Thought I’d post this Guardian front page, not because of the disgraceful headline about Boris – standing up for the leader who saved the world from fascism does not constitute “stoking fear and division” – but because of the red line showing the fall in Britain’s output in April. The worst recession in 300 years!
How instrumental was the lockdown in causing this economic woe? We can’t blame it entirely on the Government’s decision to place us all under virtual house arrest on March 23rd since the more modest containment measures introduced on March 16th would have had a negative impact on the economy absent a lockdown and, even if they hadn’t been imposed, people would have naturally adapted to the presence of the virus in ways that would have harmed the economy. But the lockdown increased that harm by an order of magnitude. Sweden’s economy, for instance, is expected to shrink by just 7% in 2020. The eminent financial journalist who contributes anonymously to this site used the Blavatnik School of Government’s tool for ranking different countries according to whether or not they locked down and how severely they locked down and found there was a positive correlation between that and how much their economies are predicted to shrink by.
The Government will claim that when it took the decision to lock us all up on March 23rd it was merely “following the science”, and that’s the subject of my op ed in today’s Telegraph. Here’s how it begins:
According to the WHO, there are two pandemics raging across the world. The first is the one we’re all familiar with, but the second is more insidious – the explosion of fake news about the virus. “We’re not just fighting an epidemic,” said WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus on February 15th. “We’re fighting an infodemic.”
This theme was taken up by the UK Press Gazette which launched a “Fight the Infodemic” campaign on June 3rd. “The aim is stop key platforms like Facebook, Google and Twitter from promoting misinformation about vital issues like Covid-19 and instead to favour evidence-based journalism from bona fide outlets,” wrote the editor Dominic Ponsford.
What surprised me about this is that the biggest fake news about the virus has been disseminated by the mainstream media. I’m thinking of the myth that the Government’s scientific advisors urged Boris Johnson to impose a full lockdown long before March 23rd and it was only because he ignored them that Britain has one of the highest Covid death tolls globally.
As I point out, this is the exact opposite of the truth: Boris didn’t turn a deaf ear to the scientists urging him to lock down. Rather, he ignored their advice to tread carefully and rushed into one of the worst decisions in our history.
That claim is based on an analysis of the SAGE meeting minutes in the period leading up to the lockdown that readers of this site will be familiar with:
Various different social distancing measures were discussed by SAGE, but no one in the group recommended quarantining the entire population. The measures talked about were home isolation of symptomatic individuals and the cocooning of the over 70s – both of which were introduced by the government on March 16.
The penultimate SAGE meeting before the lockdown was on March 18 where it was noted that the impact of the measures introduced so far would not be known for two or three weeks. According to the minutes, the boffins said it was too early to say whether additional measures – such as closing pubs, restaurants and entertainment venues – would be necessary.
In short, Boris Johnson and his Cabinet were not “following the science” when they took the decision to place everyone under virtual house arrest, and nor were they ignoring it by not doing so earlier. On the contrary, their scientific advisors were urging a more cautious approach.
In the SAGE meeting on March 23, the day lockdown was announced, the attendees flagged up the negative impact of the containment measures. “Actuarial analysis is required to estimate deaths caused indirectly by Covid-19, including those caused by the social interventions,” says one of the minutes. Another says: “Given the clear links between poverty and long-term ill health, health impacts associated with the economic consequences of interventions also need to be investigated.”
I also nail the calumny, put about by Neil Ferguson and others, that the UK would have a lower death toll if Boris had locked us all down a week earlier.
Simon Wood, professor of statistical science at Bristol University, published a paper on June 1 showing that the R number in England and Wales was less than 1 before March 23rd. The same conclusion has been reached by Carl Heneghan, professor of evidence-based medicine at Oxford.
In other words, the containment measures introduced on March 16 were more than sufficient to halt the spread of the virus. The government’s scientific advisors did not urge the Prime Minister to go any further, and they were right not to do so. I’m convinced that the decision to place the entire country in suspended animation on March 23 will end up costing more lives than the pandemic.
Former French Health Minister Issues Warning About Big Pharma
This is rather remarkable. Philippe Douste-Blazy, Cardiology MD, the former French Health Minister and at one point a candidate for Director-General of the WHO, has revealed that in a recent closed-door meeting, the editors of the Lancet and the New England Journal of Medicine expressed their concerns about the criminal pressures of BigPharma on their publications. Things are so bad that it is not science any longer. You can watch the video of Philippe Douste-Blazy being interviewed about this meeting here and a reader has kindly produced a transcript.
Apolline de Malherbe [French broadcaster]: But it’s hard to understand why scientists would voluntarily give bias to studies
Dr. Philippe Douste-Blazy: Exactly! That’s the great question. That’s the great question we are all asking ourselves, finally, and you know those Chatham House lectures in London.
AdM: Remind us what is this all about? This is extremely interesting.
P D-B: These are meetings that are completely behind closed doors, only with experts. No one can record, no one is taking any pictures. It’s only between experts.
AdM: Top secret.
P D-B: Top secret. But still, there was a meeting the other day, of the directors of scientific journals, like the Lancet, the New England Journal of Medicine…
AdM: The Lancet, which is that journal which published this study we are talking about…
P D-B: These are extraordinary journals. When it’s written in Lancet, it’s “written in Lancet”. So that’s why… Here, we’re talking about something very important this discussion that happened. And it ended up leaked: the Lancet’s boss, Horton, said: “Now we are not going to be able to, basically, if this continues, publish any more clinical research data, because the pharmaceutical companies are so financially powerful today and are able to use such methodologies, as to have us accept papers which are apparently methodologically perfect but which, in reality, manage to conclude what they want to conclude…” This is very, very serious!
AdM: But what you are telling us is very serious! That would mean that it is the pharmaceutical companies that are putting pressure on, including financial pressure, I guess on the scientific results! But you understand, who can we trust anymore today?
P D-B: Indeed, that’s why I allow myself to tell you about it, because it is one of the greatest subjects… never anyone could have believed. I have been doing research for 20 years in my life. I never thought the boss of the Lancet could say that and the boss of the New England Journal of Medicine too. He even said it was “criminal”, the word was used by them. That is, if you will, when there is an outbreak like the COVID, in reality, there are people… us, we see “mortality”, when you are a doctor or yourself, you see “suffering”. And there are people who see “dollars”, that’s it.
Sceptical is Second Favourite at Royal Ascot
Anyone fancy a flutter at Royal Ascot next Saturday? ‘Sceptical’, a four year-old gelding, is second favourite for the Diamond Jubilee stakes. He’s trained in Ireland by Denis Hogan and will be ridden by Frankie Dettori. I’ve put a tenner on…
Not All Heroes Wear Capes
Great story on the Isle of Wight Radio site. A Cowes man called John Corby has taken it upon himself to wash away all the two-metre distancing street markers the local council has painted on his street, which he describes as “council-sanctioned vandalism”. He told the radio station:
The dots will not save any lives but undoubtedly reduce the vital charm of the high street just when we need to be encouraging people to go shopping again.
Basically council sanctioned vandalism projecting an image of fear, the last thing we need right now.
All I did was remove three dots in front of my house as a sign of defiance against a dystopian Orwellian future which we all seem to be sleepwalking towards.
A “dystopian Orwellian future”! Sounds like Mr Corby is a reader of Lockdown Sceptics.
Well done, Sir.
The Taliban: An Apology
A brilliant piece of satire by Sahil Mahtani has just been published in the Spectator called “The Taliban: An apology“. The idea is we were wrong to condemn Mullah Omar and his shock troops when the Taliban started destroying ancient artefacts to erase the past. “As it turns out, they appreciated sensitivities that we did not recognise at the time: the threat that cultural history poses to the present,” he writes.
The Taliban worked out – in a way that Britain was slow to – that public statues are not politically neutral. They are statements about who and what we honour as a society. They carry the power structures of one age into another. Every collective generation has the right to ensure their values are reflected in the statues they pass. Modernity means that the aperture narrows. Five years ago it was Rhodes must fall. Today it is Churchill must fall. It turns out there was a slippery slope—to utopia
Worth reading in full.
The Free Speech Union Litigation Fund
As you watch the protests today, worth bearing in mind that what the demonstrators are trying to do to statues they’ve done to dozens of living people – cancelled them, that is. The Free Speech Union, which I helped set up in February, has launched a fighting fund on GoFundMe so we can stand up for freedom of expression in the courts. You can find it here. Please give anything you can and share it on your social media feeds. Free speech has never been in greater peril since the man in the box defeated the Nazis.
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:
- ‘Ghanaian footballer ‘stranded at Mumbai airport for 74 days’ thanks to coronavirus‘ – Anyone seen The Terminal? Here’s the sequel
- ‘Universities could see up to ten per cent of British students defer places, Ucas chief says‘ – As few as that?
- ‘Before Catching Coronavirus, Some People’s Immune Systems Are Already Primed to Fight It‘ – More evidence that some people have natural immunity
- ‘How New York’s Coronavirus Response Made the Pandemic Worse‘ – Not just New York, obviously
- ‘We cannot sit in our own little bubbles forever‘ – Robert Dingwall, member of NERVTAG, with a refreshingly dissenting point of view in Spiked
- ‘Cricket fears lost generation as clubs stare into financial abyss‘ – It is game over for cricket, asks the Times?
- ‘Brilliant Seinfeld spoof‘ – Fans will remember the episode when Kramer is shamed for not wearing an AIDS ribbon. Someone has updated it with subtitles so this time he’s being shamed for not sticking a BLM black box on his Instagram account
Theme Tune Suggestion From Readers
Just the one suggestion today: “How Long Will it Last?” by the Jackson Southernaires.
Small Businesses That Have Reoponed
A few 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 takes me many hours every day, which doesn’t leave much time for other work. If you feel like donating, however small the amount, please click here. And if you want to flag up any stories or links I should include in future updates, email me here.
And Finally…
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.
A hero. A real doctor in a world gone insane. For all the risks of hurricanes, I think I’d move to Florida in a heartbeat if I could.
Slightly off-thread, but I was reminded of the following issue from the distant past, which I conjecture is present today in the US and UK.
[TL;DR: modern healthcare is dominated by politics and activist agenda rather than medicine]
Covid apart, fraud schemes involving anti-depressants, other interventions and protocols are well-known in the UK mental health services too, though the well-meaning people involved in them might find a justification for them, and indeed the fraud is minor in itself but has repercussions. In one hospital I was associated with (through visiting patients as a carers’ representative) there were issues over “ring-fencing” of government funding and protocols for treating severe depression. In essence, the physicians or finance directors found out, or concluded, that as a result of funding conditions they could only authorise and fund certain medication (e.g.cheap anti-depressants) or certain therapy (expensive Cognitive or Dialectical Behavioural Therapy) if they also ticked a box saying that in their opinion the depression was attributable to certain politically-associated causative agents, most relevantly “domestic emotional abuse”, “discrimination”, “bullying” and suchlike. (Politicians at the time were keen to use terms like “tackling workplace bullying” and “addressing the epidemic of domestic emotional violence” in their rhetoric.) Thinking they were working in the best interests of the patient and merely bending the rules a little, the physicians and administrators would collude to tick these boxes to keep the financial department and politicians happy and, usually, achieve a short-term (and often long-term) medical benefit. Unfortunately, in some cases (notably Dramatic Personality Disorder) the patients, often with distorted perception of their world, would see the “tick boxes” and use them as evidence to seek reparation from their ex-spouses, ex-employers for causing the depression, trying to use the ticks as evidence that a clinician supports the hypothesis of what causes the depressive behaviour, whereas the clinicians was merely bending the rules to obtain funding. Arguably, tick-boxing didn’t help the patient in the long term either, as it merely gave them an incorrect identification of the cause of their depressive behaviour, which they would then cling on to rather than seeking more accurate interventions. At least the lawyers made some money out of the practice!
Personal and professional integrity were quickly cast aside by too many in the face of financial incentives.
Thank goodness there were / are some true professionals who advocate for their patients and fellow humans.
https://tessa.substack.com/p/anthem-covid-19-vaccine-provider
Rotten ba#tards.
A cynic might note that they accidentally gave ALL the “vaccinated” a lower standard, by promoting a drug that was granted “Emergency Authorization Use”, and circumventing the normal protocol for brand new drugs. A proper risk and benefit analysis would be nice, at the very least.
Medical Apartheid justified by those who claimed to hate Racial Apartheid
******************************
Stand in the Park Make friends & keep sane
Sundays 10.30am to 11.30am
Elms Field
near play area
Wokingham RG40 2FE
The medical profession has not covered itself in glory, and on not one, but three occasions.
[1] The medical professions showed open support for BLM an avowedly Marxist organisation that created an atmosphere to imply that only black lives mattered, as evidenced by of the radio presenter in the Isle of Man that lost his job because he said all lives matter, to give just one example
[2] The medical profession promoted lockdowns, masks and the mandating of unproven ‘vaccine’ therapies, with their unions championing governments to pay people to stay at home and not work. Now those same unions complain that inflation has devalued their pay packets.
[3] The medical profession prioritised Covid patients above all else so that Cancer patient’s care was suspended. And of course the example given above.
During any war it is expected that medics treat injured soldiers and civilians based on need and not who they are. Just one example is the famous story below from WW2. How far have we drifted form the following and why?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RrI1bB39PGs
Humanity in War: The Story of Two Medics on D-Day
The chilling thing about this is that so many perfectly lovely friends, relatives and family all went along with this. During the period when serious discussions were made about allowing unvaccinated to participate in society, I remember being a bit shocked at a perfectly reasonable friend thinking that it was not just OKay but actually justified to shut those of us who preferred not to take part in an experiment out of medical treatment/travel etc (or even restaurants in France).
It was, by far, the biggest outbreak of Mass Psychosis since the Medieval Witch Trials.
“Crimes the individual alone could never stand are freely committed by the group [smitten by madness].”
Carl Jung, The Symbolic Life
A “perfectly lovely” couple we know told us that all unvaccinated people should be imprisoned for endangering others …
i had the same thing happen to me, closest friends ,a sibling,cousins too.
i’m glad others like me here that i can read about so not feel so alone and wasn’t just me had this happen.chilling is good description .was like ww2 posters no parks no schools no restaurants no cinemas but they didn’t realize .still don’t.
These are bitter truths but it is always better to know and to remember. And the memories are going to be very poignant for many given their losses. This profession seems to think that it will always carry on unscathed. I have a feeling that this may not be the case given the awakening on a mass scale that has occurred in just the last two months. I would just ask them to repent of their actions it isn’t impossible. This has been a very fertile period in terms of cross-pollination of disciplines and the joining together of open minds. Before we lament our times we should imagine what it would be like if we didn’t have to go through them.
To read this article 3 years ago, one would assume one was reading a dystopian short story of the science fiction genre.
The sad reality is that I have witnessed very similar occurrences here in Australia.
And we don’t have a Florida to move to!
Good fiction is believable. This is unbelievable, sadly, but true. I was admitted to Royal Berks Hospital in 2021 and the lead physician in A&E was vitriolic, foaming at the mouth and shouting at me when I told him I was unvaccinated. He didn’t like that I had the temerity to tell him he had no right to advise me under his Hippocratic oath to take a clearly unsafe and ineffective treatment which he would know if he had read the trial data. He refused to treat me and passed me on to an underling. An unforgettable experience of the Covid era. Me and my family are happy and healthy. I wonder if he is?
He should have been up before the GMC and barred from practising. But he most likely got an award for following the narrative
Retaining your integrity and peace of mind is priceless.
Well done.
Dr James Miller should be seen as a beacon of truth, honesty and honour in a very faulty American medical system. I haven’t heard of any doctors with the same actions in the UK National Health system, but I suspect they may exist, although silenced by the system. After the extreme impact of Covid is over, I expect more situations like this will be discovered.