Did Boris’s announcement yesterday that up to six people from different households will be able to gather outside from Monday sound the death knell for the lockdown? It certainly feels that way for those of us who’ve been out and about on this glorious Summer day. Guy de la Bédoyère, who’s contributed many fine things to this site, has sent me a note about a motorcycle ride he took this afternoon. Sounds like things are returning to normal in Middle England…
It’s another afternoon of piercing sunshine in England on the last Friday of May 2020. The trees are in full leaf, the hedges thick and verdant. It’s a day out of one’s childhood, a summer day filled with memories of past times. I pull out one of my vintage motorcycles and set off for a short run through the countryside and villages as a break from a day of proof-reading my next book. Immediately I notice a change from other days in recent weeks. I have to wait to turn onto the main road. An endless stream of cars and vans keep me waiting. What’s this? For weeks I have been able to turn out almost without bothering to look. As I hurtle on I pass the Joint Services Flying School. The carpark is full. More vans and trucks pass me. I reach a crossroads in one of the larger villages and actually have to wait in a small queue. I turn left and pass a garage. Outside a gaggle of eight or nine children aged between 9 and 14 are on their bicycles all gathered together and enjoying a Friday afternoon like no other. It’s half-term of course but these are the days of Covid aren’t they? How many of their parents won’t be sending them back to school any time soon “because it’s not safe”. You could hardly have got 2 metres between the whole crowd of children let alone any two of them. If what some parents say is true and if one of the children is infected they’ll all be dead along with their families in a couple of weeks.
I accelerate on, watching the glint of sunshine on car roofs ahead as they approach me on the other side of the road, each one whizzing past. I head on into a road that crosses National Trust property. The stately home and its gardens are closed but there’s a public footpath and carpark on one side. It’s packed with vehicles, no doubt belonging to furloughed workers and those “working at home”. I have to dodge several joggers on the road, often running in pairs and side by side, adding to the numerous cyclists I’ve passed too (in one instance four of them in a formation barely two metres across), and also more commercial vans: painters, decorators, TV aerial vans, builders and many more. And so on and back home and once more it’s a wait to get back on the main road near my house as the cars churn past. This is the world of those who have gone back to work and those still eking out their time at home or on leisure outings before the Day of Reckoning. Some are going to look back on this as the best of times, and others the worst of times. Either way, the lockdown is dwindling and there’s one unalterable fact about summers – they always come to an end.
More Dodgy Covid Data From the Financial Times
Yesterday, the Financial Times published the above chart purporting to show that countries which had locked down the quickest had a lower excess death toll. I was immediately suspicious because it’s at odds with the numerous other papers and surveys I’ve linked to on this site showing that there’s no statistical correlation between a country’s Covid death toll and whether or not it locked down, the date at which it locked down, and how severe its restrictions are/were.
Today, my financial journalist friend who’s made many contributions to this site got in touch to tell me I was right to be suspicious. The chart is nonsense.
I’ve had a look at yesterday’s Financial Times story by John Burn-Murdoch and Chris Giles suggesting a link between excess deaths during the COVID-19 pandemic and the speed with which countries entered lockdown. Countries that locked down early had had fewer excess deaths than those which locked down later, according to the story. It confirms the widespread view among the Government’s critics that the UK’s high death rate is linked to Boris Johnson’s tardy decision to enter lockdown. A chart was published alongside the piece showing a near perfect correlation between the estimated number of infections on lockdown day and the total number of excess deaths (see below). To drive this point home, the chart’s title read: “Locking down in the early stages of the spread of the virus is linked to a reduced excess death toll.”
A sceptic might have marvelled at such a good statistical fit, particularly as we’ve never seen it before. A second sceptical thought suggested itself to me: how had the FT estimated its lockdown day infections? The methodology wasn’t explained. Still, if the data were correct, it was game over for the lockdown sceptics. At last, there appeared to be definitive statistical evidence that lockdowns saved lives.
Later in the day, however, the pink paper pulled its original chart and replaced it with a new chart [the one at the top of this article]. The new chart showed the total excess deaths per million of the population against the estimated lockdown infections per million of the population. That seemed like a sensible way of comparing countries with different population sizes. This chart carried the same title as the original and supposedly showed the same thing – the earlier a country locked down, the lower its Covid death toll.
But the data told a completely different story. The link between lockdown day infections and deaths had broken down. The US, for instance, had a much greater infection rate on lockdown day (30 infections per million) than the Netherlands (7.5 per million), but suffered far fewer excess deaths. Although the new FT chart had a regression line drawn through the data points, it was clear that there was no statistical correlation between estimated lockdown infections and a country’s excess deaths. You can see from looking at the FT’s scatter plot that the regression coefficient (R-squared) for its new, revised chart is very low and not statistically meaningful. Most of the dots are quite far away from the regression line, whereas in the first chart the dots all cluster around the line.
In fact, the new chart appears to support the recent claim from the Norwegian Health Ministry that there is no evidence that Norway’s own lockdown saved lives. Yet the FT’s original text was not revised to reflect this profound change. Instead, a note was added to the bottom of the article, stating: “This article has been modified to replace a chart linking excess deaths to lockdown dates with one linking excess deaths per million.” A puzzling comment and hardly a proper retraction. Later on the same day, the headline was changed again to account for new data which showed that Spain, rather than the UK, had the highest excess death rate in Europe.
I ran the FT’s data on excess deaths against the Blavatnik index of lockdown severity (from the end of April). In the chart I came up with, the Regression score (R-squared) is 0.16 which is STATISTICALLY MEANINGLESS. Thus, from the FT’s own data it appears that lockdown stringency has had no meaningful impact on excess deaths in either Europe or the US.
Recalculating the UK’s IFR Based On the ONS’s Antibody Survey
Yesterday, I did a back-of-envelope calculation to work out the infection fatality rate (IFR) in the UK based on the just-released results of the ONS’s seroprevalence survey which estimates that 6.78% of the population has antibodies. The survey didn’t include people in hospitals or care homes, just those “in the community”. Consequently, I stripped out the deaths that have occurred in care homes from the latest UK totals, but not hospitals, assuming that the people who’ve died in hospitals were originally “in the community”. I ended up with an IFR of 0.82% and because this is so at odds with the latest CDC estimate I concluded that either the numerator or the denominator must be wrong.
However, the number-crunching genius Alistair Haimes has been in touch to say I miscalculated.
Just gone through your calculation of the UK IFR from yesterday – I’d actually used those results and got to an IFR of 0.25% which is strikingly close to the CDC’s estimate of 0.26%.
You need to make the following changes to your calculation:
1. You assumed that only 21% of deaths are care home residents based on the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control data, but actually ONS figures show it’s 37.4% (as at May 1st: 12,526 care home residents out of the 33,480 Covid deaths til then = 37.4%). Very sneakily, the ONS only generally shows “care home deaths” as those where the death is actually inside the care home, but in a release on May 15th they also include care home residents in England and Wales who die in hospital.
2. You also need to remove infections acquired in hospitals, where the percentage of infected people is far higher than “in the community”. That is “somewhere between 10% and 20%” according to the NHS figures from recent Guardian article. Say mid-way, 15%.
3. If we deduct those care home deaths (37.4% of 47,343 is 17,706) and those who caught the virus in hospital (15% of 47,343 is ~7,000), the total number of deaths “in the community” comes to 22,637.
4. Having sorted out the numerator, you now need to look at the denominator. That means accounting for the percentage of people who fight off the virus (so should be included in the number who’ve been infected) using antibodies from other coronaviruses. According to the implications of this article in Cell, you might well have to double the percentage of the population testing positive for antibodies in a seroprevalence survey to get the true figure. That means doubling the 6.78% to 13.56%. 13.5% x 67 million = 9,085,200.
5. So what’s the IFR? 9,085,200 ÷ 22,637 = 401.34 and 100 ÷ 401.34 = 0.249, so an IFR of ~0.25%.
Canadian Columnist Fired For Covid Dissent
Brian Jones, a columnist for a Canadian newspaper called the St John’s Telegram, has lost his weekly gig after writing a piece in which he pointed out that public sector workers in Canada are having an easier time of it during lockdown than private sector employes. The former have been furloughed on full pay, while the latter are expected to subsist on $2,000 a month. Here’s an extract:
It is more proof, as if any were needed, that Government workers enjoy a special status paid for by everyone else, even by people who lose jobs and then receive a measly $2,000 per month.
A laughable explanation is that Government employees are working from home, when possible. Please. Civil servants move at half speed even when they’re in the workplace.
Although, to give them their due, there were credible reports of Transportation and Works employees taking shovels home so they could lean on them in their living rooms.
Needless to say, this provoked a storm on Canadian Twitter, with hundreds of outraged readers demanding that Jones be fired for wrongthink. So what did the Telegram‘s editors do? Tell the hashtag activists to take a running jump? Alas not. They fired the heretical columnist. Here’s how they announced the decision – on Twitter, naturally:
Dear Readers, as a daily news publication we aim to offer you an informative mix of features, news, fun diversions and diverse opinions. With opinions, in particular, sometimes we push the edges and explore unpopular opinions. When we go too far, you tell us.
We’re always grateful for that. This week, you stepped up once again with scores of readers responding to Brian Jones’s May 20th column. Your feedback was an important gauge for us and for him, and, in response, he has decided that that this week’s column will be his last.
As excuses go, that’s right up there with being told your opinions “violate our Community Guidelines”. Solidarity, brother.
Dodgy Death Statistics
A reader provides yet another anecdote of a doctor ascribing a death to COVID-19 when it clearly wasn’t. I get a lot of these.
I met up with a friend of mine the other day and he mentioned he had spoken to a mutual friend of ours the other week. He said that our friend’s gran sadly passed away in a care home the other week. However, on the death certificate – you guessed it – cause of death COVID-19.
She tested positive six weeks ago, recovered form the virus (two Covid tests to confirm she was negative) the following week. Then sadly she died last week as she was very unwell before hand.
I don’t understand how the cause of death can be COVID-19 after testing negative to show she had fought the virus off, she can pass away a month later and then have her death go down as a Covid death?
Donor-Conceived Babies Cannot Find Out Who Their Biological Parents Are
Following last week’s news that it’s nigh-on impossible to register a new birth at the moment – because of the lockdown, natch – a reader has contacted me to point out that donor-conceived people cannot obtain any information about who their biological parents are while the crisis continues.
A notice on the website of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority informs people that: “Due to COVID-19, we cannot currently process any applications for information.” It blames it on the fact that fertility clinics, which it depends on to help it access this information, are not “fully operational”. It then adds: “We estimate it will be several months before sufficient support is available across the sector to enable the… services to restart.”
President of Tanzania is Sceptic of the Week
Among the heroes to emerge from the coronavirus pandemic, Dr John Pombe Magufuli, the President of Tanzania, is one of the least likely. Yet hero he is, having sacked his chief health advisor after a goat and a papaya tested positive for COVID-19 in the Government lab, and refused to lockdown the country. According to Worldometers, the death toll in Tanzania currently stands at 21. That’s since the beginning of the year, not in the last 24 hours.
In his latest audacious move, President Magufuli has banned face masks, as well as ordered schools and businesses to reopen. He also recently told the American envoy to Tanzania not to “cause panic” after the American embassy in the capital, Dar es Salaam, wrongly claimed that the chances of contracting the virus were “extremely high”.
Top man.
An American in London Writes…
Nice blog post from the writer Michael Hurley about what it’s like being an American ex-pat living in London during lockdown. It’s entitled “Land of Fear and Loathing“. He’s one of us, but more pessimistic than me. Here are a couple of paragraphs:
Unlike some, I do not kindle hope that the many able commentators who keep pointing out the continuing tragedy of the lockdown policy and the absurdity of the “new normal” of social distancing will eventually win the argument with their fellow Britons. There is no argument to be won. As the American cartoon character Pogo would say, “I have met the enemy, and he is us.”
We are the new normal. We are not the people our grandparents were. We are the ones eagerly participating in this extravagant charade that we are all about to die from shaking hands with our neighbours or walking outside without a mask. We have the power to choose the kind of society we live in by refusing to give aid and comfort to the scaremongers through our silence. Too many of us simply refuse to speak.
Worth reading the whole thing.
Sign Petition to Get Club Cricket Back Up and Running
A reader sent me this Change.org petition calling on the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) to stop being such big girls blouses and allow county cricket to restart. The ECB recently announced a further delay to the start of the professional domestic cricket season, with no domestic cricket to be played until August. As the author of the petition writes:
I’m urging people to sign this petition and plead with the ECB/UK Government to work hard at making all forms of recreational cricket matches possible from early July 2020.
No cricket season in 2020 will have a major effect on many clubs across the country financially.
No cricket at club level this year could see participation levels and interest in the sport drop which is not what anyone wishes to see especially within the younger generation.
Please sign the petition.
In Wales, the First Minister is Granting People “Permission” to Leave Their Homes!
I got an email from a disgruntled reader in Wales following yesterday’s announcement by the First Minister about the easing of lockdown restrictions.
Had to comment on the latest measures here in Wales which tells us that we’re allowed to leave our homes, but have to stay local and within five miles. I do understand that the FM has said there’s room for interpretation as we do not have a bus within five miles of here, never mind a shop or a relation. But will the police give us this same latitude?
One thing that really annoyed me though was his use of the phrase “we are offering people permission…” Sorry? I thought this was a free country? I understand we have emergency powers in place, but shouldn’t the politicians be talking about “we are returning some of the civil liberties we have withdrawn” instead?
I think if I were to write down the emotion I feel whenever I hear such words as “permission” being used, it would be GRRRRR.
“It’s all bullshit,” says Russia’s Head of Coronavirus Information
In Russia, the doctor and television presenter Alexander Myasnikov has been given the task of informing the Russian people about coronavirus treatment and prevention methods and to battle “fake news” about COVID-19. He recently called the country’s reported low death rate a “Russian miracle”. But in a moment of candour, when he thought he was off air, he blurted out the truth, according to the Moscow Times.
In an interview that aired Wednesday, Myasnikov gestured for the cameras to stop running and said candidly: “It’s all bullsh*t.”
“It’s all exaggerated. It’s an acute respiratory disease with minimal mortality,” he told television personality Ksenia Sobchak in the interview for her YouTube project.
“Why has the whole world been destroyed? That I don’t know,” Myasnikov said.
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:
- ‘Prevalence of “silent” COVID-19 infection may be higher than thought‘ – Article in a medical journal pointing out that 80% of passengers on a cruise ship infected with Covid were asymptomatic
- ‘Why No One Can Explain the Drop in Coronavirus Cases in Israel‘ – Meirav Arlosoroff points out that the number of new cases has fallen in Israel since lockdown was eased, contrary to the prediction of many. Why were the experts’ models so mistaken?
- ‘Let’s learn from this pandemic to be better prepared for the really big one‘ – Professor Ramesh Thakur on the rise and fall of coronavirus modelling
- ‘Japan’s Covid success is a mystery‘ – Philip Patrick in the Spectator marvels at well Japan has navigated the crisis, with no lockdown
- ‘Was the lockdown worth it?‘ – Inaya Folarin asks a question to which the answer is no in Spiked
- ‘Easyjet’s 30% cut in jobs bigger than feared‘ – Job losses at EasyJet continue to mount
- ‘Car production fell to just 197 vehicles in April‘ – Things aren’t looking good for the British motor industry, reports the Times
- ‘Bodyguards for Italian leaders amid anger at economic woe‘ – Will Boris Johnson and Dominic Cummings soon require the same service?’
- ‘Seven in ten testing positive show no symptoms‘ – More data from yesterday’s ONS survey
- ‘People asked to self-isolate will not be told name of informant amid fears of reprisals‘ – The Telegraph reports on precautions being taken to protect Covid informants to Matt Hancock’s test-and-trace task force. But won’t this increase the likelihood of vexatious reports?
- ‘Extent of Covid-19 Deaths Failed to Be Captured by Most Countries‘ – The Wall St Journal delves into the dodgy Covid death statistics
Small Businesses That Have Reopened
A couple of weeks ago, 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. If you feel like donating, however paltry the amount, 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…
This picture is for fans of the John Carpenter movie They Live, a cult classic about how aliens are living among us and use subliminal messages to ensure compliance with their diabolical plans. To most people in the film, they appear normal. But occasionally they get to see what the aliens really look like…
For more on the psychological techniques being used by the Government to control the population, see this YouTube video by Dr Vernon Coleman. Watch it before it’s taken down…
Discussion
Comments
This week across the site:
To join in with the discussion please make a donation to the Daily Sceptic.
Profanity and abuse will be removed and may lead to a permanent ban.
[…] this explains why a papaya tested positive in […]
Some good studies about facemasks and their use if you scroll down the comments:
https://underdogsbiteupwards.wordpress.com/2020/05/25/stop-that-its-silly/#comments
I managed to be passing ‘Click’ on the BBC whilst on my exercise bike (don’t make a habit of watching BBC) and noticed that they were, very subtly, extolling the virtues of face masks by interviewing denizens of Taiwan and their ‘successful’ containment of virus where masks were a big feature. ‘Click’ presenter nodding knowingly every time a so-called benefit of wearing masks was mentioned. Call me paranoid, but another way of making the absurd and visibly compliant measures acceptable.
It may be deliberate, it may be just lazy journalism. Most BBC reports I see these days are incredibly superficial and assume the viewer or reader has the intelligence and attention span of a primary school child.
If you want a laugh about millenial car-driving mask-wearers. (We all need a laugh):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RUKdgq-DJWA
The trouble with that video (which I really liked) is that some people will think it’s serious and not a piss take. (Otherwise why would they wear masks?)
Good lord, Legiron… he’s been blogging one hell of a long time… a good chap.
Done some epic rants in the past, very enjoyable.
Here’s one consequence of lockdown that no one has mentioned: increase in outdoor toileting.
Yesterday my family drove up to North Carolina to hike part of the Art Loeb Trail. (I dropped husband and kids off at the Blue Ridge Parkway, and drove the car around the trail head at Davidson River Campground. Then I walked up the trail until I met them heading toward me, and we all went down to the car together. They did this 17-mile (or so – no one is quite sure) stretch in slightly under 8 hours, which is pretty fast!)
Anyway! North Carolina is still rigidly shut down. That means no toilets anywhere. Not at the gas stations, not at McDonald’s, certainly not in the campground. This leaves but one alternative, which is going behind a tree. Now, of course that is expected when walking in the wilderness, and a quick wee on a mountain laurel never hurt anyone.
But it’s not always a quick wee, and it can’t always be in real wilderness. Of course our great cities have been awash in male urine for decades (Paris – never change!), but one of the hallmarks of civilization is that… Read more »
Very good point! We are pushing our local council to open up the public toilets, so far to no avail. Not having them open is disadvantaging many people including ‘key workers’ such as bus drivers and, as you say, is a growing public health issue.
Just had a chat over the fence with my neighbours I haven’t seen hide nor hair of for 10 weeks (nothing unusual in that in case you think I should have knocked their door sooner as they jet off at random to their pad in Spain and it can be months between sightings in normal times), he’s been hiding away as he had a heart attack in January and he’s been scared silly ever since and even quarantines his mail for 3 days and sanitises the food deliveries.
Went through the sceptics viewpoint quoting days, names, numbers, facts, rumour, gossip etc all the way from the 1st vaping deaths in the USA last year via the military links between Maryland, Seattle, Honolulu and Wuhan; the links all the listened to experts have to a certain billionaire, falsification of death certificates etc he’s not so scared anymore.
He even said he may check out some of it this afternoon as he always thought the TV news was bit odd.
Chipping away one sheeple at a time.
Good for you. It is hopeful that the message was listened to and, at the very least, aroused curiosity in the listener. The sceptic message on lockdown is one of HOPE; often the sceptic side of an argument seeks to remove hope and replace it with cynicism and despair. We are lucky that hope is on our side. People will always respond to a hopeful message delivered with respect to the listener. We must not be seen to be “laughing” at them for being taken in by the mainstream propaganda; this is a turnoff which will cause ears to be shut.
SAGE committee minutes have been released
https://www.gov.uk/search/transparency-and-freedom-of-information-releases?organisations%5B%5D=scientific-advisory-group-for-emergencies&parent=scientific-advisory-group-for-emergencies
web site for said minutes!
https://www.thelocal.dk/20200529/leaked-emails-show-how-denmarks-pm-steam-rollered-her-own-health-agency
The knifes are out now in Danish politics.Refreshing
And people say the lockdowns were not a conspiracy!
It’s absolutely remarkable how similar a process has happened everywhere. Central gvt (and their ‘data’ agencies and academic advisors) effectively ignoring the emergency planners and public health bodies. It was always totally and completely political.
Which means there literally needs to be a Hague trial. Politics has killed millions and ruined billions of people in the name of a common cold.
Last week I undertook an observational survey of mask and glove use at my local supermarket. I did the same again, same time and place, and the results suggest that mask wearing is on the increase. Results (last week’s in brackets):
Mask 15% (12%), gloves 12% (14%), mask and gloves 18% (10%), nothing 55% (64%). So those wearing neither masks and gloves is now only just in the majority……
I concur. It seems like the incidence of mask wearing is increasing everywhere you go. I’m betting that nearly all the people wearing masks are not aware of the basic fact that the mask protects others rather than themselves. If, indeed, they offer any protection whatsoever, to anyone.
Wearing a mask non stop will kill your immune system eventually. Think of all those impurities you exhale that you then breathe back in.
General doctor’s advice
Anyway takes about 5 mins to look that up (avoid any article dated 2020 by the way!!!). 2019 or before
So these dickheads think they are protecting themselves and others, but are in fact killing themselves slowly… You could not make it up
Interesting in my local supermarket (where I am going again soon this afternoon) over the last few visits mask wearing seemed to be slightly declining. Quite a few wearing sometimes grubby looking gloves.
Just back from my shop in a medium-large Morrisons. It was at capacity with a small queue to get in, I saw fewer masks than a few days ago, about 6 I think. Didn’t look how many gloves.
Not many in my Lidl today. Maybe 4-5. All young. Looming like complete idiots.
At least you know who to avoid – mask wearers are obviously bedwetting f-wits who you wouldn’t wanna be friends with anyway.
We walked from Buxton to Whaley Bridge down the Goyt Valley yesterday, about 9 miles in perfect weather during which we must have seen 200+ people. Cars were arriving at Errwood reservoir car-park non-stop and we met several friendly locals on the way and family groups, one of which was very happy to tell us they don’t live together. The atmosphere was relaxed and happy with very few ‘swervers’ and no masks!!!
When we got back to Whaley Bridge we saw 3; two of them worn by lone drivers of whom one had it over his mouth but not his nose. A favourite cafe has re-opened for take-away, strictly anti-socially distanced, of course. It was hot and stuffy in there and we were shocked to see the really nice owner wearing a sinister black mask which she said was to avoid frightening people. Really?? We’re going to work on her next week.
[Generally, in the Wild North West, mask-wearing seems to be on the decline…..so far but we’ve had emails from train companies telling us we need to wear them if we want to travel with them. They are squandering god knows how much on re-fitting carriages… Read more »
I live near London, haven’t owned a car for more than 20 years, don’t like driving and have been a keen user of public transport, but I am almost certainly going to buy a car and drive instead of taking the train, bus or tube, and avoid London. I can’t face being herded around, made to wear a mask, queue, not be able to get on the train I want to get, get harrassed by marshals in hi-vis jackets etc.
https://mobile.twitter.com/simondolan/status/1266646179489726464
The SAGE zeslots out to in force, having a scaremongers mongers tea party. What i don’t understand is why they seem to aim their vehement objection at English government. I may be wrong but lockdown fan club founders Sturgeon and Drakeford are being even more liberal with easing than Johnson. Why isn’t SAGE’s ire aimed at them? Could this be political by any chance? Woke Left motivated by any chance? Surely not…
‘Bobs cartoon’ in the blog above is quite amusing, however it is incomplete. What it should say is:
“You may have been sold a national lockdown. Unfortunately there is no compensation for this, but we will be halving your old age pension in order to pay for it. Thank you for your contribution”
Just to add a story about the misreporting of cause of death on death certificates, one of my sister’s friends is a solicitor specialising in wills. One of her clients had lung cancer and was rushed into hospital recently coughing up blood. On arrival he was tested for Covid-19 and the test result was negative. Sadly, the next day he died. The cause of death was marked as Covid-19 on the death certificate! What can you say?
Resisting the “new normal”.
I am very disturbed at the extent to which this phrase, and the seemingly insane regulations that it is brining, are spoken of as settled fact, about which we do not have a choice.
It needs to be stopped, in my view.
I think it would help if there were some national figures who are big enough to get themselves heard on national TV and newspaper front pages, who supported this cause and spoke strongly for it. We need to start getting the right questions asked, and sowing seeds of doubt.
I wonder how this could be brought about. Perhaps Mr Young knows one or two of sufficient gravitas? Perhaps someone who has a way with words could pen a few paragraphs, enough to fill a full page in a newspaper, and set up a crowdfunding site to get funds sufficient to take out an ad, to draw attention to this. Or a truck driving round the country with some billboards? Perhaps a businessman, or group of them?
I think we need to move the narrative on from stuff about which little bits of lockdown are being eased or not to… Read more »
If it was up to me, I would end lockdown right now!
Julian – completely agree with you. The lockdown will (at some point) fully ease, but the narrative around the ‘new normal’ is terrifying. While I am supportive of the view that many of us will not accept the ‘new normal’, when institutions and employers all over the country put measures in place to keep us 2m apart etc., there will be little choice.
I would be fully supportive of crowd funding to get a different narrative out. Today, with the current media coverage, this feels like an uphill battle.
Peter Hitchens immediately springs to mind. However, I guess the MSM are boycotting him. I’m surprised he hasn’t been banned off Twitter before now.
I think Hitchens has clear thinking and sound ideas on this, but he’s not a big enough name sadly. He’s seen as a fringe, polarising figure, seen by many as an extremist (which is odd seeing as I think his views on most subjects seem sensible and moderate).
I think a minimum would be a senior serving backbench MP, or a former cabinet minister, or a major business figure with public name recognition. Or a trusted celebrity.
Lord Sumption?
Well, he has already spoken out, and I am sure it has done some good, but not enough to nudge the debate into the mainstream.
He’s a brilliant speaker and clear thinker.
I agree that if social distancing were the new normal then it would be catastrophic, but it is only the ‘new normal’ in the Fascist BBC Wokeworld (I use the BBC as an example of the gutter press as a whole – other similarly biased media outlets are available). Around my way the first supermarket to introduce ‘social distance’ queuing was Sainsbury’s – they introduced it even before it was compulsory I believe. My reaction to that is that I have never used Sainsburys since, even though they are now no different to the rest, and I will continue to boycott them afterwards too.
So that is the answer, vote with your wallet as much as possible, sooner or later someone will break ranks and the system will fall.
If society has become so completely polarised that there are people out there that want to queue outside shops indefinitely, then maybe we should have introduce ‘social distancing’ and ‘non social distancing’ shops and see which ones get on the best. They could even arrange to swap staff, so the covid cockroaches that want indefinite lockdown could work in the ‘SD’ shop while the human beings could work in… Read more »
Yes, certainly will vote with the wallet as far as possible, and maybe there is some room for places offering a different experience depending on the preferences of their customers.
However there are very serious limitations to this approach. Any organisation that is regulated and/or by the government, where there is a service provided to the public, will need to fall into line – nurseries, schools, colleges, universities, public transport, council sports and leisure facilities to name but a few. There’s little possibility of voting with your wallet there.
We’d have to set up a more or less parallel society, or found a new country…
Well said. New normal is orwellian and deeply sinister in concept.
It scared the shit out of me when i first heard it and i knew it would be pushed into the narrative
Such evil.
Very interesting interview with John Edmunds of Sage on Sky News. While talking about opening up, if you watch it carefully he’s about to say there will be a large number of deaths but stops himself and changes it to people will die.
Watched The Big Short (Netflix) again last night. With extraordinary clarity it parallels today’s events, although back then it was a financial panic that brought the world to its knees. It also highlights the fact that we’re actually governed and controlled (indirectly) by fraudsters and cheats and when the crunch came we bailed them out. WE paid THEM back for robbing us. There was an opportunity then to change the way we did things, to shift paradigms, but it never happened. Maybe this time, but I’m not holding my breath as I watch ministers and ‘scientists’ try and wriggle off the hook by delaying lifting LD, massaging figures and exaggerating risks. A new paradigm would need so-called leaders to hold up their hands and say we screwed up. But what I see is a compliant population willing to ‘bail’ them out again. And so we continue to live in this charade. In the film the Brad Pitt character says to two traders too obviously celebrating imminent financial collapse: ‘For every 1% increase in employment, 40,000 people die. ‘ And this is what Michael Lewis says at the end of his book which inspired the film: ‘That was the problem with money. What… Read more »
‘unemployment’ not ’employment’
Increasingly its looking like we have a new paradigm just not one that will good for the vast majority of us or one that we have any input in. We are now ruled over by a ‘politburo’ referred to as sage.
Those are interesting analogies you have spotted all the same.
Yes. We are being “ruled” rather than governed, with Boris issuing what are tantamount to “Royal Decrees”, whatever their basis in reality.
Has the queen said anything during this fiasco?
Possible, I agree. I’m going to wait until we’re out of the woods. It could all come tumbling down. An interesting trivial observation from that film: In 2006 a (very) few people are still wearing face masks in New York. I assumed from the fall out of 9/11 five years before. There’s been speculation that the high rate of Covid fatalities in New York has a direct correlation to the quality of air as a result of that calamity.
If I recall, the stats on deaths were analysed by the team at the Langone hospital in New York, and the most statistically significant factor after age 80 plus (I think that was the age cut off, but it might be 70) was obesity. That, of course, links to the other comorbidities of diabetes and various heart diseases. However, your post reminds me of one of the other key factors in 9/11 – I watched it unfold live while sat at home heavily pregnant! The advice to those in the second tower was to stay put – in effect to lockdown. Interestingly, several Brits were interviewed at the time, who said they ignored that advice and got out. Sadly, many of their American colleagues followed the advice and perished. The Big Short is a great film, by the way, and again of note is that Dr Michael Burry (Christian Bale) has come out very vocally against lockdown some weeks ago (covered by ZeroHedge).
Yesterday was an ‘up’ day, when you thought that sense might possibly be showing through, the papers hinting at some sort of a return to normality. Today is a ‘down’ day, with the papers falling over themselves to stress that if you jump the gun on lockdown ‘easing’ you will be fined, and that SAGE scientists are saying that it’s all to early and there’ll be a second wave.
We are left to imagine that the PM is listening to this garbage because that’s what he does, and so when the time comes he will renege on previous promises as he has done before:
“Now is the most critical time ladies and gentlemen. Let us not undo all the good work, the sacrifices we have all made. I don’t have a clue what ‘R’ actually means, but my good friends the media… er, the scientists – some of the finest scientists in the world, ladies and gentlemen – tell me that we must maintain our vigilance – vigilantia retineamus, as it were – for a little while longer. So, my friends, from Monday the police have been instructed to taser on sight that inconsiderate minority that… Read more »
EXCESS DEATHS:
I have been looking at the ONS data for 2020 deaths in England & Wales, compared to the 5-year average.
If the Covid deaths (“deaths where Covid-19 was registered on the death certificate”) are removed, this should give me the difference between 2020 and an average year.
(I leave it open as to whether these were all deaths due to Covid – anecdotally there seems to have over-recording of Covid deaths, and hence under-recording of excess deaths).
In the 8 weeks since lockdown (ONS data is to 15 May) there were 12,852 excess deaths. All of these were in the first 6 weeks – the last 2 weeks are back to normal.
So in the first 6 weeks of lockdown, excess deaths were running at over 2,000 per week, compared to an average weekly death rate of about 10,500.
Better brains than mine can tell me:
1. whether this is statistically significant
2. whether it reflects an under-recording of Covid deaths at the peak
3. whether it reflects lives lost as a result of lockdown
This article may give you an answer:
‘David Spiegelhalter, chair of the Winton Centre for Risk and Evidence Communication at the University of Cambridge, said that covid-19 did not explain the high number of deaths taking place in the community.
At a briefing hosted by the Science Media Centre on 12 May he explained that, over the past five weeks, care homes and other community settings had had to deal with a “staggering burden” of 30 000 more deaths than would normally be expected, as patients were moved out of hospitals that were anticipating high demand for beds.
Of those 30 000, only 10 000 have had covid-19 specified on the death certificate. While Spiegelhalter acknowledged that some of these “excess deaths” might be the result of underdiagnosis, “the huge number of unexplained extra deaths in homes and care homes is extraordinary. When we look back . . . this rise in non-covid extra deaths outside the hospital is something I hope will be given really severe attention.”
He added that many of these deaths would be among people “who may well have lived longer if they had managed to get to hospital.”
https://www.bmj.com/content/369/bmj.m1931
Helpfully in Scotland, our Dear Leader has tweeted a handy list of rules for us to stay safe. I’ve printed the list out, laminated it and it’s being held in place on my fridge by a Saltire magnet.
➡️ 1 other household/ 8 people max
➡️ Stay 2m apart
➡️ Don’t go indoors
➡️ Wash your hands often
➡️ Avoid hard surfaces & clean any you do touch
➡️ Take care in the 🌞
For my BBQ this evening, in order to keep my 6 guests safe, I’ve purchased 6 plastic buckets, 6 bottles of antibacterial soap and 6 fresh towels in order for my guests to frequently wash their hands in the garden. This means they can safely do so without unsafely entering the house.
I’ve also purchased 6 shovels so that each guest can dig their own latrine and I’m providing each guest with a packet of antibacterial bottom wipes, should they need to relieve themselves from their bottoms.
As I’d expect, the replies to Dear Leader’s tweet are overwhelmingly positive, praising her for her clear and concise advice.
I do take exception to the use of the word “advice”. This isn’t advice,… Read more »
Great idea about the outdoor latrines – maybe you should send that to the management of the National Trust, English Heritage and all the other stately homes.
It’s funny that ‘taking care in the sun’ is now a rule too.
Have fun!
Read this:
https://spectator.org/science-failed-imperial-college-ferguson/?utm_source=whatfinger
If any of you still have faith in “The Science” and “Scientists”. this will put you right.
I have faith in science – not our criminal government and advisers. Anyone can use the word science or call themselves a scientist – it does not mean that is what they practice.
Spot on. This whole debacle has been marked by either the Government telling us they’re following the science without giving any details of what that science is, or by scientists themselves popping up and making predictions about the future that the only reason we listen to is because they’re a ‘scientist’. You can bet what motivates loads of these ‘scientists’ is not a dispassionate quest for the truth but rather naked ambition.
Surely if we had from the start protected the elderly care homes etc and the vulnerable with health conditions the test of us could have cracked on and built up herd immunity with minimum fatalities ,why does no one ask SAGE boris etc why this wasnt done it’s so obvious and the economy would not have been trashed@
Very insightful – it is what some have been saying for many years about the ‘science is settled’ mantra of the Climate Change bandwagon, until they were silenced by having their funding cut. One need look no further than the modus operandi of the prophets of doom. For Climate Change it is St Greta, and for this ‘pandemic’, the rantings of the likes of Professor John Ashton encapsulate ‘the science’. My contempt, however, is reserved for those charged with the task of managing ‘in the public interest’. Their defence cannot be, ‘we were following the science’ when, as Boris admitted, he only looks at the summary of the SAGE committee findings. There is even less scientific rationale for adapting policy to the rantings of a 17 year-old with no formal and relevant educational attainment.
The discussing of the second wave is strange. Everybody talks about the second wave in the Spanish flu without any real knowledge what they are talking about. We had no virus confirmation of the Spanish flu for the simple reason that the influenza virus was not even discovered at that time. About 80 year’s later two frozen bodies of Spanish flu victims were dug up in Alaska and Svalbard, bodies well preserved after being frozen. In those bodies H1N1 of the influenza virus could be found and “reconstructed” from the body tissue (in fact there was concern at the time that a dangerous unknown virus could be found which could leak out). Everybody was afraid that the reconstructed H1N1 virus could have features showing a great propensity for severe attachment to human cells like avian flu but, if I remember correctly, that was not the case. It seemed to be an ordinary H1N1 influenza virus. By testing sera from persons alive during the first world war, antibodies to H1N1 was found, hence this is the only indirect evidence that H1N1 was the cause of Spanish flu.
A new pandemic shift influenza virus H1N1 would then circulate yearly during winter… Read more »
Excellent and informative summary. Thank you.
Oh yeah, this soap opera is now going to be played out for all it’s worth. There have been several hints along the way. There’s loads in the mix here, and you have to keep an eye on the money AND all this new tech (robot dogs ffs?!) Suddenly coming out to play. Here are what I think are the factors : china economic dominance being checked – good thing for sure given the CCP, technology – 5g – Boris is going to renege on Huawei pretty sure, green tech & net carbon zero, financial restructuring, overpopulation, state coercive control or a voluntary change in population mindset… ? Lots lots more that’s not easy to piece together but it’s big.
Thank you so much for this!
I did a post on this the other day but it’s hard to keep track with a new blog comments page every day!
It’s believed that during the second wave a significant proportion of the deaths was caused by Aspirin overdoses.
Really depressed today. I know I shouldn’t be watching it but some bloke who is on Sage (I think) has just been on Sky News giving a really, really, really bleak prognosis about the virus and the effect of loosening the lockdown. Seems he is supported by two others, one being some bigwig in the Wellcome Trust. Can anyone cheer me up? Sorry to be downbeat.
Stop watching the news.
Sky is very biased. They’re generally dismissive of anybody they interview who has a contrarian view to the mainstream narrative. Except for Sophy Ridge who seems to be slightly more neutral and sympathetic to other viewpoints.
I sometimes think that Adam Bolton is sceptical of the mainstream narrative but is very careful to hide it. Maybe I am wrong.
Definitely not yesterday morning. He was interviewing Susie Boniface and another lady who was against lockdowns. He was totally dismissive of the second lady and seemed irritated by her even daring to try and put her point across.
They’re not real journalists
Give up the tv you will feel much better!
Read this:
https://spectator.org/science-failed-imperial-college-ferguson/?utm_source=whatfinger
They all have no upside to saying let’s unlock but much downside. Some might be seeking to rewrite their own history. Let’s have all the prior advice out in the open.
Sorry to hear you are depressed. Maybe take a break from reading about this stuff and do something enjoyable instead.
I think it’s fine for scientists to differ in their views – that’s what science is. As long as they are being honest. They are not perfect, and I am sure that applies to pro and anti lockdown scientists.
What I think most experts agree on, with backing from the statistics, is that the virus mainly affects people with pre-existing health conditions of certain types, and older, more frail people. That’s probably not much comfort if you fall into one of those categories, or have loved ones that do. But influenza also affects those groups, though there is evidence that the new virus is more deadly than influenza. Many of us, me more than most, worry about death, but it doesn’t seem to me like this virus is a game-changer, it’s just one more nasty thing we have to learn to live with as best we can.
In my town this morning, there were lots of people out and about, young and old alike, almost none with masks and while trying to give eachother space certainly not… Read more »
Yeah, I can cheer you up. The principal reason for MSM to exist is to instill fear in people. Fear keeps people watching/reading which in turn makes them buy things they don’t want. I trained as a journalist back in 1970 (lasted six months) and even back then truth was not high on the agenda.You’re never going to see the likes of Michael Levitt, Knut Wittkowski or John Ionaddis on Sky TV. Watch this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YgP_Au5RZVw&list=WL&index=308&t=0s You’d do well to assume that MSM are going to lie to you
The only two behavioural drivers
Fear and Greed.
I can imagine there will be more Covid deaths if we ease lockdown rather than maintain it. The important issue will be how many more and, on balance, will the benefits of easing lockdown outweigh the extra deaths that this might cause.
The scientists may simply be giving their judgement on how the reduction of lockdown will affect Covid deaths, it’s up to the politicians to strike the right balance based on this information and that’s why they’re easing the lockdown despite these predictions
I’d imagine they’re banking on minimising extra deaths by (hopefully) adequately protecting hospitals and care homes whilst allowing everyone else to eventually go about as normal. They’re possibly realising that a vaccination is a pipe dream and are therefore going for herd immunity without actually admitting it.
You may be right, and that would be a more sensible approach than the one adopted so far, though far from ideal.
Had they been more rational and shown leadership in the first place, we wouldn’t be in this mess.
The registration of covid 19 deaths in this country is all over the place, like so much covid 19 ‘data’ hopelessly unreliable, fudged by bureaucrats to please their politicised and political masters.
https://www.buzzsprout.com/1013854/3675205-episode-4-dr-john-lee-part-1?client_source=twitter_card&player_type=full_screen
When Italy looked at their own recorded covid 19 deaths, they revised the figure down to 12% of its original size:
‘Prof. Walter Ricciardi, scientific advisor to Italy’s minister of health said, and I quote, “The way in which we code deaths in our country is very generous in the sense that all the people who die in hospitals with the coronavirus are deemed to be dying of the coronavirus. … On re-evaluation by the NIH,” he says, “only 12% of death certificates have shown a direct causality from coronavirus, while 88% of patients who have died have at least one pre-morbidity – many two or three.”
https://www.mediamatters.org/coronavirus-covid-19/federalist-contributor-and-oan-host-agree-italy-may-be-greatly-inflating-its
Lockdown scepticism cannot win on official data because the data is/are corrupted. There is no internationally recognised standard for death registration procedure.
The reckoning will probably only come (if then) via a public inquiry where deaths caused by unhelpful interventions may very well be shown to be a great deal more significant than… Read more »
Don’t disagree at all.
‘Covid deaths’? I’m not sure there are a thing now. Deaths that erroneously recorded as ‘linked to Covid’ are what you are referring to.
To be honest I’m not really refering to the official data because, as Tim has pointed out, it’s totally unreliable. There are obviously a lot of deaths that are caused by Covid, how many is impossible to say (although I’m guessing a lot less than were being told). I’m simply saying that some scientists think this number will increase if the lockdown is eased, which may well be the case, but it looks like the politicians are now thinking that this sacrifice is now worth it for the benefits of easing lockdown.
Why obviously?
No. You have to get past this mental block. God knows how many deaths are being attributed to covid when quite honestly it was not the cause. My own Gp told me that a 94 year old terminal cancer granny in a care home was marked as a covid statistic. It’s a disgrace and it’s widespread practice everywhere
Deaths at home… What’s the betting that they were too scared to go to hospital? Eh stroke… ?And don’t be surprised if, as if by magic, they have covid on the death certificate too.
You are being played
These 3 specimens who have taken to the media to fearmonger are the 3 most desperate to avoid the truth coming out. Remember their names when the enquiry uncovers who they’re really working for.
From “The American Spectator”.
Coronavirus teaches a recalcitrant humanity an important lesson: seers still cannot, in 2020, see the future.
Science tells us as much. Scientists disagree with the science on prophecy. They continue to play Nostradamus. When one’s profession morphs into a religion, occurrences as unpredictable as science usurping the supernatural come to pass.
But the data is in. Scientists make for poor psychics.
“Here we present the results of epidemiological modelling which has informed policymaking in the UK and other countries in recent weeks,” explained epidemiologist Neil M. Ferguson and 30 other members of the Imperial College COVID-19 Response Team. Their study outlined a worst-case scenario of “approximately 510,000 deaths in [Great Britain] and 2.2 million in the US.” Though they conceded this “unlikely” given that the model relied on a presumption of no government “control measures” or behavioral changes among individuals, they also hedged their bets on the upper edge of the estimate by “not accounting for the potential negative effects of health systems being overwhelmed on mortality.” Under “the most effective mitigation strategy examined … we predict there would still be in the order of 250,000 deaths in [Great Britain], and 1.1-1.2 million in the US.”
Coronavirus deaths… Read more »
Michael Hurley is absolutely spot on in his analysis.
I have a few comments on the SAGE minutes from 07th May 2020:
point 6 shows they do not have a clue still on how bad his programme was
point 6 shows they still only want “science” from the agenda following adherents
50 is way too many for anything meaningful to happen in a committee
To me those 3 points are enough to ignore them.
Yes indeed. Point 6 expreses thanks for Ferguson’s valuable work and says that they ought to continue to use the work of Imperial College.
I dont know how you can have 50 people on a committee. I wonder who the redacted names are.
bill gates? Beelzebub? Maybe a rothschild?
What’s your fucking point?
I wondered that as well.
So at this key pivot moment:
– Stop following the science
– Protect Cummings
– Save Brexit
I do wonder what the ‘narrative’ has become.
Science was never followed. 🙄
So effectively are you suggesting that lockdown was done just to protect the government and deflect criticism for reacting too late?
And keeping it in place keeps ‘fooling’ the sheep?
Love, there is no evidence than any scientific evidence was followed to put any measures in place.
The reasons are baffling, so I can’t help you there….. sorry.
The UK is in a terrible situation. We will always be judged based on what other countries have achieved. Since NZ managed to keep their death toll to double figures everyone expects the same. What started as flattening the curve has turned into nobody needs to die, look what NZ managed to do.
So as we ease lockdown there will probably be more deaths. Then people will say haven’t we had enough deaths and now you’re risking more.
If our death rate was lower then as harsh as it sounds we would have had wiggle room to take on more deaths. Opening up wouldn’t be such an issue.
So we have to make a decision. Stay locked down and take the damage that comes with it until the infection rates drop or we open up and accept at least a few more deaths (it could turn out to be a lot more but nobody can say for sure).
This is what happens when you manage a crisis with seemingly no clear plan.
The ‘death with covid’ count is an essentially a meaningless number and should be ignored, there is not really any science behind it.
We have never attempted to track deaths with other coronaviruses, rhinoviruses, influenza viruses in the same way before so there is nothing to compare with.
Excess mortality is a better figure to look at because simply counting dead bodies is less open to interpretation. Of course we do not know how many are dying from covid but the deaths with covid figure does not actually tell us that either.
There are countries much closer to home which have set good examples in that sense such as Germany. Excess mortality across Europe can be seen here: https://www.euromomo.eu/graphs-and-maps/
I’ve always looked at excess deaths as the key metric. However most people think it’s about the absolute number of deaths.
They seem to think that nobody should ever die from this virus simply because other countries managed to keep their death count low.
Yes I agree and it is depressing. I think its important to try and explain to people that the death with covid number does not actually tell us how many people are dying from it and that the number is meaningless and not comparable from country to country. I think it might be a better measure of the level of corruption within each countries health care system then anything else and I am not saying it is even a good measure of that.
Brainwashed and stupid basically. It’s always about absolute numbers to them because they have been conditioned to FEAR the virus.
The game’s just about up though, because apart from the masked loons that reside on Facebook etc, and us opposite (angry) normals here I actually reckon most people are just simply apathetic… That means they will sway with the wind. And thats clearly only going one way
NZ has a population of about five million.
Ours is 67 million.
Do the math.
It’s nothing to do with maths. People just see a low number of deaths and think that’s what everyone should be able to do.
So it reinforces the idea that every death is unnecessary.
NZ didn’t “manage” to do anything. NZ, like Australia, had the benefit of summer weather and geographic isolation. Both countries imposed travel restrictions, which would have helped to keep cases out. Other than that, it was just the luck of where they are. Both countries now have the tricky task of opening up their borders at some time and hoping that the virus doesn’t get out of hand.
I think you’re missing my point. A lot of people only look at the absolute number of deaths because they are the “one death is one too many” type. So nomatter what is done they will say things like yeah but we could have had zero deaths look at NZ.
As we ease lockdown it is likely that there will be more deaths. These people will demand lockdown lasts forever because they think zero deaths is possible.
Oh sure… This was the new Zealand that was STILL in lockdown about 2 weeks after their last death from the virus. Hilarious. 15 bloody deaths was it…? All pre-existing conditions? And they fucked their economy for that??? I think they have almost been the stupidest of the lot
My Facebook news feed is filled with annoucements from the likes of the National Trust, English Heritage, Blenheim, Chatsworth, etc about their grounds reopening but you have to pre-book. As I said a few days ago here, that has the potential to descend into farce given their core demographic and I’ve already seen members angry about the system as the slots have been booked up faster than you can say “we’re open”. Not surprising given that people have been cooped up in this mental hospital for 10 weeks now.
Some will reopen their cafes for takeaway food and drink but the toilets will be closed. WTF??
Have these people not thought about the fact that without toilets visitors won’t be able to wash their hands and they will just relieve themselves behind the trees and bushes? Plus don’t forget litter.
Then cue next week that management are whining that their grounds resemble a rubbish skip.
They only have themselves to blame.
I’m cancelling my NT membership. I’m not making an appointment to stroll around a local NT property I’ve been visiting and supporting for years. English Heritage however have given members an extra 3 months on their annual membership so I’ll stick with them.
I think that’s why you’ve not been hearing of EH members not renewing or cancelling en masse because of that extra 3 months which the National Trust have not done.
Also I won’t be surprised if there will be a lot of boycotting until this madness is consigned to the dustbin.
Cancelled mine too. In Wales they spend all their time licking Comrade Drakeford’s arse and don’t give a (appropriate word here) shit for their members.
I’ve cancelled my RSPB membership, on the grounds that opening up their reserves but not their toilets (at this stage) is both inhumane and insane. The totally unnecessary social distancing measures, in outdoor spaces, also played a part in my decision.
These large organisations potentially have a huge amount of clout, if only they would have the guts to use it. If they had defined the idiocy, it would have sent out a very powerful message.
On a related note, I wonder how many serious health issues may arise due to desperate people having to use parks and gardens as a public sewer?
*Defied, not defined. Apologies for the typo.
Yet again that boggles me. As I’ve said in the past its odd that none of these organisations have spoken out considering that they keep on bleating how good being in the outdoors, going to a museum or live performance is good for your mental health. But come crunch time all you can hear from this lot is deafening silence.
That said my husband believes that the state must have some hold on them and they can’t deviate from the current orthodoxy.
Part of my local park smells of piss during the weekend as people use it both as a drinking area and a sewer at the same time.
I was pondering on here a few days ago, that, at first, there will be a big burst of economic activity as people move out of lockdown – which will then quickly dissipate as people get frustrated and bored with the ‘new normal’ lunacy. This sort of thing is a case in point ….
Agree. If anything this so-called “new normal” and social distancing will accelerate further falling business and visitor numbers. Who would want to stand in a queue just to buy something or eat in a restaurant or visit some NT grounds? Expect more shops, restaurants, cafes and pubs to close.
I wonder about the psychological impact of having to go for long periods without being to do what people did previously. For instance, someone enjoys going to the pub. I have heard pubs can’t open until July at the earliest. A regular pub goer has gone for over three months without being able to go to pubs. Would that person become so used to drinking at home instead of going to pubs, he may not want to go to pubs again. I wonder are businesses going to loose trade if people don’t go back to old habits.
That’s a good point and of course with the proposed social distancing who would want to queue to get to a pub? Many people just won’t bother.
Closing public toilets is total lunacy, whether in general or at these heritage properties – in any other ‘normal’ time it would be a discrimination issue because some disabled people need to use the toilet more. And public toilets have never been bastions of hygiene anyway – just wash your hands or bring sanitising gel in case there’s no soap! Enough of these sledgehammer-to-crack-a-nut measures of closing everything down with no nuanced targeting.
It is bonkers and I’m amazed that the management of these heritage sites have not thought of that – there’s going to be a knock on effect be it visitors just relieving themselves wherever which would lead to litter everywhere and waste affecting the biodiversity of their estates or not bother coming which would mean less revenue for this lot.
The funny thing is that my local Morrison’s has kept their toilets open throughout this madness and have carried on cleaning it and trying to maintain it at an acceptable standard.
I see that the SAGE minutes are out. Will take some reading. Sorry if already posted.
https://www.gov.uk/search/transparency-and-freedom-of-information-releases?organisations%5B%5D=scientific-advisory-group-for-emergencies&parent=scientific-advisory-group-for-emergencies
I used to like to go to work but they shut it down
I’ve got a right to go to work but there’s no work to be found
Yes and they say we’re gonna have to pay what’s owed
We’re gonna have to reap from some seed that’s been sowed
“Telegraph Road” by Dire Straits
Dire Straits is the name all right.
Fabulous piece above describing the journey yesterday- I too noted the same things- brilliant!!
Having listening to Dr Karol Sikora being interviewed by Freddie Sayers on Unherd Lockdown TV, I now think it is up to us- we need to lead the way by just going back to normal.
I listened on my way back home from work and on getting out of the car had a chat with a local teacher friend who was back from a walk with her children and her teacher husband- ‘ooh, we’re not going back until September- it’s got to be safe’; how lovely for them- they get 5 months to spend with their children and the most amazing Spring/early Summer on 100% pay, thank you UK taxpayers!
This attitude is shocking.
Also, please can someone help- I keep getting quoted ’60k excess deaths’- is this true? How can they know now anyway and how many of those are unexplained deaths due to lockdown? Is this made up of expected deaths in the 6 month period plus Covid deaths? Or…?
Have a look here: https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/deaths/datasets/weeklyprovisionalfiguresondeathsregisteredinenglandandwales
There has been a lot of anecdotal evidence that many of the deaths are actually not from Covid 19 but from the usual suspects – old age, cancer, stroke, heart disease, etc but are being recorded as Covid 19.
Paulito a few days’ ago has mentioned that there is an investigation going on in Spain over the death count so it looks like the same thing is happening over there.
Well excess deaths are certainly up on the average over last 5 years in the UK, and in other (but not all) European countries. My guess is that the new virus is probably more deadly for the vulnerable, and there’s no vaccine or immunity in that group so the variation in figures between countries is to do with how well they protected and continue to protect the vulnerable.
I think it was Ferguson himself who said it was likely that the overlap between his in famous 500,000 possible deaths in the UK in 2020 from covid-19 and those who would have died anyway in that year was around two thirds.
You can see the excess deaths here:
https://www.ft.com/content/a26fbf7e-48f8-11ea-aeb3-955839e06441
But I prefer this one as it’s visually easier to read but probably not as up to date:
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/04/21/world/coronavirus-missing-deaths.html
Its interesting to look here https://www.euromomo.eu/graphs-and-maps and see that several countries have seen no visible excess deaths.
Considering the same virus must have swept through all countries it would seem plausible that the vast majority of excess deaths might be the result of the actions of governments, health services and care homes in some countries rather then the virus itself.
One issue is that they’ve never tracked the flu in the way they’ve chosen to track COVID-19.
If they had made flu a notifiable disease then the historical figures for flu would have been a lot higher. The same people dying with COVID-19 now would in the past have been marked down as having died of flu.
That FT chart is a disgrace to statistics. First they have cherry picked countries and second you can easily plot opposite regression lines e.g. straight line through Holland, Portugal and the US. Also they should publish the r-squared on the face of the chart.
Absolute garbage, they should be ashamed.
Just had my daily laughs over at the Daily mail comments section.
Lots of pro-narrative comments and votes so AI and trolls out in force.
Seconds apart a pro-narrative comment goes from -7 votes to +21, -5 which doesn’t make sense. I’ve tried to put on anti-narrative comments in the “unmoderated” comments without success.
77th earning lots of overtime today.
I think the Mail needs to start using Captchas to defeat Cummings’s bot
Cummings bot??? What is that?
I think he has a script that posts generic “Dominic Cummings is great” on comments on the Daily Mail and similar publications under the guise of various randomly generated sock puppets.
The news is comedy – a sign that we have arrived in the great communist utopia!