact of the lockdown on cancer patients, saying “thousands of people… could die early because so many hospitals have suspended surgery for the disease while the NHS battles the coronavirus”.
Schools’ Out For Summer
In its online edition, the Telegraph reports that “[t]he country is heading for a divide on the reopening of schools, with Government minister Robert Buckland this morning conceding a ‘uniform’ start from June 1st is unlikely.”
The Justice Secretary told Sky the “picture is a mixed one”, with at least 11 councils now refusing to open schools on the date set by the Prime Minister. He insisted conversations were ongoing but admitted there was “not a long time to go” to persuade teachers, unions and councils it was safe.
This is in spite of the paper’s splash, in which the British Medical Association now says schools can reopen on June 1st, or earlier, as long as it is “safe to do so”, and – in what is described as “an apparent softening of its stance regarding pupils returning to the classroom” – admitting that there is “growing evidence that the risk to individual children from COVID-19 is extremely small”. Today’s Telegraph also includes a comment piece by Dr Peter English, Chair of the British Medical Association’s Public Health Medicine Committee, pointing out that even though sending children back to school is not “risk free”, keeping them at home isn’t either.
The Guardian reports that “up to 1,500 primary schools in England are expected to remain closed on June 1st after a rebellion by at least 18 councils forced the Government to say it had no plans to sanction them”. And the Telegraph reveals that Scottish pupils may only return part-time when schools there reopen in August.
The Mail exposes what it calls the “cynical tactics” of a teacher’s union trying to stop schools reopening. It reports on Zoom video footage available on the National Education Union’s (NEU) YouTube account which shows leaders discussing how to “threaten” headmasters who try to get their staff back to work:
In a further sign of their hardline approach, they described their opposition to the date as a “negotiating position”. Mary Bousted, the NEU’s joint General Secretary, was even shown accusing children of being “mucky”, spreading germs and “wiping their snot on your trousers or on your dress”.
The paper says parents and teachers are at war over the issue:
At least 13 mainly Labour councils are actively opposing Boris Johnson’s plans to open schools in England on June 1st as parents who want their children back in class claim they have been branded “teacher bashers”.
Extraordinary rows have broken out on WhatsApp groups and online forums as it was revealed that up to 1,500 English primary schools are now expected to remain closed in 12 days’ time despite millions of children being at home for more than eight weeks.
On Mumsnet today a thread suggested that “parents aren’t allowed to criticise teachers anymore” and sparked outrage among those in the teaching profession. One parent wrote: “I’ve seen a lot of parents genuinely concerned about the teaching who were immediately accused of ‘teacher bashing’ and being ‘too lazy to teach their own children’. It’s ridiculous’”
Cambridge: No Face-to-Face Contact With Students For a Year
Cambridge University has announced all lectures will be online for the duration of the next academic year. Cambridge didn’t close during World War Two – and didn’t close during any of the recent influenza pandemics with a higher death toll than SARS-CoV-2, such as 1968-70. But the University’s administrators have decided that the risk posed by the current virus is simply too great.
“Given that it is likely that social distancing will continue to be required, the University has decided there will be no face-to-face lectures during the next academic year,” a press release announced.
This follows the disclosure from Manchester University that all its lectures will be online next term. Neither university has offered to reduce tuition fees as a consequence, which may be an oversight if they want to persuade students who’ve accepted places this year not to defer.
In truth, that will probably be less of a problem for Cambridge and Manchester than for low tariff institutions. If you’ve got a place at De Montfort University, for instance, why would you pay £9,250 a year to take an online course when there are cheaper, better-designed online courses out there? Even private schools have reduced their fees while pupils are taught from home (although not by much).
In a story in today’s paper, the Guardian lays bare the scale of the problem facing British universities, saying they face a £760 million hole in their finances from deferrals alone:
A survey of students applying for undergraduate places found that more than 20% said they were willing to delay starting their courses if universities were not operating as normal due to the coronavirus pandemic, which would mean there would be 120,000 fewer students when the academic year begins in autumn. The results, released by the University and College Union, come as universities are wrestling with how to reopen campuses for students while protecting them from COVID-19.
British universities are facing a perfect storm going into the next academic year: lots of students who were supposed to be starting this autumn will defer; applications for the following year will decline; EU students will have to pay full fees for the first time, meaning fewer will apply; and foreign students in general will stay away due to travel restrictions and fear of contagion. The sector is clearly hoping the Government will bail it out, but that may be naive. As the Guardian reported on May 3rd: “University leaders had asked the Government for a bailout running into billions of pounds to make up for lost international student and research revenue. But the plea on behalf of the sector was said to have ‘landed badly’ with the Treasury.”
If Britain’s universities don’t radically rethink their plans for the next year and the Treasury continues to play hardball, at least one third of them will end up going under. Clayton Christensen, a Harvard Business School professor, predicted last year that up to 50 percent of America’s colleges and universities will go bankrupt in the next 10 to 15 years. I think the same is true of the UK, except that Covid has speeded up the process.
Gerard Degroot, a former member of the St Andrew’s History Department, sums up the situation in UnHerd:
Many universities were teetering on the edge of bankruptcy. A lingering dispute over pensions had corroded morale. The over-emphasis on research, imposed largely by the Government, had warped priorities, leading to a decline in teaching quality everywhere. Mounting student debt led many young people to question whether the ‘ivory tower experience’ is worth the investment.
The virus is ruthless: it exposes and punishes those weaknesses. Over the long term, some institutions might be forced to close, while others will have to radically transform the product they offer.
Is COVID-19 a Nosocomial Disease?
There’s an interesting graph on Guido today showing the percentage of all Covid deaths that have occurred in care homes in different European countries. The data is from a new report from the EU’s Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDPC) on the prevalence of COVID-19 in long term care facilities, including care homes. I’ve looked at the report and the data in Guido‘s graph is correct.
Guido highlighted this to show that the UK has fared better at protecting its care home residents than other European countries, but it points to something else, too, which is the degree to which COVID-19 is primarily a nosocomial disease. This is a theme taken up in a Medium post by the banker Jonathan Tepper called ‘Ground Zero: When the Cure is Worse than the Disease‘. The post includes lots of interesting facts and quotes pointing to hospitals and care homes as the main vectors of transmission:
- Data from five European countries suggest that care homes accounted between 42% and 57% of all deaths related to COVID-19.
- A group of doctors from the Papa Giovanni XXIII hospital in Bergamo warned of nosocomial infections in the New England Journal of Medicine: “We are learning that hospitals might be the main COVID-19 carriers. They are rapidly populated by infected patients, facilitating transmission to uninfected patients.”
- Nearly 14% of Spain’s reported COVID-19 cases are medical professionals.
- The ECDPC has warned hospitals: “It is likely that nosocomial outbreaks are important amplifiers of the local outbreaks, and they disproportionately affect the elderly and vulnerable populations.”
- Today, almost all new cases in Spain are in hospitals and retirement homes.
Tepper asks whether many of these deaths could have been avoided if politicians and their scientific advisors had realised sooner that COVID-19 was primarily a nosocomial disease, as does a leader in today’s Telegraph. He also discusses the fact that people under 60 in good health are at minimal risk of dying from COVID-19 and draws the obvious conclusion:
If hospitals and retirement homes are one of the main transmission vectors and the disease and the virus overwhelmingly affects the very old and sick who have multiple existing conditions, shutting the entire economy will not solve the problem.
Government Stocks Up on Hydroxychloroquine
While the chattering classes on both sides of the Atlantic continue to mock Trump for disclosing he takes a daily dose of hydroxychloroquine – and social media companies are busy removing any content that promotes it as a possible treatment for COVID-19 – the British Government is planning to buy the anti-malarial drug in bulk. According to the Guardian, ministers are seeking 16 million tablets in packets of up to 100 as part of a £35m contract put out to tender last Friday:
A Whitehall source said the purchase of hydroxychloroquine was related to current clinical trials to evaluate it as a treatment for people with COVID-19, adding that it should only be taken on prescription or as part of a controlled clinical trial.
It’s worth pointing out that the Government’s purchasing of a drug is no guarantee that it’s effective. Britain spent £424 million stockpiling Tamiflu, hoping it could be used to treat both bird flu and swine flue. This was partly on the advice of Liam Donaldson, then the Chief Medical Officer for the UK, who had seen the modelling from Neil Ferguson’s team at Imperial College predicting that bird flue could kill up to 200 million people worldwide and swine flu could kill 65,000 in the UK alone. AT the time, Roche, the manufacturer of Tamiflu, was refusing to release all the data from its clinical trials and only agreed to do this in 2013, long after the money had been spent. This followed sustained pressure from the lockdown sceptic Carl Heneghan, among others. When Heneghan and his team were able to review the Tamiflu data, they concluded the drug is marginally useful in shortening a bout of flu by half a day, but does not prevent complications, keep people out of hospital or reduce the spread of infection and does have side-effects, some of which are alarming. The Guardian has more.
I’ve discussed the evidence surrounding hydroxychloroquine, both as a prophylactic against and as a treatment for COVID-19, in the page entitled ‘What Are the Most Effective Treatments‘ on the right-hand side. For what it’s worth, I started taking chloroquine when I thought I had COVID-19, but stopped after three days when I started getting heart palpitations. It may or may not have contributed to my own speedy recovery.
Lawyers Turn on Lord Gumption
There was an article in the Law Society Gazette yesterday by Jonathan Compton chastising Lord Sumption for straying into the political arena. In particular, he takes issue with Sumption’s civil liberties argument that it should be up to individuals to assess whether they want to take the risk of leaving their homes, not the Government:
The risk of exposure to the COVID-19 is indeed an individual risk. But it does not follow – as Lord Sumption suggests – that it must be solely in the hands of the individual to decide to take that risk or not. The “individual risk” argument risks underplaying, indeed ignoring, what we may call the “societal risk” argument.
The “societal risk” argument may be put thus: if we leave it in the hands of individuals to decide whether they choose to run the exposure risk, then we run the risk that infection levels will increase to the point where basic supply chains start to break down, less/no food in shops, less people/no one on the tills, fewer/no petrol deliveries, no imports of medicines, food stuffs, critical levels of agricultural workers, bus, rail and tube drivers. By this time, of course, the NHS would have been over-run some time ago. This is a risk to the fabric of society itself. A risk to society poses grave risks to the individuals in it, surely?
I’ll save Lord Sumption the trouble of having to respond to the “societal risk” argument and do so myself. If we end the lockdown tomorrow, there is zero risk of basic supply chains breaking down, shops running out of food, check-out clerks leaving tills unattended, petrol deliveries stopping, or any of the other calamities the lily-livered Compton envisages. None of those things have happened in those countries that have ended their lockdowns, nor have they happened in those countries and US states that never locked down in the first place. As Sumption has repeatedly said, the burden falls on those who want to suspend our liberties to show that not doing so would be catastrophic – for instance, that not doing so will cause a net loss of life. To date, the British Government has come nowhere near meeting that threshold.
Luckily, not all lawyers hold their manhoods as cheap as Jonathan Compton. There’s a robust comment below his article which has got more thumbs-up than any other:
I support Lord Sumption. He doesn’t mince his words, and he has no time for high-emotion, low-intellect, entitled muppets who demand protection from everything. I am confident that those cowering behind their sofas, demanding that they be wrapped in cotton wool at the expense of others, are quite happy to accept NHS treatment and to shop at supermarkets – workers there aren’t cowering at home: you’re not better than them.
Graph Porn
A reader has compiled this graph showing that infections peaked in both London and the country at large on March 14th and 18th respectively – nine days before the lockdown in one case and five days in the other. He also sent me the source for all his data, which look robust to me. In other words, placing more than 66 million people under virtual house arrest wasn’t necessary to “Save Lives” or “Protect the NHS”.
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:
- ‘This is not a natural disaster, but a manmade one‘ – Staunch sceptic Lionel Shriver’s latest column in the Spectator
- ‘The UK’s public health response to COVID-19‘ – Damning assessment of the UK Government’s response to the pandemic in the BMJ. But the thrust of the criticism is that the UK should have locked down earlier, without offering much evidence that that would have resulted in fewer deaths from COVID-19
- ‘Under the Corona Act, Dr Shipman could have got away with more murders‘ – Ronan Maher in the Critic digs into the changes the Government has made into the regulations surrounding the reporting of death and finds much to be alarmed about
- ‘We’re all in the big numbers now‘ – The always dependable Alistair Haimes sums up everything we’ve learnt so far. Includes the under-statement of the century: “Imperial College haven’t had a good war.”
- ‘Every person prosecuted under Coronavirus Act was wrongly charged‘ – I missed this story last Friday, but it’s a marmalade-dropper. Literally every person prosecuted under the Coronavirus Act in April was wrongly charged, says the CPS
- ‘It is fear – not science – that is stopping our children being educated‘ – Robust column in the Telegraph by the redoubtable Allison Pearson. She refers to a new petition you can sign if you think chidden should go back to school
- ‘UK coronavirus death figures fall for third week in a row‘ – Good news in the Times. According to one expert, it may be “difficult to find” anyone with the virus on their death certificate by the end of June
- ‘The Results of Europe’s Lockdown Experiment Are In‘ – Bloomberg does what we did on Lockdown Sceptics last week, which is to use the Blavatnik School of Government’s table ranking countries according to the severity of their lockdowns to see if there’s any correlation between that and the number of Covid infections and deaths. Answer: No, although there is a positive correlation between the severity of a country’s lockdown and damage to its economy
- ‘WHO to be investigated over coronavirus pandemic response‘ – The World Health Organisation has agreed to an independent investigation into its response to the pandemic. Can I be one of the investigators please?
- ‘National Trust faces £200m loss as it closes for summer‘ – The Times has alarming news for National Trust members. Will they get a rebate? And if the charity’s in trouble, why shut down for the summer?
- ‘Even Pakistan is more relaxed on coronavirus than Britain‘ – My friend James Delingpole thinks Imran Khan might not be such a villain after all
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.
Theme Tune Suggestions
More suggestions from readers about theme tunes for this site: “The Distance” by Cake, “Every Day Should Be A Holiday” by the Dandy Warhols and, of course, “School’s Out” by Alice Cooper.
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 now passed one million and it’s averaging 54,000 visitors a day. We’re changing hearts and minds…
And Finally…
A reader has dug up a picture from an Italian magazine that published a story in 1962 about what the the world might look in 2022. The illustration is uncanny…
To join in with the discussion please make a donation to The Daily Sceptic.
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Rishi is firmly on the ball isn’t he. I mean, only 2 months behind anyone with half a brain realised shutting the economy and spending billions was going to lead to the mother of all recessions is pretty smart.
I heard today that 9000 jobs are to be lost at Rolls Royce. Call me an old cynic but in due course I suspect these prestige manufacturing jobs will pop up somewhere ‘off shore’.
I don’t think they will (this time!) – aviation will take a long time to recover fully.
What they should be asking is
“We have the technology and the skilled workforce, what else could we make?” (ventilators is not the answer)
Think home many ventilators a big jet engine could power!
Unlikely the rate that flight deck staff are being laid off, or retired world wide. We will not need aircraft engines in the volume we have in the past.
I was laid off in early April for “covid related downsizing” reasons. I’m a skilled tech worker in the San Francisco/Silicon Valley region with over 20+ years of experience in my field. Before I was laid off, my company (a major star-up with ample funding, and outpacing all growth projections. I was 5th hire almost 4 years ago) had hired two outsourced Chinese nationals (contract, not full time). I helped train them. There level of work was mediocre. I’m not a conspiracy theorist in. Any sense, but this has me thinking. China will do well out of this. I don’t think there was any Chinese “grand plan”, but they will benefit from the hysteria.
That level of insight is why he earns the big bucks.
I don’t think he’s an idiot. Previously he had to toe the party line, make sure people were more scared of Covid 19 than any economic impact, so people would cower in their homes. However the tide has turned – now they need to terrify people back to work. Expect to see the terrible economic impact ramped up over the next few weeks.
As Madeline Grant said in an interview a few weeks’ back, the government was a victim of its own success and now they will have to find a way of reversing that given that the economy is now in a tailspin.
I suspect that having dangled the carrot, Sunak will now unveil the stick – perhaps that will shake many of the Covid zombies out of their torpor.
Some companies that were not doing well before this will shed jobs and blame Covid 19. Same thing happened after 9/11 when all the airlines in chapter 11 retrenched workers.
They don’t have the right to destroy society in the name of safety. Let’s face it those whom claim they care about saving lives aren’t chained up outside the arms manufacturers protesting the loss of life of those the bombs are dropped on. They don’t care about other people. The people who really care are those wanting the full return to open society right now, those whom want the government vastly reduced in size and scope. We fought the war to free the people but it turns out we’re under the jackboot in a global tyranny ruled over by the WHO, the UN, the EU and other folk we don’t know. Told what to do in every aspect of our lives, for our own good. Well sod this for a game of soldiers. I’m not having it anymore.
Absolutely- I have been saying the same, sadly it seems that most people under about 50 don’t actually want freedom- it’s too scary. Interesting to note that it’s basically the private sector- which pays for all this- wants to get back to work, whilst the public sector- which is doing very nicely as usual thank you- is throwing tantrums and making threats. Meanwhile cancer patients, etc., can sod off. Can you imagine telling a private company, ‘No I’m not coming back to work until you guarantee 100% safety and you have to pay me my full salary and fund my pension in the meantime’? Just how do they think these things work?
“They don’t have the right to destroy society in the name of safety.”
Um . . . yes they do. That’s the problem.
They have the power to.
I wish it were possible to impeach Boris and his cabinet for gross stupidity. It grieves me that they will get away with the damage they have wreaked on us. As for all of us waiting for NHS treatment I’ve written off my op for this year, fortunately its not life threatening, just annoying.
“Dilettantism raised to the level of sociopathy” – this is what New York Times said about Jared Kushner when he took over the coronavirus response.
I would say that it’s a great description of Boris’ and his cabinet performance.
Yes, to coin a phrase, there’s disappointments, damned disappointments and Boris.
No such luck for the cancer survivor in Edinburgh whose eloquent piece is quoted from above. It is, simply put, her life on the line. And while I agree with most of what she cites, she’s wrong in one aspect: the cancer fatalities will not be ignored but added to the Covid 19(84) tally.
Which is, in a way, ignoring them…sadly.
Same here. I’m listed as “urgent” since my delaying my op will almost certainly reduce the chance that normal function will be restored and I will be left with a disability. In the meantime prolonging the treatment I’m currently on can lead to all kinds of complications I just don’t want to think about. I’m pretty fit and healthy currently – I work at it – but a further delay of months will mean morbidities that will require more treatment.
Sorry to hear that Jonathan. Fingers crossed they manage to sort you out sooner than you anticipate.
I’m sorry to hear that. I’m a Type 1 diabetic and have condition called diabetic amytrophy. This is a rare condition that causes muscle wastage of the legs mainly but I managed to get a neurologist. I got referred for an MRI scan. Amazingly I got the scan 2 weeks ago although I had to run a gauntlet of Covid screenings and the country hospital was like a ghost ship apart from PPD donned nurses. Like you I fight the condition by cycling. Gladly it’s reversible and doesn’t need surgery. Keep your chin up mate and I hope you get the surgery you need.
Hope that your operation gets scheduled ASAP.
The thing that really disturbs me is this talk of ‘easing restrictions’ when really its the complete opposite. So when they talk of opening bars and restaurants, at 10% capacity and only outside, or allowing people onto the tube but only with security preventing you from getting on (if you still have a job) if there is some capacity, or the insane restrictions for schools that are simply psychological abuse camps, then it should be clear that they wish to impose restrictions that were never there before. They have gone through every minute social interaction in our lives and made it arduous, restrictive, petty and unworkable under the guise of ‘keeping us safe’. They are doing this almost at the same time everywhere in the world so its not like these ideas are coming from our corrupt government. These ludicrous yet sinister measures are here to stay and if this ‘new normal’ is the way we are supposed to live then it is a life not worth living.
Agree, MoH. Except that it seems to be our karma to make sure they’re NOT here to stay.
I said right from the outset of this that it would be very interesting to see just how many of our little freedoms we get back. Politicians and bureaucrats don’t like giving things back. As usual, I was dismissed as a conspiracy theorist when in fact I am a simple Libertarian who values his freedom above all else- so a Nazi according to some…
Like you, I prize liberty. It’s very worrying and bewildering how many folk are content to be and even want to be infantalised. Our welfare state is not the safety net it was intended to be, but the foundation of dependency and the antithesis of self-reliance. It also facilitates big government and all that entails, with big slogans and other tools of propaganda so readily appropriated.
You aren’t alone in this…. for ruminating on this very point about the ratchet of authoritarian measures, I was labelled hysterical, ironically by people intent on responding hysterically to the piffling risks of COVID… Fine thought I, let’s just see, shall we?
I totally agree. The New Normal is oxymoronic and hideous phraseology. Hell no!!!
Good t-shirt there Catherine –
New Normal ? HELL NO !
Quite apart from anything else, it wrongly implies that there was an ‘old normal’. It’s classic communist thinking of individuals as fungible cogs in a machine, all with the same backgrounds, skills, talents, drives, beliefs and desires.
If the depression isn’t enough to get the Reform Party into power at the next General Election, then our future, and the future of young men and women even more so, is starting to look pretty grim. Time is running out if we want to actually change the course we’ve been on since 1990.
Stuff like this gives me hope that the future may not be lost. Hopefully Americans have woken up to what life would be like under the Democrats
Helpful if I provide the link!!!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Bm8urk_Ifs
And meanwhile in the rest of the world……….
https://mobile.twitter.com/amnestypress/status/1261324416157454337
Where the fuck has Amnesty International been all this time?
Censored I imagine, for spreading false information – gross breaches of human rights only happen in those nasty ‘poor’ countries, not in the glorious First world!
Hiding under the bed like all the other bedwetters..
Scrub that comment. Bedwetters hiding under a bed doesn’t make much sense.
Could be a bunkbed. Stacked bedwetters.
In the Universities section ‘I think the same is true of the UK, except that Covid has speeded up the process’. We know you meant the lockdown and the associated panic rather than the virus itself!
As you point out, many universities were already strapped for cash before all this so it seems the Vice-Chancellors have crunched the numbers and reacted accordingly. SC2 has provided a handy figleaf for slashing costs. Otherwise this suicidal overreaction to ‘protect’ almost the least vulnerable sector of society makes no sense. Who would want to pay Russell Group top-whack for ‘Open University Lite’ i.e. without the study weekends? No social life, no peer group, no sports, no sex, no booze, no drugs – no point! We wonder how the universities can come back from this. We share your view that Higher Education may be yet another casualty.
On another note, the secretary of a local British Legion in our small High Peak town has just told us he’s shocked at the number of emails he’s been getting reporting suicides among local ex-servicemen. Many more than normal. Also a Registrar friend of his reports a growing number of teenage suicides (or attempts) locally.
No sex, yes indeed. I’ve not seen it mentioned before – perhaps it is considered in bad taste – but sex has been banned for many, unless public indecency is your thing. If nothing else, I think this will break the collective appetite to stay “locked down” and to “social distance”. Attempts to stop people having sex for extended periods generally don’t work out too well.
I am hoping against hope that some universities find a way to provide a more normal experience, so that students can choose what suits them best.
If this 2 metre distance insanity persists, I can’t see any primary and secondary schools and colleges being able to offer a full time on-premises experience – there simply isn’t the space and aren’t the number of teachers to be able to have that kind of separation and smaller class sizes.
I wonder how many of the cabinet actually believe this madness, and intend it to carry on forever, how many are simply still in panic mode and haven’t really thought it through, and how many know it’s all nonsense but are going along with it to fit in, and how many know it’s nonsense and are saying so, privately, because their strategy is to pay lip service to providing “covid-safe” environments everywhere until the panic dies down and it becomes old news, and other countries have taken the risk of opening up “properly” and haven’t fallen apart? None of those possible positions are much to be proud of.
I’m sure sex is perfectly acceptable so long as both parties observe social distancing.
All very well for King Dong but not us mere mortals
Neil Ferguson couldn’t hack it either, bless him.
If students do online courses rather than actually attend university there will be a massive economic knock on effect. There is a university in my city which is a major employer. If universities move to online courses far fewer staff will be needed and many businesses in my city are dependent on student trade which they will lose if no students come.
Agree Ianric. The university in my home town was at one time the biggest employer. Add to that the money spent by students in local shops and bars and the rents paid to landlords the impact of losing it would be huge.
This amounts to a candlestick makers’ petition.
Things will move on, some businesses will win, others will lose.
The whole further education business is a pyramid scheme that will inevitably collapse under the weight of technology, mobility and the strangulation of student life by all the zealots they’ve acquiesced to.
Mine too! The university is essentially the economic backbone of my town.
This is the inherent problem with the runaway numbers of ‘universities’. Not only has it dumbed down the entry level and quality of content, but these institutions are primarily businesses and everything else comes second. The priority is bums on seats to the detriment of students and standards. Universities do attract lots of investment and improve the ambiance of the local areas, but that shouldn’t be the function of academia?
Jesus, look at that unemployment claims graph.
To those who begged the government to go harder with the lockdown; those who vented their faux virtue-signalling outrage on social media when we got the tiniest crumb of relief on May 10th with pathetic easing of restrictions; those who snitch on their neighbours for daring to go outside; those who clap for the the NHS, a bloated behemoth parasitically sucking the life out of this country, which actually caused more deaths with its sclerotic bureaucracy and ruinous policies; those who treat Neil Ferguson’s debunked many-times-over model as gospel; those who are prepared to abuse our children and rob them of their childhood to satisfy their own myopic abdication of risk assessment; those who shut down beauty spots and stop people from getting fresh air and exercise when there is zero risk of transmission in a wide open space; those who slavishly adhere to arbitrary social distancing; those who believe that cancelling the medical treatment of millions is an adequate price to pay for dealing with Covid when hospitals now lie empty; those who refuse to engage with countless pieces of evidence that undermine the lockdown; those who think it is justified to completely decimate the economy and the livelihoods of millions for a virus with a tiny mortality rate; and those who never had the balls to stand up for the truth.
Every single one of them.
They own this crisis.
100%
Poppy, I’m a reasonably intelligent bloke who wouldn’t normally believe in outlandish theories, but two things fairly recently have made me question the motives of our ‘leaders’. One was Theresa May’s woeful performance in the 2017 General Election and obviously more recently, Johnson’s (and indeed other ‘leaders’ around the world) handling of this current pantomime. They really can’t be so dumb, can they? And that makes me think that there is an ulterior motive (and that’s not the way I like to think…)
It’s clear this is a global economic ctrl-alt-delete.
YES!
Too right and with Bill Gates seemingly driving the keyboard.
Yes, it is really hard to understand how this could have happened. I still favour cock-up (well, Boris is the chief culprit after all), but it is a devastatingly astonishing piece of stupidity. I think they just decided to deal with this one issue and forgot everything else.
Brilliant Poppy,absolutely spot on,but you know what they would say,’yeah,but if saves just one life……’
And yet, in normal times, old patients get sacrificed all the time for
the benefit if younger patients. Ask any honest health pro.
Rantastic Poppy.
Yes excellent”!
Again I wish I can recommend this comment more than once. You have articulated very well how I feel.
Can I interest you in making some babies, Poppy?
Poppy
Well said
I know how to get public sector back to work. You are back in school, council offices, dept for xxx, etc. Etc. Next Monday or we furlough you. What the fear disappear.
Wow! Bravo!!!
And we will pay the price of this whole none sense together. Now, when allthe evidence stands for lockdown sceptics,every single person on this site should receive a relief from tax increases. And the ones from Poppy’s brilliant summary should pay the price for what they wanted. But now the government is in trouble with their politics pleasing the majority of people instead of leading them. I’m wondering how they will sell the bad news now. It’s very likely that they will finish if don’t go for massive debts that even our grandchildren will pay. I would bet for it that’s what they will do. Because in this way they still can please people instead of leading them. They will delay the problem instead of sorting this out now. We certainly need politicians who are not shared to lead people and take the responsibility for what they did.
Ah, but we won’t all pay the price together, will we? Only those of us who actually produce will pay. As usual, the public sector will do just fine.
Absolutely spot on Poppy! You’ve perfectly articulated how I feel, thank you.
Don’t forget all this who don’t qualify for any of the schemes so are not on the numbers – 3 in my house alone.
Poppy, that is brilliant. I hope you don’t mind that I have copied it and posted it to as many friends and family as won’t disown me for ‘impure thoughts’ as possible. Thanks to you for a great comment. And thanks to Toby Young for all his brilliant work and dedication. This site truly helps keep me sane in a world gone mad. Thank you!
I’ve been working through this in a large supermarket 36 hours a week and before this whole thing the company planed on having a double discount day for employee’s but in a show of solidarity with the grief stricken they’ve cancelled it saying it’s not respectful to those suffering the virus. You know what i’ve always said that the only people they hate more than the customers are employees. I’ve worked my pan in for £9.50 a hour and company profits are up over 30%. I’m glad though that i won’t be getting my extra ten percent off because i’d be upset to think grief stricken families were more grief stricken knowing that i was getting and extra ten percent off my shopping for one day. To hear people saying they don’t want to go back to work makes me mad. Those refusing shouldn’t be using my supermarket
Biker, for what it’s worth, what you and your colleagues are doing is very much appreciated by the vast majority of the public. We only go shopping once a week but we’ve seen some really flaky characters giving verbal abuse to shop workers. We ‘clap’ for you all on Thursday evenings!
Cheers T Prince. The worst customers are those in masks. Almost all of them are rude and aggressive. They’ve lost their mind and have decided that they can just shout at me any way they like. As always the most selfish horrible people are always those who virtue signal the most.
Well said, as always, mate.
If anything the supermarket workers, postmen, delivery people, bin men and cleaners deserve the clap every Thursday not the NHS.
“supermarket workers, postmen, delivery people, bin men and cleaners deserve the clap”
Bit harsh, surely….
At the beginning of the lockdown my wife and I volunteered to stock shelves in the local supermarket for free even though we have full time jobs and run an animal charity because we knew they would be inundated, They were very appreciative but didn’t accept our offer probably due to insurance reasons.
Not much chance of that with social distancing!
Whoopsie – I meant we should be clapping for those workers not the NHS”
Wish there was an edit button
Though I’m with Riffman below. I’m certainly not planning on giving anyone the clap….
Yes! And don’t forget the workers and owners of the local shops (for those who still have them)
Whoa here everybody! I thought seal clapping was rather frowned on by readers of this site? I fully appreciate the work put in by those mentioned: but 1) they are all lucky enough to have a job and 2) they are (certainly supermarket staff) under say 25, and as ‘we’ all know at no risk ( not even slight) to themselves. I wish my daughter could find ANY work right now.
Steady on. I’m furloughed from my current job, but I’m topping up my already low income (the company refuse to pay the remaining 20%) by working as a home delivery driver for a large Supermarket chain. I’m 58.
Independent shops are going to be decimated by this.
Thank you for all your work. My supermarket has been an oasis of normality throughout this, the staff cheerfully ignoring any of the 2 metre malarkey. However my mum’s supermarket was a different kettle of fish, with “we’re all in this together” T shirts (I have NEVER been in this together), young people holding placards urging customers to keep their distance, more young people spraying everything in sight with disinfectant spray, and a one way system which I didn’t notice. I will avoid that chain in future.
It sounds like the same supermarket I’ve used locally a few times- customers tut-tutting because I take my son and he sometimes STANDS STILL to look at things and once, gasp, went the wrong way by mistake! You’d have thought he’d just stabbed somebody…They dutifully line up outside doing the one out/one in thing, even when there isn’t anything telling them to, and get very abusive if you ask why. I popped my head inside to ask if we could come in and was told that there were three people in so it was fine but the woman in front of me was most indignant, telling me I was putting every one at risk…that’s me told then. Meanwhile, in two other local shops staff and customers are carrying on quite cheerfully. Bizarre,no?
First day of compulsory muzzling here in Spain. You can, however not wear it if you can keep a distance of 2 metres. Took the car in for a service and there were fewer muzzle wearers than I’ve seen in at least a month. At the garage they had to tell numerous people that muzzles were necessary. The mechanic we talked to was wearing a mask stood talking to us like a normal sane human being at a sane normal distance. One other guy walked around happily dealing with customers and without a muzzle. Warmed the cockles.
I cannot understand how supermarket and shop workers are so unregarded in all this. They are at the forefront at what keeps this society going. But we’ve all seen them treated with disdain and even abuse. It makes me ashamed at what sort of a society we’ve become. It’s also more evidence of the deep class divisions in this tragi-comedy.
Ms Pearson was correct in yesterday’s (20 May) Telegraph: British society has gone stark raving mad. And that’s the kindest interpretation that can be put on it.
Well done Biker, and please let your workmates know that not everyone is regardless of what you are all doing.
The universities have an agenda that goes beyond student/staff safety. The university of manchester closed their campus on 17th March. They immediately cancelled a large number of research scholarships, pleaded financial ruin and demanded a government bail out. On what basis? At that point their finances were in the same state as they had been 1 week/month/year previously. Nobody received a fee refund, and huge numbers of staff were furloughed. The decision to suspend face to face teaching from September seems like a strange way to retain student numbers. Learning online isn’t just about logging in to lectures. It means no library facilities and no campus life. This does not equate to the same high standard that they claim justifies no fee reduction for this or the next academic year. I don’t know how they’re getting away with it.
1) Teachers unions should be treated as terrorist organisations and acted against accordingly. Recalcitrant teachers should be fired and barred from teaching again.
2) I’m reaching the point of wishing to see the entire political and media establishment hanging by the neck.
I’m not convinced either of these measures will be sufficient, but the feelgood factor will be a vital boost for national morale.
1) Agree
2) Agree
This may give you a feelgood factor…even if you’re not a Trump supporter, the alternative is pretty scary.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Bm8urk_Ifs
The alternative is creepy…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_H5NJZMDumY
Jeez…. Saw Eric Garcetti (Mayor of LA) explaining lock down rules in his part of sunny California: You can swim, surf, body-board in the water (sea) . You can run or walk on the beach but not cycle. You can sit on WET sand but not DRY…and we think we’re being lead by jackasses!
It is crazy, would love to hear the reasonings behind those rules. I know some of those if not all of the democratic leaders are just trying to hurt the economy as much as they possibly can. Just to blame it on Trump… It hasnt been a health issue for a long time anymore.
What reasoning do they need? Where people like Boris could be said to have adopted these extreme measures with reluctance, is there a single leftist who hasn’t approached the whole business with relish and an eye on the boundless opportunities to wield power for its own sake?
Yeah, me for a start as I have said maybe a dozen times in this forum on different days.
Haha… fair enough… I’ll presume you naive, rather that evil
You know that’s the first time since I came here on the first day the site was published that someone has made a personal remark and a judgmental one at that. I’ve had very sensible and very civil exchanges with people who hold a different political perspective. I’ve respected them and they’ve reciprocated. Forty five years active engagement in politics does not make me naive. What is naive is thinking that anyone that leans to the left of the political spectrum favours lockdown and the curtailment of liberties. None of my colleagues, who also have the same leanings, support the authoritarian tendencies of a mouthy vocal group. To think we might: now that’s naive.
xxxxx
Dunno what went wrong there. I wanted to say Well said Nigel (speaking as a non leftie)
Nigel, the comment was tongue in cheek – hence the winky emoji – no offense was intended.
Teaching unions in particular are an absolute disgrace. Don’t child abusers have to stay a certain distance fron schools. That’s as close as those people should be to any school. I say the unions, because I know there are lots of teachers who love their pupils and their jobs and would be back tomorrow if they were allowed.
Katherine Birbalsingh always gives me hope, and I have teachers in my own family who are inspirational in their own ways.
None of these would deny the preponderance of pondlife among their profession though.
The chart on the timing of the lockdown vs the peak deaths is excellent. But I had heard that the median time for death is 18 days (see minute 9 of this useful moreorless podcast: https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m000hn4s). Would be good to hear where the source of the 23 days for the median is.
Thanks for sharing this. The source for 23 days is the early Wuhan paper, but I agree it may be different in the UK for a number of reasons. The thing I don’t this is clear is why London and the UK are so different, when the lockdown date was the same (and if you extend this analysis internationally, there is very little consistency between lockdown date and the date of peak deaths).
Did the government foresee all this damage when they panicked into the lockdown.
Or is coming as a surprise?
I believe they knew this would happen, anyone with half a brain that can think outside of the MSM brainwashing narrative could have foreseen this, the bigger question is why they and other governments have done this?
Everything is happening as they wanted it to. Lockdown was inevitable, even when it was becoming quite apparent how small the threat was. Now big businesses can capitalise, and millions are beholden to the government for handouts, as long as they do as they’re told.
Reported today that 9000 jobs are to be lost at Rolls Royce. Call me an old cynic but in due course I suspect these prestige manufacturing jobs will pop up somewhere ‘off shore’.
I don’t think so. The global economy is on its knees and the aviation industry is in extremely bad shape, I seriously doubt there will be much demand for what Rolls Royce does.
‘Accepted wisdom’ (I don’t know how true it is) says that the luxury sector – Rolls Royces, big yachts, jewels, etc. is always the least affected during bad times.
I think the reason why that’s the accepted wisdom is that their production is small to begin with and they can always rely on a pool of millionaires/billionaires as customers. Of course the reality is as the global economy tanks a lot of these rich will take the hit as well – I used to live in Edinburgh (my father-in-law still does) and since we’ve left there has been a building spree and many of these luxury flats have been snapped up by wealthy foreigners mostly Chinese. I won’t be surprised if there will be a plethora of “for sale” signs outside these flats as these Chinese rush to cash in to either pay their debts or keep their lifestyles and businesses afloat.
I think the most telling point for me was when the news that Neil Ferguson had resigned broke. The next morning Matt Hancock was interviewed on Sky News and asked what he thought about it. All he had to say was “I’m speechless”.
Maybe it’s just me but that’s the response I would expect from somebody thinking “That arsehole got us into this mess, I’ve not even got something remotely nice to say about it”. Secretly I think people are really pissed off that they were taken of course by his modelling.
All just my opinion of course as there’s no way to prove any of it.
That’s a very interesting observation about Matt Hancock. He could have avoided been drawn into the case and yet he roundly condemned him, saying it was a matter for the police.
It would have been easy to use a prepared line about how helpful his expertise has been, but we are disappointed.
I thought at the time that numpty Neil was being set up as the scapegoat for this and the decisions based on his worthless modelling would be reversed. Hancock’s “it’s a matter for the pólice” comment suggested that Ferguson’s role in this disaster was going to be investigated. Silly me.
Everyone who was taken in by Ferguson, given his track record, should be peeled and rolled in salt.
This is what we get for being ruled by a cadre of wankers who did PPE degrees, and spent their formative years thinking they were in Brideshead Revisited.
Not a one of them appreciates that there is no such thing as ‘the science’ and that models are completely worthless until they are validated by real data.
What I would like to know is who was the actual person that hired Ferguson to advise the government. Did they not check his CV and realise his past modelling debacles were as accurate as a 4 year old’s. Maybe he just lied on his CV and just pretended he was epidemiologist.
Apparently Imperial College are the A-Team when it comes to this sort of thing. I’d hate to see the quality of the other teams if that’s the case.
With all that Gates money, they can afford the best PR firms.
The fictional A-Team were on the run from the authorities. Would be nice to see life imitate art…
Just been thinking about something after the daily update:
Am I correct in thinking that the R number and therefore number of new infections is now higher in the north than it is in London? It seems to be presumed that this is because London has always been ahead of other parts of the country in terms of the course of the infection ( I think I remember it being stated that London was 2 weeks ahead of other parts). What’s confusing me is that, if this was the case, and as the lockdown was implemented for everyone at the same time, then surely on the day of lockdown London would have significantly more infected people than other parts of the country. If the lockdown was the reason for the drop in infections, as we’re repeatedly told, then wouldn’t the north hit zero new infections first (as I think London have today) simply because they had a lower starting point?
As this hasn’t happened wouldn’t that suggest that the course of the infection is dropping after a certain period of time, regardless of lockdown, and that’s why London is so far ahead, because it started there first??
As I’m saying, this is just me thinking out loud – I’ve done no research to back this up so my assumptions may not be correct.
I think you’re right with your thinking. However the counter argument would be it wasn’t a proper lockdown as there were still millions of people working/moving around. This makes it hard to say for definite that the lockdown had little effect.
Based on the data it would appear that the virus would have declined regardless of actions taken. Some people predicted this and that’s how things panned out. In some ways lockdown may have extended the time the virus hung around for.
I recall seeing MSM news reports of tube trains and buses crammed with people and the fear that this would lead to rampant transmission of the virus. This has not happened as far as i am aware? So another MSM fear porn story?
What you’re saying makes perfect sense to me and I was thinking the same thing the other day.
Sadly though it seems rather difficult to discuss any aspect of this situation with a lot of people because they just start accusing you of wanting to murder OAPs, or if they are a little more genteel in their ways you get a sort of “does not compute” reaction – I rarely see or experience any exchange where there’s a real attempt to engage with specific points of logic or approach and make counter arguments. That’s one of the most difficult and dangerous aspects of this madness.
What one really wants to see is senior government figures and their advisors and prominent supporters – those responsible for this mess – grilled in a Q&A by sharp-witted, slightly hostile journalists who are well briefed on the subject, or grilled by experts with differing views.
Anders Tegnell vs. his UK counterpart, head to head, for an extended period. Or the Swedish PM vs ours. I’ve no idea if the Swedish PM would be much cop, but somewhere there must be a politician with balls who can also speak well and appear intelligent to “intellectuals” that might start to dent some of their idees fixes.
Get the president of Tanzania in! And tell him to bring his papaya!
Whether it’s a green papaya or a white papaya, we don’t have time for parliamentary procedure right now.
Baddum tish !
What we really needed was someone of the calibre of a certain Mrs. T leading the country, but sadly they do not make them even remotely like her anyomre.
‘you isolate if you want to, the lady’s not for isolating’
Yep now is the time to draw a line from the Wash to the Bristol Channel and build a big wall on it.
Your logic seems sound.
The UK gov added loss of smell and taste to the list of symptoms on 18th May that should warn people to self isolate for 7 days being Covid-19 suspect.
https://www.cebm.net/covid-19/loss-of-smell-and-taste-as-symptoms-of-covid-19-what-does-the-evidence-say/
According to this evidence-based review very strange to incorporate these symptoms just now. The evidence are not strong and furthermore only having these symptoms to self isolate would lead to gross overdiagnosis. Furthermore, both influenza and other resp. viruses could have these symptoms.
The point is that this science led government introduced this measure and only 2 days later an evidence-based investigation from a reputable source have serious doubts about this.
https://www.avogel.co.uk/health/hayfever/can-hayfever-cause-loss-of-taste-and-smell/
Just in time for the grass-pollen season. Keeps the ball rolling, so to say.
As a lifelong sufferer, yes it bloody does!
Everything is a symptom. Makes it easier to attribute deaths to it and get those numbers up.
Also, it’s hay-fever season and anosmia (loss of tasste/smell) is a common symptom of that, too. I wonder why this is being trotted out now….
Very good point! And for some reason it’s especially bad this spring.
It was bad agree. This is the first time I had to take antihistamines my whole life.
The photo I saw accompanying this story showed somebody wearing a face mask trying to smell a rose. I think I could have suggested a diagnosis and a cure.
Loss of smell and taste is your average bog standard symptom for a whole load of illnesses – colds, flu, fever, cough, even hay fever. I get the feeling they’re really scrapping the bottom of the barrel now.
Just the same with suddenly putting a load more people on the self-isolation-for-twelve-weeks list now. Scraping the bottom of the barrel for yet more lockdown justifications.
Waiting to hear about covid related dandruff.
And still they claim that we should have had _more_ lockdown, not less. And yet again, it’s all from modelling, not actual evidence: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/05/20/earlier-lockdown-could-have-prevented-three-quarters-uk-coronavirus/
I mentioned before in a post (I think yesterday) that people conflate the need for a lockdown with the result of isolating a virus.
If we start with the simplest case of 1 infected person by isolating that person and it’s job done (assuming no other infections). If you lock down an entire country and isolate that person it’s the same result but you could be mistaken in thinking it was the lockdown that achieved that result.
Early action to isolate a virus makes the biggest difference but it’s not necessarily down to enforcing a lockdown. Case in point compare New Zealand (lockdown) vs South Korea (no lockdown) with basically the same result.
The difference being that that one person won’t cause everyone else to go bankrupt if you only isolate them.
Just had a good day at Blackpool.
Some very heartening sights:
lots of families and groups playing on the beach and in the water – too cold for my old bones though
very few masks and gloves in use, only 2 being worn by very old people in wheelchairs and a few others used as chin warmers so they could speak properly
very little concern about social distancing, just people being polite and civillised
shopkeepers willing to listen when I said the council forgot 2 words from the social distancing signs – if possible
shopkeepers not fussed over enforcing any of the restrictions, it is done by the people themselves, if they remember
Police just driving up and down bored not hassling anyone
only 1 +/- 25 year old, I’d say university educated reasonably well off professional and his partner getting twitchy in a queue as he did not know what 6 ft looked like and he never had a thought in his head that did not come from social media and he’s the least in danger – numpty
very few compared to normal down and outs and drunks about throwing litter everywhere – but give me a choice between these and the destruction of our society I’ll take the drunks and litter
I also converted a few people round to skepticism – one lady by asking her to listen the next time the government advert came on and listen to the 2 words stated after “social distancing” is mentioned as she did not want to go in a shop with others in it. they are not “you must” but “if possible” as it is not a law so not enforceable.
A man we chatted to was very much a believer until I reeled off facts, figures, dates, names etc and when he asked which nutty sites I got them from I explained it was all from the ONS, daily briefings, PHE, WHO, eumomo, videos of Vallance, Whitty, Gates etc. He did a quick check of a few websites on his mobile (and so did a few others round us listening in I could see) and said “they are lying to us the bastards”.
One person at a time a that quote from ages ago says – man goes mad in a crowd, returns to sanity a individuals (or something like that anyway.
All in all a good day out – sunshine, fish and chips lunch, ice creams and sticks of rock .
Impressive work and well done on keeping up the R number of the truth.
Indeed.
I have taken to talking to people on my daily walks (when I find some) and it’s interesting just how many have become cynical about the never-ending bullshit. Doesn’t take much of a push for some of them to open up.
“Police just driving up and down bored not hassling anyone”
But I don’t think they should be there, anyway. No doubt the police in East Germany didn’t hassle people – most of the time…
You’re right, they didn’t – their informers in homes, families and workplaces did the job for them. They just came in at the end to make the final arrest after the inevitable denunciation.
I’m starting to think this book isn’t about East Germany after all:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Stasiland-Stories-Behind-Berlin-Wall/dp/1847083358
From Cambridgeshire,probably, where the police had a snitch site up and running as soon as the lockdown started. Hail to the fenland Stasi.
Good on you my friend.
Popped into the supermarket today for a socially distanced experience . A few ” Karens ” wearing face masks ( what is the male version of Karen called ? )
There were karens back in the flu epidemic of 1968.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V9yj72pkPWo
Ken. I like Ken.
Although he sounds a bit too hunky.
Keith. Gotta be Keith.
The only tradesman who came to my house in mask and rubber gloves was called ” Tim ” ….whereas both Scott and Kevin were attired as normal.
Or Ian…?
Darren?
I just call them twats
Did you not get the memo on gender fluidity? We’re all ‘Karens’ now and must be referred to individually as ‘they’ or ‘them’…
It’s Derek. Derek and Karen. He plays golf.
BBC just interviewed a ‘fit and healthy’ doctor in his 50s with ‘no health conditions’ who survived his noble battle with The Corona. (What’s betting if we did some digging we’d reveal otherwise, but whatever that’s not my point).
They managed to find the 1 in a million (literally) case and interview him.
What’s stopping them interviewing some of the thousands of cancer patients like the lady mentioned above? What’s stopping them interviewing a parent whose teenage child has committed suicide? (they love a good suicide when someone’s been bullied- but not when they’ve been forcibly imprisoned in their own home apparently)
Shame on the BBC. Shame.
I’ve recently received a reminder that my tv license expires at the end of this month. I don’t have live tv, I refuse to have my viewing interrupted by strident ads for stuff I neither want nor need, so I just use a firestick and iplayer. I’ve just finished watching the excellent A Word and am about to watch Killing Eve 3. I’ve been so absolutely disgusted with the biased covid news reporting and disappointed with the toothless HIGNFY that I doubt I’ll renew my license this year.
Good decision Cheese. The telly is insidious, and very damaging.
Maybe we all need to stop paying the bbc to lie to us, give auntie a bit of a shoc
I will battle Capita goons on my doorstep with kitchen implements after this. They’ll have to arrest me before I pay the tv licence ever again.
To help get across the anti-lockdown reasoning I’ve started a twitter account that attempts to pull together short messages about the damage the lockdown is causing, and alternative ways of viewing the science.
The idea of “flashcards” is that they can be easily shared with people to help get the message across.
I’m a PhD molecular biologist myself so I understand the majority of the science behind this, and I work in science media now so know how to spot when science is being spun.
If you want to use these flashcards you can find them here: https://twitter.com/covidflashcards
All the best – let’s keep fighting the good fight.
Nick, I suggest you tag other known sceptics when you tweet, Toby, James Delingpole, Peter Hitchens and so on – people with large followings – that way you may get more followers and retweets..
These are superb; well done. Look forward to seeing them out there in the wild.
They are great, but Britain’s zombies are in a state if psychotic panic and wholly impervious to reason.
Fantastic resource. Someone was asking for something like this on here yesterday.
Fantastic!
Nurse who only wore underwear under transparenet PPE gown on male hospital ward in Russia because she was “too hot” is disciplined (but the patients don’t seem too upset!)
Conspiracy version: Russians devise a new way to reduce the pressure on geriatric wards by seeing off some of the old buffers with heart attacks.
Mind you, if she had a similar weight to many of the nurses seen of late on TV, it might have failed.
Lockdown doesn’t work – again:
Peru’s coronavirus response was ‘right on time’ – so why isn’t it working?
The Guardian notes:
“In stark contrast to his Brazilian counterpart, Jair Bolsonaro – who has deliberately undermined social distancing and quarantine measures – Peru’s leader strictly adhered to the World Health Organization’s coronavirus recommendations and mobilised the police and army to enforce a stringent quarantine.
But more than two months later the country is one of the region’s worst-hit by Covid-19 and has been unable to flatten the curve of infections. Peru now ranks second only to Brazil in Latin America with more than 99,483 cases and a death toll of 2,914 according to official figures on Tuesday. ”
You would think the comparison would therefore be worth exploring further, wouldn’t you? I mean otherwise the reader might be left just to assume that Brazil has done much worse than Peru. But no, the Guardian decides not to bother with that kind of nonsense. After all too much information of the wrong kind is bad for plebs. They get all confused and start to get silly ideas that they can decide for themselves about things that should rightly be left to the much cleverer people who run leftist newspapers, for instance.
In fact, here are the current stats on the two countries on Worldometer:
Peru Population: 32,920,378 Cases: 99,483 Deaths: 2,914
Brazil Population: 212,391,489 Cases: 275,382 Deaths: 18,130
So deaths per thousand pop:
Peru: 0.088
Brazil: 0.085
Sweden has double the population of Scotland but only 400 or so more deaths.
And one of the people advising the Scottish Government made it clear on Question Time (Devi Sridhar – 14th May) that Scotland should be aspiring to countries like South Korea and not Sweden. Lo and behold we’re still under stay home restrictions until the infection rate goes down as much as possible.
Devi Sridhar is a snake.
Speak of the Devil: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/may/20/british-schools-science-children-education-testing-tracing
No mention that Sweden didn’t close their schools. Guess they don’t think there’s anything to be learned from there.
“The lesson from there and other nations with similarly effective regimes is that the UK needs to suppress the virus and ensure that public health infrastructure is ready to detect new infections and identify clusters rapidly.”
So as I said above, this is likely why we’re still under the stay home slogan in Scotland.
Sorry she was talking about Australia in the quoted part.
Now here’s someone who has the right idea – especially about the furlough:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/consumer-affairs/furlough-generous-transformed-pub-supermarket-instead/
We have a duty to respect and obey the government.
Unless it does something morally WRONG.
Which is what the lock-down is.
Therefore we have a duty to disobey this government.
Let’s get Godwin again- Do these people think the Germans had a duty to obey Hitler?
Yep as per the Nuremberg Principle – I was just following orders is not an acceptable defence.
A duty to respect and obey the government? I reject both of these putative obligations in their entirety.
What’s the source for 23 days median between infection and death? According to the UN the mean incubation period is 5-6 days https://www.un.org/en/coronavirus/covid-19-faqs. And according to large surveys in Italy https://www.epicentro.iss.it/en/coronavirus/sars-cov-2-analysis-of-deaths and UK https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.23.20076042v1 the median time between symptom onset and death is 10 days. That’s 4 days between symptoms and admission and 6 days between admission and death. The death curve can also be seen to lag the admission curve by 6 days.
It puts UK peak infection on 23 March, 16 days before peak deaths on 8 April and the day before lockdown came in.
This paper: https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.03.09.20033357v1 says, “We estimate the mean duration from onset-of-symptoms to death to be 17.8 days (95% credible interval, crI 16.9,19.2 days)” so you need to add another 5 or so for incubation.
Possibly the shorter times found in that other UK study were because people were turning up with already rather severe symptoms? Especially as rather a lot of them died. I couldn’t see where it said 10 days in there anyway but I probably just wasn’t looking hard enough.
This would put peak UK infections a bit earlier. There’s also a bit of a lag in when deaths get reported although maybe you took that into account.
The Manchester paper (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/ijcp.13528) puts the peak of reported cases on 8th April. But that will lag actual peak infections by however long it takes to get a PCR test back and for it to get reported.
The Verity report from Wuhan has not been replicated in Italy or UK, for whatever reason, and shouldn’t be relied on for other contexts. The Italy study gives 10 days. The UK study says 4 days from symptoms to admission and 7 day average hospital stay, though that’s for all patients not just deceased. However, the lag between admissions and deaths in New York City is 7 days. With this consistency of data pointing to 15-17 days it’s hard to see how you can apply the Wuhan interval to the UK and other Western countries.
Reported cases is almost useless data, of course, because it depends on number of tests and who’s tested.
The Wuhan data is the source. I can’t access the Italian link you posted but I agree that the time from infection to death in the UK may well be more like 18 days. I think the more interesting point raised by those charts is why it is so different between the UK and London. If the lockdown has caused infections to peak, you would expect the peak in deaths to be at the same time.
Also, if you extend this analysis internationally, there is little correlation between lockdown date and peak deaths. Now, none of this may prove anything – it might just be that the infection > death time varies widely between countries (for example, because Italy was more willing to accept elderly patients into hospitals, prolonging their life) – but it’s an interesting data point which hasn’t had much attention to date.
I don’t know why you can’t access the Italy report. Google ‘Characteristics of COVID-19 patients dying in Italy Report based on available data on May 14th, 2020’ to find it. UK is more like 16 days.
We should use the best, most recent and most relevant data to build the sceptic case and that is the data from Italy and UK not Wuhan.
I agree the lack of any consistent relationship between social distancing and death curves is receiving scandalously little attention given it’s the main verification data for social distancing measures. I have been writing about it, most recently here https://conservativewoman.co.uk/social-distancing-the-case-against/.
I can see the Italy link now – and agree that’s a fair challenge.
I’m not sure I do agree that the peak in London is the same as in the rest of the UK. If you dig into the ONS data in more detail (rather than looking at the absolute peak, which tends to fluctuate), the curve for London looks to be c. 4 days ahead of the rest of the UK, and 2 days ahead of the Midlands. Perhaps 4 days isn’t enough to be statistically significant – or could be explained by something, but it is strange given the lockdown happened simultaneously in each region.
Yes the London curve is flatter at the top and gets to the high level earlier – it’s a slightly different shape making comparisons difficult. The peak used to be 4 April but shifted as more late registrations came in.
Also the peak of deaths in both London and UK is 8 April not 6th and 10th. See https://www.cebm.net/covid-19/covid-19-death-data-in-england-update-20th-may/
Another great document from ‘Architects for social housing’ showing the lack of justification for the lockdown and manipulation of Covid death recording: https://architectsforsocialhousing.co.uk/2020/05/01/manufacturing-consensus-the-registering-of-covid-19-deaths-in-the-uk/
Extract from the above-mentioned document: ‘it’s on the basis of this increase of an average of 522 deaths per week this year out of a population of 56 million people in England and Wales that the Government has imposed the lockdown of the entire UK, the suspension of our civil liberties, and the removal of our legislature.’
Uncanny how fit they all look? I’d go for a world like that in a heartbeat: no iPhones, women still taking pride in their appearance, men looking like they mean business. The old boy in the background is even doffing his hat! Bring on the bubble cars!
Down my way the local rag is stirring up trouble with photos of people that have the temerity to go to the beach in 26c weather, Some of the comments are ludicrous. ‘They’re spreading the virus, they’re all going to die etc etc’
https://www.theargus.co.uk/news/18462616.brighton-beach-goers-soak-sun-lockdown-ease/
The ignorance is astounding. I enjoyed the numbers piece Toby linked to today. Under 45 healthy person is more likely to be struck by lightning. Brilliant. And yet we still have to queue outside Tesco like sim city NPCs
Near me (Suffolk Coastal) queues seem to have largely disappeared at Tesco – and the atmosphere while shopping and at the tills has become much less tense. Maybe it’s the weather or maybe all the paranoid sheeple don’t come out any more!?
The sheeple stocked up on Monday for their extended minibreak at home good weather lockdown.
Same here in the part of Dublin I live in. Not just Tesco but Iceland and Lidl also. Having said that, I can’t see our Government bringing forward their lockdown lifting schedule.
I have been emailing various ministers regularly on anti-lockdown matters (primarily our Minister for Health and the Taoiseach) -needless to say, they haven’t responded.
Unfortunately for me, I live more than 5km from my family and am WFH so haven’t seen anyone I know in over 2 months at this stage. I am part of the collateral damage of this insane policy.
Around me (south London) there is some serious casual racism crawling out the woodwork. Our local neighbourhood Facebook group (predominantly white, middle class) spends most the day taking photos of black kids and families in the parks and posting them up complaining. It drives me nuts the assumptions people make about other people, and yet they’ll all be the first out there clapping away for the NHS and feeling holier than thou!
“It drives me nuts the assumptions people make about other people”
And yet here you are, making assumptions about other people.
Just sayin’.
‘The World Bank warns 60m more people could be pushed into “extreme poverty”‘ off the front page of the BBC website. I will be using this retort to the lockdown fanatics quoting thier gospel as the source when questioned where I got it from.
Quite – and that is the sort of true poverty that kills. Our Prime Minister (among most other leaders) should be heartily ashamed of this even if they can live with the decimation of our economy and life prospects. Suicide levels are expected to surge now, but I doubt many politicians will take that route.
Heard today that 9000 jobs are to be lost at Rolls Royce. Call me an old cynic but in due course I suspect these prestige manufacturing jobs will pop up somewhere ‘off shore’.
I think that I remember a time when 9000 job losses at RR would be the headline of every national newspaper
Probably somewhere which doesn’t have 2m of social distancing!!!
Today, in the dictatorship of Scotland, hundreds of families defied Sturgeon to go for a stroll on Portobello promenade. Needless to say, Plod turned up to “offer advice” but only because, it seems, some local bigwig snitched on them. Disappointingly, Ruth Davidson MSP supported Plod rather than her constituents. Despite that, I’m pleased to r3port that Plod’s intervention had little effect.
In some trepidation I glanced at the Guardian. Have you seen the headlines? Eu should brace for second wave, says EU coronavirus chief. Largest daily rise in covid19 cases prompts WHO warnings. You read the articles on this site, and the comments, and you think that sanity is beginning to prevail. And then you glance at the Guardian.
I think this pandemic is just the sort of situation Epidemiologists (experts in general) have been waiting all their lives for. They want to be the Dennis Quaid character in The Day After Tomorrow who warns the world of impending doom. To put it crudely, when the time came they shot their load.
My main reason for going to the Guardian is to check their ‘live’ coverage which tends to be a bit better than other papers, otherwise it is mainly their columnists celebrating the opportunity to enforce the god awful ‘new normal’ on us…
‘Amazing Polly’ on youtube produced a plandemic document showing a second virus – I wonder if another virus will be ‘magically’ released into circulation in the autumn, but called a second wave or mutation, in order to ramp up the fear and enforce another lockdown, to be followed by enforced vaccination?
On the bright side, Jane. you doubled their readership, so I don’t think we need worry about the wooly-headed wingnuts spreading their ideas too far from Islington.
The Guardian is really the pits.
Best bit is, typically during a recession the government ramps up borrowing and does some good old fashioned economic stimulation.
However, having already borrowed our way into the recession, we don’t have much more to give. What’s the government going to do? Icelands ‘let them collapse’ approach? More borrowing; with a generation of crippling austerity to pay for it? Beat the economy with the mother of all tax increases – some countries have >70% income tax brackets already! Throw their hands up and say ‘fuck it’ and default. At least it will be fun to watch the 2024 labour government try borrowing on an ‘junk’ credit rating.
Having spent some time on Reddit, it seems like the majority of people are under the impression that the government can just loan itself infinite money. Hmm… Hyperinflation anyone?
It’s not just the government that’s taking on debt. Much of the “help” offered to business is in the form of loans that they will have to pay back. And householders who avail themselves of payment “holidays” on their mortgages and credit cards will find that interest has continued to rack up and they owe more than before. These debts fall disproportionately on the young, while the beneficiaries of the lockdown, in terms of lives “saved” are more likely to have cash or assets to their name.
We need a better, fairer way of paying down the debt than the government’s normal debt management process. I call this the ‘Soros Plan’ because it’s based on a series of papers George Soros wrote around the time of the Greek debt crisis. He suggested that European governments and central banks should target nominal GDP growth of 5% per annum, and if this could not be achieved through real economic growth then inflation should be allowed to rise to make up the difference. Thus would the value of debt be steadily eroded in relation to the capacity to repay it. Creditors would have an incentive to promote growth in order to minimise the loss in value of their assets, while those with cash in the bank would have an incentive to spend it rather than hoard it.
With its own currency and central bank the UK could pursue this path alone if necessary, but would be better if as many countries as possible do the same.
Given the size of the deficits/debts caused by the lockdown, I would suggest a starting figure of 10% nominal growth per annum, to be gradually tapered as the situation improves.
The level of inflation would be limited and kept under control, the worst case would be like Britain in the 1970s. I was there. It was not that bad. We even still had the freedom to play outside.
I certainly think that a novel approach is needed, will need to give soros’ papers a read, it sounds similar to what China have implemented (note their massive success in transforming from a backwater to a superpower, using 7-10% forced growth)
Being born in the late 90’s, I couldn’t possibly comment on how good or bad the 70ies were! (Although this lockdown has shown the need to use past experience to put current affairs into context)
The Bank of England is a private bank, does not belong to the nation. That is why we as a people have to pay interest on borrowed money from it. If it was “our” bank then this would not happen.
Part of the Rothschild’s fractional reserve banking scam, all very interesting reading when your research into it.
As far as I know only a few countries left with a nation owned central bank – Iran, North Korea, Syria and a couple of others I can’t remember. Libya fell recently, first thing the “new government” passed into law – institute a Rothschild owned central bank.
https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/knowledgebank/who-owns-the-bank-of-england
You do this site (and sceptics generally) no favours by spouting such easily debunked information.
Try this independent site:
https://newspunch.com/complete-list-of-rothschild-owned-and-controlled-banks/
Lots more info out there on the it all ties together and how fractional banking works.
Few more sites to start independent research but lots and lots more that are easy to find:
https://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/esp_sociopol_rothschild.htm
https://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/sociopolitica/sociopol_globalbanking.htm#Central_Banks_
Just looked at the 1998 Bank of England Act (Gordon Brown’s doing) – they do not report to the Government nor do they take orders from the Government on what they want to do to follow monetary policy. The Government has no control over anything the Bank of England wants to do and has to pay dearly for the privilege. Policy is set based on instructions from the Queen with input on what the wanted monetary policy is supposed to be (but all bit vague) and oversight is by the FSA.
There was a company called Bank of England (Nominees) Ltd that held all the bank’s shares and had specific exemptions from reporting requirements under the Companies Act so it was all a bit murky to say the least. This company was dissolved in 2017 and I’ve not found out yet who/what took it’s place.
The 1998 Act says the Bank of England can charge for “issuing” money which is the interest taxpayers pay for the privilege of brewing money from “our own bank”. If we own it why do we have to pay extortionate amounts of interest each year to them that drains the country’s pockets?
If we own the bank as a national asset then why do we pay this:
“In our latest forecast, we expect public sector debt interest in 2019-20 to total £41.6 billion (reflecting £52.4 billion of gross debt interest payments and £10.9 billion netted off due to the APF). That would represent 4.9 per cent of total public spending or 1.9 per cent of national income.”
Direct from the OBR website https://obr.uk/forecasts-in-depth/tax-by-tax-spend-by-spend/debt-interest-central-government-net/
If we own it then they should pay us money surely?
In the same report it says “The biggest components are interest paid on government bonds (known as ‘gilts’, of which there are two types: conventional gilts that pay a fixed amount of interest and index-linked gilts that pay an interest rate linked to RPI inflation), to holders of NS&I savings products and on the reserves (in effect electronic money) created by the Bank of England for monetary policy purposes.”
This means we pay them interest on money that doesn’t exist and they created it out of thin air on a computer screen. That is the essence of privately owned and/or controlled central banks running the fractional reserve banking scam.
Ah the good old days of needing a wheelbarrow full of money to buy a loaf of bread.
https://uk.yahoo.com/news/coronavirus-lockdown-measures-104322610.html
Honestly, some of the comments on this story really do make me angry.
Stupid stupid people.
They Won’t be for the “lockdown” to continue when they don’t have jobs to go back to though.
Honestly, some of the comments are insane.
“The virus will mutate etc if lockdown is lifted”, or “we should wait another couple of months before lifting it.”
No, it should be lifted completely NOW. & get back on with Normal life.
It boils my piss to see how many gullible people have actually bought into all this nonsense.
Twats.
They wouldn’t be advocating it at all if Rishi wasn’t paying their wages.
I usually ask such people to tell us exactly how long they think we should be in “lockdown” for and to explain their exit strategy bearing in mind a vaccine may never be found. I don’t think anyone has ever answered me.
I find this worrying – they just shut down and can’t cope. Even clever people give answers like “well, we just don’t know”. I cannot comprehend the thought processes. I just want to be able to engage with someone more on the pro-lockdown side who will actually try to argue their case from facts and logic.
There was someone, on Malcolm Kendrick’s blog, who made a good attempt at some counter-arguments regarding a cost-benefit analysis of various options. That was the only one.
Yeah, the widespread gullibility used to annoy me too, but then I realised there’s a huge market for this bridge I have for sale. And the fact that it’s in New York shouldn’t even prove a hurdle, as my marks…sorry my *customers*, will no doubt believe that Uncle Rishi’s Magic Money Tree will provide the wherewithal for weekly visits to view their new acquisition.
Our captious readers may be interested in this snippet, picked up by my virtual Extendable Ear from the top-secret deliberations of senior Welsh ministers:
The Minister for Education reported, to loud virtual cheers, that all education in Wales was to cease forthwith and permanently.
‘Welsh people only need to know five things,’ she said. ‘To stay at home, to fear Covid, to worship the NHS, to obey Comrade Drakeford in all things, and to hate the English. As these five goals have already been achieved, there is no point in continuing with education.
‘Anyway, schools are very dangerous places. The fact that no pupil or teacher, anywhere in the world, has been infected while in school proves that conclusively.’
*******
Only jokin’, folks.
Or am I?
Denmark’s government disease research center (SSI): We’ve opened the economy. People aren’t getting sick. We’re very confused.
https://nyheder.tv2.dk/samfund/2020-05-20-ssi-vi-forstaar-ikke-hvorfor-der-ikke-er-flere-smittede
“ It is still unclear why increase in infection activity is still not recorded 4-4.5 weeks after the final reopening of Denmark. We don’t know whether this is due to high compliance with physical distance and hygienic advice, or whether it is a possibility due to biological conditions such as weakening of virulence (I.e. disease causing by the infection, ed) or infectiousness of the virus.”
Kids went back to school there a month ago, and masks aren’t required anywhere in Denmark.
It’s almost as though the “experts” really don’t have a f*kn clue, eh?
This could be bad news for Sweden, if the virus has run it’s course and doesn’t come back then the lynch mobs will be out claiming their deaths were unecessary.
Stockholm is the odd man out in the Nordic countries.Half of the deaths and also big badly managed care homes.Many grave mistakes in Stockholm. Take out Stockhom and the picture much the same in al Nordic countries.
I agree. It’s almost the same in USA at a slightly different scale. Take out New York State and their numbers are relatively low.
I think Sweden took a measured approach. They knew what they were doing and it looks like the people were kept informed with proper data. Here in the UK it’s all story telling with hardly any meaningful data giving the impression that they’re just making it up as they go.
Maybe the daily UK briefing ough to be renamed jackanory and then we all know where we stand
The lynch mob will be out whatever happens. Its their reason for existing – lynching to save lives. Of course fewer infectious diseases circulating can only be good for Sweden regardless of the actions of the lynch mob.
Yeah, tbh I’ve been a bit concerned about that ever since it became clear that these epidemics seemed to be running their courses pretty naturally. If it turns out there’s some seasonal element, or another reason why the epidemics are time limited rather than herd immunity limited then the lockdowners could potentially avoid the second worst (after the catastrophic damage caused) result of lockdown policy (if it works) – the absence of widespread immunity meaning you just postpone the problem.
Clearly that’s not a big problem if Sweden is compared to countries whose lockdowns seem to have failed pretty comprehensively such as the UK, but it might be a problem if they are compared with Norway and Denmark, if those countries don’t suffer any negative consequences from their lack of herd immunity.
That said, if it is just that it is seasonal then assuming there’s a reasonably long lasting immunity Sweden will be set to reap the benefit next time the coronavirus season comes around, so if nothing else that will postpone any political damage for a while.
When people start coming back and claiming their deaths were unnecessary, it’s really time to hide.
Has Denmark, or any other country that has closed its schools, actually reopened them back to full capacity, with children able to attend full time and play together without restrictions?
The Danes getting on with life. Hopefully someone in Gov’t watched this https://twitter.com/Channel4News/status/1263193844432154624?s=09
BREAKING COVID-19 antibody testing in Spain estimates ~5% infected -Those in quarantine trended toward a higher infection rate than those working (6.3% vs 5.3%) -Higher rate of infection in those OVER age 60 (6.1% vs 4.8%) Challenges the idea that lockdowns protect the elderly
https://twitter.com/JamesTodaroMD/status/1260934184551411722
Summary: Those working in essential services had less infection than those working age staying in the quarantine. Those over 60 more infected .The meaning of the lockdown?
Madrid and surrounding areas were more like 11% and the tests were done some time ago.
But reading some of Toby’s links today according to that EU report around 60% of the deaths in Spain were in care homes. How many of the remaining 40% were caught in hospital? The seroprevalence out in the countryside of Spain is almost completely irrelevant to the actual problem here. It’s also clear why you get such an overestimation of IFR if you divide the deaths inside the health care system by an estimate of the number of infections outside it.
Divide and conquer
Speaking to a few of my university collaborators, it seems a lot of places are planning along the lines of on-line lectures at least for autumn semester – but with the option to do it in person if the Dear Leader decides to unravel some of the social distancing nonsense sooner. There is some wariness about putting everything online so the consensus seems to be to be keep tutorials and maybe some labs, as otherwise it is difficult to justify the high fees….
At my place, the health and safety loonies are apparently putting in place one-way systems with stickers on the floor to keep us ‘safe’ when we go back. Apparently we get the honour of eating lunch in our cars and won’t even be able to get a coffee out of the automatic machines. And even when we are in work we will have to meet our colleagues over Zoom… Needless to say many of us will choose to work at home unless we need to go in and do experiments. I’m actually very worried about the arguments and friction all this is going to cause, some of my co-workers will not play ball with this rot, and that combined with unionised technicians sparking for a fight = hassle. I have made clear I will not wear a muzzle (as P. Hitchens would put it)
My heart was gladdened by the photos of Southend beach today, it’s really got under the skin of the lockdown-o-philes. But I do wonder how many of the people pictured were the same people ‘very frightened’ of going back to work and won’t send their kids to school. Today in the queue for the shop there were a lot of drunk people clearly enjoying the furlough and good weather too much….
I had an email from the university I worked at until recently about reopening. It seemed it would be a phased opening as buildings had to be “checked” one by one for safety.
I was trying to think of why it would 2-3 months for staff to “check” buildings, or indeed what they were checking for!
Story from someone I know who worked at a University: H&S decided to “convert” all the buildings for wheelchair access. Having done all that they then decided to ban wheelchairs everywhere above the second floor.
Ha ha. You can’t make this up. Great way to waste money and resources.
if I am not mistaken I think it means that Covid Shamans must perform their secured rituals to banish the evil Coronavirus spirit. I believe they do it by chanting various traditional matras such as ‘Stay Safe’, ‘Stay Alert’ and others.
Same idiocy going on at my uni, which rough region of the country is yours in james007, wonder if it might be the same one as mine. Management busybodies getting in the way of research, just finding excuses to delay things. If buildings couldn’t be trusted to look after themselves for a few months they would have fallen down decades ago. They’ve taken over 2 months to decide to form some commitees to look into how reopening should be done, if there was a national organisation of researchers against bullshitting HandS bureaucrats blocking acces to our labs I’d join it in a femtosecond, only together can we over-rule their stupidity with our sense.
And also, all these brain dead management bureaucrats are going, in the absence of talented foreign students being charged exorbitant fees, and the abscence of UK and foreign students being charged extortionate rents to be on campus, and the abscence of some UK students who’ll drop out of paying almost as exorbitant fees if course go online, and the presence of extra anti-covid layers of management no doubt, to be begging Uk Gov for more money. Doesn’t look very good asking for funds when you’ve spent months failing to get any research or teaching done. Managers bring shame on all who do actual work, they do not represent us.
‘Covid shamans’ I love it!
ReopenTheUnis, sorry to hear of your troubles. If it’s any consolation, at least some of my university collaborators are starting to get back into their labs, including two London universities. I fear the unions at our place (and I am a member) will be a blocker and are the ones causing trouble. They see this as an opportunity for score-settling.
Nursing students and other students in health care will presumably have to have hands on practice or are we going to have virtually trained nurses now?
The answer obviously is no. So if its ok for them then why not other students?
BBC hate campaign against hydroxychloroquine has got new impetus by the arch villain Trump taking it. As an antidote
https://www.medicineuncensored.com/
I didn’t know that this prophylactic study in South Korea in long term facility had such a good outcome
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7162746/
Although not double blinded, as the authors state clearly, should have inspired ,very early on in the pandemic, massive studies. This was published in a very respectable medical journal.
Seems to be an interesting site, even more so as Google Big Brother has taken down one of its papers.
I certainly would not discount the merits of HCQ at all but it is said it has to be taken in conjunction with zinc and I’m hoping the trials currently being undertaken here will include zinc.
Agree the trials should include zinc. A previous study did not include zinc and then used a control group that received vitamin C (a great antiviral) – great underhanded setup to prove that it does not work.
Not a single vaccine has double blind tests either. Bet they won’t mention that when our saviour Gates is flogging his wares about town.
This is just ridiculous:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/05/20/sweden-becomes-country-highest-coronavirus-death-rate-per-capita/
They’ve taken the death rate per capita over 1 week just so they can put in in a headline. It really annoys me to see media distorting the truth like this. Then they have the gall to complain about social media being rife with fake news and threatening the legitimacy of MSM.
Could it be to restore the fear, because London hasn’t recorded any new cases in 24hrs?
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2020/05/20/pmqs-uk-recession-coronavirus-lockdown-boris-johnson-news/
It’s just bashing Sweden for providing the evidence to counter the mainstream narrative.
‘Peerless Reads’ on youtube reckon that all the latest UK and Swedish statistics are being fiddled, in order to disguise the falling rates of infection and death. He shows that the statistics they are putting out are are all over the place.. I believe him with regard to the UK (the government seem clearly to be wanting to continue the lockdown), but with Sweden I think the weird new ‘spikes’ of new infections may possibly be being caused by people who have chosen to ignore government advice and have travelled to other regions (where the peak had passed), carrying the virus with them and thereby causing new outbreaks.
You can track the Swedish stats here: https://experience.arcgis.com/experience/09f821667ce64bf7be6f9f87457ed9aa
Sjukdomsfall/dag is new cases per day (I think) and Avlidna/dag is daily deaths (actual and not reported date). Their daily deaths are pretty low now.
Oh, daily deaths for UK (when they happened, not reported dates which is what we see on most sites): https://www.cebm.net/covid-19/covid-19-death-data-in-england-update-19th-may/
I live in Uppsala (Sweden) so am following this and yes, your translations of those words are correct
And you are right that numbers are falling.
I’m not sure why our government would be still fiddling with the statistics at this point.
In the beginning, to justify the lockdown, yes. But now, they must be looking for a way to get out of this mess and this can provide it.
People seem to believe that falling death and infection rates are the result of the lockdown and their ‘sacrifice’.
Nope, sadly they want to continue the lockup as long as possible. Despite what they say, avoid saying. and will say.
I’m thinking they need to justify prolonging the furlough scheme and keeping pubs etc closed – also it is in their interests to justify the lockdown because the stats otherwise show that we had passed the peak infections before they locked the population up. So the longer they can keep the numbers up the better.. I also think that for some perverse reason they are hoping for a second wave of infections..
Only way to stop a second wave is to work towards herd immunity, as soon as windows shut and air cons go on in the autumn the virus will be having a party. Only way to stop a second wave of lockdowns is to work now and over summr to form a well organised pro-liberty campaign group, with local contacts in meatspace not just forums online.
I’m not sure if I can agree with that. Some countries have opened earlier than planned, so it’s not like it’s set in stone.
Project ”panic” can be reversed – maybe not entirely and probably not for everyone, but enough to get the economy going.
Yes, the are millions who are furloughed and who would use any excuse not to go back to work, but that’s not everyone. A lot of people worry that they will be made redundant at the end of their furlough period and the longer this is going the chances for that will indeed keep increasing.
I don’t believe in one big conspiracy theory behind all this, because conspiracies at this scale simply don’t work. I do think that there are a lot of parties involved (governments, big pharma, bill gates, etc.) that want to use this as an opportunity to push their agenda.
Also, there is more evidence coming to light every day that the virus isn’t deadly etc. It looks like almost everyone is trying to play safe, but I think that we’ll be seeing more and more public figures coming out and speaking against the lockdown. Just like all these people who are now criticising Ferguson’s modelling but didn’t have guts to do it earlier.
If businesses are allowed to go back to normal and operate without social distancing rules in place, then a lot of furloughed people will go back to work earlier than October.
Today I read that another expert says this virus is just a very bad cold.
I don’t know anyone who’s had it or died from it so I’m finding this lockdown and mask wearing public who leap out of the way when I approach them too bizarre!
Our family of 5 all had it, it was nasty (2 weeks in bed) and lingering for the worst case (patient zero) right through to just 12 hours feeling off-colour for the youngest family member. Definitely not worse than my experience with a proper influenza infection. Maybe there will turn out to be an immunological sting in the tail like chickenpox or Epstein Barr but that is just conjecture and nothing to justify the government’s current paranoia.
Please let me know who and give me a link, in case I can add another one to the list I’m keeping!
So the breaking news seems to be that – “Sweden overtakes UK with highest coronavirus death rate per capita -did they get it wrong?”
https://www.express.co.uk/news/world/1284920/Sweden-coronavirus-lockdown-latest-death-rate-per-capita-us-uk-death-rate
“Sweden has recorded 6.08 deaths per million inhabitants, higher than the UK, USA and Italy.”
6.08 deaths per million inhabitants – why not focusing on the fact that it’s 6.08 deaths per million inhabitants, which I think still falls under 0.04% even without the lockdown.
A quick look reveals that this is only true for deaths recorded between 13 and 20 May.
No real change in total covid deaths per capita.
These cretins must be getting really desperate to show how ‘disastrous’ Sweden’s policy is.
A sneaky way to play with numbers
“UK scientists must not be blamed for giving advice, says Royal Society head”
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/may/20/uk-scientists-must-not-be-blamed-coronavirus-advice-says-royal-society-head
LOL
“UK scientists must not be blamed for giving advice, says Royal Society head”
“Media must not be blamed for just being the messengers, say newspaper and TV editors and reporters”
“Politicians must not be blamed for following The Science, says every politician caught in disastrous error”
British people: “guess it is entirely our own fault then…”
“British people can’t be blamed for breaking lockdown rules and not following the governments advice”.
“Members of the public must not be blamed for wanting to cower under the bed for the rest of their lives in response to even the slightest whiff of danger”
Where their methods were clearly flawed and unprofessional (Ferguson), that should be acknowledged by science leaders and acted upon. Whistling and walking away from this will not wash.
Does this mean they know the advice was er….. shit?
My eldest has already vowed not to return to university if it’s online in the fall. It’s really not the same thing at all. Fortunately here in the U.S. there are lots of schools that will be open, and I’m sure would be happy to accept those left high and dry by their home institutions.
It amazes me how “sad” academics are feeling, and how they lament that colleges and universities are already struggling, and it will be terrible if the students don’t come back! This is such a classic case of reaping what you sow. No one has been more vocal about shutting everything down than university faculty. If they lose their jobs – well, yeah. Isn’t that just a shame.
The students were all summarily kicked out of their programs in March, while many of them were off on break. The schools dumped THEM. If the schools refuse to offer the services they sell, why should anyone pay the regular price? There are plenty of dedicated online programs for a fraction of the cost of actual institutions.
In the UK university used to be free (and the government even gave you beer money in many cases).
Then some government decided more people should go to university (maybe to make unemployment look lower or something). Then we reached the point that this became unaffordable and so not only was the beer money taken away but people found themselves paying for tuition. Looked at in the harsh light of something you’re actually paying for many university courses turned out not to be such great value, especially as there’s a bit of a race to the bottom going on to attract the dimmest students.
If they now become online-only I really don’t see how they’re going to compete with all the superb online educational material you can already find completely free on YouTube (that didn’t exist when I was at university but which I have learned far more from over the years, and I was at a very good university).
I think some sort of correction here is inevitable and I won’t be shedding too many tears over these second-rate universities that go bust.
In reality many of the second-rate universities are no more than ‘property empires with a light bit of teaching on the side’, as summed up by an academic acquaintance of mine. Agree with all your points. When I went to university in the early 1980s, due to family circumstances, I had a full grant. It was enough to see me through and I left with no debt. From my experience of academia, it is often staffed by unimpressively qualified, but cheap, lecturing staff, overseen by a huge ‘blob’ of even less impressive political appointments, with students often ill equipped to learn from years in sub-standard secondary education.
The Open University, which has always operated remotely, has superb teaching materials of its own, provides tutors who give you far more individual attention than you’d get anywhere else except, perhaps, Oxbridge (I know, I used to be one), and charges far less money. What’s more, the degree courses are modular so you can build up to the degree at your own pace. But the OU always lamented that it couldn’t provide ‘the full campus experience’.
No contest now, is it?
In Tesco today, at the checkout, I was told to stand behind the line so the guy in front could finish packing and paying for his shop. There was around 4m between us, I had been at around 2m but that was insufficient and I was asked to retreat a further 2m. Trouble was, that brought me within 30cm of the couple standing at the same point of the adjacent checkout queue. So in order to enforce their meaningless regulation, they actually put me in “danger”. I also did an experiment on the “N95” masks I bought on amazon. I got one of my wife’s cigarettes, filled my mouth with smoke, put the mask on, then breathed out. The smoke came directly through and out the other side, except none came through the respirator valve (where it is supposed to come out). Not a scientific check for virus defence (different size particles, etc) but a test that the masks are complete BS. Unless you buy a genuine N95, know how to wear it, wear it religiously with NO exceptions, then masks are not useful. Try the smoke test challenge on your favourite scarf or snood that you are being asked to believe can be effective masks. It reminds me of the nuclear warning adverts in the early 1980s which said ‘if you hear the warning siren, hide under the table’ – fat lot of good that would do against a thermonuclear strike
Derren Brown (magician or whatever) did an experiment once where he locked people in a room and they got points for doing actions. They did not know what actions gave points but could only see a counter going up so they had to work out what actions gave points.
What they didn’t know was that the points given were completely random based on a fish swimming back and forth in a fish tank. However because they saw the points counter increasing they continued to believe that it was their actions that were attributable to the points.
It’s the same thing with mask wearing. People look at Asian countries that have managed to control the virus, see them all wearing masks and assume that’s why they were successful. All the while ignoring countries that also controlled the virus that don’t as a rule wear masks.
I always say if it was clear cut then there would be no arguments between the experts about the value of mask usage.
I’m from that part of the world and again, the irony is they’re not very good with hygiene – went to China many years ago and in many places the toilets were disgusting and there were no facilities to wash your hands.
In Japan as well there was no soap unless you went to the shopping centres and restaurants that were frequented by foreigners and tourists.
Ditto is several SE Asian countries where there was even no loo rolls in the public toilets so you have to carry tissues and paper towels in your bag (my husband finds it amusing that I still do it even after being in this country for so long).
As a Taiwanese acquaintance told me many years ago, the masks are simply a placebo, they know that they don’t really work but its a force of habit and gives them a sense of security (albeit false).
Yet another useful function for ciggies. Goodness me, they’re wonderful !
Yes, and, since they seem to protect from covid infection, maybe they act to disinfect the lungs – you know the disinfectant action that Trump (that son-of-satan) mused about!
‘Duck and Cover’ back in the sixties I think
I keep reading the articles and comments about teen suicides. How desperate for kids and young adults who believe they are in the eye of the storm and yet the truth is that it’s not the category 5 hurricane they are being told it is… instead it’s a strong wind on a distant shore. They have grown up believing that they have been born into a deeply unfortunate time that if climate change doesn’t ruin their lives then their financial prospects will or maybe Brexit will.
Many of them have now denied the chance to prove their worth to the system that has shoved exams down their throats since they were tiny tots. Not only that but the school they attend and the universities they might hope to attend aren’t there to support them at all. They say they are and give that impression but point-scoring, bureaucracy and safetyism come before the true needs of the students. The job market that might have been open to them is being completely trashed before their eyes. They have been kept from friends, extended family and any simple, carefree pleasures of life that teens live for. No bloody wonder some of them have been pushed beyond the brink… where’s the hope? Where are the people telling them that actually they have opportunities that no other generation before them has, that technology and innovation might be the key to fixing this ‘broken’ world. That it’s ok to not be completely safe 100% of the time because in truth we never are. They have been truly left behind and overlooked in all of this in the worst way.
People are so blinded by their own virtue signalling, NHS wank-fest that they can’t see that their house really is on fire now.
I have said on here before, the proponents of lockdown, including the ‘scientists’ and the government ministers unwilling and unable to challenge even the most basic ramifications of lockdown, should hang their heads in shame for the death of any young person through suicide.
Having read the article about the National Trust, their plans don’t make sense:
1. members have to pre-book a slot to visit their outdoor spaces?? Many of their members are computer illiterate and so the phone lines will be busy all day, others won’t just bother telling themselves “ain’t got no time for that”
2. houses to open from August?? Given that many of their properties are only open from March to October/November, that doesn’t really give them much time to generate some revenue does it?
3. cafes, shops and facilities to follow – yet again they miss those crucial extras that make money. To paraphrase the Duke of Bedford, cafes and toilets are very important if you get them wrong people won’t bother to come.
Its not surprising that people are cancelling their memberships. What is the point of having something that they can’t use? And its odd that they are not offering members any leeway such as not renewing memberships while properties remain closed or offering a few months’ membership next year free (if they have renewed or opened a membership before the lockdown)
I think the National Trust and everyone in the museums and heritage sector should wake up. When we formally enter into recession, my sector will struggle really badly as people already badly affected by the lockdown and its eventual aftermath will have to tighten their belts and prioritise their spending. Unfortunately art, culture and heritage will fall under “luxuries” – given a choice between keeping the roof over their heads or visiting a National Trust property, Joe Public and his family will opt for the former. And I won’t blame them.
I still hope that, in a month or two, as the situation in Sweden continues to improve without a lockdown and as more and more countries begin to open up and so much data showing that lockdowns were a mistake accumulates that it will be impossible to ignore it, all these silly plans made by universities etc. will be scraped.
Agree. There are still just under two months to turn this around. If we are lucky we’ll end up like Switzerland who brought their opening forward or Italy where its just falling apart as more and more regions defy central government.
I will keep you updated as regards developments here in Sweden! I can tell you that this week our bus services in Uppsala (where I live) reverted back to their usual timetables (they had been scaled back since late March, partly due to less people travelling and partly due to drivers off sick). I hope this is a first sign of a return to normal, although I have to say that Sweden pretty much closes everything over the summer, from when schools shut in early June, until mid-August when they open for the autumn term.. So there may not be that many more changes till then..
The NT is slavishly kowtowing to the Stalinist clique that is stomping on Wales and has closed all its properties and car parks, even for the remotest and most windswept headlands, and us keeping them closed. Questions and criticisms are fobbed off with patronising standard replies. They disgust me and I am now an ex-member.
Well said about the domino effect. This is why IMO museums and heritage sites need to reopen minus the social distancing rules – its not just us who will be affected but even those we do business with such as suppliers, printers, MMG providers, etc.
I don’t think visitor attractions will especially be swamped after this but social distancing will ensure that the public will avoid museums and heritage sites like the plague. If that won’t put people off the prices they charge for admission will.
The strawberry grower could organise students, a picnic table, an old van, and sell them in lay-bys across the country.
We get cherry sellers near us, but I reckon folk would buy strawbs as well.
No deaths in London and the South East for the 19/05/20 https://www.england.nhs.uk/statistics/statistical-work-areas/covid-19-daily-deaths/
Does that mean no deaths at all or just from WuHuFlu?
The latter!
This is very bad news for the government.
This will upset the BBC, Grauniad, and all the other media oafs who simply LOVE death.
When this is over and the reality of the unemployment figures hits home, I am concerned they may introduce conscription. After all there army recruitment has been falling for years and there must still be 1 or 2 countries in the world we haven’t started an illegal war with.
Great idea! Coincidentally we need more soldiers to enforce lockdown. This seems to be a win-win.
Good point; Boris hasn’t had ‘his’ war yet (I don’t count covid).
Eritrea is such a wonderful economic model to follow /s
Watching BBC 10pm news. Lots of scaremongering. No mention about how London has seen no new cases or deaths in the last 24 hours. We must keep spreading the facts ourselves.
We’re on the road to no-where by Talking heads. Suggested theme tune
I’m going for A Little Time by The Beautiful South
If a Take of the Day can be permitted, I recommend E. M. Forster’s ‘The Machine Stops’, which, with uncanny foresight, depicts the ultimate lockdown dystopia. Easily obtainable on the Web.
Mr Big Stuff, Who do you think you are? by Jean Knight https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9f4CyQto-0E
The Model – Kraftwerk
The R Number of the Beast
Mentioned in my post below, It wasn,t me. by Shaggy.
Can I suggest The Prophet’s Song by Queen? Very apt for Neil Ferguson. (Oh oh people of the Earth; Listen to the warning, the prophet he said: “For soon the cold of night will fall; Summoned by your own hand”).
I am trying to get my head around the phrase ‘following the science’ and it raises a few questions.
What is a science?
The definition seems to vary a bit, but this is from Encyclopedia Britannica
Science, any system of knowledge that is concerned with the physical world and its phenomena and that entails unbiased observations and systematic experimentation. In general, a science involves a pursuit of knowledge covering general truths or the operations of fundamental laws.
Is Predictive Modelling a Science?
Well obviously it can be. If I write a spreadsheet to determine the stresses and strains in a bridge beam I can predict whether it will stand up or fall down. Now, the formulas I will be using have been theorised first and then tested in labs and have been proven in the real world because, of the thousands of bridges built which do not fall down. Of course the odd one does but we learn from that and revise our science accordingly. This fits quite closely to the definition above.
Predictive modelling is used widely in financial decision making and, as we all know, often the results turn out to be erroneous. They have not been tested by systematic experimentation and generally do not follow the definition of Science above.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Predictive_modelling
The same applies to the predictive statistical modelling carried to out advise the Government on the likely death toll from Covid-19. Quite clearly systematic experimentation cannot have been carried out on the software to predict the spread of this virus because it is indeed novel. i.e. it has never been seen or studied before. Even worse is that when the Imperial model had been used before to predict outbreaks of other, different, viruses its results were out by orders of magnitude. This Imperial model is far from complying with the definition of science above and can therefore only be considered as Junk Science.
Perhaps then, to be clearer to the public, the Government representatives should be more honest and say they are ‘Following the junk science’
The Royal Society’s ‘It wasn’t me’ statement therefore has no standing.
But then, The Royal Society’s own motto ‘Nullius in verba’ is taken to mean ‘take nobody’s word for it’.
Ah well, the blame game for this will continue for ever.
The fact that the other scientists advising the govt seem to have been unaware of this is the frightening bit and makes me question the quality of the advice they offer to govt. generally.
I think that government advisers understand that they are there for 2 reasons, i) As a cover if things go wrong; ii) To give the government the advice that they want to hear.
It sounds like something Dominic Cummings would constantly parrot. As we never hear or see Mr Invisible, we tend to forget he is around.
He reminds a bit of a Doug Stamper character from House of Cards.
A genuine scientific hypothesis needs to be falsifiable. If the entire world locks down, there is no way to falsify the hypothesis that the lockdown was necessary. It is essential for the world’s governments to characterise Sweden’s approach as a de facto lockdown so that no scientific data can ever be produced to say that the lockdown was wrong. Catastrophically, tragically, history-makingly, civilisation-endingly, war-causingly, mass-starvationly, Mad Max-ingly, wrong.
So it appears that this weak, feeble government are going ahead with the ridiculous idea of quarantine for people returning from abroad. Even from the Greek islands which have ZERO cases of the virus. Not content with ruining this country, the health of those awaiting operations and cancer treatment, peoples’ finances, futures and homes, they now want to decimate the tourist industry both here and abroad, ruin lives even further and destroy the airlines. I won’t be stopped from going to my summer home in Greece any longer, I have family there I need to see, so I will come back via Ireland to avoid quarantine. Which makes a nonsense of the whole idea. They’ve lost the plot. Sorry …. rant over …
I think that a class of primary school infants could take apart this governments policies. Perhaps they would do a better job of it than the press. I can imagine the teacher reading the story:
“One day, all the politicians decided to stop a nasty illness by telling people they were no longer allowed to live their lives for a while, and would have to be frightened into quarantine for their own safety (called a “lockdown” – a word used by prison officers, when the prisoners are violent and there is a risk of a riot). If they had to go out, they had to avoid each other. No one was allowed to travel”.
I can imagine the children asking questions like
“But what if people get the illness anyway when the lockdown is over?”
“But wouldn’t all the people feel really sad for a long time?”
“Are the politicians really allowed to do that?”
“But wouldn’t people get poor, and that might be worse than feeling ill?”
“If the virus is already here, would it be much worse if people were allowed to go on holiday?”
etc….
I think children could pull apart forcing care homes to take back residents from hospitals, introducing pointless travel bans, closing schools and using a concerted media/ad campaign to frighten the population into thinking they may kill people and themselves if they dont follow the government’s “advice”.
they will indeed do a better job. Scary
The quarantine scheme has all the hallmarks of an idiotic Dominic Cummings government by opinion poll scheme. Talk about ‘bolting barn door after horse fled’. If I was a cynical man, this might be a half baked scheme to force people to holiday in the UK. This might backfire for a number of reasons – all of my colleagues (in Champaign socialist central) say they will bank their annual leave for use next year if this happens. Not to mention the face that if the lockdown is eased this summer a lot of employers are going to want the worker bees back in and beavering away to make up for lost time – even my place is talking about this…
It only makes sense if this whole charade is indeed about control and the imposition of a nwo, and not about a virus at all.
Chilling really, but those of us with brains need to consider this as a possibility/likelihood.
Ooh, ooh, my first ‘awaiting moderation’ message. Have I been bad ?
Ah, I see, an extra ‘j’ on my name. Not bad, sloppy.
A lockdown skeptic from Florida.
https://twitter.com/LawrenceBJones3/status/1263177475376513024
Some countries have used the “dangerous” HCQ as early and prophylactic use for Covid-19. Most of them have pretty good numbers compared to the average deathrates. Could be coincidence, I have no idea. I just like stats…
India (deaths/million 2), Costa Rica (2), Australia (4), South Korea (5), Argentina (8), Israel (32) and Turkey (50).
https://www.effiedeans.com/2020/05/are-we-having-fun-in-lockdown-scotland.html
Another good article -see above.
She Who Must Be Obeyed releases her Road map today.
Meanwhile, bored kids will stay at home, small shops are dying, SNP nutters want the border with England closed-good luck with that- while insisting on maintaining open borders for the rest of the world.
A couple of points worth considering for the sceptics:
https://www.spiked-online.com/2020/05/21/the-pandemic-must-not-be-used-to-silence-protest/
Protests are rising in Germany; see the Spiked article.
State suppression continues.
Secondly, and worryingly, the government’s new Immigration bill contains a number of loopholes :
https://www.migrationwatchuk.org/press-release/612/immigration-plan-fails-to-protect-uk-workers-at-time-of-rising-unemployment
https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1263236596561776640
At a time when the UK faces the most serious recession in living memory, the immigration rules are being adjusted in such a way that employers are no longer obliged to advertise for UK applicants as a priority; new arrivals are forecast to continue to increase, unemployment is set to rise significantly, many many people are already on the breadline, or worse, and the surplus labour pool will continue to rise, particularly as settlement criteria have been loosened for several categories.
This is indicative of a fundamental lack of conviction in government circles: any and every attempt to raise questions about the wisdom of continuing to operate an implicit open door policy,albeit with a few cosmetic adjustments, is immediately shouted down as racist and heartless by the liberal establishment.
Our population is rising rapidly and converging on a major,probably lengthy recession; where and when will all the job opportunities materialise? How will the pressure be contained?
How will we reduce the already damaging low wage, casual employment policies if these rules pass into law,as it seems likely that they will be?
Nigel Farage is routinely dismissed as a vulgar trouble maker who should not be admitted to polite society, but he has been steadfast in trying to bring the consequences of this political disconnect to the public’s attention.
Many here will be discomfited by what I’ve written ,and no doubt disagree, but at least give the matter some thought.
We’re good at open good humoured debate here, so all thoughts welcome.
I used to be an Immigration Officer, so direct experience has featured here.
I agree absolutely – the situation is so crazy but the racism card is just played and played no mater how many bombs at concerts or knifings on bridges, quite apart from the total lack of jobs. What is behind it? Why do governments want to impoverish the ordinary people of this country and call us racist if we disagree with this terrible agenda? Governments want more government, more and more people under the heel of the welfare state. Communism by the back door? But the logic behind it all defeats me – the only explanation the quest for raw power. Evil people leading the naive to ruin all of us.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2020/05/21/real-scandal-illegal-immigration-country-collusion-french-navy/
Read this Marion. It is a national scandal which only the much vilified Farage has investigated thus far.
Collusion between government officials-ours and the French-while the Crazy Gang at Westminster continue to shred the economy, ruin the lives, hopes and prospects of many thousands of people and all the while sanction illegal arrivals ,most of whom will never be removed, all at great public expense.
Many jobs will disappear in the aftermath of this utterly disastrous and incoherent lockdown, yet we’re supposed to turn a blind eye to the sheer ineptitude of the Border Force and the Home Office and the so-called SAGE advisors.
We are being hoodwinked on an industrial scale, and I’m afraid to say that I’ve now lost all faith and confidence in our politicians.
This doesn’t resemble effective and trustworthy governance any more; it’s more like the ‘make-it-up-as-you-go-along’ show, driven pc posturing and the assumption that we’re all too dumb and compliant to question this monumental scandal.
Phew! Rant over.
The question must be asked, again, why were the real (coronavirus) experts not listened to?
This assessment was made, at a time when only inconsistent and flaky data was available, in an interview 06 Feb 2020:
‘”Sunlight will cut the virus’ ability to grow in half so the half-life will be 2.5 minutes and in the dark it’s about 13 to 20 [minutes],” Nicholls said. “Sunlight is really good at killing viruses.”
For that reason, he also added that he doesn’t expect areas such as Australia, Africa and the Southern hemisphere to see high rates of infection because they are in the middle of summer.
Regarding temperatures, Nicholls said the warmer the better for stopping the spread of the virus, according to the transcript of the conference call.
“The virus can remain intact at 4 degrees (39 degrees Fahrenheit) or 10 degrees (50 F) for a longer period of time,” Nicholls said, referring to Celsius measurements, according to the transcript. “But at 30 degrees (86 degrees F) then you get inactivation. And high humidity — the virus doesn’t like it either,” he added, the transcript of the call showed.’
‘……..he would expect the impacts of the virus to be varied in places such as Singapore, Indonesia and Malaysia. Singapore, Nicholls said, may potentially see the virus linger for longer due to an abundance of large public spaces with indoor air-conditioning, such as malls, where people congregate and temperatures and humidity remain lowered.’
‘However, Nicholls also said that he doesn’t consider SARS or MERS, a Middle Eastern novel virus that spread in 2012, to be an accurate comparison for this year’s outbreak. Rather, the novel coronavirus most closely relates to a severe case of the common cold.
‘”My feeling is that this is going to be just like SARS, that the world is going to get a very bad cold for about five months,”
‘”Compared to SARS and MERS, we are talking about a coronavirus that has a mortality rate of eight to 10 times less deadly to SARS to MERS,” Nicholls said. “So, a correct comparison is not SARS or MERS but a severe cold. Basically, this is a severe form of the cold.”
Similar to a common cold, the surrounding environment of the outbreak plays an important role in determining the survivability and spreadability of the virus, he continued. Because of the impending shift in seasons, Nicholls said he expects the spread of the virus to be curbed in a matter of months.
“I think it will burn itself out in about six months,” Nicholls said.’
Interview 06 Feb 2020. Reported 11 Feb 2020
https://www.accuweather.com/en/health-wellness/coronavirus-expert-says-the-virus-will-burn-itself-out-in-about-6-months/679415
At the risk of sounding cynical – one of the main sources of Vitamin D is that great big yellow thing in the sky and its free so there’s no money in that plus of course the Church of the NHS won’t get the kudos if people boost their immune systems while being simply out and about doing their normal daily stuff or being on holiday.
Vitamin D tablets only work during the autumn/winter months when we barely have the sun but at the moment the weather is so good that we should be taking advantage of this as one of my friends pointed out.
A good walk beats tablets any day
Agree, however you need to expose lots of skin to get enough vitamin D. Many kids are vitamin D deficient as they are ‘coated’ in sunscreen.
My mum who is 88 and no longer goes out has been precribed vitamin D. My daughter who had leukaemia as a child and is not able to soak up the sun is also on it.
We have not adhered to any of the shut down so called rules and we are fine and dandy.
Glad the doctor prescribed vitamin D. However they normally prescribe vitamin D2 (synthetic and not well absorbed) and also very low dose (not enough to get levels up to a healthy level).
Taking Vitamin D3 with Vitamin K2 is highly recommend, the K2 will help the Calcium in the blood go into the bones. If Vitamin D levels are low then to take at least 10,000IU vitamin D3 per day (thats how much your body produce if you stay long enough in the sun with exposed skin) and at least 80mcg Vitamin K2.
Agree Victoria. i would add Magnesium to the mix as well
More evidence the Belorussian dude got it right – heat and humidity !
Free saunas on the NHS now !
Distancing in a sauna -the mind boggles!
Have been following that Brendan O’Neill post on Facebook and came across these two comments that are excellent rebuttal point when debating with a lockdown zealot:
There is a cognitive dissonance between the economy and people’s lives. They think that the “economy” is just a word we use for afew bankers having a circle jerk over graphs. They don’t understand that their house is the economy, concerts are the economy, even the black economy (spliffs) is estimated and counts towards GDP.
You can debate distribution, but the economy is ultimately the ability of individuals to live the lives they want and make the choices they want, you can’t loose the economy without loosing freedom.
There are so many people virtue signalling “Lives before profit” as if making money is immoral. They don’t see the connection between profits, taxes and public services.
Cognitive dissonance is the go-to mindset now, regrettable but true, and it shows no sign of abating, packaged as it is, in the obligatory noisy virtue signalling.
I do get blank stares when I mention the economy
Same here. My sister pretty much accused me of wanting people to die (and she has her own business – unbelievable)
It’s not just the lockdown that needs ending, the ridiculous social distancing needs to be abandoned. Cafes, restaurants, high street clothes retailers, pubs etc will cease to exist within a year, throwing hundreds of thousands into unemployment. Charities will suffer a drastic reduction in income (who is going to queue outside charity shops- nobody goes with a list!). The Government has it within its power to prevent this tragedy, and the countless other personal tragedies the inevitable unemployment social distancing will cause. Please abandon it. It is MIT needed.
Should have read not needed at the end. Autocorrect!
Agree. A headline in today’s Times online ‘Two-metre rule will bankrupt businesses’. Pub owners, restaurants have said they could open with a one metre rule but 80% will remain closed under current advice. Sage Committee advised against reducing two metre rule as it would cause confusion.
Meanwhile, back in the real world businesses go bust, unemployment skyrockets, industry cannot function properly, economy trashed etc etc.
Although the crackpot Ferguson is no longer on the Sage Committee, there appear to be many others still left on it.
A good way forward would be to disband the Sage Committee. Sanity could then be restored.
Perhaps the SAGE committee could be replaced by a SANE committee; we can but dream…..
Brill
It is absolutely crazy. I have been to 3 garden centres in my area – just because I can! LOL – but from now on I am frequenting the one that is paying lip service to the distancing rules. (I refuse to call it social distancing, it is anything but social, it’s inhumane) That garden centre has a nice atmosphere under the circumstances, you don’t get shouted at if you go the wrong way through the system, you can double back, do what you want and nobody stops you. You get your trolley disinfected before you go in – that’s sensible, I don’t mind that – and of course checkout is done behind a perspex screen for the cashier, but other than that, it’s business as usual. Well done them, I say. The other 2 centres were trying to follow the rules to the letter and it made for a horrid dull atmosphere with customers creeping around not looking at each other. These distancing rules can only have been made up by scientific boffins who don’t understand human warmth and need for touch.
Aliens, Carrie. They have been designed, and are being implemented, by aliens.
This is also nigh on impossible in the museums and heritage sector especially as people go round and have a look not to mention examine paintings and objects as closely as possible (within limits for conservation and legitimate H&S reasons). I foresee a lot of problems with this as all of us get ourselves into contortions enforcing social distancing while visitors who come to see exhibitions and historic houses get fed up first having to pre-book then having to queue Soviet style in what’s meant to be a pleasurable activity. I don’t see people clamouring to visit anytime soon even when we do reopen and we will I suspect make do with low visitor numbers for the foreseeable future.
Social distancing will not only sound the death kneel for the hospitality and retail sectors but also for sports, tourism, culture and media. If the government doesn’t want anymore additions to the unemployment figures and businesses going bust then they need to drop this ridiculous idea now.
If you watch UK column from 11th May you will see that it is planned government policy for most things *never* to re-open again – a complete re-structuring of society is what they want. Hence the announcements on people cycling everywhere, etc…
Absolutely right, Albie. It should really be called anti-social distancing at every opportunity.
Always worth remembering – and I realise most here will be well aware – this distancing bollocks is guidance, not law.
Agree. Unfortunately when I raised the issue of the lack of logic of the whole thing and how we run the risk of alienating and patronising visitors, I was told that “we have to be seen to be doing something”
“I’ll be doing something – shopping somewhere else !” might help things, if enough of us say it.
Same here. Rather stay without it or order it online.
Absolutely John – the police have said they cannot enforce distancing as it isn’t law only a ministerial guideline.
I posted yesterday the MSM reporting the death of 13 year old Ismail Mohamed Abdulwahab, but with the ONS not actually having any deaths for boys in the 10-14 year old age range.
I have now found another 4 deaths in children under 14 that have been reported and sensationalised in the MSM that also do not appear in the ONS figure. They are as follows:
The figures show zero deaths in the age range 5-9, but there was a 5 year child who was reported to have died in the media that was reported 4th April as “Child, five, becomes UK’s youngest coronavirus victim” who tested positive for COVID-19, and this death was also reported by Michael Gove in that day’s bulletin.
Here are the links to the story in the Metro and Gove’s bulletin on Youtube below:
https://metro.co.uk/2020/04/04/child-five-becomes-uks-youngest-victim-coronavirus-12508801/?ito=cbshare
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=txaO5PA8kGU
There is also another 5 year who died at Darent Valley Hospital, Dartford on the 20th April that is missing from the figures too:
https://www.kentonline.co.uk/dartford/news/europes-youngest-virus-victim-5-died-at-kent-hospital-225925/
An 11 year old boy who died with COVID-19 reported on the 11th April, but the figures say no boys have died in the 10-14 year old range:
https://www.oxfordmail.co.uk/news/18374501.11-year-old-boy-coronavirus-dies-death-toll-england-rises-823/
Another boy in the 10-14 year old range reported on the 29th April:
https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/breaking-coronavirus-victim-14-dies-21946967
I have asked the ONS for clarification on all five of these reported deaths to find out why they do not show in their figures.
Nick Stripe of the ONS got back to me on twitter about the 13 year old you mentioned yesterday his reply was:
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.
I would keep up the pressure on this one – that boy (if photos are to be believed) has ‘died’ several times before, including in other countries!
Yeah, there are a quite a few suspects things around this death, for example:
No family members will give names or appear in the press.
No pictures of the boy, yet a massive media drive by the family or their representative.
Everything being driven by this Mark Stephenson, or as he’s really know AbdulWahid Stephenson, so why not use that name that he uses everywhere else e.g. LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram.
The GoFundMe campaign asking for £4,000 then being allowed to run on to reach £71,000, surely this just automatically stop at the £4,000 limit required for the funeral expenses, this is just open to fraud.
Fake tribute pages setup using the picture of the boy from Ireland who died during a choking game.
Is there a fraudulent aspect to this? Does anyone know? Any legal experts available?
From what I can see all the projects run over the target that they are trying to actual reach. I think it’s a bit out of order to be honest.
Also, I did a search on GoFundMe for “COVID” and there is 500,00 GoFundMe campaigns currently being run on there.
GoFundMe charge users a processing fee of 2.9% + $0.30 per donation, so there are raking it in!
500,000 that should read!
I’ve received a reply back from them ONS regarding the deaths of these 5 children and it was this:
“We are unable to comment on individual records”
Thanks for asking this question. The spreadsheet has sections for Registrations figures and Provisional figures, so surely the death should still show up in the provisional figures but it doesn’t.
The whole funeral for Ismail looked so staged
Is this the people you are talking about as he seems to have also been Portuguese and died there as well.
I remember from when it was “news” as there were lots of discrepancies around and couldn’t figure them out and still can’t.
Was he Vitor Godinho or Ismail Abdulwahab?
Can someone please explain the 2 different stories? Is it the same person who died or not?
https://www.express.co.uk/news/world/1262255/coronavirus-news-portugal-Vitor-Godinho-youngest-victim-europe
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8173253/Boy-13-dies-testing-positive-coronavirus-London-hospital-fundraiser-says.html
http://www.meramirpur.com/ismail-abdulwahab-13-becomes-uks-youngest-victim-died-at-kings-college-hospital-in-london/
Oh look, his photo is disappearing from the reports:
https://metro.co.uk/2020/04/03/britains-youngest-coronavirus-victim-buried-no-family-funeral-12504643/
and not just on this website either – strange
And a lot of the reports are dated 01 April as well, even stranger or a give away?
and no post mortem either so how do they know what he died from?
https://www.standard.co.uk/news/uk/ismail-mohamed-abdulwahab-no-postmortem-coronavirus-a4404116.html
Or page is gone:
https://www.three.fm/news/uk-news/coronavirus-healthy-boy-ismail-mohamed-abdulwahab-13-is-youngest-uk-victim/
I also got told by the son’s girlfriend at the time it was questioned in Poland.
It is in Polish but basically it says that in different articles on the internet:
the boy is 11
the boy is 14
the boy is from England
the boy is from Portugal
https://www.facebook.com/289907611427847/posts/940415113043757/?sfnsn=scwspmo&extid=dgQjvblDRsl80oos
https://twitter.com/sleymen71/status/1246126134397407232
So which is correct?
But no photos of him exist on the internet searches I have done on 2 separate search engines:
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=ismail+mohamed+abdulwahab&t=h_&ia=web
https://www.google.com/search?q=ismail%2Bmohamed%2Babdulwahab&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiNgJHh7tPoAhWMfMAKHcyYAJYQ_AUoAnoECAsQBA&biw=1240&bih=643
But there is a photo of a boy that looks like him – if it is the one winning a prize for football that is:
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=vitor+godinho&t=h_&iax=images&ia=images
https://www.google.com/search?q=vitor+godinho&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjlmsPz79PoAhUqQEEAHUpCDagQ_AUoA3oECA0QBQ&biw=1240&bih=643
After seeing today’s papers – “Fight Them On The Beaches”
Yes. Depressing. Telegraph is reporting on another mathematical model that thinks lives could have been saved with an earlier lockdown. No evidence, no data, bad journalism.
I was referring to the pictures on most of the tabloids.
Oh yes…sorry! Those were heartening. The newspaper reporting not so much.
A few green shoots of hope up here in Sturgeon land: only one mask spotted in supermarket-elderly woman who looked uncomfortable-, and people mingling without too much alarm,although distancing at tills continues.
Passed several passers by on my daily sea front walk to do the regular bird count: everyone said good morning and most were reasonably friendly. No masks nor ostentatious avoidance strategies.
I’ve been guilty of scorning mask wearers but it’s worth bearing in mind that some may actually be lockdown sceptics too, but in the shielded group and refuse to stay locked indoors and are wearing them as a precautionary measure, or as a compromise to to keep pro lockdown family and friends from nagging them!
Interesting point
Not a good idea to indulge nagging family
Are you going to mention this today: Sweden becomes country with highest coronavirus death rate per capita – The Telegraph.
Not sure that I see this in the Worldometer figures where Sweden’s deaths per million are for example half that of Belgium. The Telegraph is only talking about the last week or so.
The Express has also stolen that story but removed the caveat.
Sweden’s statistics are skewed due to the care home deaths which have been predominantly in Stockholm. A quarter of deaths in Sweden (962 deaths) have been of people over the age of 90 (life expectancy here is 82) and those deaths would have been considered unremarkable in any other circumstances – people over 90 are highly likely to have comorbidities and would likely have died from ‘ordinary’ flu or just old age if recent winters had not been so mild. Only one quarter of Sweden’s population lives in the Stockholm region, but the largest proportion of infections and deaths (when listed by region) have been in Stockholm. As of yesterday Sweden had had 31523 confirmed cases of which 10783 have been in Stockholm. As regards deaths, there have been 3831, of which 1879 have occurred in Stockholm, ie almost half.. Remove the care home deaths (or even just the deaths in the over 90 age group) from the numbers and things are no worse here than anywhere else.
IMPORTANT EDIT to my post above – it is one TENTH of Sweden’s population that lives in Stockholm, not a quarter!
Even with the best will in the world it is extremly difficult to protect residents in care homes from any illness without shutting them and their carers in indefinately and not allowing visitors. That would amount in my opinion to elder abuse.
However the government and NHS have hastened the deaths of many residents by their policy of discharging people with the virus or not tested from hospital into care homes, which had already stopped visitors. This to me is genocide.
He probably will you know.
In order to debunk it
Fake news.Belgium,Spain,Italy,UK,France all extreme lockdown countries all higher.
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/.
Even if it were true, and even if there weren’t a plethora of caveats attached to it that makes it meaningless, I’d still have wanted our government to follow Sweden’s plan. In fact, I think history will show (if it isn’t suppressed) that even Sweden went too far.
Sweden’s plan + early shielding of care homes.
Which even they would concede.
There’s a reason the press are now including care homes in the figures- and it’s not because they really want to hold gvts to account for what has happened. It’s because they want to create an impression of high death tolls across the general population, and create more fear. And yes, the ability to play with the timescales etc. To make Sweden look bad is a wonderful bonus.
Exactly! See https://architectsforsocialhousing.co.uk/2020/05/01/manufacturing-consensus-the-registering-of-covid-19-deaths-in-the-uk/ for the real story of Covid19 death reporting in the UK..
Yes, I was forgetting that. As you say, Sweden acknowledges it got the care homes bit wrong.
I’d be very surprised if it isn’t mentioned.
Interesting article in the Swedish press:
https://www.thelocal.se/20200520/as-europe-comes-out-of-lockdown-what-lessons-can-be-learned-from-sweden
Apart from the impressive candour, the Swedish experience highlights care homes, a very troubling area indeed for Britain.
What is required, exemplified by Hong Kong, seems pretty basic:
‘There have been improvements in infection control practices among RCHEs over the study period from 2005 to 2014, in terms of manpower, facilities, practices, knowledge, and skills. The improvement was most obvious in terms of manpower and facilities. More nurses and health workers were recruited into RCHEs, and common areas equipped with alcohol hand rub. There was also a 10.2% improvement in hand washing skills and a 5.9% improvement on skills of wearing and removing of personal protective equipment among ICOs during the study period’
‘…….there was a sharp initial increase in the number of RCHEs that had separate rooms as isolation areas in 2004. This was likely an enhancement measure in response to the SARS outbreak in 2003.’
https://www.hkmj.org/abstracts/v25n2/113.htm
Hong Kong (and Germany) also takes great care when transferring patients back from hospital into care homes.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/may/19/mps-hear-why-hong-kong-had-no-covid-19-care-home-deaths
But, apart from that, the basic lessons are frequent hand washing and restrained, long practised ‘old fashioned’ social etiquette……..probably for good reason…..
Meanwhile Sweden’s neighbours appear to be proceeding now to follow Swedish practice, rather than the other way around:
‘When deciding to reopen schools, Norway’s Public Health Institute used the experience of Sweden, along with Iceland, Taiwan and Singapore – where no clusters of the virus were linked to schools – as an example when it explained its own reasoning.’
https://www.thelocal.se/20200520/as-europe-comes-out-of-lockdown-what-lessons-can-be-learned-from-sweden
Hmmmm………
Yes I am following all of these newspapers on Twitter and tweeting every time I see one of these appalling articles.
There have been around 1000 likes for this story. People really need some justification for their cowardice and gullability I suppose.
I have tweeted that Scotland have twice the death rate per million people than Sweden.
You’re on a skeptic site, you moron, not The Guardian. Best get back to your school work and leave the adults to debate.
Actually I am glad this person has posted as at least we can challenge his/her thinking and the truth may be passed on.
Sorry for the long post but it’s all kicking off in Spain. The government yesterday won the vote to extend the state of alarm necessary for their continued breach of civil liberties. The important news is what they did to achieve it. To gain support of the Citizens party they reduced the length of the state of alarm from 1 month to 2 weeks. It later emerged that to secure the abstention of Bildu, the latest incarnation of the political wing of Basque terrorist group ETA, they promised to completely remove the legislation on labour reform introduced in the period of austerity. Bildu is detested outside of the Basque Country, so the negotiations with them were kept a very close secret. However, Bildu leaked details of the deal to the press spurring a “correction”at midnight from the Spanish Socialist Party (PSOE). The significance of this is that the government made an offer to Bildu which wasn’t in their gift. The labour reform legislation they promised to abrogate makes provision for the payments to those laid off due to the governments insane policies. Clearly, the offer made to Bildu was in bad faith. The move has left both Citizens and Bildu looking ridiculous and makes another extensión of the state of alarm extremely difficult, if not imposible.The question now, is why is continuing the state of alarm so important to the government that they would go to such ridiculous and risky lengths to achieve it. I suspect that it’s got very little, if anything, to do with the Corona virus, but everything to do with covering the Governments arse. In other news a Supreme Court judge has said that the state of alarm does not permit the banning of demonstrations. So, game on.
covering the governments arse…… you mean just like what is happening here in the UK, then!
Absolutely Fred. They made a promise they knew they wouldn’t keep and once they got the vote through reneged on it. As incompetent as they are, they surely were aware of the political shitstorm coming their way, but this was preferable to losing the vote on the extension of the state of alarm. Could well have something to do with fact that 66% of deaths ascribed to Covid occurred in care homes. The finger of blame for all this is starting to point to the vice president who is also responsible for health and social services.
Thanks for this – situation in Spain sounds similar to here!
Extending the restrictions has everything to do with putting in place tracking systems and mandatory vaccination reports in passport – planned way back.. Note page 9 in this link where it mentions mass procurement of influenza vaccines for a pandemic.. https://ec.europa.eu/health/sites/health/files/vaccination/docs/2019-2022_roadmap_en.pdf
Wow.
They all know.
They all know they wrecked the planet for a common cold.
God almighty!!
Am currently working and listening to Classic FM to break up the monotony but am finding myself having to hit stop every time the news bulletins and the patronising adverts from the government come up. I have to resist the temptation to throw my radio out of the window.
Time to bring out my Ring cycle CDs again methinks!
Well it’s looking inceasingly like Ragnarok is upon us!
At the risk of sounding pessimistic maybe that’s what they want either Ragnarok or the Apocalypse. Take your pick.
I abandoned STV- poor at the best of times-following advice from the decidedly rotund Chief Nursing Officer on how to save lives, protect the NHS etc, plus an additional feature on how to put the bins out safely-while saving lives, protecting the NHS and staying at home.
This appeared with every ad break complete with simple animations as back up for the lobotomised blob, which we are now assumed to be.
Awful.
hello wendyk. Muzzle wearing is compulsory from today in Spain. Except for the many exceptions. One of the exceptions helpfully pointed out to us is that the muzzle won’t be necessary while eating and drinking.
Madness!
That’s good to know Paulito; they don’t want to add starvation and dehydration to the list of co-morbidities I guess.
I refuse to walk around looking like something out of The Handmaid’s Tale
Perhaps we refuseniks need to start taking the mickey out of the whole thing, such as wearing Batman or Lone Ranger masks. The PTB are encouraging face masks, but they haven’t specified what type.
Or V for Vendetta masks.
Wait, wait, the voices are pssing information though …
I foresee a whole population walking about with no masks, and a half-eaten bag of crisps.
… passing,,, and ,,,through…
Even the spirits are illiterate these days.
I stopped watching Channel 4 because of the nauseating logo ‘stay at home’ gleaming at me like Big Brother stoned on opioids.
You could always switch to Radio Three; they only have 3 news bulletins a day: 8a.m., 1p.m. and 6p.m. I mute the radio when they’re on!
Radio Three have been having a singalong on Friday mornings at 8.55a.m. and this week it’s Simple Gifts. I just reminded myself of the lyrics and the first line is: ‘Tis the gift to be simple, ’tis the gift to be free” Maybe it’s a prophecy for the bank holiday weekend – we’re all going to be freed from the lockdown!!
Try Radio Caroline. No classical music, I’m afraid, but classic rock and pop album music, without the endless politics or news bulletins. It’s a relatively corona virus-free radio station.
Join the discussion…What a joy, to realise Radio Caroline is still going…. Used to listen to it on crackly Medium Wave under the bedclothes (so mum and dad didn’t hear) on my, er, trannie…?
Thanks Lms2. Now still posting shite all over the internet, but with 60s flashback music. Lovely.
https://uk.news.yahoo.com/coronavirus-lockdown-measures-104322610.html
I posted this story on here yesterday because of the comments from the scared people.
I am posting it again to demonstrate the utter stupidity of the gullible twats that are actually all for this stupid lockdown.
For example, check out this seriously delusional fool & their comment posted just 2 hours ago.
Comment Below
“ Patience ,longer lock downs work best.Saving lives comes first.The economy will come back.There is enough essential economy to keep things going.Governments can print all the money needed.Childrens education is not going to be “blighted”.Learning continues outside of school buildings.The pandemic exposes all our society’s weaknesses and faults.Hopefully we will learn that some things aren’t as important as we thought and other things are more important than we realized.“
& another idiot,
“ Wearing masks and social distancing have to be maintained.”
& this one, from a TEACHER of all people, it is long, but worth a read because of how stupid the comment actually is.
Comment below
“ This is the most idiotic thing a scientist could say. Especially when Britain has not tested anywhere near enough people and I am also speaking of educational key workers here, which includes adults working throughout all education, schools, colleges, academies, universities community education projects and special needs schools. And the test, track and trace system isn’t up and running yet, so to suggest everybody in the country should go back to work asap etc is crazy.
Over 35.000 people have died in this country to date of Covid -19 and that is really a conservative estimate, as I suspect the real number is over 40.000 people, but like all governments they cover so much up.
I am not advocating the lock down goes on forever, but nobody in all honesty wants to see a second spike in deaths so close to a real closure on the current pandemic status. Even if we accepted the statistics as they stand at present and what is happening across Britain there are still too many Covid-19 deaths. Teachers who work across all education are right to be worried about this, the teaching unions are right to be worried across this issue and even our teaching heads of management are worried about this.
The logistics problem posed at present by even sending pre-school, year 1’s and year 6’s back into school is horrendous. As each class needs dividing by 3 or 4 to bring it to a number that can comfortably socially distance in a school. .In fact if all schools re-opened their doors and all classes had to be divided like this there would not be enough classrooms for them all and there would not be enough teaching staff or support teaching staff either.
I am a teacher in FE and this problem would be compounded even more in a college.
The concerns of the so called Centre for Evidence-Based- Medicine wants to gamble with the lives of ordinary people and want the government to feel guilty in some way for the lock down lasting a short while longer, that they say it is going to cause a generation of children to have their education ruined or marred by not returning to school. This is pure nonsense as the education system in Britain employs one tactic and that is to teach a blanket and for the lucky ones, who choose to engage with education, come from caring family backgrounds that are economically viable etc they get taught to just pass their GCSES or A Levels and if they are lucky they get beyond that. But I can tell you that the current standard is a lot lower for children from economically deprived backgrounds, educationally lacking backgrounds and those who are totally disinterested in school, as they have a permanent addiction to mobile phones, games technology, social networking, gambling and dreaming about quick fix successes, such as those who want to be footballers or X factor stars and in general suffer from the Psyche of failure and celebrate failure.
This is what I see teaching from within FE. So the idea of a few months wrecking the education of children is a lie. If children want to succeed they would work jolly hard to do so, when they have the opportunity. We have a largely free education system for all below the age of 18-19 in this country through schools, academies, FE colleges, community colleges and other training bodies. So I am sure if anyone on this board tonight is reading this, who has also worked in one of these listed places, they will understand entirely where I am coming from.
If the government wants teaching staff to return to work they had better let construction companies build more schools and colleges and get teachers paid proper salaries to do the job of teacher, social worker, nanny, psychologist and administrator.
So no, going back just yet it is far too early. Try the middle of June, the third week of June or even the end of June and extend the school year by two weeks, for the next 5 years running to make up for some of the shortfall, and if some otherwise keen or bright kids are really behind, why not try a part-time summer school programme out for three weeks in each of those five years or let technology do some good for once and run it all online for three weeks instead. Whichever is the most accessible for the kids to take on is what should be considered.
So here’s hoping we all manage to stay safe this summer.”
So people, this is what we Sceptics are up against,
From scared members of Joe Public to Teachers,
Stupid Gullible Twats.
So what do British teacher make of the latest info coming out of Denmark, which even Channel 4 (!) has reported on? See earlier in these comment for links..
Or the fact that there have not been mass deaths of children or teachers in Sweden, where schools have been open all along?
There is a renewed effort in MSM to put Sweden in a negative light, i.e. death rates going through the roof. NOT
I keep trying to find a radio station without news broadcasts and government messages but they seem to have infiltrated even the smaller stations now. I too have to keep hitting the mute button
That’s why it will be CDs and YouTube for me. I’ve decided not to bother with Classic FM
My wife listens/listened to a radio station which “in the good old days” simply played music with the occasional advert thrown in, now they do dedications to our beloved key & NHS workers.
Radio Caroline.
Almost CV19-free, and certainly little enough to ignore.
Also this ‘teacher’ doesn’t know the difference between disinterested and uninterested. As you say, utter fool, I despair at the standard of out educational establishment, as he seems to be putting down its failure to the ‘disinterested’(!) children rather than teachers.
‘I am a teacher in FE…’ Says it all really. That sort of forum is about as intellectually challenging as a pistachio nut.
How can one teach FE, without seeming to have picked up any E in the first place ?
YouTube has now apparently removed one of the John Ioannidis interviews in the Perspectives on the Pandemic series. Apparently that too is misinformation from which we need to be shielded. Unreal.
https://twitter.com/on_pandemic/status/1263186878519484422
Why is is that the wunderkinds of yesteryear, bucking the system to get their products out there, turn into the crypto fascists of today? Zuckerberg, Gates, Brin, Page, Schmidt, Branson. I watched ‘The Soacial Network’ again the other night. Zuckerberg royally pissed off Harvard,, crashing their local computer network. Perhaps they were never rebel innovators, more like social pariahs who wanted to nurture their own brand of totalitarianism. I remember when Branson was fondly regarded as a folk hero for trying to diddle HM Customs and Excise out of quite a lot of dosh (£60,000 in 1971?) so that impoverished adults could listen to music. Robin Hood? Yeah right.
Add to that Elon Musk, whose mass release of satellites will aid population surveillance..
Apparently is on the side of freedom.
I know. (Although I wonder how long that will last if the gvt offers him some ridiculous some to use his satellites)
I do like Musk calling Ferguson an “utter tool” or something similar though.
Pretty straightforward, isn’t it? People, in general, are hypocrites who claim to espouse anti-authority positions and lofty sounding principles when it suits their personal position and agendas, and then change them or ignore them once they become inconvenient.
Young rebels who find rules and conventions an annoying constraint, become older people with lots to gain from those rules and restraints, and lots to lose from being regarded as “irresponsible”. So their attitude changes, along with any inconvenient supposed principles they had claimed to espouse (and quite possibly had convinced themselves that they espoused).
One classic example are the former “liberals” who when they were out of power adopted hardline anti-censorship and free speech principles (“I hate what you say but I will defend to the death your right to say it”), but once they became part of the ruling elites themselves and no longer felt so threatened by censorship themselves, decided that it would be fine for them to support censorship of opinions and of people whose opinions they dislike. Hence “hate speech” and “no platforming”, and the general management of information and opinion for the supposed greater good.
Pretty straightforward. You can be charitable and say they weren’t really claiming their early views were actual principles, or you can just say they are hypocrites.
We should all be very scary of this constant CENSORSHIP that is going on. Tell people about it and vote with our feet by nit using these platforms.
And Professor Dolores Cahill talking to Dave Cullen about a week ago, plus many more.
If the video goes against the WHO advice, i.e. Chinese Communist Party propaganda, it’s not allowed.
They’ve not yet removed this one:
https://m.youtube.com/watchv=iribs-2igfu
Professor Dolores Cahill Interview Debunking the Narrative on COVID19, hydroxychloroquine/vaccines.
https://twitter.com/MLevitt_NP2013/status/1263390435701067777
My friend and colleague Dr. Patrick Tam
@drpatricktam
has built a terrific website at https://covibes.org that I happily recommend to you all. It classifies different COVID19 outbreaks into four zones and predicts the end-point total of confirmed cases and of deaths.
Looks interesting to me
To channel Charlie Munger:
If the politicians, advisors and scientists in this debacle where made to forgo salaries and also have pensions docked for the projected damage to the economy then this lockdown would never have happened.
Show me the incentive and I’ll show you the behaviour.
The current incentive to shift blame.
The incentive is also to keep the population locked up until they can reasonably claim to have found a vaccine that works. Obviously it would be suspicious if it was found too quickly… The vaccine and apps will be mandatory if you want to work, shop or travel – in other words, if you want to lead any kind of normal life..
Great post
Thanks… the constant broadcasts from every country that we must prepare for a ‘new normal’ make me both angry and scared..
Anger good, fear bad.
We just need to be more effective in broadcasting that we must prepare for nothing of the sort.
They’ll try to make the vaccine and apps mandatory – but they won’t succeed.
Just read this comment on Allison Pearson’s piece and thought it was worth sharing- with thanks to the author Phil Davies:
The first recorded Covid-19 death occurred on March 5th. March 5th – May 18th (75 days) 34,797 people have died during the coronavirus crisis… a significant proportion of them not FROM Covid-19 but WITH Covid-19.
170,000 people die every year in the UK because of cancer… not WITH cancer, but FROM cancer. That’s 465 each day, every day!
That means that in the 75 days since the first Covid-19 death, 34,875 people have died FROM cancer.
So, 79 more people have died from cancer this last 75 days than have died from/with Covid-19 … and that figure (and the gap between the two) will now increase on a daily basis, as Covid deaths decrease and cancer continues to kill 465 people every day forever, until a cure is found! And that’s without factoring in the estimated 30/40,000 cancer patients who are expected to die because of failed diagnosis or lack of treatment during the coronavirus period.
Like I said, mind-boggling!
Cancer kills 26% of us, 1 in 4, yet we are so conditioned to its threat, that no-one turns their head anymore, unless of course, it’s you (or a loved one) getting the unwanted diagnosis.
Covid-19 will come and go, horrible yes, people crying at their sense of loss and bereavement, holes left that will never be filled. But that pain applies to ALL death, not just death from Covid-19.
Despite the proclamations of politicians, journalists and broadcasters, Covid-19 is not unprecedented. Mankind has been attacked by pandemics for thousands of years – four during my lifetime. No, what’s unprecedented is our response to it.
And as a parting thought… If just one-hundredth of the cost of this “response” had been directed into cancer research then maybe, just maybe, the killer that gets it’s claws into 1 in 2 of us, and kills 1 in 4 of us, might just be a thing of the past.
Oh my, I feel so at odds with the world and know I should finish there and retire quietly to my locked-down isolated life under house arrest, but think a moment, about the precedent that’s being created. Do we really think there’s not going to be other killer bugs and viruses, or threats to life as we know it? What happens then? Do we shut down and trash the economy each time? And if not, why not? What was so special about this time?
It’s like my dad said – they’ve replaced cancer in the public consciousness with Covid. Except you can *catch* covid from others. So psychologically people are walking around thinking they can catch cancer from others. Like airborne HIV or something.
Trouble is it’s not cancer or HIV. It’s a cold that goes very wrong for a tiny proportion of people.
Nothing.
The government just got freaked by professor pantsdown’s ludicrous predictions and didn’t listen to sense.
They then terrorised the nation by telling them that the virus was dangerous for people of all ages when they knew it wasn’t and people have been in terror ever since.
I have been on Twitter, a souless task admittedly, but I am trying to get someone with any ounce of backbone to come out and admit this disastrous error.
I will keep trying.
Don’t know if you saw the David Starkey interview https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8S8Js-tEmlg
His brilliant analysis is that the Government were on course for what we might call the Swedish approach but were spooked into lockdown by 3 factors: there were the scenes from Northwick Park hospital which was looking like some of the footage from Italian hospitals leading to fears that the NHS could be similarly overwhelmed, then the MSM were screaming hysterically that we should follow Italy, Spain, Germany and France etc. in lockdown, and finally (the straw which broke the camel’s back?) Ferguson’s absurd prediction of 510,000 deaths. 40 minutes worth of brilliant analysis. Well worth a watch!
Given the daily chaos and confusion coming from govt I can’t help but think Boris and his ministers have now become a 2020 version of ‘Fred Karno’s Circus’ from back in the days of music hall, but this time without the comedy.
The WW1 song ‘Fred Karno’s Army’ also seems an appropriate metaphor (albeit after a very slight change of wording)
We are Fred Karno’s army,
Fred Karno’s infantry;
We cannot fight, we cannot shoot,
So what damn good are we?
But when we get to Berlin
The Kaiser he will say
Hoch, hoch, mein Gott
Vot a bloody useless lot
Fred Karno’s infantry.
Some good common sense stuff in here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U9ti6isM-NY&feature=youtu.be – it’s a shame that she’s being sidelined off maintstream media, keeping the message suppressed.
I’ve just returned from my my first shopping trip to my local town centre for a couple of weeks and it was a bit dispiriting.Although still a minority,there are more mask and glove wearers,some of them with the aloofness that goes along with it.Queues for the banks stretching half way down the High Street,one out one in in operation.Definitely more people of the diving out of your way persuasion and doing so in a more exaggerated way than before and more dirty looks for apparently just being there.WH Smiths after weeks of normality has gone full paranoia,one door to enter one to leave,the ridiculousness of this being the in one is automatic but to exit you have to touch a grubby looking handle.Also lots of notices saying don’t touch if you’re not going to buy it ‘for safety reasons’.
More positively the pharmacy seems more relaxed,no staff masks or visors anymore and they are happy to come out from behind the perspex screen to talk to you and B&M bargains is as normal as it always has been,apart from a cleaning station for the paranoid to sanitise their own baskets and trolleys and the staff are friendly and not frightened of their customers.
I overheard a few conversations that were of a sceptical nature,which is good,but overall there still seems to be a very weird atmosphere.
I too have noticed the ‘weirdness’ you speak of. I think it’s a mixture of dejected realisation that the ‘new normal’ is pretty shit if this is what it entails, but also a kind of palpable… cognitive dissonance between this realisation and the fear they’re supposed to experience every time they exit their houses. They’re beginning to realise it’s smoke and mirrors, but haven’t quite realised that they’re realising – if you get me. The ‘mood’ is like the lag between fear and reality, it feels like everyone is in a zombie dreamstate waiting to wake up. And yes from the outside looking in it’s a very strange vibe.
It is the passive acceptance that is most depressing and worrying – what will it take for people to rise up and rebel?
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/trust-being-undermined-harvard-medical-school-prof-questions-faucis-shading-vaccine-results
Very important severe criticism against Fauci from a Harward professor in an interview with MSM which went so wrong for the MSM!
Rubbish claim about latest vaccine claim and also latest antiviral treatment
He’s also written about the Oxford vaccine:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/williamhaseltine/2020/05/16/did-the-oxford-covid-vaccine-work-in-monkeys-not-really/#ade73643c712
Update on Join the Legal Challenge to the UK Govt Lockdown
My lawyers have this morning filed my application to the High Court for a Judicial Review of the Government’s lockdown regulations. They have filed over 1000 pages of legal documents including an 87 page Statement of Grounds. We will be publishing the entire document on this site around 1pm today, along with the initial Govt response to our first letter.
The proceedings are against Matt Hancock, the Secretary of State for Health & Social Care – whose name is on the lockdown laws – and Gavin Williamson the Secretary of State for Education, who has presided over the closure of schools and universities.
The aim of the proceedings is to lift the ruinous lockdown, restore the civil liberties taken away from the public and allow schools, healthcare services and the economy to restart.
The number of people furloughed or unemployed stands at 10 million people, and billions are being wiped off the economy with every passing day. Those lucky enough to have jobs left at the end of this crisis could see income tax increase by up to 10p in the pound. The government has spent £13,000 per household on bailout so far.
A judicial review is the only effective means of challenging what the Government is doing and holding them properly to account. BorisJohnson and his crew have sleepwalked into this mess and are taking the nation over the cliff edge with them.
Our fight begins proper today!
And finally, again, thanks so much for your support
Just received by email from Simon Dolan; latest update.
I wonder how long it will take the Gov to respond to this.As long as they are allowed I guess. And how long before the High Court rule whether a judicial review should take place? Any lawyers out there who can enlighten us?
I suspect the only reason for the partial lifting of lockdown restrictions is this court case. The government are ‘encouraging’, but not forcing people to work and ‘trying’ to get schools to open, but only half-heartedly. They are not really resisting the teaching unions because they can then (in court) place the blame on other parties.. Mind you the continuation of the furlough system reveals other intentions and I’m not sure how they plan to defend those..
Simon Dolan’s lawyers seem to be doing a great job – it will take government lawyers some time to plough through the 1000 pages of legal documents and try to find loopholes!
Good point and I’ve already asked whether there are any lawyers here who could advise on the mysteriously increasing crowd funding page for the boy who appears to have died 3 times in 3 different places.
Do you know any lawyer sceptics DocRC?
Just spoke to my Daughter who is a lawyer (admittedly a tax lawyer but she did a law degree at Oxford). She doesn’t know if there is a time limit but pointed out that the case against Boris and Co for proroguing Parliament was heard in fairly short time. The bad news is that she thinks the grounds on which a court can grant a judicial review are that the executive acted in what the average person would consider to be an unreasonable manner in ordering the lockdown.
Would she be willing to offer advice now and then?
“No 10 is hiding behind secretive Sage pseudo-science”
Not sure if a re-post:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2020/05/21/no-10-hiding-behind-secretive-sage-pseudo-science/
Looks like mainstream media are starting to catch up.
“Downing Street’s use of Covid pseudo-science to justify lockdown could be the greatest scandal of our time. Granted, the initial decision to shut down the country was taken in a gormless panic of bug-ridden modelling and media hysteria. But since then, has the Government’s strategy become more sinister?
“Then again, this secrecy may be a hint of what is really going on. Perhaps No 10 is reluctant to publish Sage documents because that might expose the unedifying truth. Namely that, in the absence of reliable, uncontested science, it has pursued a political strategy, selectively exploiting scientific advice and using Sage as a smokescreen.”
That Sherelle’s a real cracker.
Anyone on Twitter (if Sherelle also is) able to send her the link to the ‘architects for social housing’s analysis of the Covid19 death reporting and the falsification thereof? https://architectsforsocialhousing.co.uk/2020/05/01/manufacturing-consensus-the-registering-of-covid-19-deaths-in-the-uk/
Or send this to any other good journalists?
This is another great document to share! https://off-guardian.org/2020/05/19/10-steps-to-turn-a-pandemic-into-the-brave-new-normal/
what a surprise!
Makes me think of the “Good day to bury bad news” incident a few years back.
Just looked it up and it was actually 2001 when 9/11 happened. So quite a bit longer than I thought. Where did all the time go.
Pursuing The War Against Terror ? Arguing about thermite/mini-nukes/box-cutters ? Awarding points for the funniest explanation for Building 7 ?
Which is why I think we need to be wary about over-focusing on some bug. The real threat is house arrest, police state, suspension of legislative assemblies, etc.
Jacobs is an MSM heroine – my choice for MSM voice-of-the-year. Toby is great too of course – and Peter Hitchens etc!
More YouTube censorship – this time Professor Karol Sikora:
https://twitter.com/freddiesayers/status/1263418042610049025
Disgraceful.Ionnadis and Sikora. They are not flatearhers/antivaxnutters etc. Orwellian world.
Well once you’ve established that “bad” opinions can and should be suppressed, clearly there have to be decisions made as to what constitutes a bad opinion, and those decisions won’t necessarily be to one’s liking.
That’s why the US Constitution adopted an uncompromisingly strict wording on freedom of speech. Something seen almost nowhere else in the world, certainly not in Europe and the UK where it’s all about “compromises” and “balances”, with the result that we have noticeably less political freedom of speech.
That applies similarly to the corporate controls on speech that we are mostly seeing here. If we don’t hold them to an uncompromisingly firm expectation of freedom of speech, they will apply whatever rules suit them and that pander to those they seek to influence.
Find companies providing products that adhere to an as near absolute as possible freedom of speech and hold them to it strictly, or face this kind of now routine opinion management as the norm.
Please to sod off with the ‘antivaxnutters’ nonsense. Not a few people on this site have realised vaccines are bad things.
*some* vaccines are bad things.
Quite, being mildly immuno-compromised (arthritis drugs), I am happy to brave the flu vaccine, but if there ever is a covid-vaccine I shall wait a year or two to see how many deaths/problems it causes!
That’s your opinion, farinances. Mine is that *all* are bad things. Which are both opinions, as per normal.
It’s the insults which have the potential to divide us, and weaken our anti-lockup objective !
No intent to offend. The cheap vaccines are good like tetanus, diphtheria, whooping cough, polio, BCG. MMR because if not immunized as a child a severe adolescent/adult disease so no choice. These are the old-fashioned useful vaccines open for voluntary use by parents. Big Pharma not interested in those. All later vaccines introduced more dubious beneficial effects and much more expensive and potentially side effects like narcolepsy with the swineflu vaccine and peripheral neuropathy of the HPV vaccine. Big pharma is not in Covid-19 vaccine for charitable reasons. In fact they are behind the whole scam.
This is exactly why this is not the right forum for vaccine insults or even debate. Saving the much touted up-coming cov19 wonder vaccine, of course.
Polio vaccine – SV40.
MMR vaccine – autism – Wakefield, validated by Dr W Thompson, CDC whistleblower.
There is always a choice. Childhood disease parties spring to mind.
Oh the vaccine debate… there’s not a snowball chance in hell I’ll take a Covid-19 vaccine rolled out by psychopathic technocrat billionaires within 6 months. Having said that I am not a flat out anti-vaxxer, as I am interested in homeopathy and they both work according to the same principles but are created, manufactured and distributed with very different intent (read:capitalist interest behind them).
Since my vet refused to see my puppy in person during lockdown as her case of potentially infected spaying scar “can be dealt with from the distance” I have been working with homeopathic remedies instead – et voila! Got loads better. By the way, vet practices are brutally privatized but any vet with a bit of wits in them will be honest enough to tell you that most vaccines they offer (except for very basic ones) – ie kennel cough – will give you only 50/50 chance of your dog not getting it. Still costs…£130? Sth like that? For the record – neither one of the pups got that vaccine…. ha!
I had the MMR and have had Measles and Mumps. Waste of time.
Not sure where this story came from- I see it was a tweet purportedly by Freddie Sayers who did the interview with Prof Sikora. I just watched it on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=at637wBqSRA
Does anyone know if all of these cases of censorship have been compiled anywhere such as a website or Twitter account? Some people I know are reluctant to believe that this is occurring so would be useful to share a single resource rather than multiple links.
Not aware of one, Anthony. Might be worth asking on off-guardian.org – and if they’ve not heard of one, off you go !
They really are the Ministry of Truth aren’t they!
Remember the scary Seoul #Covid_19 nightclub outbreak that was supposed to show the perils of reopening? It ended up essentially being a non-event.
https://medium.com/@daniilgor/the-scary-seoul-nightclub-outbreak-shows-the-world-it-is-safe-to-reopen-wholesale-8646ce810203
Well then.
https://www.covibes.org/public/UK
From the site I recommended earlier the suggested deaths and cases in UK in 3 days and 2 weeks time.
This is calculated according to mathematical models Levitt etc.
That’s great, beats my own attempts! It would be great if it could also show predicted daily cases and deaths, over the next couple of months…
“The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported last week that 15 children under age 15 in the U.S. have died of Covid-19 since February compared to about 200 who died of the flu and pneumonia. Children represent 0.02% of virus fatalities in the U.S., and very few have been hospitalized.”
And I think everyone here knows about the studies showing minimal risk of children infecting other children or adults.
So why exactly are schools not open…?
https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-evidence-on-kids-and-covid-11590017095?mod=hp_opin_pos_1
Lazy, selfish adults.
They’re not genuinely scared. It’s much more cynical than that.
You’re right. They also think they’re much more valuable than the shelf stackers, bus drivers and nurses out there so it’s perfectly reasonable they stay sheltered while we lowly types take the risk. They make up for this of course by banging pots and bin lids like chimps every Thursday. As I cycle to work every day I like to intermittently shout “Go back to work, you lazy f*#%ers” as I pass by, in the hope I disturb their state funded lie in.
https://twitter.com/Avik/status/1263136439555981313/photo/1
Why don’t we close kindergarten ,creche etc each year in flu outbreaks as they are 20 times more likely to die of flu than Covid-19?
Why don’t we close primary schools each year in flu outbreaks as they are 7 times more likely to die of flu than Covid-19?
Why don’t we close universities each year in flu outbreaks as they are 1,3 times more likely to die of flu than Covid-19?
This is based on US data assuming 150000 total Covid-19 death estimated relative risk. Absolute risk of course much,much lower.
Oh dear – don’t ask these questions: you never know what will happen next time flu arrives!
Because the unions are apparently in charge.
It would be great to establish how healthy these children were and then determine their risk (both Covid related deaths and flu deaths). Eat junk food diet? Drink sodas? No exercise? Low nutrient levels. Low Vitamin D levels? Not getting enough sleep?
It’s just occurred to me the extreme irony of people dissing ‘herd immunity’ whilst displaying the greatness amount of herd behaviour I’ve ever seen.
Quite so, we now finally understand why lemmings rush off cliffs – to avoid the one with a nasty cough!
So, our First Monster has just published her roadmap. Almost a mirror image of Boris’s plan. She is a contemptible fool and deluded if she tanks her “rules” will be followed.
2 metre distancing in food outlets; imagine the queues at Greggs! The local Greggs here has lengthy queues as the best of times.
We can meet people from other households but will probably have to resort to morse code and/or shouting across the divide: normal discourse will be challenging.
First thoughts for the day:
There has been no resurgence of infection from any country or US state that has dared to open up.
There has been no unfettered exponential growth of infection in any country. 5 US States never locked down and have had around 700 deaths between them to date.
Sweden didn’t lock down so if the infection growth was exponential then their death rates should still be increasing. It isn’t, it’s been declining for weeks.
We can never prove that something won’t happen but we have plenty of evidence now to show if something is likely to happen or not. And there’s plenty of evidence.
More and more this is becoming like the religious debate where on the one side we have people clinging onto a belief that millions could die based on modelling whilst on the other we have data and evidence to counter.
Just like the Brexit Project Fear – no, it hasn’t destroyed the UK yet, but just wait till next week/month/year … !
Paul Joseph Watson on top form –
Send in the Clowns https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cFCrs6uR-d8
UnHerd did an interview with Professor Karol Sikora, the leading oncologist in the U.K, a couple of days ago. YouTube have since removed it for “Violating YouTube’s Community Guidelines“. Shocking! This is again censorship of free speech.
They have just added an interview with Professor Sunetra Gupta from Oxford University here: https://youtu.be/DKh6kJ-RSMI
Some may know she had always opposed Neil Ferguson and the Imperial College team from the very beginning. I’m sure YouTube will delete it too within 24 hours so watch it before it’s gone.
Just watched the interview with Professor Sunetra Gupta. Excellent and full of common sense.
Yes, on the medical aspects certainly, though I return at her politics the evident contempt in her sneering reference to “libertarian” politics.
Here is the interview that YouTube removed: https://unherd.com/thepost/professor-karol-sikora-fear-is-more-dangerous-than-the-virus/
https://www.rte.ie/news/politics/2020/0521/1139797-dail-coronavirus/
Varadkar starting to prime the sheep for either a return to work or starvation.
Hello Ewan. Didn’t Varadker come out a week or so ago saying, essentially that those he made unemployed were spongers. I believe the words he used were that people were milking the system. This from an illigitimate Taoiseach who was roundly trounced at the last election.
I see there’s now an Unherd interview with Sunetra Gupta.
https://youtu.be/DKh6kJ-RSMI
This is excellent, and deals precisely with much of what we talk about here – it’s so refreshing to hear someone actually deal with the points without evasion or non sequiturs.
Unfortunately, while Ferguson’s model and her own were both compatible with the earlier stages of the epidemic, we find that they are *still* both compatible post-lockdown – if we believe the lockdown works as advertised. However, she says that the Ferguson model is becoming increasingly unlikely as we see the epidemic decline in the same way in all countries, and that the truth is probably that the virus was with at least a month earlier than we thought, and most of the population has been exposed without serious symptoms. Some people are going to be resistant, and some will have innate immunity, possibly without requiring antibodies to be developed.
Her belief is that the IFR is “closer to 1-in-10000 than 1-in-1000”. She is keen to stress, however, that this figure is a the combined effect of the virus on the “population structure”, so for populations of highly vulnerable people it will higher, and in younger populations lower.
She thinks that historically, living in de facto lockdown as we used to a hundred years ago, without foreign travel, set up the conditions for the Spanish flu to kill 50 million people. It is far better for us to mix as much as possible. She thinks that releasing the lockdown immediately would probably be the best strategy for everyone’s health.
And the dynamite question: might we have done better by doing nothing at all? Her answer: yes.
Interesting that both Gupta and Giesecke both come across a lot better in their public interviews than the sinister Ferguson, who seemed to enjoy the adulation a bit too much, along with his attention seeking little allies at a few of the other London Unis.
I posit because Ferguson, both literally and metaphorically, is thinking with his d*ck. To be blunt.
She was very measured and thoughtful. The only thing I disagreed with her on was the dismissal of a libertarian view. Liberty is important and it is the structures that we have in place to protect liberty that should have stopped the government taking this action in the first place. If you don’t place importance on liberty then the government can always follow the precautionary principle without a care for human rights.
Exactly. Her opinion is tactically useful as an expert in the relevant field who is dissenting from the views being used to justify the lockdown at the moment, but more broadly her views are in large part the ones that got us into the situation where such a disastrous authoritarian, collectivist, absurdly and lopsidedly risk-averse response could even be considered.
I thought about mentioning that, but then I figured that if it makes it easier for her to put her point across to the people who matter, then so be it.
Exactly. This could be good, because nobody can accuse her of being a righting nutjob for valuing freedom.
I have a lot of sympathy with her on that front.
‘ Guido highlighted this to show that the UK has fared better at protecting its care home residents than other European countries, ‘
First of all none of these death stats can be compared because they do not follow a standard used by all.
Playing the percentages to draw conclusions is not recommended.
Deaths in UK care homes are nearly as many as all deaths in Germany, and double the number of deaths in German care homes and Swedish care homes.
Also what are the respective numbers of populations in care homes in each Country?
Pink Floyd – Sheep
How have we missed that one?
Boom! Team Oxford, knives out https://unherd.com/2020/05/oxford-doubles-down-sunetra-gupta-interview/
I had a discussion (argument) a few weeks back on natural immunity and was accused of misrepresenting the science. They even quoted the wikipedia definition of immunity but conveniently left out the inate immunity part.
Whilst it’s not possible for me to give a number or percentage of the people with natural immunity to any particular disease/infection I am pretty sure it is not zero.
If they only know that Wikipedia is not a reliable source of information as anyone can change the information. Wikipedia is also known to censor any natural health information.
There is a reason they censor “natural health”. Not that I support censoring. Might be better to just put up a warning banner.
I think it will be impossible to quantify meaningfully, even after the epidemic is over.
From reading around, and listening to virologists and immunologists, it’s going to be a continuum of different responses to levels of exposure and will vary from person to person depending on many things like their previous exposure to other viruses, different genetics, housing, social behaviour, climates, age distribution, etc. etc.
But the fact it cannot be quantified doesn’t mean it’s not real. Just allowing for it as an idea would have explained results like the Diamond Princess, and allowed us to infer that the situation was nowhere near as dire as Ferguson et al. were predicting. I really, really, hope that this eventually comes out in the public enquiry.
We need to make sure public inquiries are still legal when the epidemic is over.
Perhaps I don’t mean “impossible” to quantify, but rather “difficult”. I suspect modelling will be the best way to estimate its effects. It should certainly be a factor allowed for in all future ICL models!
‘ For what it’s worth, I started taking chloroquine when I thought I had COVID-19, but stopped after three days when I started getting heart palpitations.‘
Apparently you need take only one tablet for it to be effective.
and take it with zinc
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/x-days-to-save-the-economy
Douglas Murray; worth reading
The Scottish Government had a little project entitled “Coronavirus (COVID-19): framework for decision making ” where the public were asked for suggestions on how to proceed during this pandemic.
One of my suggestions was to make decisions based on the evidence available. Looking around the world there is plenty of evidence that can be used to help shape decision making.
As of today the only evidence that seems to have been used for decision making is that the virus is still present.
Sturgeon has announced the possible very slight easing of the restictions in Scotland from Friday next week. Scotland will still be one of the least free nations on the planet. Does anyoone know whether Sturgeon actually has the necessary power to enforce all her rules? Although health is a devolved matter I don’t see how freedom of movement and open borders within the UK are her prerogative. I suspect that the courts may not uphold fines for breaching her rules, assuming that the courts ever find time to try the cases of non payers. I have looked at the Scottish regulations which show all the signs of rushed legislation and I do wonder whether some of the clauses are ultra vires under the devolution settlement.
The whole lockdown shebang across all four nations could be ultra vires. But we’ll leave that to Simon Dolan’s team to hash out.
Typhoid Mary takes me back to when I was a microbiolgy student in the good old days.
Just wondering how lab work will be able to go ahead if this lunacy continues?
I really enjoyed this, you made us laugh! It seems a lot of people have discovered their local shops through this so I hope we’ll all remember to keep using them after the madness is over.
https://www.independent.ie/world-news/coronavirus/clampdown-coming-on-people-who-wont-work-in-order-to-keep-seeking-pandemic-payments-varadkar-39223226.html
If you read the full article, he is almost speaking like someone who has a gun to their head – who is pulling the strings in the background? Time for him to start acting like a leader and not a puppet.
Plenty of twats out there…and woe betide you if you forget to say ‘thank you’ when they graciously move out of your way to let you pass
I really enjoy reading your blogs
Poor you. This has finally given all those type of people a legitimate reason to sneer at others and righteously display their revulsion at complete strangers. Y’know the people that think that John Lewis is a mark of class. What I resent most is that their behaviour forces me to notice them when once they would of been little more than a backdrop.
https://order-order.com/2020/05/21/green-snp-amendment-exempts-16-17-year-old-scots-lockdown-fines/
From Guido:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cz20ITBoMZc&list=WL&index=12&t=0s
Great video.
The “New Normal” You are Meant To Accept Based on Neil Ferguson’s Projections
Great confusion over the fact that Stockholm’s population was only at 7% antibodies at the end of April.
“…Tom Britton, a maths professor who helped develop its forecasting model, said the figure from the study was surprising.
“It means either the calculations made by the agency and myself are quite wrong, which is possible, but if that’s the case it’s surprising they are so wrong,” he told the newspaper Dagens Nyheter. “Or more people have been infected than developed antibodies.”
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/may/21/just-7-per-cent-of-stockholm-had-covid-19-antibodies-by-end-of-april-study-sweden-coronavirus
Well, duh! We’ve been saying this for ages.
Sturgeon has announced the possible very slight easing of the restictions in Scotland from Friday next week. Scotland will still be one of the least free nations on the planet. Does anyoone know whether Sturgeon actually has the necessary power to enforce all her rules? Although health is a devolved matter I don’t see how freedom of movement (eg we cannot drive a distance as people in Egland are free to do) and open borders within the UK are her prerogative. I suspect that the courts may not uphold fines for breaching her rules, assuming that the courts ever find time to try the cases of non payers. I have looked at the Scottish regulations which show all the signs of rushed legislation and I do wonder whether some of the clauses are ultra vires under the devolution settlement. I also rather think that Boris should be emphasising his position as Prime Minister of the UK – it rtather feels that he is happy just to be chief minister in Engand.
If anyone is having a sense of deja vu over this post, I did post it on the previous thread just before it closed (I know, bad timing) but I would really appreciate any views or opinions.
Enjoyed reading this. Glad that your sales have gone up unfortunately we will have twats with us all the time.