The Guardian has splashed with a humdinger of a story today, revealing that Dominic Cummings drove 264 miles from his home in London to stay with his parents in Durham. The police were tipped-off on March 31st after Cummings was spotted in his parents’ front garden with his three year-old child by a member of the public and officers “explained to the family the guidelines around self-isolation and reiterated the appropriate advice around essential travel”.
The police took no further action, but the Guardian leaves its readers in no doubt what it thinks should happen:
The witness, who did not wish to be named, told the Guardian: “I was really annoyed. I thought it’s OK for you to drive all the way up to Durham and escape from London. I sympathise with him wanting to do that, but other people are not allowed to do that. It’s one rule for Dominic Cummings and one rule for the rest of us.”
Tulip Siddiq MP, the Vice Chair of the Labour party, said of the reports: “If accurate, the Prime Minister’s chief adviser appears to have breached the lockdown rules. The Government’s guidance was very clear: stay at home and no non-essential travel. The British people do not expect there to be one rule for them and another rule for Dominic Cummings. Number 10 needs to provide a very swift explanation for his actions.”
The acting leader of the Liberal Democrats, Ed Davey, tweeted: “If Dominic Cummings has broken the lockdown guidelines he will have to resign. It’s as simple as that.”
Ian Blackford, the Scottish National party’s Westminster leader, said: “Dominic Cummings’ position is completely untenable – he must resign or be sacked.”
Breaking lockdown rules has been a resigning issue for senior officials.
Prof Neil Ferguson, the epidemiologist whose modelling prompted the lockdown, quit as a member of the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies for flouting physical distancing rules when he was visited by his girlfriend.
After he stood aside, senior Tories insisted he had done the right thing.
Hancock said he was “speechless” and added: “I think he took the right decision to resign.”
So should Dominic Cummings go? I punched the air when Neil Ferguson was caught with his pants down and promptly slunk off with his tail between his legs. So shouldn’t I be screaming for Cummings’s head? Or is it one rule for my Tory mates and another for bearded leftists?
My view is that unlike Professor Pantsdown, Cummings had a “reasonable excuse” to be outside his home. Under the guidelines issued by the College of Policing (and reproduced in Appendix 1 of Lockdown Sceptics), one of the reasonable excuses listed is “providing support to vulnerable people”, accompanied by the following guidance:
Social visits are not generally a good reason to leave home. However, there may be exceptional circumstances for a person to visit another…
So what were the “exceptional circumstances” in this case? Well, both Cummings and his wife were suffering from COVID-19 at the time and as a result felt unable to care for their three year-old child. That was the “vulnerable person” that required “support”, so Cummings drove to his parents’ house in Durham and entrusted his toddler to their care while – as far as we know – observing the correct social distancing rules while in their household.
In other words, this isn’t a case of one rule for them and another for the rest of us, although Cummings was certainly interpreting those rules quite liberally.
And I don’t think I can be accused of sucking up to my Tory mates. If I was willing to turn a blind eye to their faults I wouldn’t have started this website…
Coronaphobia Still Grips Nation
Britons do not want to go back into work because they fear the lockdown is being eased too quickly – and they enjoy being at home, according to a depressing poll in today’s Mail. Here are some of the key findings:
- 33% said they were “better off” as a result of the lockdown, compared to 29% who said they were “worse off”. In the public sector, this rises to 46% saying “better off” and 23% saying “worse off”.
- 43% said they have enjoyed being stuck at home, with 25% saying they haven’t.
- 53% think the lockdown is being eased “too fast” against 11% who think it’s “too slow”.
- 75% think all travellers arriving in the UK should be quarantined for two weeks while 11% think they shouldn’t.
- 60% of parents said they won’t be sending their children to school on June 1st and 55% think the teaching unions are right to veto schools reopening compared to 27% who don’t.
- 58% think pubs with outdoor seating should not reopen, while 35% think they should.
Will London be First Out of Lockdown?
This is rumoured to be the big announcement Boris is planning on May 31st, following the news that there’ve only been 634 cases in the capital over the past fortnight. To lend credence to these reports, Barcelona and Madrid will be easing their lockdowns from Monday, allowing people to meet in groups of up to 10 and travel within their provinces. In addition, bars and restaurants will reopen, provided customers eat and drink outside.
Amusing comment spotted beneath the Times‘s piece on the forthcoming liberation of the capital:
People of Cornwall, Cumbria and Wales: please do not visit London. We are worried that you will reintroduce infection and overwhelm our health services. You will be welcome to taste the pleasures of urban sophistication when the crisis is past, and we will be pleased to relieve you of your money.
Former Director of Israel’s Health Ministry Condemns Covid Hysteria
There’s a good interview with Yoram Lass, former Director-General of Israel’s Health Ministry, by Fraser Miles in Spiked. He thinks the global reaction to the pandemic, including that of governments, has been fuelled by social media-induced hysteria:
It is the first epidemic in history which is accompanied by another epidemic – the virus of the social networks. These new media have brainwashed entire populations. What you get is fear and anxiety, and an inability to look at real data. And therefore you have all the ingredients for monstrous hysteria.
It is what is known in science as positive feedback or a snowball effect. The government is afraid of its constituents. Therefore, it implements draconian measures. The constituents look at the draconian measures and become even more hysterical. They feed each other and the snowball becomes larger and larger until you reach irrational territory. This is nothing more than a flu epidemic if you care to look at the numbers and the data, but people who are in a state of anxiety are blind. If I were making the decisions, I would try to give people the real numbers. And I would never destroy my country.
Lass is sceptical about the number of deaths being attributed to COVID-19 across the world, pointing out that the most reliable data are the excess death figures published at the end of the year.
The only real number is the total number of deaths – all causes of death, not just coronavirus. If you look at those numbers, you will see that every winter we get what is called an excess death rate. That is, during the winter more people die compared to the average, due to regular, seasonal flu epidemics, which nobody cares about. If you look at the coronavirus wave on a graph, you will see that it looks like a spike. Coronavirus comes very fast, but it also goes away very fast. The influenza wave is shallow as it takes three months to pass, but coronavirus takes one month. If you count the number of people who die in terms of excess mortality – which is the area under the curve – you will see that during the coronavirus season, we have had an excess mortality which is about 15 per cent larger than the epidemic of regular flu in 2017.
Compared to that rise, the draconian measures are of biblical proportions. Hundreds of millions of people are suffering. In developing countries many will die from starvation. In developed countries many will die from unemployment. Unemployment is mortality. More people will die from the measures than from the virus. And the people who die from the measures are the breadwinners. They are younger. Among the people who die from coronavirus, the median age is often higher than the life expectancy of the population. What has been done is not proportionate. But people are afraid. People are brainwashed. They do not listen to the data. And that includes governments.
Needless to say, Lass thinks the lockdowns are a pointless act of self-harm:
Any reasonable expert – that is, anyone but Professor Ferguson from Imperial College who would have locked down everybody when we had swine flu – will tell you that lockdown cannot change the final number of infected people. It can only change the rate of infection. And people argue that by changing the rate of infection and ‘flattening the curve’, we prevented the collapse of hospitals. I have shown you the costs of lockdown, but this was the argument in favour of it. But look at Sweden. No lockdown and no collapse of hospitals. The argument for the lockdown collapses.
Worth reading in full.
The Covid Bible
A reader has sent me some verses from the “Covid Bible”. This one could run and run…
- And their number was said to be Five Thousand… until the Authorities dispersed them as it was an illegal gathering under the Corona Virus Legisation.
- And the Disciples said, there is a boy here with Five loaves and Two fishes… which caused accusations of Panic Buying as the maximum at the time was two per customer.
- And I tell you, Lo, where two or three are gathered together in My name there will… the Police be also, to fine thee for breaking the Lockdown Rules.
Professor Ferguson’s Latest Astrological Charts
Neil Ferguson and his team at Imperial College have published a new paper – Report 23 – analysing the likely impact of easing lockdowns in different US states. According to them, the prognosis isn’t good:
We predict that increased mobility following relaxation of social distancing will lead to resurgence of transmission, keeping all else constant. We predict that deaths over the next two-month period could exceed current cumulative deaths by greater than two-fold, if the relationship between mobility and transmission remains unchanged.
You’d have thought Team Ferguson would have learnt its lesson by now. Why make apocalyptic predictions, given the high likelihood that they’ll turn out to be over-estimates? In the case of this one, we only need wait two months before it’s proved wrong. You’d think the bespectacled soothsayers would be a bit more risk averse, given that the general tenor of their advice is to hide under your bed until we have a vaccine.
I asked Alistair Haimes, a data specialist who’s written some great number-crunching articles about the crisis, to take a look at the report for Lockdown Sceptics. This was after I’d seen a tweet of his saying: “Just imagine that the Imperial College report is all in Comic Sans and you’ll have an idea of the esteem they’re held in right now in the UK.”
Imperial’s latest analysis is mesmerisingly bad, finding interesting new ways to be wrong and misleading. Key questions to ask yourself reading it or its conclusions would be:
1. Why is Imperial still only using deaths to work backwards to past infections and then forward again to future infections (an inherently error-prone method) when we have on-the-ground data like hospital admissions and COVID-19 calls to doctors and hospitals to track the disease’s spread? (In the UK, this information is actually the most useful data for ‘community’ R, as it excludes nosocomial infection: UK’s R is currently around 0.6 from this data by the way). Why on earth wouldn’t they use whatever current data they can get their hands on rather than using a single, variable lag-indicator?
2. Why is Imperial not differentiating states based on how they have controlled the outbreaks in care homes, given the high percentage of total deaths this represents? New York has 10x the proportion of care home residents dying of COVID-19 as Florida, since NY made the same mistake as the UK, where 1/3rd of deaths are care home residents (and Sweden, where >50% deaths are in care homes or care-at-home), which was to send infected patients back to care homes without first testing them to ensure they’re negative. (Both Germany and South Korea got this right, btw.) The ‘care home’ R would clearly be hugely different as a result, and everyone is now ‘on”‘this issue, but Imperial’s analysis does not account for it.
3. Why does Imperial assume that infection spread is only affected by state-sponsored interventions rather than declining naturally, given that the downward trajectory of R is indistinguishable for a lockdown versus non-lockdown country (see UK v Sweden)? Michael Levitt – Stanford Professor of Structural Biology – pointed out two months ago that transmission is constantly declining whether the disease is managed or not, but Imperial’s model implicitly assumes that infections will spring up again when interventions are lifted like an un-squashed sombrero. The ‘natural experiment’ or ‘control’ of Free Sweden versus HMP England does not bear this out.
4. Why is Imperial using only antibody levels to sanity-check its results, when it is clearer by the day that large proportions of people are relying on other facets of the immune system (T cell and likely cross-immunity from other coronaviruses) to fight off infection? This would make a massive difference to its calculations of the remaining susceptible population.
5. Why is Imperial still running the model based on Chinese (no comment) parameter inputs for length of illness from over two months ago, when we know so much more about the virus, the disease and its treatment now than we did then?
6. Why is Imperial still using IFR assumptions via shaky historical data from selected countries in Europe, when the CDC has calculated the current actual IFR rate (0.26%) in the US?
I could go on. There is a two-page digression proving (with lovely charts) that mobility is strongly correlated with stay-at-home orders: no shit, Sherlock. The code itself is very short and simple – formatting and presenting the results is more lines of code than the calculation – but it’s the old chestnut: garbage in, garbage out.
P.S. A lockdown sceptic on Twitter decided to plug Sweden’s numbers into Neil Ferguson’s model to see what deaths it would have predicted compared to the reality. We all know how this turns out because I’ve written about two other versions of this exact same exercise. But here’s the graph just for laughs:
Instant Karma for BP’s Looney
A few days ago a reader emailed me with the following gripe:
I am really getting hacked off at the amount of money that is being splashed around as a consequence of this stupid lockdown. Now we learn that the wonderful boys in blue have been getting free petrol, c/o BP’s generosity. Do BP’s shareholders know this is how BP is misuing their funds I wonder?
He included a link to an article in Police Oracle confirming that from the beginning of April British police have been allowed to fill up their tanks at BP petrol stations completely free of charge.
Yesterday, the same reader emailed me again, only this time he was in a better mood:
Today the CEO of BP (aptly name Bernard Looney) announced this: “BP is halving the number of top managers as the coronavirus pandemic accelerates a strategy shift under the new chief executive to transform the UK energy major into a ‘smaller and nimbler’ company. The pool of managers will be cut from 250 people to around 120, with many who held leadership positions under former chief Bob Dudley leaving the company in the next few months, a person familiar with the change said. In an email to staff sent on May 14, Bernard Looney said the company was working towards a new operational and leadership structure as it seeks to achieve its ambition to be a net-zero emissions company by 2050.”
You can read the story in full on EnergyWorld.com, where it’s headlined: ‘BP’s Looney halves top management roles in energy transition plan.’ Someone has a sense of humour…
Did Matt Hancock Inadvertently Reveal London’s IFR is 0.32%
At the Downing Street press briefing on Thursday, Matt Hancock announced that “around 17% of people in London… have tested positive for coronavirus antibodies” based on “the results of our antibody surveillance study”. Is this the much-touted Porton Down seroprevalence study? He didn’t say. He also didn’t say how he was defining “London”, but if we assume it’s the London metropolitan area that’s a population of 14,372,596.
Can we calculate the infection fatality rate (IFR) in the capital based on this? I think we can. According to the ONS, 5,654 people died in London hospitals after testing positive for COVID-19 up to the week ending May 8th. The ONS estimates that 75% of Covid deaths in the capital have occurred in hospitals, giving us a total – in and out of hospital – of 7,805.
So let’s calculate the IFR:
- 14,372,596 x 0.17 = 2,443,341
- 2,443,341 ÷ 7,805 = 313
- 100 ÷ 313 = 0.32
- IFR = 0.32%
Probably an over-estimate, given that we know some people who’ve been exposed to the virus have it so mildly their bodies don’t produce enough antibodies for them to show up on a PCR test. But still three times smaller than the IFR Neil Ferguson plugged into his shonky model.
Stop Press: I put in a call to the Department of Health and Social Care to try and find out a bit more about this data and have been told it comes from Public Health England’s seroprevalence study, the results of which are due to be published next week. The 17% estimate comes from studying 974 NHS blood transfusion donors in London between May 1st and 3rd. So a small sample and hardly a representative one. After all, anyone who thinks they have the virus, as well as some who think they’ve had it, would be unlikely to give blood. Some of you may recall the bonkers prognosis that Professor Anthony Costello gave to the House of Commons Health Select Committee on April 24th, claiming we wouldn’t achieve herd immunity until after eight to ten waves of infection, with a death toll exceeding 40,000 in the first wave alone. This prediction was based on a Dutch survey of blood donors which showed that only 3% of them had developed antibodies to the virus. As a reader pointed out at the time:
By definition, a blood donor has no known infections, has not had a recent illness, even a cold or flu, and I presume the blood banks are being particularly careful at present. Even if the tests are done from the initial samples rather than the blood collected (i.e. includes rejected donors), someone who is aware that they had a cough recently would either not have volunteered or been rejected at questionnaire stage before giving a sample.
Children More Likely to be Struck by Lightning Than Die of COVID-19
At yesterday’s Downing Street press briefing, Sir Patrick Vallance, the Government’s Chief Scientific Advisor, was asked what risk COVID-19 poses to children. He said: “They are very low risk, but not zero risk. And there have been some serious cases in children, of course, but very few compared to adults and older age groups.”
Let’s unpack what he means by “very few”. Up to the the week ending May 8th, according to the ONS, there were 37,375 deaths registered in England and Wales involving the coronavirus and of these two were of children aged 14 or under. There were no such deaths in Scotland, and none in Northern Ireland. So that’s two in total aged 14 or under for the whole of the UK. According to Statista, there are 11.91 million children aged 14 and under in the UK. So that means the chances of a child under the age of 15 dying from COVID-19 are one in 5,955,000.
An average of 49 people are injured by lightning in the UK each year and if we assume those strikes are distributed equally across different age cohorts that means about eight children aged 14 or under are struck by lightning each year.
So the chances of a child under the age of 15 being struck by lightning are four times higher than them dying of COVID-19.
Can you say that next time please, Sir Patrick?
Harvesting Deaths
In yesterday’s FT, David Spiegelhalter, the Cambridge statistician, told Alphaville’s Jemima Kelly he has revised downwards his estimates of the proportion of people dying from COVID-19 who would have died in the coming year anyway, suggesting that figure is between 5 and 15%. The colloquial term for this is “harvesting” – a short-term increase in the mortality rate that then causes a subsequent drop in deaths because some of the most vulnerable people will have died during the earlier spike. Five to 15% is a far smaller estimate than Neil Ferguson’s, who previously said that as many as two-thirds of the people who’ve died from COVID-19 might have died later this year anyway.
Sir David, who is the Winton Professor of the Public Understanding of Risk in the Statistical Laboratory at the University of Cambridge, and was formerly president of the Royal Statistical Society, said his reduced estimate was partly based on research carried out by University College London and published in the Lancet, showing that even among the over-85s with at least three comorbidities, we would still only expect 1 in 4 to die in the next year without coronavirus.
But evidence that at least some “harvesting” is taking place was provided by last Tuesday’s ONS data which shows that in Week 19 of this year the total number of deaths in hospitals in England and Wales was below the five-year average for all-mortality deaths in Week 19 – 114 lower, to be precise. It will be interesting to see whether that was a one-off or the beginning of a trend.
The Reality of Lock Down for One 99 Year-Old
Lockdown sceptics like me are often told we are “heartless” for wanting to “sacrifice” the elderly for the economy. Worth pointing out, then, that for many elderly people the miseries of being kept in quarantine, unable to see their families, are so acute they would prefer to take their chances. Here’s the story of one reader’s 99 year-old mother-in-law:
On 21 March my 99-year-old mother-in-law fell at her care home in Lincolnshire and cut herself so badly she had to be rushed into Peterborough Hospital. Since I and my wife had only returned home that morning from Australia after an abruptly curtailed trip, this was fairly distressing for all since we could not visit her. She was to remain there for 15 days largely because thanks to the habit of NHS regions of offering different treatments, Lincolnshire could not deal with the type of dressing used in Peterborough. On 31 March this was finally sorted out, my wife having had to ring almost daily to barrack staff in Peterborough and Lincolnshire.
So, she was discharged. Incredibly, even at this date the proposition was that this elderly lady be sent back to her care home in an ordinary taxi, with all the attendant risks. Staggered at this, we stepped in and collected her ourselves. I need scarcely mention that she was not tested for COVID-19 at the hospital. She lives in a detached garden apartment so does not need to come in contact with any other residents.
As it happens, she’s fine and there were and still are zero cases of the virus at her care home, a place which is incidentally so well organised they have plenty of stocks of PPE. But let’s just look at what the lockdown means for my mother-in-law. Her husband died three years ago. Two of her three children are dead, many years ago. Almost all her friends and relatives are long dead. The only person she has left is my wife, our children and her great-grandchildren, none of whom she is allowed to have visit her. Since some of them live abroad the new quarantine rules will ensure any chance of seeing them again is being pushed back further and further.
Handicapped by macular degeneration she can hardly see anything and her hearing is only just acceptable thanks to a number of electronic devices that enable her to listen to the radio and TV.
She has no dementia and is utterly appalled at watching her country being reduced to economic ruin for the sake of people like herself. She is crippled with acute back ache that confines her to bed most days. The doctor is not allowed to visit her. Nor of course can she go to the dentist or get her hair cut.This is the reality for one very elderly person who never stops telling us she has had enough and wants to go. The lockdown has denied her not only any remaining joy in her life but even some amelioration of her physical discomfort. She is in despair for the future of her descendants of whom she is immensely proud. The care home staff do their very best but nothing can compensate for what has happened.
I’m not going to pass judgement here myself on the lockdown. But when I hear people like Matt Hancock or Priti Patel say they understand how tough it must be, I know they really don’t have the slightest idea.
Queen Sacks Boris, Takes Back Control
Has one particular 94 year-old finally had enough? Excellent post in the comment thread beneath yesterdays update from “Annie”. It begins:
Last night I dreamed a dream.
The Queen was scheduled to make a live broadcast to the nation. She appeared as usual, poised and serene. But suddenly she sat bolt upright, hurled a brick through the autocue, fixed the cameras with a steely glare, and began:
People of Britain, I know you are watching me without respect or full attention, sloppily dressed and probably eating junk food. I will give you just five minutes to take off your nappies, assume decent clothes, smarten yourselves up and return to hear my announcement.
[Five minutes later.]
In view of the lamentable condition of this country, I have decided to resume my proper place as an active head of state. I have dismissed the present Cabinet and am in process of selecting a new set of ministers equipped with brains and backbones. Dr David Starkey is to be the new Prime Minister, and Lord Jonathan Sumption will be Lord Chancellor. We are currently looking for a Chancellor who can add up and knows that there is no such thing as a magic money tree. We will let you know when and if we find one. Leading my new team, I shall restore this country from the shambles it has become.
For a thousand years, the best of the people of these islands have striven – not always successfully, and never unanimously, but unceasingly – to construct a system which is built on justice and individual freedom. But to maintain justice requires courage, and individual freedom requires individual responsibility. People of Britain! In a few short weeks, cowed and subjugated by panicking bullies who use fear and lies as their weapons, you have cast away the labours of a thousand years. You have ceased to care for justice, you have surrendered your freedom, and you have shrugged off your responsibilities. Everything that is worth having in Britain has been destroyed by the so-called lockdown. Without protest, without resistance, you have allowed your country to be turned into a vast concentration camp, where you are at the mercy of self-styled leaders who know neither leadership nor mercy.
There’s a good deal more in the same vein. Read the rest of it here.
Famous Companies That Have Gone Bust (So Far)
After hearing the news that Hertz has filed for bankruptcy I thought I’d start a new section in which I list those famous companies in Britain and the US that have gone bust as a result of lockdown lunacy. Here is a provisional list, but it will grow given that half of Britain’s high street chains are expected to be in administration by August:
In the UK:
- Debenhams
- Carphone Warehouse
- Oasis
- Warehouse
- Carluccios
- Cath Kidson
- Lombok
- Brighthouse
In the US:
- Hertz
- Dean & Deluca
- Gold’s Gym
- JC Penney
- J Crew
- Neiman Marcus
- Pier 1
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:
- ‘Tens of thousands of coronavirus tests have been double-counted, officials admit‘ – Diagnostic kits which involve nasal and saliva samples of a single individual are being counted as two tests, says the Telegraph
- ‘Every part of England would pass Germany’s Covid test‘ – Ross Clark in the Spectator suggests forgetting the R number and using the same metric used in Germany and Ontario – if the no. of infections falls below 50/100,00 then continue easing restrictions
- ‘Stanford Professor and Nobel Prize Winner Explains this Viral Lockdown – Fully!‘ – Ivor Cummins, aka the Fat Emperor, talks to Professor Michael Levitt about the lockdown policy
- ‘Feel a Little Shame for the Lost Soul of the Nation‘ – Avay Shukla makes a powerful moral case for ending the lockdown in India. A must-read for people who think lockdown scepticism is a conservative cause
- ‘The worst week for Britain’s economy laid bare – in five charts‘ – The Telegraph publishes five charts to show the economic devastation unleashed by the lockdown. Sobering
- ‘Lockdowns Haven’t Proved They’re Worth the Havoc‘ – Joe Nocera in Bloomberg contrasts the reaction to COVID-19 with the reaction to the Hong Kong Flu pandemic in 1968-69
- ‘We Can’t Go On Living in a Two-Meter World‘ – More scepticism from Bloomberg
- ‘Two in three of us have put on weight in lockdown‘ – I am among the 66.6%
- ‘Next week’s clap for carers should be the last‘ – The inventor of ‘clap for carers’ calls time on the virtue-signalling seals
- ‘Cracks widen as fatigue takes its toll at Downing Street‘ – Trouble down pit, according to the Times
- ‘California doctors say they’ve seen more deaths from suicide than coronavirus since lockdowns‘ – Disturbing report in the Washington Examiner
- ‘Life long damage inflicted on children by lockdown, reveals study seen by SAGE advisers‘ – The Telegraph reports on data shown to members of SAGE showing lasting harm done to children by keeping them out of school
- ‘Justice Dept. supports downstate lawmaker’s lawsuit against Illinois stay-at-home order‘ – The US Justice Department is helping a state congressman in Chicago sue Governor JB Pritzker over stay-at-home order
- ‘Tokyo Gov. Yuriko Koike reveals restart plan as end of emergency looms‘ – Governor of Tokyo gives short shrift to the idea of a “new normal”. He told a meeting of the city’s coronavirus task force yesterday: “We need to proceed cautiously, but each day the city meets these criteria is another step toward reclaiming the lives we had before.”
- ‘Exclusive: Sir Keir Starmer reveals his children have been at school and calls for consensus to get pupils back in classroom‘ – Good scoop from the Telegraph. Starmer’s wife is a “key worker” so this is within the rules
- ‘Boris Johnson’s ‘Conservatives’ Are Spineless Bed-wetters‘ – James Delingpole’s latest in Breitbart. Yes, James, but what do you really think?
Theme Tune Suggestions
Some more suggestions for theme songs from readers: “I Am the Law” by Spandau Ballet the Human League, “Cancer” by Joe Jackson, “You’re Not Very Well” by the Charlatans, “Patience” by Guns n’ Roses and “My Sweet Lord” by George Harrison (for Lord Sumption).
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 opened near you. Please visit the page and let us know about those brave folk who are doing their bit to get our country back on its feet.
Shameless Begging Bit
Thanks as always to those of you who made a donation in the last 24 hours to pay for the upkeep of this site. It still takes me about nine hours a day, what with doing these updates, moderating your comments and commissioning original material. And my journalist helpers have gone! 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.
And Finally…
If you want to visit your elderly parents this weekend and are worried about being stopped by the police, just wear this Halloween mask. You should get away with a slap on the wrist.
Discussion
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[…] and concluded that the chances of a child under the age of 15 being struck by lightning are four times than of dying from the covid […]
[…] much about this story on the Telegraph‘s front page except to say: You read it here first. I pointed out that children under the age of 15 were more likely to be struck by lightning than die of COVID-19 […]
I’ve been impressed by the spine shown by key Tories over the Dominic Cummings incident. It’s just that these same people have caved in to every far left offensive for their entire lives. Which raises the suspicion that this is not any kind of working resistance to the creeping socialist/globalist agenda at all, but merely naked self-interest; looking out for him because I could be next. Probably will be since I suspect none of them have any respect for the laws they impose on the rest of the people. Like the butcher knows exactly what’s in the sausage, and eats the steak instead.
And of course with this fake resistance comes fake arguments about the outrage of the public over Cummings’ hypocrisy. Oh, it’s just the media ginning up a twitter storm. Oh, the problem’s not Cummings, the problem is the lockdown. Oh, he did what any Dad would do to protect his child.
Worst of all is the last one: Oh, he did what he believed was lawful and reasonable.
Yeah, Boris, so did thousands of Britons who’ve been persecuted under the lockdown laws during the last 2 months.
And in what universe is the opinion of the… Read more »
[…] under-65 you’re more likely to die in a road traffic accident than from COVID-19 and, as I pointed out yesterday, if you’re under-15 you’re more likely to be struck by lightning – four times […]
So Boris has backed Cummings. |No surprise there. The so called elites will always stand up for each other as they feel they are so much better than the plebs.
Another good website here
https://unlockthelockdown.com/the-top-twelve-lies-about-covid19/
set up by a retired Science teacher I think it deserves more traction.
I think clappers should be forced to carry on every Thursday as a mark of shame.
Haha, replied to the wrong post. Please ignore
He states that the IFR is 0.1% for Covid. I can find no study that puts it that low. More so, to make a convincing argument, you do not pick the lowest estimate, but rather the consensus.
He also claims the IFR rate for Covid is comparable to the 0.1% mortality rate for flu. This ignores the fact that the mortality rate for flu is based on suspected symptomatic cases of flu. It makes no account of asymptomatic cases as the IFR for Covid does.
Must be good – is blocked by my company’s webfilter. 🙂
You have probably mostly seen it, but, for anyone else, Hannan discusses the dreadful economic future we face with some suggestions for trying to aid recovery. A pretty good attempt at least to spell out the nature of the disaster which so many sheeple clearly fail to see.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/05/23/radical-free-market-plan-can-lift-britain-economic-doldrums/
Daily Mail is all over the Cummings story. Banner on News front page is: “CUMMINGS’ DEFENCE UNRAVELS”
While somebody who has really got it in for the chief lockdown hypocrite has parked a van outside his house playing pro-lockdown speeches at him. Great stunt.
Protesters set up camp outside Dominic Cummings’s home and blast Boris Johnson’s ‘stay at home’ speech on a huge screen
That’s really pushing the knife in….
Protesters set up camp outside Dominic Cummings’s home and blast Boris Johnson’s ‘stay at home’ speech on a huge screen
Oops left a space in the link. See if this one works.
If this isn’t all ten-dimensional chess orchestrated by the government, I really hope the papers have got something else on Cummings that can be brought out after the PM has defended him. I want to see the whole lot of them go down in ignominy and the country rise up against the ridiculous lockdown.
The thing with the PM defending him is to see off the next move which would be to point out that he knew about it. Maybe (fingers crossed) they’ve negotiated that Cummings will resign “honourably”. Doubt it though.
Yes, very good. He can’t not defend him if he already knew about it.
Having seen the latest polling as mentioned by Toby, the chances of the country rising up against the lockdown are exceedingly slim. The government and media have successfully managed to scare the living daylights out of a majority of the population, and who are happier under lockdown (being paid to stay at home) than going to work.
They’ll be the same people who will be screaming blue murder when the financial depression well and truly hits home .
I still think the whole Cummings business is an irrelevance compared to the bigger picture, but am glad the PM and others are defending him, and doing it so clumsily. I can only hope it highlights to at least some waverers that the laws we have and the whole policy is unworkable, unenforceable nonsense.
The PM really got his digger out, all that business about following your instincts. I think it’s referred to as “doubling down”. Maybe the PM has started to think he is Trump – the difference being I suspect Trump genuinely doesn’t give a toss about what some people think of him.
Out and about today saw a good few little clandestine playdates with adults and kids from different households – hopefully not the same households saying schools are not safe. Hoping human nature overcomes this madness, for now, though worry about our long term future.
Excellent piece by Nick Triggle – about the only journalist they have that doesn’t make me want to smash the television: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-52758024
I complained to the BBC about not covering the Simon Dolan legal challenge and got a boilerplate reply listing the criteria they use to decide whether to cover a… Read more »
Not only has the Dear Leader endorsed fully the actions of Dominic Cummings, he has also de facto run away from the battle with the teaching unions. Looks like September for schools. Jesus wept!
A while ago I said Boris’s balls had been sucked back up into his body following his brush with covid.
I think now we can all assume they’ve fully fallen off.
I think this is now bordering on very dangerous. Cabinet have to resign from him if he won’t go. I don’t like many of these journos with their ‘gotcha’ questions, but they are reflecting the mood of the ordinary citizen now.
Not quite following why it is dangerous..? True danger is the country being in lockdown, the public being behind the lockdown and the government free to lie, cheat and follow its authoritarian instincts. If Cummings remaining in post undermines all that, I’m 100% supportive of Cummings.
And the mood of the ordinary citizen is being dictated to them by a dishonest press.
“At the government’s daily press conference on 24 March, England’s deputy chief medical officer Dr Jenny Harries spoke of the “exceptional circumstance” of an adult unable to care for a young child during the pandemic.
“A small child clearly is a vulnerable individual, so in this case, although we are encouraging everybody to stay in their own households – that’s the unit with the same risk of exposure – clearly if you have adults who are unable to look after a small child, that is an exceptional circumstance,” Dr Harries said.”
If you had a 3-year-old child to look after and you knew you probably had the virus, what would you do?
I wouldn’t have driven 260 miles! All “normal” people would have managed at home with the child – just like my parents did during the 1960s flu epidemic. Besides, you can’t tell me that Dom and wife don’t have some kind of nanny.
No, his sinful balls are fully intact and operational in violation of Exodus 20:14.
I accept what someone said above. Leaving Cummings in place is actually good news. It turns the press and public against the lockdown rules, and it prevents the government from ever strengthening or re-introducing such sneaky, slimey, disingenuous ‘guidelines’ in future. In fact, it couldn’t be better. I withdraw my earlier call for Cummings to go.
I hear what you say, but in these times, this is surely, even if true, a very risky if not outright reckless strategy?
No, we’re still set to open on 1st, to be confirmed this Thursday, which was always the case.
Was just using the children killed compared to lightning argument with someone and went and checked the ONS figures. Which show that 6 children under 15 have died with CV-19 on the death certificate. I know it’s still a very small number but think it’s important that the figures/arguments are correct.
My data from the ONS statistics up to the 8th May for England and Wales upto the 8th May ‘Covid-19 Weekly Occurrences’
The chart he linked to still shows two aged 1-14, although it does also show one under 1 year old.
I’m going to assume Toby was cunningly setting up a Cummings-esque “make them argue over whether it’s comparable to a minuscule number or a very minuscule number” trap here.
One of the youngsters was reported to have had leukemia. The baby was born with non virus related problems.
Die from or died with CV19?
A very annoying article in the Spectator:
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/was-dominic-cummings-acting-legally-
A barrister tries to assess whether Cummings acted illegally. Did he have a “reasonable excuse”? He looks at the government’s guidelines.
“The fact it was reasonable to leave to access paid childcare facilities is also a useful pointer – why would paid childcare be reasonable but unpaid unreasonable?”
“Ultimately, if pursued, the question would be one for a judge. I would be very surprised if a judge concluded that two parents leaving their home with a vulnerable young child, in order to guarantee childcare in the foreseeable likelihood of both parents being ill with the virus (which went on to hospitalise the boss of the man in question) acted unreasonably.”
(a) Obviously, the reason why the guidelines stipulate “paid childcare” is to prevent people from saying “I went round to my sister’s because I was feeling unwell and thought she could look after Timmy”. It would never occur to most of us that this was just an optional example – I would assume it meant: paid = legal; unpaid = illegal.
(b) Ordinary people are not in the business of “letting a judge decide”. For us, it’s unthinkable. The cost, the stress,… Read more »
Indeed, and most people, with access to just a single property (their home!), would have managed where they were based. Why should this have been impossible for Cummings?
As you say, he must (or at least should) go.
Absolutely. But I change my mind about Cummings remaining in place just further down the page. I now want him to stay, in order to symbolically undermine every government attempt to extend or strengthen the lockdown from now on.
What law did he break?
“At the government’s daily press conference on 24 March, England’s deputy chief medical officer Dr Jenny Harries spoke of the “exceptional circumstance” of an adult unable to care for a young child during the pandemic.
“A small child clearly is a vulnerable individual, so in this case, although we are encouraging everybody to stay in their own households – that’s the unit with the same risk of exposure – clearly if you have adults who are unable to look after a small child, that is an exceptional circumstance,” Dr Harries said.”
Just watched some daft interview on Sky News with a medical ethics specialist and it was about the lack of virus naturally occurring in the community to expose vaccine volunteer testers to, in order to see if the vaccine works. The suggestion put to the guy was that the volunteers could be selected as young and fit and deliberately exposed to the virus under laboratory conditions. This would be against medical ethics, says the guy, as it could artificially expose the volunteers to risk of serious illness or death, as the virus can prove fatal even to young and fit folk. Even if the volunteers agreed to take the risk “for the greater good”. Instead of being relieved and hopeful about the lack of virus floating about in the community to infect these young and fit volunteers, the daft interviewer turned the interview into a fear and panic-fest about the difficulty, even impossibility, of a vaccine being developed which can be proved to be protective. When she put this to the interviewee he said that he was only a medical ethics man, not a vaccine expert. MSM is brain washing the audience into the belief that vaccine is the only… Read more »
They could try the vaccine out on nursing and medical staff. They’re still in contact with CV19 patients I assume, so it can be determined if it gives them immunity, and it might stop them passing it on to other vulnerable patients, as they did to an ex-NHS fire officer, who died from CV19 infection last week.
I have signed up on https://www.covid19vaccinetrial.co.uk/participate-trial to take part in the Oxford trials.
If selected, I will regard it as my duty to the greater good to maximise my own chances of exposure to the virus. With a 50/50 chance of getting the placebo and being only 2 years younger than Boris.
And I may get the chance to visit hospitals in Wales through my job.
Lord Hall: People have turned to BBC ‘in their droves’ during pandemic
And they have been betrayed, with their supposedly impartial and honest source of information used instead to disseminate state propaganda and scare them into supporting a disastrous policy of lockdown.
Long term, the future of the BBC depends on suppressing any honest discussion of the panic that enabled the lockdown, the disastrous costs and probably zero benefits of that policy, and the BBC’s role in enabling it through active propaganda.
Exactly why I’m not renewing my TV licence next Monday. Pity they won’t bother to ask me why!
Just listening to the BBC. Needless to say there were going on about Cummings, rather than why this whole lockdown farce is continuing. One question partially annoyed me: “What would you say to a nurse who has just come off a 12 hour shift.” This really sums up the quality of reporting – everything comes back to the saintly NHS and our need to protect it. The NHS is there to protect us – not the other way round.
Not all that surprising that employees of one bloated establishment state-funded institution are very keen to encourage the worship of another.
What’s disappointing is that all the other mainstream media outlets have caved in to outright, blind NHS worship.
i’d say to a nurse that just came off a 12 hour shift hey fatso stop eating cakes and making tiki tok videos and oh if i had my way i’d shut down your piss poor organisation and have a totally private system and then we’ll maybe get some decent health care instead of some kind of carry on matron bollocks that the braindead seem to think is the best in the world
😂 more up ticks needed!
Maybe point out they’re lucky to have a job?
It’s just emoting – ‘What would you say to a nurse who has just come off a 12 hour shift’ is not an argument that deals with the facts and statistics.
It’s very stressful making YouTube videos while allowing cáncer patients to die.
What would I say to a nurse coming off a 12-hour shift?
Should have fought to keep the old 8-hour shift pattern, and try not to infect any of your patients.
“Up to 20% of hospital patients with Covid-19 caught it at hospital
NHS England figures reveal some infections were passed on by hospital staff unaware they had virus”
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/may/17/hospital-patients-england-coronavirus-covid-19
‘cording to this cummings was within his rights and police had no right to complain: https://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/parenting/health-bosses-advice-single-parents-17973790
When I was at the gathering on Glasgow Green yesterday I was remembering the wonderful Commonwealth Games in 2014 and the joy and camaraderie.
It makes me weep to see what we have done to dear old Glasgow.
The Geordies will always be with you. Last time I was there was almost exactly two years ago – a beautiful Saturday morning, had to transfer between the stations on my way ‘south’ via Buchanan Street – and Patisserie Valerie was still with us. Magic!
funny how you saw the camaraderie in the Commonwealth Games and i saw it as a bunch of jacked up dullards playing school sports at the tax payers expense.
Well I for one loved it and it brought a lot of money into the city.
I hated the whole charade of the Glasgow Commonwealth Games 2014. Shamelessly used by the Scottish Nazi Party to push their suicidal independence agenda on the populace ahead of indyref. Flavour of Berlin Games 1936. I speak as a Glaswegian. Ashamed of the locals who bought into the whole nonsense of those games and that awful summer of 2014. May we never, ever, have a repeat.
i’m 6’3 and when i go to Glasgow everyone calls me ‘Big Man’ because everyone is so small and malnourished. Gotta love how there are junkies everywhere on account of how the Scottish Nazi Party hand out free drugs and needles to these wasters. We really are a piss poor nation of losers, wasters and imbeciles. Still i’m in Fife and we’re er……….much…….pretty much the same.
Prof Sakora is a beacon of hope and a jeffing hero.
‘Here are the latest daily infection figures for the four European countries that eased their lockdowns back in mid-April (accelerating since).
Denmark – 59
Norway – 14
Czech Republic – 77
Austria – 50
No second wave, not even a tiny ripple.’
https://twitter.com/ProfKarolSikora/status/1264500520313634817
‘Incalculable loss’: New York Times covers front page with 1,000 Covid-19 death notices
Presumably we can look forward to a similar front page in a month’s time to pay tribute to next month’s likely toll of 200-250,000 deaths, the numbers that occur in the US on average each and every month?
Or could it be that the NYT is cynically exploiting these particular deaths to serve an agenda?
Dead right Mark, and how many of those deaths were due to NY governor Cuomo’s homocidal policy of sending older vulnerable people to care homes to die. Revolting hypocrisy
There will be a roll of honour for all the “war heroes” and every year we will have a remembrance day for the fallen.
Indeed, there is something increasingly dark bout New York as a region. Of the nearly 74,000 COVID19 labeled death certificates reported to the US CDC as of Friday, 47% come from just 2 states out of 50, New York and its neighbor New Jersey. It is increasingly clear that something other than just a respiratory virus killed a awful lot of mostly elderly people in those two states from the middle of March through April. The New York Times celebration of this murderous fact is, frankly, beyond the pale.
Found this website, some interesting stuff on it:
https://questioningcovid.com
Hilarious! From the first paragraph on the site:
“To that end, we orient ourselves around the foundational premises that the body is inherently wise, that symptoms are meaningful, and that radical healing is eminently possible when we align with the earth and honor our place in the natural world.”
Sally Morell has a fascinatingly deluded piece that tells us it’s all down to sunspots:
“Sunspot activities became more violent until they peaked in1738 when physicians reported flu in both man and animals, including dogs, horses and birds, especially sparrows.”
A new low I think.
Definitely interesting though, or I thought so anyway.
I like reading thinks outside of my normal as it leads me to strange places and challenges my thinking, keeps me questioning and I never get into a bubble like all those movies in the media from Islington or wherever it is.
If the Government had followed some of the stuff on here would we be worse off than now?
Doubt it, we’d be walking on a beach in the sunshine grounding ourselves to health. Might not work but a lot better mentally and physically than locked away at home with no social contact I think.
luvvies not movies, didn’t notice the autocorrect.
We have a system called science that will test these theories and see if they have any validity. A quick Google search will bring them up. So here is the paper you need. To save you the trouble I can summarise it’s conclusion on sunspots causing flu epidemics, “It’s bollocks.”
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/epidemiology-and-infection/article/sunspot-activity-and-influenza-pandemics-a-statistical-assessment-of-the-purported-association/06DDEE622D8ACFD42B3E1564278BD3FC/core-reader#
The sunspots – possibly. Other electrical interference, maybe.
“Science” also used to tell us the world was flat and the sun went round the earth.
The theory behind the lack of sunspots and flu is to do with more cosmic radiation reaching the Earth and penetrating the atmosphere, thereby causing more virus mutations and infections.
I have no idea if it’s true or not, but that’s the theory.
Good find, thank you. I have been in the field of complementary medicine for nearly 30 years and I am always interested in new ideas and theories. We are not just physical machines . . . in fact, we are anything but.
After 10 years research as the normal medical industry was bloody hopeless to say the least found out my wife has electro-magnetic hypersensitivity so I know we are very highly tuned to electrical frequencies and as a hard bitten supervisor of engineers I know it all sounds drippy hippy but it’s true.
Unfortunately more people suffer than you know but they just put ti down to modern life as feeling like shit is normal.
Interesting fact – if you draw a line from stonehenge back to stonehenge around the earth it intersects the last amount of land?
https://twitter.com/plaforscience/status/1264177989757087747
“If accurate reconstruction of deadly infections date fits on a Gompertz, and linear regression from daily death data follows Gompertz’ expected decreasing straight line, it’s Gompertz NATURAL decreasing by constant increasing Herd Immunity. Hard to believe? Deads can’t lie.”
What does this mean? As the deaths in Spain of Covid-19 follow a Gompertz curve, the author has reconstructed the peak of infection about 20 days earlier than the peak of deaths. That means an explosive infection in Feb reaching a peak early March. Most cases asymptomatic, some cases with symptoms never diagnosed as Covid-19 as not tested. All categorized otherwise if ever investigated. The infection reaches a peak very early on. We start to test for Covid-19 when the infection already has peaked. Afterwards a steady decline whatever measures we do, whether social distancing, lockdown (In Spain coloured by red in the graph) or other measures. The natural Gompertz decreasing by constant increasing herd immunity.
The argument is that if the epidemic declines, we have achieved herd immunity. This holds even if antibody tests just give low numbers as everybody now understand that immunity to corona virus is much more complex with T cells immunity as essential part in… Read more »
Previous contributors to this blog have produce lists of heroes, villains and those they have lost respect for. Here’s my take which is inspired by Emil Zola’s J’Accuse which appeared in 1898 in a newspaper L’Aurore accusing the French government of anti-Semitism due to the Dreyfus Affair:
I accuse the Prime Minister Boris Johnson of cowardice and for caving in to the hysterical ramblings of the media and the flawed advice of the scientists. For not showing true leadership to lead us out of this crisis.
I accuse the mainstream media both print and television for the barrage of apocalyptic headiness and scare stories that have cowed the populace into submission and pushed us in to this disastrous situation that we are now in.
I accuse Neil Ferguson for his flawed model which has caused misery and untold damage to this country. Not only once but twice, even thrice.
I accuse our elected and unelected representatives also of cowardice like the Prime Minister for allowing our civil liberties to be restricted all in the name of health.
I accuse the police and judiciary for their abuse of power and trampling on the rights of innocent people who are unable to… Read more »
You can’t see me, but I’m standing and applauding….
Me too!
And me! Very well put!
Spot on!
Spot on.
This is brilliant! Send it to Toby.
Yes!
True
What a post! I thought about whether “child abuse” was too strong.
We heard from a couple of friends who have found that every day their 3 year old boy gets his preschool bag out of the cupboard, he packs it and stands by the front door and waits for them. When they try to move him and get him to do something else he has a meltdown and cries.
So I concluded you were right.
The negative effect on our kids’ psycho-social development will be a huge price to have paid. Depriving the young from playing with their friends is definitely child abuse.
Fun game:
Post an anti-lockdown comment into one of The Guardians’s opinion pieces. See how long you can make it last before it’s removed by a moderator.
My record’s 4min and 25s. Beat that if you can.
They’re always closed for comments by the time I read them.
The Guardian will have closed down before I read it!
As a former Grauniad reader,I’d love to see the propagandist rag go bust.
Me too!
Me too!
My excuse? I can get the headlines free without a paywall.
Facts are sacred.
Apart from facts that are politically inconvenient such as:
Sweden’s covid death rate is far lower than the UK’s
The evidence already strongly suggests lockdowns had no advantage over distancing plus normal hygiene etc
Overall covid is broadly comparable to flu (or a bad cold)
4 minutes! What took them so long? Were they all making sourdough bread at the same time
I notice a change afoot. Dr John Campbell’s daily broadcast on YouTube has been a source of fear and panic about the global “pandemic” since January, under a guise of good old-fashioned “give ’em the facts”. Today he is covering developments in the search for a vaccine. The comments section, normally adoring of the good doctor and his ponderous warnings of plague and pestilence, are disclosing great wariness of an early vaccine, and some even “anti vac”. The tide is turning.
He is a retired nurse with a doctorate in something or other, not a “Doctor” doctor. Still, he must have earned himself a few quid on YouTube, so that’s all right then.
To be fair to Dr Campbell, he’s clearly familiar with the experience of losing a patient in ICU and dealing with the grieving family. That’s where he’s coming from. His YouTube channel is entirely focussed on preventing any deaths at all. He comes across as a decent man, and if I was critically ill I would trust him to do all he could to go the extra mile and save my life. But on the other hand I wouldn’t trust him to run the economy.
Possible, but many people are dying from non-covid reasons in care homes (alone and without access to doctors or hospitals), future deaths due to a lack of access to medical care now, suicides etc
Yes I like Campbell although don’t watch him that often. The same info is usually also covered in a more “techy” way on MedCram which is a great channel.
Decent maybe. Dangerous definitely if he’s spreading misinformation that perpetuates the panic.
I saw a couple of his vids early on and he seemed to be talking sense. Then he did one where he was bandying about such obviously ridiculous numbers that, even at the stage of the plandemic where I hadn’t discovered info sources like this site and was still believing the MSM, I realised he was was a dodgy source of info.
According to Sky News, The Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce (RSA) has suggested firms arrange “A teams” and “B teams”, typically working Monday to Wednesday or Thursday to Saturday.
Please, no more experts!
Maybe we should ask what ’The Bingo Association’ thinks about lifting lockdown, also consult ’National Council for Metal Detecting’? and then check if Greta Thunberg approves it?
Well I have a sword for Cummings to fall on and that’s all I’m gonna say.
Stick it through Ferguson first. Like a kebab.
Annie, a greater punishment would be to place him in solitary confinement for the rest of his miserable life. His only human contact should be with his jailers, his only contact with the outside world, a half hour stroll round the prison courtyard.
Shoul’ve been only contact with the world outside his cell.
With respect, I have to disagree.
He and his wife put their small child first, as they should.
It’s entirely different from making an unnecessary social visit, as with Kinnock Jnr, who was at least maintaining a reasonable distance from his parents, or Neil Ferguson who deserved to be outed if only because he’s done more than anyone to destroy the country and was a clear hypocrite.
Cunningham’s circumstances were within government advice:
https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/coronavirus-symptoms-parents-children-childcare-dominic-cummings-a9529481.html
“At the government’s daily press conference on 24 March, England’s deputy chief medical officer Dr Jenny Harries spoke of the “exceptional circumstance” of an adult unable to care for a young child during the pandemic.
“A small child clearly is a vulnerable individual, so in this case, although we are encouraging everybody to stay in their own households – that’s the unit with the same risk of exposure – clearly if you have adults who are unable to look after a small child, that is an exceptional circumstance,” Dr Harries said.”
Yes ‘a small child clearly is a vulnerable individual’ …. tell that to thousands of other parents who were instructed by Government to stay put irrespective of dire circumstances with their small children or the thousands of children that no longer have access to sponsored school meals or are attacked in their own homes during this lockdown.
Just listened to the podcast with Michael Levitt and Ivor Cummins (link under Roundup above). Well worth it if you have an hour to spare. Surprise, surprise there is no evidence that lockdowns work! The numbers still say Prof Levitt was right back in March when he wrote to Ferguson saying the 510,000 death was 10-12 times too many. He says that the number of deaths in the UK will be about 1 months worth (remember we have 610,000 deaths per annum). He says it looks like the worst death rates in Europe will be 0.7 per thousand population (n.b. he is not talking about IFR because not everyone will catch the virus). Sweden appears to have plateaued but if they were to reach the 0.7 per thousand they would end up with 7,000 deaths. Cummins makes the point that no scientist who is still arguing for the lockdown has crunched the numbers, they are relying on their models-possibly OK when you don’t have any data, but when you have lots of it who needs models! When will our Dear Leaders wake up and start listening to real rather than modelled science?
Ivor Cummins has been a hero through this. All of his videos about the Corona flu have been fantastic. All of the low carb advocates have been sceptical of the corona panic from the start. Another good channel is Paul Saladino MD.
Excellent piece from Camilla Long about the hypocrisy during this crisis:
Aha! Quick as a flash, Steve Coogan makes us foot the bill for his household staff
Camilla Long
Sunday May 24 2020, 12.01am, The Sunday Times
Who actually furloughs themselves? The answer appears to be a Lib Dem called Lord Fox. In case you haven’t heard of him, he is a member of the House of Lords who signed himself up to the government’s furlough scheme in spite of having two homes worth more than £2m, and a “strategic communications” firm with £100,000 sitting in the bank.
He tried to defend the “greedy” move by saying this was simply what “many companies” were doing and the authorities would have said if he was “ineligible” for the cash. But Fox isn’t a regular citizen and his company isn’t “many companies” — he is literally paid by us to be the voice of reason and set standards. For a member of the Lords, the bar is even higher, as he cannot be ousted at the ballot box. It is difficult to see how anyone in his position could logically arrive at thinking they were entitled to yet more free money, when… Read more »
Great article. So glad Camilla questions the weekly clap.
“It makes you feel jealous of a country like Sweden, where the rate of death may be sky-high but at least”
Seriously, how did the zealots manage to establish this nonsense as a “received opinion” meme? It seems to be popping up everywhere at the moment!
Unbelievable, isn’t it?
One of the comments below today’s Daily Fail article https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8351649/Lockdown-waste-time-kill-saved-claims-Nobel-laureate.html
“If we had stayed out of lockdown, we could have had the devastating results of 392 per million deaths , like Sweden. Figs for UK are 541 instead.”
It got 34 likes
Really?You aren’t having us on? Promise?
Poster wasn’t being sarcastic?
Honestly, I have no idea. It was one of the many comments that got all the numbers wrong.
Don’t go there or you will lose your sanity.
This was one of my favourites:
“We haven’t lost our liberty. We are very fortunate to have Boris in charge: those who bother to read up on his background will be amazed at the wealth of experiences he has had which make him ultra-liberal (small L), he is not the Posh Etonian he is portrayed as (for start he was there for free, based on his intellect, unlike Cameron and Osborn). Our lock-down was voluntary and we did a fantastic job of it….”
O.M.G Nobody is that stupid surely? We suspended trial by jury and consent over your own body for starters. What a dimwit.
Not that stupid? We’re talking DM commenters.
Mostly good but she has fallen for the lie that Sweden’s death rate is sky high when it is half that of Scotland.
What’s wrong with “widespread semi-naked cavorting in parks” ?
A bit off topic maybe but just received this from a friend – are the lockdown’s related to this by any chance?
https://www.globalgoals.org/partners
Same old names cropping up yet again.
Problem is on the surface it look commendable. Don’t we all want those goals? No poverty. clean water, zero hunger etc. What’s not to like? I emphasise ‘on the surface.’
And a free unicorn for every household…
It has exactly the same flavour as the UN Happitalism site, mentioned earlier.
I have just been called a putinbot and blocked by someone on twitter.
I would like to report however that there are loads of Lockdown sceptics out there and the message is starting to get accross.
“called a putinbot”
LOL! This fantasy about nefarious Russian influence has certainly been very useful for those who want to delegitimise and silence dissent. It gives them another variant on the usual “conspiracy theorist” smear.
And they don’t need to engage their brains.
I get called that a lot on the Times comments, and when I articulate my way through, I just get called a ‘liar’ repeatedly, and with increasing aggression. Finally in capitals: YOU ARE A FILTHY LIAR!!! It’s fascinating on one level. It’s just projection, they’re so well defended now, ad hom is the only way to not have to face what they’ve done.
Neil Ferguson didn’t leave his home.
Haha, good point. Maybe his lover forced entry and he is innocent?
He resigned from Sage, but kept his job at Imperial, right? Where is justice?