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…
Discussion
Comments
This week across the site:
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Enjoyed reading this. Glad that your sales have gone up unfortunately we will have twats with us all the time.
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… Read more »
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.
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
https://order-order.com/2020/05/21/green-snp-amendment-exempts-16-17-year-old-scots-lockdown-fines/
From Guido:
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.
I really enjoy reading your blogs 🙂
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
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/x-days-to-save-the-economy
Douglas Murray; worth reading
‘ 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
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!
Pink Floyd – Sheep
How have we missed that one?
‘ 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?
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… Read more »
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.
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.
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/
Paul Joseph Watson on top form –
Send in the Clowns https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cFCrs6uR-d8
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 … !
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.
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!
“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?
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…
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.
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!
“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!