No update today, but am planning one for tomorrow looking at the rise in infections in those US states that were among the first to ease shutdown restrictions. In light of this rise, should we be worried about a “second wave” in the UK? You can probably guess the answer…
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Thanks again Toby, a true hero for providing this level of effort and community!
Yes, it’s reassuring to hear from Toby each day, even with only a very short post such as this. At least we know that they – whoever ‘they’ are -haven’t got to him yet.
I’m guessing hat his garden shed from where he writes these posts has long since been bugged though …
Looking forward to it
From the BBC Website
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/health-52943524/coronavirus-and-psychiatric-hospitals-staff-are-scared-patients-are-scared
As someone on the front line I can say the damage to the mental health of the people of this country caused by the policy of terror introduced by the government and propagated by the BBC and other MSM channels is the most striking health problem I deal with everyday.
A member of our extend family got sectioned under the mental health act almost 3 weeks ago, they had a good well paid job and it was the only thing keeping them on the level. They went totally psychotic.
It was solely down to the lockdown that this happened, they had been doing well up until the lockdown.
That’s tragic. Sorry to hear it.
Thanks, yes it has been extremely traumatic for everybody involved. Absolutely horrible. The idea that our government is doing anything to “safeguard our welfare” is just laughable right now.
There was absolutely no help available for them what so ever. Nothing. We had to wait untill they went so crazy the police had to arrest them despite previous involvement with the police, nothing was “set in motion” to help them.
I can’t help but think how horrible it must be being held against your will in a mental mental institution staffed by crazy fools who think the virus is a scary thing. That would make me even more crazy for sure.
I understand what happens; I’ve seen it first-hand. You have my sympathy, which doesnt do much I know, but be assured many of us do feel for what you’re going through. They should have had help from a doctor; there are early intervention teams for people with psychosis, who help them through and may provide the medication. I hope your relative will get this help.
It’s heartrending. And wicked.
PS. I think we need to build an archive of this sort of wickedness, with full and detailed evidence, for the Coronaberg Trials. Perhaps Toby could set it up – in complete confidence of course? Or is such an archive already in existence somewhere? I know it seems impossible to ask more of Toby just now, but such evil CANNOT be allowed to go unpunished.
I don’t think you can ask Toby to do more, but I’m willing to volunteer if someone wants to kick off what is is they want to happen.
It’s really up to the people who have suffered directly. I haven’t. But if the victims want a record to be kept, so that the perpetrators are brought to justice or at least exposed, perhaps they could take up your most generous offer?
Yes it is wicked, in fact it’s absolutely evil what is happening. A deliberate attack on the citizens of this country under the banner of ‘keeping us safe’? You couldn’t make it up! I must admit there have been times when I have felt such despair for the future and intense hatred for the powers that be I can well understand why people go insane or want to kill themselves. Sociopaths like politicians dont do empathy which is why they go about their jobs seemingly oblivious to the sufferings of others.
Very sad to hear this
What a sad story. But I hope all may yet work out all right, or at least not so bad, in time. I hope that he or she may yet make a good recovery.
It will, I suppose, be no consolation to know that your family member will be among tens of thousands of people in this country to be seriously harmed by lockdown, including being killed by it.
This may not be the thread in which to say it, but it is clear to me that those responsible must be held to account.
Hello
so sorry to hear about your loved one. My Brother has also been sectioned and has been incarcerated for 12 days. I am absolutely convinced that this “pandemic” is the cause of his breakdown. Very upsetting as we can only get limited info from the clinic. Best wishes x
Sorry to hear that, Two-Six. I hope that they recover.
i echo others, that such events need recording as a perfectly foreseeable cost – of lockdown, not of Covid.
Sorry to hear this and I hope your relative gets the care they need. Mental health has always been a cinderella service and things are much more stretched now.
They have a lot to answer for.
Someone I know had a benign brain tumour removed just before the lockdown. She has been exhibiting irrational and sometimes aggressive behaviour, but has had no help, either from her GP, or the hospital. The family has been literally torn apart by this. Clap for our carers? You must be joking.
The sooner the NHS is reformed the better. Its dysfunctional and too bloody expensive.
The BBC, channel 4, Sky News all need sanctioning.
They’ve sacrificed their integrity (not so much in the case of Sky) for viewing figures.
I know that OfCom won’t do a thing but I’m hopeful that as viewers realised they’ve been tricked they will desert these sources of news in droves.
I am NEVER going to watch telly or listen to the radio or buy a newspaper EVER AGAIN.
Welcome to the club. Our household is BBC and MSM free, also FB and Twitter free. I wish it was Google free but I’ve not taken that step yet.
Hi, we have no TV, steer clear of MSM (‘read the occasional posted link which usually confirms our prejudices) and we use an allegedly private search engine called MetaGer. We rarely resort to Google. YouTube is useful until it gets censored. We avoid all anti-social media like the Black Death. My smartphone contract is up for renewal next month and will be terminated. It has been useful but we are not happy about the increasing surveillance.
We also stopped listening to BBC Radio News about 10 years ago for the sake of our blood-pressure.
p.s. we’d be a bit stuck without the internet though. . .
Well done! Switch search engines from Google to https://www.startpage.com.
“Why StartPage? Because it doesn’t track you, and because it gives you full access to Google’s amazing index. In other words, it gives you great search results while also preserving your privacy. StartPage also gives you the option of turning off search suggestions, which Google uses systematically to manipulate your searches as they please.”
https://medium.com/@re_53711/seven-simple-steps-toward-online-privacy-20dcbb9fa82
PC Plod in a new guise – VIEW quick before the BLM thought police take it down:
https://youtu.be/91VaSkV87Ls
It’s good comedy because it’s so observationally accurate – every one of us must have seen exactly these kinds of people saying these kinds of things, just less honestly and openly.
Johnny Smugface: “Not me, obviously! Don’t come for me guys I’m an ally. I’ll say anything you want me to, it doesn’t even have to be true. Just please, please don’t come for me. I can’t afford to be cancelled, I’ve just had a new kitchen fitted.”
The toadies to the new(-ish) power in the land.
I read somewhere that Rishi Sunak wants us to spend our way out of the financial crisis caused by the government’s lockdown. If any of the shops I used recently are anything to go by, he won’t have much luck removing my money. I went to an optician to collect a pair of glasses I had ordered pre lockdown. I was greeted by a masked up, gloved up, security screened employee that told me I didn’t have an appointment – I did. When we overcame that problem I was told that I couldn’t enter the shop unless I was wearing a mask. I pointed out that this was wrong and that masks were not compulsory and this led to a blazing row with the shop manager who told me to leave. At least I got my money back, but somewhat of a pyrrhic victory since I now have to manage with my 5 year old glasses with an incorrect prescription. I also haven’t been to a barber or a clothes shop since the lockdown commenced.
So if you happen to be wandering in a town near you and you see an old man with dishevelled hair and tatty clothes leering at you menacingly, it might be Boris Johnson (if you are female that is), but don’t automatically assume it is and attack him straight away, because it could be me struggling with my pre-lockdown spectacles.
The easiest way to differentiate will be to start a conversation. If it is BJ he will talk bollocks, if it is me I will talk sense.
If you’ve had a test, they have to give you your prescription by law
Yep, which you can then take to any optician you like. Or fulfill it via the web, people have told me it is much cheaper.
I would write a letter of complaint if I were you.
If Sunak wants us to spend our way out of this self-inflicted crisis (Armageddon coming soon) then he would call for the end of antisocial distancing and all the assorted paraphernalia that goes with it. Until then I will be staying away from the high street and if I need anything I will buy it online.
My boycott will also include pubs, restaurants, museums, heritage sites and cultural venues.
Retail shopping is about experience as well as getting the products. Trying on clothes, talking to sales assistants, browsing and chatting etc.. When experience is removed, and the shame of being a potential plague carrier is added, shopping is to be avoided. (Some business have even told customers to stay away for their own safety, or said only 1 adult is allowed in per family).
I expect antisocial distancing will go by the autumn (perhaps just in time for COVID-19 to return for the winter season). By then I fear the damage will be done, and for many stores it will be too late. After several experiences of the misery of current retailing, similar to those already discussed, I may be well out of the habit of going to the shops.
That’s precisely what I said in my email to Waterstones – browsing, the joy of finding something you end up liking and buying, the social interaction but I just got fobbed off with blathering about safety and that the Chancellor had visited. Yeah sure, he’s not going to be inconvenienced and treated like a plague victim is he?
I agree with you and yes it will be too late by then – people will have the attitude of can’t be bothered and/or have never forgiven the shops for treating them like dirt and many shops will have gone bust by then.
You should ask why they’ve never cared about safety every winter flu season. Over the last decade flu has killed far more than Covid.
The response I get when I ask this is “Flu has a vaccine”. To which I simply reply, “That’s ok then death with a vaccine is acceptable so it’s not really every death is one too many is it?”. I rarely get a response after that.
You should say you have an immune system which works very well.
We’ve been brainwashed to believe that vaccines are the panacea. While they can protect they also weaken our own immune system, so now many are reliant on vaccines and suffering many of the side effects stated on the packaging – nut allergies, asthma, neurological disorders, etc etc
That’s a good idea. Will keep that in mind when I write another boycott letter or complaint.
All too true but for some peculiar reason their powers of reasoning have blown a fuse!
I think individual shops can have a policy of muzzles just as some shops have “No shirt? No service” . My local Samsung shop has a muzzle policy as does a very small jewellers shop.I usually get a prescription given to me immediately after a test . Did you not get one?
I have got a prescription and I have got my money back, so I can easily go somewhere else, but where? I can probably manage with these glasses until the world regains its senses – if ever.
Any good? https://www.glassesdirect.co.uk/
Good idea although you usually have to have the frames adjusted but if you can live with that all very good. Besides which it’s probably a lot cheaper buying online.
Specsavers website says “you are invited to wear a muzzle” but implies you can say no and they will still serve you.
I went to the vet to collect a flea/tick treatment. They wanted me to wear a mask, but I refused, so they sold it to me anyway!
could be worse . they could have wanted you to wear a muzzle
Muzzles aren’t required for animals at the vet’s, only for humans.
I can’t believe I just said that.
But it’s true.
I’d say lose the mask or lose my custom.
That’s called business acumen! Seems to be in short supply nowadays.
I thought we were supposed to self-isolate if we have symptoms, so what’s the point of the mask if we’re not ill with Covid and therefore infectious?
Pity our friends in the MSM aren’t asking that question on a daily basis!
If Tom Blackburn’s correct and there’s a legal requirement on them to provide your prescription glasses, then it must be worth writing a letter of complaint.
If nothing else, the owner (if it’s not the manager who was so hostile who is actually the owner) needs to know that he is losing business and future custom by his stance. They mostly think that they can only lose business by not being seen as “safe enough”, I think.
Of course, writing a letter of complaint might be tricky with out of date glasses…..
Why all these businesses seem determined to hasten their own demise is beyond rational explanation,Turkeys voting for Christmas !.
Take the prescription elsewhere to a friendly optician.
I’m in the same boat. Half blind with an old prescription, refusing to go anywhere near any establishment that ‘asks’ me to behave like a biohazard.
Same here, my prescription is two years old now I could do with new ones but there is no way I am going into specsavers until the mass psychosis wears off.
I’m in the same boat but I need an eye operation first before I can have new prescription gasses. Welcome to the new world of the stupid!
Is it a chain? Are we allowed to know who it is?
Their initials are VE
Try somewhere else. My optician agreed to see me without a mask, even though it’s a recommendation. They were all dressed for the Ebola ward, but I can put up with that to be able to see properly again…
I also made an appointment with Specsavers – actually had the eye test last year but never went back for the updated prescription – 3 year old glasses were too misty now to see laptop screen for work so had to go – there must have been 10-12 staff all in masks and plastic aprons – told the guy at the door I didn’t have a mask – he looked puzzled – so I mentioned ‘panic attacks’ and he went away into the store – was very polite, I have to say. They let me in, after lifting the rope,(like you might have in a nightclub!) and put me in a corner to look at frames, left me with a box to put in any I touched (a contaminated tray?) – eventually a guy (who seemed to be in charge) told me someone would come and help me – the assistant had a mask and plastic apron but then donned a plastic visor as I ‘wasn’t wearing a mask’. It was all a bit surreal – looking around at all these staff with only 3-4 customers in the shop at any one time – 3 assistants were stood at a desk chatting (from behind their masks) – I felt I was in an operating theatre. When I went to leave (exit side) there wasn’t anyone there so asked if I could unclip the rope myself – someone raced over to let me out. Just crazy. Then crossed over to Boots where, thankfully, it is now a lot more normal.
Insane.
That’s interesting I might give them a look then, although it probably depends on individual shops and managers rather than a blanket policy from above.
It would drive me loopy. Its just as well we don’t have the Second Amendment here, MSM would be having a field day with sensationalist headlines. A couple of illegals stabbi g people in Glasgow would seem like a picnic in the park!
They are going through very similar situations in the US of A, and there has been no mass wave of people going on shooting sprees. Hoplophobia is one of the bad guys’ memes, Bella.
An idea for Toby: with the brilliant idea of listing shops that have opened up now rendered obsolete, a list of shops treating customers in this manner should instead be compiled.so we can all vote with our feet.
Good idea however with supermarkets it seems to be down to individual branches. Maybe we should have a list of high street stores that treat customers like dirt and Typhoid Marys.
I agree that a list of shops that treat people like dirt is the better option. We don’t want to provide councils etc with a list available to view here of the good ones that they can terrorise into conforming!
Agree. Best to protect those who use their common sense and treat people well and shame those who treat us like dirt and are staffed with CPSU commissars or Nazi gauleiters
If the optician is wearing a mask what’s their problem? You’ve had new glasses prescribed they should have given them to you! Complain and Loudly too!
Been doing some rooting around and seems that opticians in England are being guided by The College of Optometrists.
This is the link to the guidance for optometrists under amber phase of current situation.
https://www.college-optometrists.org/the-college/media-hub/news-listing/primary-eyecare-covid-19-guidance-amber-phase.html
These seem to be the relevant sections:
2.19 All practice staff should wear appropriate PPE if they need to see patients at a distance of less than 2 metres, unless this is behind a screen. National guidance is that, even if the patient is not currently a possible or confirmed case of COVID-19, clinicians should wear single-use disposable aprons and gloves (changed for each patient).
2.20 In addition to gloves and aprons, national guidance advises optometrists to risk assess whether they need to wear a fluid-resistant surgical face mask (type IIR) (a ‘surgical mask’) and/or eye/face protection if there is an anticipated or likely risk of contamination with splashes, droplets of blood or body fluids. If masks and/or eye/face protection are worn they can be worn for the whole session (‘sessional use’) rather than changed for each patient, unless they become soiled, damaged or uncomfortable.
2.21 We recommend that all optometrists working within two metres of a patient should wear a fluid-resistant surgical mask (‘surgical mask’). The same surgical mask may be worn for examining multiple patients, but you must be fastidious to avoid transmitting any potential virus on the front of the mask via your hands or your clothes. Do not take the mask on and off between patients, do not touch it and do not allow it to dangle on your chest.
The word guidance is used frequently
People you might want to email this pub company, they run a lot of pubs including my favourite local. https://www.craftunionpubs.com/ and they can be contacted here: enquiries@craftunionpubs.com
These people: http://www.longlivethelocal.pub seem to be some sort of trade lobbying group and seem to have drawn up these new normal plans https://www.longlivethelocal.pub/visit which obviously look terrible.
They can be contacted here: hello@longlivethelocal.pub
Write to them and let them know what you think about their new normal. Obviously I have written to them and said I won’t be registering on the Twatt Handcock’s idiotic and evil track’n’track register and I won’t ever go to their pubs unless they drop all “COVID SAFETY” measures.
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/is-leicester-going-to-see-england-s-first-local-lockdown-
Is Leicester going to see England’s first local lockdown?
For the love of God, can we PLEASE move away from using any kind of lockdown of an entire city/region as a method of dealing with this virus?! Surely there is enough evidence out there to show how harmful any kind of indiscriminate lockdown is (and Leicester is a reasonably-sized city so I regard the locking down of the entire area as indiscriminate)? Also what would a ‘local lockdown’ look like? Would it be like the idiocy that the entire country has just had to endure for 3 months, where literally everything bar supermarkets closed and people were only advised to leave the house for ‘essential’ reasons? Would the localised area see restrictions which are that strict again? How on earth would it work?
Why are we even having this debate when the evidence suggests that lockdowns do not work and do more harm than good?!
Its all part of the psy-op to maintain the fear, they can’t say the virus is now prevalent across the whole country so they are focussing on localised “flareups” or more positive test results due to increased testing. Again no distinction between “cases” and deaths….Robert Peston is such a freekin d-bagger.
So another 658 asymtomatic cases then? 658 people feeling slightly peeky?
Woo, scary.
There seems to be a vocal minority in each town vying to be placed in a local lockdown. Some just love being under the thumb. Think their local rave / protest / beach gathering is unique them and their town.
Is HMG gunning for Labour councils and this number one on the list?
They are determined to see us starving next year. If this is true, my advice to the people of Leicester is to unite and rise. Stop at nothing to remove those doing this to you. And I mean nothing.
It’s Peston who wrote the article. I tend to believe very little he has to say.
Local BBC zealots now taking the mantle from national. Tonight our local ‘news’ reported 3,000 deaths in the region from covid. Beyond taking issue with the little ‘from’ they slipped in there, absolutely no context provided for that figure, as ever.
My region is inhabited by more people than the whole of Scotland. 3,000 deaths from 5.3 million people. Boo, I’m shitting my pants.
Willing to bet these are NOT cases but positive tests!!!! A case requires medical intervention. How many hospital admissions have there been? This is so obviously now a massive scam. Got to keep it going somehow. These people need to be arrested, tried and if found guilty get a capital sentence. Murder by any other name (and fraud as well.)
Of course there not “cases” but positive PCR tests, which are notoriously inaccurate. Also, 2, 3 or more tests from the same the same person are included in the data.
PCR tests, which are completely inaccurate.
Fixed it for you!
https://off-guardian.org/2020/06/27/covid19-pcr-tests-are-scientifically-meaningless/
The whole narrative is based on a lie. The “virus” does not even meet Koch’s postulates (i.e. it has not been shown to exist).
Yes this is bad news. Particularly as my mother in law hasnot seen her family since February. She’s in a private care home in Leicestershire and was looking forward to seeing her eldest son on Wednesday. Fingers crossed!
I am a hospital consultant In Leicester. We have 75 inpatients with covid-19 (includes asymptomatic patients who are in with other diseases) out of roughly 2000 beds (that’s from Friday’s daily figures). This is pretty much the lowest it’s been since March and has been steadily decreasing. Our hospital rates of positive tests have been at the same lowish level since the start of May. I cannot understand how on earth a lockdown is needed. To protect who or what?! The community tests appear to be showing large numbers of mostly well people of working age. Why do we even care about a numbers of a disease that isn’t making those people ill?!
I cannot be locked down again (which is a ridiculous statement given I worked 60+ hours a week from March to the start of June and therefore never technically locked down in the true sense of the word!)
So apparently there’s a lot of cases imported from Pakistan, and they might need to lock down Leicester. I don’t think I need to say much more, I’ll go with good luck locking Leicester down.
In the USA, it’s clear – even more than here (though Khan is doing his best) – that mask-wearing has become a defining political statement of attachment to Lefty-Absurdopolitics.
Is Biden going to go the whole campaign in a mask, claiming that as an excuse for not speaking and thus avoiding any possibility of him uttering one of his dementia gaffes?
Sorry – meant to link to this:
https://twitter.com/JoeBiden/status/1276930290858905605
A mask might stop him sniffing people’s hair
Now it makes sense!
They can replace him with a mask wearing stunt double, that might be able to form a coherent sentence.
Biden rambling about a vaccine. Just embarrassing.
ITM!
This article was flagged in the previous day’s comments.
https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/1301736/coronavirus-latest-news-second-wave-lockdown-uk-deaths-update
The UK has recorded a further 100 deaths from COVID-19 which makes it the highest Saturday increase in weeks according to the latest figures.
Am I missing something? As far as I can see, the last two Saturdays have both had a higher death count. In fact, today’s looks like the lowest Saturday count since March. What are they going on about?!
Saturday raw numbers of deaths (UK all settings) as follows:
6 June – 204
13 June – 181
20 June – 128
27 June – 100
Looks like they are coming down to me!
I know – so how on earth have they managed to imply that it’s a spike?
Journo who can’t count back in weeks – suspect they have compared vs last Sunday’s 43 reported deaths?
I give up!
I suspect it’s suspect
It is The Express. Every year in winter there is a panic (according to them) because we’re all going to freeze to death.
The average IQ and educational standard of Express journalists is even lower than those of their readers, which is saying quite a bit. (I base this observation on what appears BTL.)
Probably getting close to a natural floor – as in we are going to have infected people coming into the country all the time from all around the world including returning holiday makers on air bridges. We’re not going to get to 0 any time soon as a nation of 70 million that has millions of ties with every country on the planet.
You have to remember the deaths posted each day do not all come from that day, sometimes they are weeks or even months old. It just means that’s when the paperwork arrived at wherever they do the counting. Which makes virtually every comment and article in the MSM regarding numbers of deaths meaningless For example on Friday there were 67 deaths reported by the NHS, The oldest was from May 21st. Of the 67 only 9 had occurred on Friday 26th June.
Maths isn’t the Express’ strong point.
Maybe they think this Saturdays increase was from 43,414 to 43,514 is much higher than 6th of June’s increase from 40,347 to 40,554?
Or, because it’s now summertime, they’ve randomly converted the figure to Fahrenheit.
What pisses me off is why despite all the data clearly showing who this mainly impacts (very ill, very elderly people), why everybody still gets treated as though they have exactly the same chance of catching, spreading, being ill and dying from the virus. It’s completely nonsensical. You wouldn’t give everybody in the country an inhaler just in case they develop asthma at some point or start treating people for cancer who haven’t got it.
I don’t get why they can’t just come up with a strategy to protect, as best they can, the people most at risk, instead of fucking around coming up with one ridiculous rule or piece of pointless guidance after another. So frustrating.
That strategy was in place until Bojo wet his pants on 23 March.
They could, and should, have done this from early April when it was clear that the NHS wouldn’t be overwhelmed by deaths in the corridors (the ONLY reason for lockdown – hard to recall now!)
But, it was evident that we had no functioning government in early April; everything since has been a backside-covering fudge.
Because people’s welfare is the last thing on their agenda.
“My sense is that democracy really remains viable only if we are willing to extend to one another a presumption of individual competence”
An important observation, very relevant to the whole coronapanic issue, with its underlying basis in government and elite propagandisation and infantilisation of the people. It’s by Matthew Crawford, from this excellent short interview (a credit to both interviewee and
interviewer), posted on the previous LS by CarrieAH.
Matthew Crawford: the dangers of Safetyism
The discussion to my mind covers a lot of issues that are really quite fundamental to the dysfunctionality of modern western culture and societies, and in particular in relation to our disastrous failure over covid19, which is basically a challenge created almost entirely by our panic response to what otherwise would not have been a significant issue on a societal level.
I believe a lot of what Crawford has to say here is especially relevant to those who find themselves politically homeless at the moment, both conservatives like myself who have found that the nominally conservative party has become no longer conservative in any meaningful sense, and those on the political left who have found that their own parties no longer represent their concerns.
A political party which embraced the philosophical conservatism described here, combined with a core commitment to free speech and to political tolerance, best embodied in a decentralised constituency-based structure rather than a “modern” centralised national party structure, would get my support. That’s what I personally would like Toby’s
“Dangerous Party” to be.
The interview is most interesting – highly recommended. I don’t know if there was ever a general consensus regarding what being alive was all about, but if there was it’s gone now.
Maybe we need to divide the planet up between people whose priority is safety and others whose priority is to live life to the full. I’d be willing to settle for less than half the planet, if only the safetyists would leave us alone.
Sadly I think the lesson of modern western culture is that the safetyists and woke in general just are utterly incapable of leaving anyone else alone. The urge to try to boss is just too strong in them.
There’s been a lot of debate on this page about whether discussions about BLM are relevant to the site. Not an issue I intend to get into here, except that…
Quite apart from the free speech angle, it seems clear that what we have been forced to endure is very tied in with the “woke” mindset. “Nobody must be offended, even if that means that nobody is allowed to say what they think” is philosophically very close to “nobody must be allowed to die, even if that means nobody is allowed to live”.
You can see on the streets that the most enthusiastic zombies are from the same demographic (in so far as you can tell someone’s age from the way they dress and their eyes).
It’s hard not to see the tipping point as the moment when politicians who were hostage to opinion polls started to see twitter as a useful platform for broadcasting thoughts and receiving feedback. It is – perhaps unintentionally- the perfect tool for the bored and the fanatical to focus their disingenuous shouting and it must be so easy to mistake “what twitter thinks” for “ what people think”.
I could also talk about how Facebook has made it even worse, but I’ll leave that for another comment.
I should add – the reason I put that there was because I think it doesn’t matter a damn what the party is called or whether it’s old or new. What matters is that it needs to find a new way (or better, an old way) of understanding and reacting to the will of the people and of speaking to them to shape their opinions.
It’s worth noting that both Greta Thunberg and Amol Rajan (with the BBC’s institutional blessing) have linked the pandemic-lockdown to climate change, BLM and equality-justice issues. So, it’s not as though we are the only people doing so.
There are common threads linking them. One clear issue is indeed free speech. Those who like to think of themselves as “progressives” advance their causes by denying free speech to others – which breaks a fundamental principle of democracy.
Another link I feel is the difference between reality and imagining. The PC Globalist alliance are big on “imagining” – imagining some bright future that is easily within our grasp as long as we come down hard on anyone who opposes the imagining. Nothing wrong in principle with imagining. It clearly has its place in the arts. But whenever imagining invades politics it never ends well. Mao was a poor poet. AHwas a poor painter.
“Another link I feel is the difference between reality and imagining. The PC Globalist alliance are big on “imagining” – imagining some bright future that is easily within our grasp as long as we come down hard on anyone who opposes the imagining. “
This is surely the old division between the progressive and the conservative, the whig and the tory.
I think you are correct here.
“Nobody must be offended, even if that means that nobody is allowed to say what they think” is philosophically very close to “nobody must be allowed to die, even if that means nobody is allowed to live”.
Indeed, and imo one underlying common thread is precisely what Crawford expresses in the quote I extracted from the interview, namely the issue of willingness to extend to one another a presumption of individual competence, where competence means the ability (and the duty) to take decisions and take responsibility for oneself, including for one’s own responses to speech by others.
Yes, it will good to cogitate over this tomorrow. In the Telegraph today, Juliet Samuel (who believes lockdowns do work, although sees the negatives), waxed lyrical about the US situation ‘second wave’. She quoted raw numbers unqualified by any context.
I have a subscription to the paper but, with a few exceptions (Jacobs, Hannah, Halligan) the reporting, IMO, has been much the same as the rest of MSM overall. Charles Moore in particular has been quite the disappointing bedwetter.
Subscription will be terminated at it’s endpoint. I’ll use the dosh to support the likes of London Calling, Delingpod, Escape from Lockdown, who have been consistently sound throughout.
Finally, today, a reason to be cheerful – particularly after reading more dispiriting Sturgeon control-freak bollocks about timescales for easing restrictions here in Scotland. Which is both slower than England and, incredibly, even slower than her bloody ‘roadmap’ suggested several weeks ago.
I went hill-walking with a mate who, a few weeks back, was lauding Piers Morgan for his pro-lockdown stance. Today he asked me about Ferguson’s history of costly epidemiological catastrophising. I obliged with the detail, and summed up with why lockdown is a very very bad idea. Pause… followed by ‘I agee with you’.
So that’s ~ 10% of the population, Plus One!
Pennies are dropping, pennies are dropping.
A little history of the lockdown concept. It has been researched back to a 14 year old school pupil.
“Laura, with some guidance from her dad, devised a computer simulation that showed how people – family members, co-workers, students in schools, people in social situations – interact. What she discovered was that school kids come in contact with about 140 people a day, more than any other group. Based on that finding, her program showed that in a hypothetical town of 10,000 people, 5,000 would be infected during a pandemic if no measures were taken, but only 500 would be infected if the schools were closed.
Laura’s name appears on the foundational paper arguing for lockdowns and forced human separation. ”
https://www.aier.org/article/the-2006-origins-of-the-lockdown-idea/
I find a lot of people quite receptive to the comment “we’d have been better off following the Swedish model”, most sort-of-accept this, none I’ve met have outright disagreed with it.
Local Subway is now open…not that I use it much, but have had the occasional veggie-burger. Staff are all wearing masks, God knows how they cope with that all day. Another local hardware store was open…went in, tried to get to the kitchenware section for a new extra-large loaf tin. “Sorry you can’t go there, you have to ask at the counter”.
“But I need to see what you’ve got!”
“Can’t do it, the staff will go and look for you”.
How the hell do you describe an item that you want when you can’t see whether they’ve got any?
The boy came out with something that looked like a dog’s dinner tray.
You can fill in your own idea of my response.
Aaaand….hubby has been refused a scan via the NHS for a suspect hernia. I just hope it doesnt get any worse (the hernia, that is….the NHS can only get worse anyway).
Jesus wept. Your experience in the hardware stores reminds me of that Two Ronnies sketch – the Four Candles.
They really shouldn’t be surprised if they go out of business.
Oh LOL, the four candles, I remember that one! Well, I hope they don’t go out of biz, they’re normally a ruddy good shop, but it was an absolute joke. I’ll be online looking for a loaf tin, and buggar the postage costs, it’ll be worth it.
Whilst I think of it…I had to take a dearly loved pet to the vet this week…couldnt go in with her….but the vets came out, all masked….and they couldnt have been more kind. They were truly wonderful and supportive. We’d be better off being a dog or lizard, fish or hamster/
That was the first thing that came to my mind after reading your comment, you couldn’t make it up!
Well said, I sometimes think pets have better protection than human beings under the law.
We’ve had many different pets, and many vet trips over the years. I’ve always said that veterinary care far, far surpasses the medical care given to humans. You can always get through on the phone, and usually get an appointment either that day or the following day. They are actually interested in the pet’s ailments, and willing to attempt to treat them. They’re polite, engaged and caring. Very different to the average visit to the GP!
but then you pay directly for a vet and you can take your business elsewhere… whereas the NHS you just have to accept what they give you, whether it is good bad or indifferent
Yes. 15 minute consultation, antibiotic jab. £80 please.
You get what you pay for, which is ok for one-offs but a different ballgame for ongoing stuff.
No good saying we’d pay less tax and have the choice. My state pension doesn’t even cover my modest lifestyle and the roof over my head.
“Don’t know what the problem is. I’ll give him an injection of antibiotic, steroid and food coloring. £50 please.”
I’m fairly sure that the increase in antibiotic resistance in bacteria is at least partly thanks to oversubscription by vets. Quacks and charlatans.
Vets are better qualified than GPs too. I used to tease my doctor when he couldn’t diagnose something after I explained the symptoms. I told him I should just go to a vet and let him work out what was wrong. I stopped teasing after my GP offered to clear out my anal glands…
Counterpoint: my mum (a GP) identified in minutes exactly where my springer’s grass seed-caused abscess was, though his vet had been baffled for 6 months and 5 courses of antibiotics.
Hmmm, getting what you pay for a la US system?
Really can’t make this stuff up can you? Thirteen weeks ago, when we weren’t certain how it would go, fair enough. But not now. It’s over now.
My neighbour was told she had to wear a mask when she returned to work. She works in a kitchen. Can you imagine how hot that will be? Positively dangerous!
https://twitter.com/TheTollington/status/1276471912684756992?s=20 this tweet has provoked quite a response. On one thread people are queuing up to say they are doing the right thing staying closed on the 4th July. On another thread there’s quite a few folk taking them to task about their claim that 1 in 20 have covid
1 in 20, ha ha. One of the few occasions I wish I had a Twitter account. According to this https://covid19.joinzoe.com/data#interactive-map it’s 123,000, so roughly 1 in 540. So they have only got it wrong by factor 270. Close enough, and worth keeping your business closed for.
They were going to be interviewed by 5 live but received this early this morning https://twitter.com/TheTollington/status/1276757354348978182?s=20 .As someone warned them you will look silly if you mention 1 in 20. But fair play to these guys they are getting so many tweets from people saying they are doing the right thing and will visit when it does finally open
Let’s see how their virtue signalling holds up when neighbouring pubs’ tills are RINGING
Exactly! One landlord I know is going to have table service only and a minimum spend of £50 per table. This being London and plenty of close by pubs you will quickly see the “guidelines” quickly abandoned
if they are still in business….and how many of those that say they will go will actually go..
However this may be a sensible business move in that the pub will not be getting the football related visits and so remaining closed and taking the furlough payments may be better for them
Last ONS estimate was 1 in 1700 I think!
“It’s been a long struggle, but my only fear is a big spike.”
(Insert your own jokes)
Not Janet Daly’s best effort but she makes some good points: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/06/27/can-ministers-not-see-inhuman-lockdown-rules-driving-terrible/?li_source=LI&li_medium=liftigniter-rhr
Unfortunately most of the comments are what I think of as typical Torygraph readers, frothing at the mouth and screaming about discipline, closing the beaches and immigrants.
Gave up before I got to any bring back hanging, flog them all stuff but these smug bigots are the main reason why things aren’t improving.
Yes, I’m a law & order fan, rule-breakers annoy me, but I long for the return of bad behaviour currently. There have been a number of groups – the lazy, the obsessively virtuous, the fearful, that the government has relied on during this for support, but the law & order brigade have also played their part.
Merseyside Police anticipated people coming together to mark Liverpool becoming champions of England for the first time since 1990 again on Friday night, but had warned fans to wait for official celebrations.
Liverpool mayor Joe Anderson said on Twitter …: “I appreciate LFC fans want to celebrate but please, for your own safety, and that of others, go home and celebrate at home.
It just doesn’t work that way, does it?!
Talking about closed beaches…the little seafront at Clevedon has had all its car-parking bays blocked off by the council, using hefty barriers. Now, in case you don’t know it that well, or at all, it is hardly a seafront likely to attract thousands of cars because there are only, what, forty or so parking bays? It’s forcing visitors to park in the side residential streets, where there are already enough yellow lines to throttle a cat with.
There are a few small cafes etc on the front, they’re already suffering, without having visitors blocked for parking. It’s depressing, it really is.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a1Bn0DuDoFo
Simpsons Virus Forecast From Ten Years Ago
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/06/27/lockdown-social-distancing-could-make-immune-system-weaker-says/
Lockdown and social distancing could make our immune system weaker, says scientist
This is another aspect of lockdown mania that hasn’t been fully explored yet. There may be an excess deaths effect once people do start interacting again (unrelated to Covid-19).
Yes but they will just claim it is the Second Wave.
IMO there will be an initial fall in deaths followed by an increase from all the things the NHS haven’t been treating. Probably just in time for the promised October lockdown. What a coincidence
Yep, combined with the fact that we are all getting minimal excercise, and drinking more and getting fat. And for the unfortunate without gardens – getting no vitamin D even during the sunniest month ever recorded (May). Vitamin D , the thing that we all seem to need to fight the virus without symptoms. Strange coincidence that isn’t it?
Yep, Vit D v. good for general health…difficult to obtain other than from old fashioned sunshine…which our misguided media have also managed to make out to be a killer – unable to differentiate between healthy exposure and roasting yourself like a chicken for 3 hours at the height of summer.
Beware the bad news evangelists who see a Covid second wave behind every statistic
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/06/27/beware-bad-news-evangelists-see-covid-second-wave-behind-every/
It’s still bloody depressing isn’t it? The States, Spain, our ‘second spike‘. Unrelentingly depressing. And to cap it all I’ve just checked on the status of my favourite pub, in a beautiful little Cornish village we have been going to for 13 years, where I sit with a pint watching the sun go down over a beautiful estuary, and it has decided not to open until July 23, by which time I will have gone. I know it’s not much compared to what a lot of us have had to put up with, but it’s just another sign of just how much our life has changed, without any scrutiny and with absolutely no chance to influence it.
Why isn’t this breaking through to more people?. We on ‘sceptics’ are still in the minority. I just don’t get it.
Yes, sure that’s how we all feel: our lives haven’t been furloughed…they’re carrying on but at a much lower level of existence. Not quite amoeba-like but hardly the rich experience that addresses all of our human wants and needs…
Just for the records, here are a couple more terrible things I have seen in the last few months. I was cycling about and stopped to have a rest and a drink, I wheeled up next to a lady in her late 50’s and her old Dad. The old guy clearly had bad dimentia as he couldn’t recall the word for bird, never mind what kind of bird his daughter pointed out to him. I said hi to the lady and as the old chap became aware of me he went into a total panic toddeling about and going oh! oh! oh! or some such thing trying to social distance away from me. His daughter had to grab him and calm him down.
I couldn’t help thinking about how he has probably been told 100 times a day to “keep two meters away!” and then promptly forgot but something about keeping away from people stuck. His daughter hadn’t been allowed to see him for three months. Tragic.
Here is another one. I was cycling down the canal tow path and I cycled past two people who clearly had Downs Syndrome, as I approached, they held their hands up to their faces, turned towards the hedge then pressed themselves into the hedge as I passed. I wasn’t that close either just for the record. Tragic.
And another one: Mrs 2-6 works as a carer, a few weeks ago a masked man walked up to the care home wearing a hoody and a mask carrying a baseball bat. He proceeded to smash the windows in with it. It was terryfying for Mrs 2-6 and her college inside and for the resident who has learning difficulties. I was very traumatised too. Horrible, it was early evening in broad daylight. The police thought he got the wrong house but that doesn’t make it any better. This attack was no doubt precipitated by and exacerbated by the stresses of the lockdown.
And another one, I have been noticing a guy driving one of those boy racer cars with a bad exhaust around here for a few weeks. Driving it like a total looney, skidding up behind other cars, screeching the wheels furiously, revving the engine hard, speeding…Crazy.
Well a few nights ago he managed to ram his car into the back of a parked car, it would have been very hard to miss. It looked almost deliberate. A huge bang. He was probably doing 50 at least in a 20. Then he drove off, the police said report it online, nothing they can do, despite people getting video of the car and registration. I am not sure if it was the same guy I have seen but I think it was. Another lockdown looney.
Great article in the Speccie today about the police
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/The-police-have-become-too-politicised-to-function
“ In response to the appalling stats, the Metropolitan Police commented that burglary presented ‘particular challenges’ in finding culprits. Does it? Well blow me down. Once again, don’t put yourselves out on our account, lads. Robbed of your wallet and mobile at knifepoint? No point ringing the police — again. Only 4 per cent of robberies in England and Wales in 2017 were solved. Had your car nicked? There is just a 2 per cent chance that the police will bring a prosecution.”
I’m pretty sure that during Operation Yewtree there was a roomful of policemen somewhere in Scotland Yard who spent all day sitting there saying “you know who else I always thought looked a bit dodgy?”
Makes for a much nicer day than getting out on the streets tracking down and arresting highly violent criminals.
The Met Police are pathetic, particularly under the worst ever lead, Dick.
Why don’t they put in some monitoring equipment in high burglary areas.? We see plenty of animal cams on Spring Watch that react to the movements of creatures passing through woods!
It’s a defeatist attitude. They consider burglary and street crime as minor. Whereas social media hurt feelings “crimes” get treated like homicide in the fourth degree.
Their refusal to deal with gatherings flouting the legislation on social distancing was itself criminal. The Police have discretion but they don’t have the right to completely ignore mass flouting of laws on the basis of political or racial considerations.
OKUK – the Rod Liddle article Steve is quoting, together with the one immediately after it (in the print version) are worth reading. Particularly the second, actually – written by a former Met Police borough commander who was instructed to chance his (successful) techniques because the visuals were wrong.
I’ve got the print version so will take a look.
‘Chance’ = change
Yes the second article is also great…. in a depressing way
The police are there solely to keep a foot on the law abiding middle class.
People with a job and a few assets they can take when they fine you.
Everyone else is immune.
If you are “rich” And can afford to pay a proper lawyer you can get away with murder.
If you are poor then police have no leverage. You have almost zero chance of being caught let alone prosecuted
A friend was burgled – Bristol, not the Met – but the response was
“Oh we know who did it but we can’t prove it, here’s your crime number for the insurance”
Could some savvy person help Toby set up a section, comparable to the ‘Small businesses’ section, for giving details of (1) shops that treat customers like human beings and(2) shops that treat customers like toxic waste? It would help a lot of us to avoid the first and find the second. At the moment, much relevant information is getting buried in the ever-lengthening comments sections.
(Yes, I know, Annie is always so good at suggesting work for other people to do… sorry!)
You mean find the first and avoid the second surely Annie?
Eek, yes, sorry, getting late!
My hairdresser phoned today. She’s back at work next week and did I want an appointment? I said I’m not going anywhere that requires masks. She said it was salon’s policy so I politely declined, despite the fact that she’s good and I like her. There was hardly a heartbeat when she said ‘how are you with rules?’ I said I don’t abide by rules unless there’s a sound reason for them. So she invited me to her house for a cut – sans masks. Yippee. Got an appointment next Wednesday. (Sod’s law, I’d just bought some clippers off ebay.)
I’m glad people are willing to ‘get around’ the rules
At this rate we’ll have black market hairdressers, pubs, restaurants, etc. Maybe even a resurgence of sales people similar to Avon ladies and gentlemen.
Brilliant! We saw the Dr Scott Atlas video in which both he and the interviewer mention that the US is seeing a growth in ‘speakeasy’ hairdressers. Like Bart, below, I can see this catching on in other sectors. We already have a ‘pop-up’ BYO pub which will probably persist if/when the miserable local re-opens and offers its unique brand of unfriendly dystopia – and I’m talking about what it was like before
I haven’t heard from my hairdresser yet but I hope she offers a similar alternative as I expect the salon will be like an operating theatre and it will not be getting my custom.
My husband hopes his hairdresser opens soon and if said hairdresser offers the same black market service, I’d tell my husband to go for it.
Following on from my comment about the resurgence of the Avon woman or man, maybe several well known high street retailers could branch out similar to that – that’s probably where they can deploy their retail assistants rather than to make them redundant.
Avon is pre-internet. Plenty of one-man businesses now thrive via ebay and Amazon.
Mask Count: I’d say only 5% of people in my local shopping centre were wearing masks today. Probably most of those have underlying health conditions, so I’m not judging them…you can understand how the pro-mask propaganda would get to you if you think you are vulnerable.
What’s it like in your area?
Yesterday and the day before in a fairly quiet area in central-ish London, with 30+ degree heat… very few masks. How strange. You’d think they were stuffy and uncomfortable or something.
Today, back up I’d say. 20% maybe?
On the plus side, managed to have a normal-but-abnormal experience today. A microbrewery on the Blackheath is doing takeaway pints and you can sit outside across the road. Walked up to the bar, ordered as you normally would. Had a conversation with the barman (Spanish originally, judging by the accent) about reopening ‘properly’ next weekend. He’s not looking forward to it, mostly because he doesn’t think it should be his job to “police all this nonsense”. It’s not a place I’ve been to in years, but even at 1m, their capacity is going from about 260 to 100.
Good observation about the relationship between temperature and mask-wearing!
If you can’t stand the heat get out of the kitsch-gear!!.
I should have given my general location as there may be regional variations – more SW-ish London for me. I think there may be a class basis for mask wearing. There seem to be a surprising number of very prosperous women driving expensive 4x4s wearing masks.
SE here. I’m seeing three distinct groups: fairly well to do mostly women in their 60s (usually also wearing gloves. What the point is of wearing the same pair of gloves from the moment you leave the house to the moment you get home I cannot even imagine); teens and 20s; and people on/waiting for buses. I spent a very amusing 5 minutes the other day watching a chap in his early 20s trying to put on a visor that looked like it was made out of the kind of flimsy transparent plastic you get in packaging while he was waiting for a bus.
Especially if you use your gloved hands to adjust your face mask…so potentially passing infection from your gloves to your facial area including the mouth part of the mask that you will be breathing in (remembering masks do not stop viruses passing through).
Yes, I think some young people enjoy “wearing” them more as a fashion accessory dangling around their neck most of the time rather than actually as a mask (although looking like a bandit is also appealing).
Maybe we should start handing out flyers to such mask wearers telling them to stop adjusting their masks and the risks of doing that.
Maybe they find it exciting, it’s a bit like dressing up.
Virtue signallers!
I was in town today, it was pretty busy, the car parks were pretty empty still. However it didn’t feel too bad. There were one or two groups of people talking to each other with arm folder, leaning back in that “look at me with me and my supreme social distancing skills ” kind of a way. There were lots of people normal distance apart, not swerving or looking worried.
I saw a few mask wearers but most of them looked old, ill and worried.
There were a well to do looking family group all with designer masks on in Wilco, a “yummy mummy” and two blonde kids. I am sure I saw another “normal” family laughing at them. I saw another trendy young woman wearing one. I went into Waterstones, a young lady shop assistant was wearing one of those mental face shields and the cashier was behind a screen that made it hard for her to hear people, she said. No mask and fairly normal, I gratuitously handled a few maps and put them back on the shelves and nothing bad happened.
I got told off in WH Smiths for not noticing the one way system and walked out the in door….Some words were exchanged with the door monitor lady to the effect of sorry I will not comply with your instructions but it just involved two words and Sorry afterwards.
Marks and Spencers was OK as I actually didn’t notice the que for the food hall but I was after the clothing upstairs anyway, I got what I was after, the upstairs bit was empty then I must have jumped the food hall que and I went in there. I honestly didn’t know it was there.
Then I made my 2nd mistake of the day and tried to leave via the IN doors at the front of the shop instead of the rear OUT doors. I think I could hear a faint protest coming from the que supervisor but I just ignored her and kept walking out to freedom and ignored the que of social distancers waiting for the food hall who were no doubt looking at me with disapproval.
I actually I might have found a good coping strategy, act stupid, just ignore the rules in general, as actually what is required is just too complicated and insane for me to be arsed to try to understand anyway let alone comply with.
Not sure “act stupid” is the right phrase. I’m pretty sure that’s what everyone else is doing.
Well yer but they think they are clever and obviously I must be the silly old man who doesn’t understand how to do it properly.
I act like nobody should mess with me. I’m a five foot three plump somewhat cherubic (sadly I was born ‘youthful’ looking rather than hot
) woman, so it must be the attitude. Even security guards don’t fuck with me.
My mortal enemy however is the middle-aged Karen. They know no fear, and they seem to hate dissident fellow women more than dissident blokes.
I’m a man in my forties, with no excuses, but lots of experience of facing people down. I’m _itching_ to be told that I’m doing something wrong, so I can pick up the fight, but so far it hasn’t mattered how many signs and arrows I’ve ignored, nobody has said anything.
I’ve noticed that too. I had this masked woman staring at me the whole time a few weeks’ ago so I stared back and gave her a manic grin. She looked shocked then turned away quickly.
Just say you have a “protected characteristic” (there’s a phrase that ought to better known) and watch them change their tune. In fact if you really want to make things difficult for them, ask them to guess what the protected characteristic is.
Protected characteristics and the Equality Act only apply when dealing with functions of the state. Always best to be properly informed if planning on rocking the boat, saves ending up with egg on your face
I doubt the average Karen knows much about functions of the state.
I’ve learned that confident body language does make a difference. Plus as my dad has said, I have a perpetually scowling face which does help as these mini Hitlers and Stalins will come to the conclusion that I’m a miserable git and they back off.
Pretty good. You see the odd person, looking like a complete numpty. I feel sorry for them now. They are mentally challenged and don’t know it.
It’s gonna be very interesting venturing into town and stuff and seeing how people react to being forced to wear the things.
I live in a less than affluent part of NW London and most of the people wearing masks are from BAME (how I hate using that term) and migrant population. There are also a few old people using them and some yummy mummies from the more affluent suburbs who drive into the big supermarkets in their Cath Kidston-esque masks.
I’ve also come across people wearing gloves which is rather ironic given that they’re worse than useless as the germs just get stuck in them which makes constantly touching the mask to adjust them or to try to breathe properly all the more counterproductive.
I see very few mask wearers out and about in SE Wales. 5% would probably be about right and those who do wear them look old and frail. The staff in Macca D’s are forced to wear them, we ask each one we encounter how they find wearing the masks and all of them complain about them but they are forced to do it – despite the fact that the average age of a Macca D worker must be well under 25. Weird how the staff in all the supermarkets have survived all these weeks not wearing masks…
The balance is very different with ‘friends’ on facebook – lots of sharing of pro-mask posts and horror scorn directed at people who don’t wear them, like me. In the USA, Oz and NZ it seems to have become a completely politicized issue. If you don’t wear a mask you must be right wing/Trump supporter. It throws people off when you tell them that your national government hasn’t made masks mandatory anywhere – they assume that’s because Boris is a righty but when you point out that you are in Wales and Wales has a Labour government their brains cannot process it. Malfunction…Malfunction!!!!!
My other response to pro-mask posts is to act like a fellow mask wearer. It goes as follows “what surprises me is that people steadfastly wear their masks in the street and in shops, in circumstances where the chances of spreading the virus are extremely low, but then as soon as they get home to their loved ones, off comes the mask. It’s crazy isn’t it that in the very place, the home, which research has shown to be the most likely place you are going to spread the virus, is the very place most people are least likely to wear them. Why would you wear a mask on the street and in shops but take it off at home and risk spreading the virus to all your family and loved ones? Madness”
I don’t usually get any responses!
I’m not aware of anywhere in Australia where mask wearing is compulsory either, even in the Wales of Australia (Victoria).
There’s certainly a lot of virtue signalling going on with modelling their muzzles especially the cloth ones especially when they come in fetching fabrics.
A friend has found a phrase for those types – vanity hammocks.
Occurs to me that John Farnham’s _You’re the Voice_ is a good theme tune – though maybe only the chorus
You’re the voice, try and understand it
Make a noise and make it clear
Oh, whoa
We’re not gonna sit in silence
We’re not gonna live with fear
Oh, whoa
You’re the voice, try and understand it
We do but the voice will be censored, demonetised, and shadow-banned by Facebook, Google, You Tube, Twitter and all the other platforms owned by PV Globalists. If you comment against PC values on Mail Online, your comment won’t appear for hours. The BBC won’t feature your voice. Neither will Sky or ITV. So forget it.
Make a noise and make it clear
We’ve made clear our views on the Brexit vote, mass immigration, allowing China, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Russia to infiltrate our media, academia and energy sector, nutjob profs in our unis, bogus asylum seekers (no one now allowed to use the word bogus), our weak response to terrorism and violent crime. People’s views couldn’t be made clearer I feel.
Oh, whoa
More like “O woe!”
We’re not gonna sit in silence
The PC ideologues have made clear that there will be severe consequences for anyone who breaks silence. Anyone with a job and family to support will be very circumspect about being vocal about almost anything political. As in Communist societies people only speak openly with friends and family they feel they can trust.
We’re not gonna live with fear
Fear has always been used in politics. Back in the early 1800s the working class Chartists were made to fear the Yeoman’s sword, long terms of imprisonment, and transportation to the other side of the world. Fear is being used now and people tend to choose to live with fear. I think it’s better to recognise that. People have a lot more to lose today than they did 150 years ago.
Oh, whoa
O woe indeed.
Well, you just spoil all the fun, don’t you?
Lol! Let’s get real. We are living in something getting very close to a dictatorship. If you are frightened about expressing your views, frightened of losing your job because of your political opinions, frightened of what would happen if you told people how you voted, it doesn’t sound like a free society to me.
Getting?
The main difference is that a dictatorship has a dictator. Even if Hancock and Raab have handed him the title, as far as I can see, Johnson is mostly looking at it going “ummmm…”.
Police state is more apt, I think, but the police aren’t really taking their lead either from HMG, or from HRH, or from the citizenry.
Well I said we were close, not there yet…but that’s a pretty good definition: “We are living in a dictatorship without a dictator.”
The dictating is being done by the media, academia and globalist corporations and by this “shame culture” ensuring nonconformist views are punished, not just silenced.
A kind of intolerant, corporatist ochlocracy, updated for the modern technological situation.
Great point! It’s Thomas Sowell’s “The Annointed”
entertaining talk by Tom Naughton
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=5&v=GDlF-z_x7vc
Many of those deported to Australia were Irish dissidents.
Where I live the Federal Gummint has said wearing masks is pointless unless you’re the disease vector and you shouldn’t be out and about anyway. About the only people you see wearing facemasks are Chinese, especially those who can’t speak English. Yesterday I had to laugh out loud as a family group of two adults and two children got out of their car all wearing face masks then walked into the front yard of their property to be met by welfare sucking grandma coming out of the house also wearing a face mask. My reading is the cowards are all frightened of being infected by each other in their own house and car.
Is it a state by state thing or a business by business thing? I know that there are places (malls etc) where masks are mandatory – curious as to whether this is state government imposed or just virtue signalling by the businesses.
Which state are you in, by the way?
Looking forward to tomorrow’s post, my guess is that….
The reported cases are increasing across Europe as those who have symptoms are now able to access tests more readily.
However deaths have not been increasing significantly as the most vulnerable are now better protected or have unfortunately perished. This therefore means those who have tested positive are sufficiently robust to get on with life as they would with a cold or flu.
More tests = more positive results.
Who’d have thunk it?
Interesting article in The Telegraph:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/formula-1/2020/06/27/lewis-hamilton-brands-bernie-ecclestones-racism-remarks-ignorant/
The interesting thing is that when you read the comments earlier today nearly all of them suppported Ecclestone. Now, all comments have been deleted and commenting is no longer allowed.
Why does The Telegraph do this?
The Telegraph knows this is a minefield. The gatekeepers of news – BBC, Sky, ITV, CNN, ABC, NBC, CBS – refuse to even approach this issue. But all sensible people know racism is found all around the world. Han Chinese are incredibly racist to just about every other “racial” group. India’s caste system tracks skin colour very closely. The nutty Oxford prof of Indian origin who said “white lives don’t matter” at least had the decency to admit that as a Brahmin she is essentially “white” in India. Most Japanese people share the Chinese assumption that they are superior to all other races. Russians and East Europeans are, mostly, incredibly racist towards anyone with a dark skin colour. Caribbean people are extremely conscious about shades of skin tone and often judge people on that basis. Throughout Africa people are very conscious about physiological differences that mark people out as one tribe or another and people are judged as good or bad on the basis of those markers. Arab people are incredibly prejudiced against people with dark skin or sub-Sarahan physical features. The quite light skinned San people of South Africa are not accepted as equals by their darker skinned neighbours.
Cambridge prof this time I’m sorry to say but Oxbridge would cover it much of the time. Douglas Murray has pointed out the lies and sheer hypocrisy of the official response after their treatment of Carl and Peterson where they immediately folded to the mob on spurious grounds (unlike the current drama). More money for Gurkhas and RNLI is the ultimate result in my case.
Hahaha, you will get burned at the stake for that comment. You forgot to add half of the Scottish hate the English….just the throw a bit more fuel on the pyre
only half???
I was trying to be diplomatic! My wife is scottish, Xmas can be interesting. Half the in-laws were campaigning for the snp.
I remember a business trip to Poland in 2015 with a colleague with Asian heritage. We were followed down a high street by a rapidly growing bunch of people making really scary threatening approaches to both of us. I’m a retired police officer, so no shrinking violet, but I dragged my colleague into the first taxi I could stop. He said he’d never experienced anything like it before despite travelling extensively. Clearly there are racist idiots in every country, labelling everybody as racist though is counterproductive to any cause and that’s why the BLM/tear down statues mob will fail.
A West African friend pointed out that there has always been AND STILL IS slavery between African countries, and the Middle East. All the white man did was to provide a bigger market. Yes there are huge tribal differences within Africa, and here between Africans and Carribean peoples. Also just because many British people are white doesn’t mean there are no huge distinctions between English, Scots, Welsh etc. and espeically the Norman French of southern England, who curiously I believe are Frenchified Vikings yet very different from the Anglicised Vikings. It’s all divide and conquer, except of course for us Saxons who can’t be bothered
The same reason people on LS regularly try to suppress discussion of these issues here, sometimes because they are politically active in the opposite direction, but more often simply because they just find it uncomfortable to be around dissident views on this topic, because such views have been intentionally demonised and rendered politically taboo, over the course of a half century and more of manipulation.
This is why our society is so dysfunctional in this area that only a retired policeman can afford to speak honestly about racial minority issues in public, and even then the broadcaster carrying his views quickly gets cold feet and cuts him off.
Most people under the age of about 40 or so have never known a society in which any genuine discussion of race from any viewpoint other than “woke” was not taboo, or close enough to be painted and treated as such.
Of course, having rational debate closed off by taboo-isation of a topic results in irrational beliefs and policies becoming prevalent, as night follows day.
Going to the gym does not increase risk of catching coronavirus, Norwegian study says
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/06/27/going-gym-does-not-increase-risk-catching-coronavirus-norwegian/
A study from the University of Oslo, believed to be the first of its kind worldwide, has tentatively shown that going to the gym does not increase one’s risk of contracting coronavirus.
Having dipped into so many Covid related studies, all I can say is that for every paper saying x you can find another paper saying not x. I’ve certainly seen research suggesting that gyms, along with other places where people are exhaling energetically (eg Church services involving exuberant singing) do increase the risk…Sounds like common sense to me but who knows?
The first thing you have to ask about such research is “Who actually paid for it?” (you can’t always rely on the name up front, funders have ways of disguising their funding). I would like to be reassured Norskgym wasn’t behind it.
Of course any healthy person aged under 60 is at virtually no risk from the virus whether in a gym or outside, so as far as I am concerned the only issue is whether you advise under 60s not to attend gyms.
The article itself does try to put a counter argument in saying the study only addresses a situation where the prevalance is already low. We know that many people don’t read much past the headline anyway.
I think articles like this will become more frequent in an attempt to reassure people that it’s safe to try and get back to some sort of normality.
Yes, I’ve got paper fatigue and didn’t read it! lol
I am sure if you factor in the positive health benefits of exercising down the gym, it outweighs any potential health risk to an under 60.
It doesn’t much matter what these studies say from what I’ve seen. Most governments seem to be acting like the last three to four months of research hasn’t happened and like they still know nothing. At least, that’s the impression I get as nowhere appears to have just completely removed all measures, despite that being the only reasonable evidence-based action to take.
Great post
If they are given honest facts, the over 60s should be perfectly capable of deciding for themselves. No advice necessary.
For most of us getting Covid is like getting the flu (yes some people will die but the same happens with flu). No virus can be eradicated and we will have to live with it.
Well, actually most people with it are asymptomatic, so it is, for them, much less bad even than a mild cold!
Just got to our place in Florida. The beach is beautiful, and there are tons of people enjoying their vacations. Very few masks in evidence. The media keeps desperately trying to terrify us into thinking if we don’t all get back under our beds right this minute, the world will ennnnnddddddd!!!!!! Or something, I’m not quite clear on it. But it would appear that thousands of Americans are happily ignoring that crap and going about their business.
Florida’s governor, a brave man, gave another statement today – everything is under control, keep calm. Not sure why cases have spiked, but hospital capacity is fine and remember that’s what we were focused on back in the day? Yeah, I remember! I wish DeSantis would run for President.
Also US pediatric organization recommended that kids go back to school in person in September. One can hope.
Yes we were are told lockdowns were to flatten the curve to prevent hospitals from being overrun (NHS in UK).
We were told it would be for three weeks. That’s why everyone was so compliant.
He was lying, he meant 3 months
and counting. . .
Hey Mimi, if you’re in Florida can you please put this BS into context https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/florida-arizona-texas-set-records-new-covid-19-cases-n1231326
and
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/06/26/americas-covid-spike-shows-second-wave-could-bring-second-lockdown/
MSM is using the word ‘surge’ so often it’s contaminating me. Have we at LS got it wrong? Because I’m convinced in UK it’s all but over. So what’s really happening in your part of the world?
Yeah. IDK exactly what’s up (I’m not an expert!) but what might be happening is that lots of employers are requiring negative tests, which means many many more healthy people are getting tested. In Florida, thousands of migrant workers are being tested – none of them symptomatic, but of course some will be positive. Pediatricians are testing all children who enter their offices, for any reason, and any positive test results in the whole family being tested, ergo more positives. At the same time, the FL infection fatality rate is dropping because of all the healthy positives. Deaths haven’t increased. In Texas, the death rate is still so low it’s almost impossible to make a meaningful graph. Arizona – not a clue, but some suspect people entering from Mexico? Migrant workers arriving for the summer growing season?
Alex Berenson and Aaron Ginn on Twitter have good info, and their feeds link to people with good graphs. Like this guy: https://twitter.com/Hold2LLC
Ethical Skeptic also has good graphs.
So, COVID isn’t over, that’s clear enough. But it’s also clear that it’s not the apocalyptic plague deadly to all people that we’ve been sold by the MSM. Leaders in Texas and Florida insist that hospitals still have plenty of capacity. I hate to say the MSM is just desperately stoking the flames of the “crisis” but it appears that is exactly what they’re doing. It’s beyond depressing.
“ COVID isn’t over, that’s clear enough. But it’s also clear that it’s not the apocalyptic plague deadly to all people that we’ve been sold by the MSM”
This is the bit that’s really bothering me at the moment. The totality of the disruption to lives, livelihoods, society and culture might – might – be justifiable if this was an apocalyptic plague, but in every interview and every televised piece I’ve seen, there’s absolutely not attempt o raise the question. The idea that we must continue to destroy everything through hypercaution for as long as this virus exists is taken as read – not even mentioned. The only question is when we’re going to get a disastrous second wave _despite_ the disruption and destruction.
“This is the bit that’s really bothering me at the moment.,,”
Same here! The media, and a large percentage of the general public, still don’t seem to have twigged that Covid-19 has turned out to be far less lethal, and more likely to be asymptomatic, than it was originally assumed/predicted to be a few months ago.
There seems to be a lot more acknowledgement of the negative side-effects of lockdown, even from sources like the Guardian, but despite this the attitude still seems to be that further lockdowns or restrictions (local or otherwise) might still be justifiable in order to prevent a rise in cases. The overriding narrative STILL seems to be the “hypercaution” one that the virus is something everyone should be afraid of and that any measure is justifiable in order to protect society from it.
Yes there may have been some reason to panic before we knew much. Now we know a LOT, but it doesn’t alter the trajectory of either the government or the media.
You can dismiss the likes of Malcolm Kendrick as a nut-job on the internet without even a Wikipedia entry (it was removed) but it doesn’t mean he is wrong.
Oxford Professor Carl Heneghan is a bit harder to dismiss along with many other highly competent folks but none of this gets into the media because it doesn’t follow The Narrative and gets ignored
https://www.cebm.net/covid-19/covid-19-death-data-in-england-update-28th-june/
especially look at the ever increasing number of hospital trusts reporting no deaths
(daily updates)
Should be headline news but never will be because THE SECOND WAVE IS COMING!!!
Mark referenced Toby speaking of a “Dangerous Party”.
I missed that…what does that relate to? Is Toby calling for the creation of a new party or hoping a party can become the “Dangerous Party”.
BTW if that was a call for a new party it’s probably the worst branding in history! lol People always vote for the safer option…in fact, when they appear to vote for “danger” it’s always because there appears to be (and there often is) “something worse” that will happen if they don’t vote for the seemingly dangerous path.
It was a joke (one of those half in jest, half real frustration things) from a few weeks back, when there was some discussion on LS of safety paranoia, Toby (and I think Delingpole, possible on their podcast) discussed setting up a “Dangerous Party” to try to counteract the “safety at any price” cowards.
Branding aside, it’s actually quite a good idea and I think the underlying philosophical importance of it is quite well explained by Matthew Crawford in the interview linked earlier.
And as a matter of fact, name branding might not even be a problem, as ironically or irrelevantly named parties can prove successful if they are seen as subverting the establishment. Consider the Five Star in Italy, or various Pirate Party incarnations.
I am sure there will be a National Safety Party soon, “Making Life Safer Together”
The new opposition?
Well, not together, surely? At a suitable distance?
A warning to all appeasers everywhere (view from 01:20):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AgD6-0XeA4Y
I wouldn’t guarantee there won’t be a second wave, it is posible, but it is looking increasingly unlikely, especially in light of mass beach gatherings, then protests, then brawls to enter shops, then more protests, then mroe beach gatherings… If it was able to spread effectively then crowds like that would be ideal transmission grounds. Either it is seasonal, but really most seasonal viruses are seasonal because of aircon and clsoe proximity of people in buildings, they would still spread in summer if enough close packed crowds gathered outside. Or there is some weird mechanism which has let us achieve herd immunity much earleir than we thought we could, possibly percentages of the population already close to immune due to exposure to other coronaviruses, or maybe the virus spreading mostly via superspreader events not consistent passing on my most sufferers (although I can’t initially see why, if the averaged R rate were the same, transmission to many each by a few sufferers, or to few each by many sufferers would change the percentages needed for herd immunity). Either way, if it comes back we know it is a thankfully mostly mild virus, that the majority of infections are nosocomial, and hence there can never be any acceptable grounds for another lockdown.
As I have been saying all along, it’s our immune systems stoopid!
https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/1301975/Coronavirus-news-latest-covid19-lockdown-social-distancing-immune-system
Hmmm…. but surely no one could benefit/profit from a population with weakened immune systems…….
Everybody thinks they have a weakened immune system now. I keep hearing it from loads of people. Brainwashed
I haven’t because I’v been active out in the sun, eating good food, meeting lots of people, – all good for a healthy immune system I believe – but there are companies that do benefit from people requiring their products – like vaccines…
I have great confidence in my moon system being able to fight of covids and anything else for that matter. I am really pretty healthy, 70% of what we are eating now I have grown in the back garden, I have a good sun tan after cycling at least 10 miles nearly every day since the lockdown started. I also don’t drink much booze or smoke any more. I gave up all that years ago thankfully.
However many people seem to believe they or their child or their spouse or whoever has a “Weakened Immune System” and needs “shielding” and seem to feel that some people are special and will have no immunity to covids and it will certainly kill them due to their “weakened Immune system”. This is a view that is being very much promoted as part of the psy-op, its very noticeable.
It’s a shame they won’t let Professor Gupta on the telly to educate our ignorant population
My immune system needs to be sneezed on every so often to keep it honed…
I would have thought that children playing together, passing pathogens to each other are training their immune systems for later life – creating a library of antibody blue prints to call upon as new pathogens attack them… just my simplistic understanding of it…
Its a shame that we don’t see her on MSM, she talks a lot of sense.
Isn’t that what we used to do as kids – run around, play and never mind if we got dirty. Somewhere along the line there was all this obsession with wrapping children in cotton wool and it seems like society is reaping what its sown.
Many kids have weakened immune systems because they live in sterile environments, eat junk food and ‘dipped’ in sunscreen.
too right ! when we were kids you expected to get dirty, eat mud (and worse), get sunburnt and so get exposed to anything and everything. As we can see now kids immune systems are by nature robust hence even now the negligible occurence of covid illness.
Don;t forget room odorisers! The nearest equivalent when I was young was the Airwick. I remember playing with the son of some of my parents’ friends and the entire house stunk of cleaning products
I actually DID have a weakened immune system – all the while I dutifully ate a high carb low fat diet I would catch every cold, flu and food poisioning bug going, and suffered from minor but chronic skin, eye, sinus, gum and fungal infections.
When I was eventually diagnosed with diabetes I was of course told to eat “the same healthy high carb low fat diet” as everyone else, but thanks to the internet, many knowledgeable diabetics and a few competent doctors, I bought a glucometer and as a result realised I must eat the exact opposite – lots of meat, poulty, game, fish and vegetables and few “foods” with bar codes.Oh and I get out in the sun a lot.
How much is down to the lack of glucose spikes, how much to the lowered insulin/leptin and how much down to the increased nutrition I don’t know but the result was that for the last fifteen years I have had no flu and only about two colds EXCEPT for what I suspect was covid back in December, which was annoying but mild.
One would hope that the immune system might be taken seriously, but that would interfere with the profits from manufactured foodlike substances, drugs and of course THE VACCINE!!!
Correction – people who’ve been brainwashed to believe they require vaccines.
yes – much better
Who are the least affected by this virus? The young people, they are more socially active. Who are the most prone the elderly who are socially inactive therefore it’s the elderly who are the biggest at risk sector . Why didn’t the government just protect those in care homes rather than release infected patients into care homes? I think you can work that one out.
Why did the government shut everyone down? Because they wanted to instil the fear factor in the public, this is a global decision not just UK. Ultimately its about changing our lifestyles and the Green Lobby is rich and powerful and Gates’s vaccine is the cure. Or so they think.
Just read the article and it makes you wonder what would have happened had the government listened to the Oxford team rather than Imperial.
This also reminds me of a conspiracy theory I’ve come across some YouTube comments – countries that are mandating that people wear masks so that their immune systems would be compromised meaning that when winter comes and loads of people succumb to colds and flu, it could easily be dressed up as a “second wave” and impose a new wave of restrictions.
Exactly. We need to stop being germophobes. Like it or not we need them!
yes – the last thing we need is another phobia.. germophobia, transphobia, islamaphobia……….. we must not act in any way that a germ or anybody else thinks is being not nice to germs
is Alexander Fleming’s statue at risk?…
That’s why I’m amazed at people’s ignorance of our own respiratory system – our body is composed of loads of bacterias and viruses many of them necessary for a healthy life. Why we want to get rid of that is baffling.
From the viewpoint of viruses and bacteria, human beings are just a cosy home. No other reason for humans to exist.
and then when we die – they re-cycle us – all very green
I’ve thought that for a while – ‘they’ need to do something to produce a second wave, and those most vulnerable to the virus have already succumbed, sadly. So the rest of us need to be made more vulnerable..
Surely they wouldn’t dare do that in the UK? The NHS would be overwhelmed with real flu cases.
Trees waiting to be set ablaze? Rather dramatic!
However, it’s good that the case for the immune system is finally making it into the MSM. People urgently need to be educated on these matters.
I am not happy at the photo which shows a white man and a black man walking together, similarly dressed. This does not reflect the general societal truth and therefore is a misrepresentation. Photos like this should not be published until it is universally true!!!
There should be equality of walking together, and on all streets. Equality of friendships. And no distinction between ethnic groups, apart from skin colour (which we can work on later). EVERYONE MUST BE THE SAME!
In fact we should track down these two in the photo and force them to not walk together or converse until we are all the same by the numbers.
And a Special Board to monitor and control this equality. Hopefully through the use of technology.
So, don’t waver on moral purity. Just do it. No matter the cost (because costs have no real consequence)! Be as pure as you can be right now (no we’re not talking at all about actual goodness in your heart or the thoughts and actions which create the real issues for you and those around you every day).
The photo is especially egregious as it is taken on American streets – the imperialist beast which exterminates brown people by attracting them there from their natal paradises and then providing them with a shared american identity and raising their level of lifestyle and opportunity well above the european average.
Bonjour
Most of your post is clever and amusing but it’s let down by your last paragraph.
France is out of confinement now, pretty much. The other day my son went to an amusement park with his friends. You had to wear a mask on the roller coaster, but on the spinning cups and saucers you didn’t have to bother. Why should a virus target a roller coaster rather than a spinning cup and saucer?
Probably the centrifugal force acting on the covids on a rotating ride throws them AWAY from other passengers, where with a roller coaster, over the bumps, covids will get thrown UP but then fall DOWN back onto the cars behind. I am sure they are just following the science.
That must be it.
Yer I was thinking that there has been probably been some good scientific analysis of covid infection rates V screaming levels done that clearly show the risks or catching covids on more screamy rides increases with the scream levels….
Harness the screams to generate electricity…
They did it in Monsters Inc!!
I think it’s probably to do with the level of screaming in a spinning cup and saucer.
Scream if you wanna go faster!
Yes it’s stupid so it wearing a mask.
Johns Hopkins doctor suggests politicians should put aside personal opinions and wear masks
The pressure keeps mounting. Republican resistance seems to have pretty much collapsed in the US, at least at the elite level (Trump aside).
https://evidencenotfear.com/
Not sure if this link has been posted before.Seems to be a resource for informtion supposedly from trustworthy sources (but unclear how they are selected).Just seen this and cannot judge the quality but easy to use.
Thank you thats an excellent website I had already listened to many videos by some of those scientists and was a Lockdown Sceptic after a couple of weeks. Why the government chose to listen to the likes of Neil Ferguson after the foot and mouth disease fiasco I do not know unless they wanted the worst scenario to scare the daylights out of the public so chose Ferguson. It was the same with schools closure, there was a report I read where they knew the kids were safe from the virus but decided if the school s weren’t closed we wouldn’t take it seriously. Well I no longer take this bunch of liars posing as the government seriously any more.
It seems the finger is being pointed at Mark Sedwill and he is being ousted shortly.
https://www.politicshome.com/news/article/pm-set-to-remove-top-civil-servant-sir-mark-sedwill-amid-plans-to-shake-up-whitehall
Here’s the original Torygraph article, but there’s probably a paywall:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2020/06/27/sir-mark-sedwill-pm-oust-uks-senior-civil-servant-whitehall/
Published figures about hospital capacity UK
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.06.24.20139048v1
“Findings: At peak availability, there were 2711 additional beds compatible with mechanical ventilation across England, reflecting a 53% increase in capacity, and occupancy never exceeded 62%.”
Didn’t seem like that according to MSM/BBC during March April
The media completely lost interest in the question of ICU and ventilator capacity, the moment that it became clear that Britain wasn’t going to become another Bergamo
And the strange thing is, despite all the mass hysteria and attempts to get vacuum cleaner companies to manufacture dodgy ventilators, no one seemed to question (or even notice) that we no longer needed them…
Well not until the devastating second wave eventually arrives…
I think I’d prefer to take my chances with positive pressure oxygen than be put on one of those death inducers
A bit like the way the screaming about “protecting the NHS” and “flattening the curve” seamlessly and shamelessly morphed into “if it saves one life” and “gotta crush that R number”.
Never needed ventilators because being put on one with Covid was a sure death sentence.
In news from New Zealand which is led by St Jacinta and is stuck in Groundhog day March 14 2020 we are told of new spikes of Covid19 in travellers. This is causing renewed hysteria. Only way to stop this is to prevent anything arriving at New Zealands doors including merchant vessels.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jun/28/new-zealands-covid-19-isolation-facilities-under-extreme-stress-review-finds
The other thing they could try is to shield the vulnerable and then let the healthy achieve herd immunity – thereby protecting the vulnerable….
It came as four more returnees tested positive to Covid-19 in the biggest one-day jump in cases in two months.
Whilst technically correct, 4 cases being described as “the biggest one-day jump in cases in two months” is a bit alarmist isn’t it?
It’s out there in the world, and will always be there in one form or another. You CANNOT hide from it forever unless you live cutoff from the world. Not even then. Birds will carry it in. Much better to get immunity early because it will get nastier as it evolves. It has to or die out itself. Ardern is a bit thick if she’s trying to deny nature. But ‘Greens’ are, aren’t they?
Ahh but initially the reason for lockdown around the world was to flatten the curve to enable hospitals to cope (those hospitals that were never to capacity). This message is now conveniently suppressed.
A quote from Nelson Mandela:
‘To be free is not merely to cast off one’s chains, but to live in a way that respects and enhances the freedom of others.’ From this week’s page in my diary!!!
Any quotes from Nelson Mandela need to be censored by social media – he is clearly a racist
Is it me or has there been a slew of anti-lockdown articles in the Telegraph and Express in the last 24hrs?
I’d describe it as a sprinkling but it’s obvious the government’s propaganda contract has expired.
It is getting better but then they fall back to alarmist articles.
Fear headlines make better clickbait!
Cheezilla, it seems that the Govt will be paying the newspapers another £35million up until mid-late July:
https://www.prolificnorth.co.uk/news/coronavirus/2020/04/newspaper-industry-partners-government-covid-19-campaign
https://www.mailmetromedia.co.uk/news/uk-government-partnership-sees-record-breaking-recall-effectiveness/
Thanks for these links MiriamW. Absolutely shocking, no wonder none of the newspapers questions the Government as they are all paid off. They are all complicit in our economy falling off a cliff, people dying as they have no access to healthcare or mental health care.
So the newspaper industry gets all the money whilst law-abiding business owners are losing their livelihoods and people are made redundant at record numbers.
I know, it’s immoral, isn’t it? I haven’t trusted the MSM for a very long time and as for so-called social media. . . . . They have a lot to answer for.
Then it really is something that a few anti-lockdown articles are gleaming through.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kZqGSnVt8c8
The Doctor Is In: Scott Atlas and the Efficacy of Lockdowns, Social Distancing, and Closings
The hoops businesses have to jump through:
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/5eb96e8e86650c278b077616/Keeping-workers-and-customers-safe-during-covid-19-restaurants-pubs-bars-takeaways-230620.pdf
As if there was not enough red tape already, this is ridiculous!
The section on face nappies is particularly interesting.
I wonder if there is a market for used face nappies – for the budget savvy
I guess that someday, face nappies used by Scarlett Johansson and Angelina Jolie may be auctioned!
It’s certainly keeping litter pickers in work.
Don’t forget the gloves as well.
Funny how single use plastics are de rigeur
The people who do the work are often the best people to understand the risks in the workplace and will have a view on how to work safely.
Do you think anyone has asked them?
… HSE or your local authority, identifies employers who are not taking action to comply … failing to put in place sufficient measures to manage the risk of COVID-19, could constitute a breach of health and safety law … Serious breaches and failure to comply with enforcement notices can constitute a criminal offence, with serious fines and even imprisonment for up to two years. …
No wonder so many businesses are masked, barricaded and acting downright nuts!
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7300806/pdf/PHP-9999-na.pdf
This is an important paper about UVC light and Covid-19.It is peer reviewed and copyrighted. Waiting publication.From the US. Very interesting article.
No risk that this article would be mentioned by BBC. It questions the lockdown measures and most importantly BBC’s arch villain Trump mentioned UV light in a bizarre rambling about treating the blood.
“Although direct (person-to-person) transmission is important between nearby individuals (9), it is remarkable that the COVID-19 pandemic progressed at a sustained rate even after one-third of the world population was in quarantine or in-house lock-down (51). The rapid progression of the COVID-19 pandemic, in spite of greatly hindered direct transmission, supports elucidating the relevance of indirect infection through aerosolized virus, contact with contaminated surfaces and other fomites, and the inactivation thereof.”
“Changes in relative humidity and ambient temperature have been reported as having a rather limited effect on environmental virus survival and disease transmission (17-21). In contrast, UVC radiation has considerable virucidal effect (22).”
“However, the statistical data [as of May 7 2020 (55)] suggest that COVID-19 may have progressed differently in countries at northern latitudes where it was winter and sun exposure was limited at the onset of the pandemic, than in countries in the southern latitudes where summer sunlight was abundant. Considering that SARS-Co V-2 is three-times more sensitive to UV than influenza A (as presented in Table 1 and discussed in RESULTS) it should be inferred that sunlight should have an effect on coronaviruses transmission at least similar to that previously established for the evolution of influenza epidemics (22,32)”
“If we accept a possible virucidal role of sunlight during coronavirus pandemics, then forcing people to remain indoors may have increased (or assured) contagion of COVID-19 among same house-hold dwellers and among patients and personnel inside the same hospital or geriatric facilities. In contrast, healthy people outdoors receiving sunlight could have been exposed to lower viral dose with more chances for mounting an efficient immune response”
“90% or more of SARS-CoV-2 virus will be inactivated after being exposed for \11-34 minutes of midday sunlight in most US and world cities during summer. In contrast, the virus will persist infectious for a day or more in winter (December-March), with risk of re-aerosolization and transmission in most of these cities.”
I remember reading on a weather site about a Hong Kong Professor (Nichols – or something) saying that covid19 was less in southern hemisphere countries because they were in summer. The article was from Jan or Feb.
https://www.accuweather.com/en/health-wellness/coronavirus-expert-says-the-virus-will-burn-itself-out-in-about-6-months/679415
https://www.linkedin.com/posts/josegefaell_activity-6682701200976031744-7QhF
Covid 19 second waves visual analysis. Update as of 27 of June 2020. Conclusion: No major second waves perceived (beyond Iran).
Life expectancy in the UK is just under eighty years. The average age of a coronavirus related death is just over eighty years. These facts mean that the virus (even using the inflated figures) is having zero effect on mortality.
In order to deal with this non-problem, the government has conducted a campaign of fear and violated all our rights and liberties.
I accuse the government (and others) of the crime of coercive control.
While I completely agree about coercive control, one should note that deaths this year did show a significant increase on the average for the last 5 years (I think about 20%). How much of that was caused by covid-19 and how much by the reaction to it is harder to say.
This year there were no deaths above the five yearly average until after the lockdown measures were introduced, according to the Office for National Statistics weekly death figures which are both valid and reliable.
That’s indeed true. Would it not however be reasonable to assume that at least some of the excess deaths were due to covid-19 being possibly more dangerous than flu? Or would you say they are probably a result of lockdown? If so, what exactly?
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that it’s anything like as dangerous as was made out, at least based on the evidence so far.
Just think it’s important to try and understand the reasons behind spikes in mortality in certain countries. Of course, it’s somewhat confusing that lots of countries have NOT had such spikes. And we probably need to wait until the end of this year before we truly see the impact of the virus.
Look at the graphs.
If you look at the overall excess deaths, the spike in total excess deaths tracks very closely the epidemic curve of Covid deaths. However much over-reporting of Covid deaths there has been, it seems illogical to assume that a brand new virus going through the population isn’t at least largely responsible for an overall increase in excess deaths as a whole. It certainly seems to have killed a similar number of people (whether directly or as an exacerbating factor) to ‘flu and pneumonia in an average season, but more quickly.
Now, where that leaves us in terms of excess deaths for the whole of ‘20 is harder to say. It looks to me like ‘20 will register hardly at all as a bad death year when you look at the year as a whole.
The answer is very clear here: https://hectordrummond.com/2020/06/23/week-23-graphs-from-christopher-bowyer/
I am curious if a private prosecution could be taken out against the government for criminal offences.
According to the Prosecution of Offences Act 1985, anyone can bring any criminal proceedings, but the Director of Public Prosecutions (ie, the government) can take over.
Plus lots of ‘baddies’ operate under Crown Immunity.
Big Issue in Ireland running an interesting piece – Are We Being Told The Truth:
https://issuu.com/onelittlestudio/docs/ireland_s_big_issue_-_issue__254/8?ff
That is indeed interesting – if I am reading it correctly, the mortality this year has been lower than 2018. I can’t find a link to the equivalent of our ONS to verify.
Mortality in the UK has been signiciantly higher than the last 5 year average.
That’s quite a difference.
You can narrow down the data to Ireland here https://www.euromomo.eu/graphs-and-maps/
Whilst the excess deaths peak was higher than 2018, it was much shorter lived so backs up the claim in the article I think
Thanks, that’s a useful site. The picture across Europe is very uneven.
Unfortunately the sheeple here in Ireland are well and truly conned – I don’t know a single opponent of the lockdown in my circle of contacts.
Lots of second wave propaganda in the press today – even normally sensible people in theTelegraph:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/06/26/americas-covid-spike-shows-second-wave-could-bring-second-lockdown/
The Telegraph just can’t help themselves. Many people on this site have indicated that they will be canceling their subscriptions.
Re the Sedwill removal:
The Prime Minister on Saturday night announced an overhaul of the way he runs No 10, setting up three strategic committees to focus on domestic, international and economic priorities.
….. Government sources said the new committee structure in No 10 followed “the successful model that the Government has been using during the coronavirus response,…..
God help us!
Indeed! But I think He may have abandoned us and who could blame him!
Again from the DT Sedwill article:
Coming to your back yard before you even knew about it:
Government sources said they hoped that the reforms would “knock months” off the time taken for building homes and other schemes which get “stuck in the mud”.
Quite insidious!
In other words, trample on people’s democratic right to protest against unsuitable developments.
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2020/jun/27/itll-take-four-years-for-nhs-to-recover-from-covid-19-health-chiefs-warn?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other
It’ll take four years for NHS to recover from Covid-19, health chiefs warn
Patients will face much longer waits for procedures as hospitals operate at a predicted 40% of capacity
How do we count excess deaths because of this? Covid-19 or Boris Johnson?
Ha! so much for receiving free healthcare when you need it.
I feel so sorry for people that need medical care and won’t get it – health deteriorating or death. Shocking
I’ve been waiting since February to hear about an eye operation. I phoned my opticians and they said there was no chance of it happening this year. I enquired at a local private hospital and was offered a telephone consultation but no operations! As Covid is apparently dying out, why isn’t the ‘ Envy of the World’ at work?
Only 4 Years? Probably more like 40 or not at all. It wasn’t gonna cope before this.
Yes, our ‘government’ (or should that be ‘our’ government?) is truly the Trojan gift that keeps taking. The pain, trauma and long-lasting distress caused to so many by so few has to be one of the greatest crimes of all times.
I went for a long-delayed follow-up x-ray last week.
Was met at the door with handgel and mask. All hospital staff masked, including the receptionists behind their screens. What a waste! No queues anywhere, carpark half empty.
Having read the above article, one would wonder if the NHS had ever been aware of infection control before now. Strange they never went to all these lengths during each yearly flu epidemic:
“The safety of our patients and our staff is paramount, now more than ever, so without a vaccine we are currently only able to operate at 60% to 80% capacity, depending upon the service,” said David Loughton, the trust’s chief executive.“This is due to strict infection prevention controls including donning and doffing of PPE, swabbing, testing and isolating patients and allowing additional time between operations or treatments to deep clean or allow air changes in operating theatres.”
How on earth did they practise hygiene before?
surgeons’ need to wear protective clothing means they are carrying out fewer procedures than before the pandemic.
Didn’t surgeons wear PPE in the past?
NHS organisations are building back services “with one hand tied behind their back”, said Dickson. “With social distancing and the need for personal protective equipment it is simply not possible in many services to deliver as much care as would have been possible in the past.
This isn’t about a legacy of the pandemic but the ongoing consequences of unecessary social distancing measures.
So the NHS is waiting for the vaccine before things can get back to normal. What is going on behind our backs?
They have been trying for nearly 80 years to eradicate the flu with a vaccine and failed.
Where is the message from the NHS that people must improve their immune systems?
Well I’d successfully managed to avoid the NHS for over 20 years, until my dentist discovered a keratoid cyst in my jawbone last year, hence the op and recent follow-up x-ray.
My immune system is pretty strong and I treat myself with alternatives when necessary.
However, that doesn’t help those with CHD, diabetes etc, who have been weakened by the government-prescribed diet. Or others who have chronic conditions like arthritis and autoimmune diseases.
It certainly doesn’t help those with cancer, doagnosed or otherwise.
While you are waiting for an operation you could look into Serrapeptase for the cyst. I am using it for a cyst in my gums, it is already around 70% smaller (high dose and taken on an empty stomach). https://serrapeptase.info
I already take serrapeptase thanks.
Nobody has been trying to eradicate the ‘flu with a vaccine. Firstly, to do so would involve a mass vaccination programme – and we’ve never had that for ‘flu. People considered to be in vulnerable groups are vaccinated, plus anyone who wants to pay for it themselves. Secondly, the vaccine we have gives only temporary immunity and needs to be refreshed and the ‘flu anyway mutates regularly enough that the specific vaccine needs to be refreshed and selected annually. So you couldn’t eradicate the ‘flu with a mass vaccination programme, even if that was your chosen course of action.
The vaccination strategy for ‘flu is to protect specific vulnerable groups, not to achieve herd immunity or to eradicate the virus. This is because (unlike TB, for example), there are specific groups that are truly vulnerable while most of the population will feel a but rubbish for a couple of days and then bounce back.
“The mRNA vaccines being developed against COVID-19 will alter your RNA and DNA, which is of tremendous concern. The idea behind them is to turn your body into a protein manufacturing plant, and if your immune system is hypersensitive, it could overreact, causing severe problems. Considering how many people have autoimmune diseases and allergies, these vaccines could have devastating effects for many.”
– Barbara Loe Fisher is the co-founder and president of the National Vaccine Information Center (NVIC) –
I concur that the push for an instant vaccine is extremely alarming. I am pretty strongly anti-vax and won’t willingly be lining up for any covid concoction.
Did you see this? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0p0qXvgsc4g
Another reason to resist!
mRNA vaccines don’t alter your RNA or DNA. The bits of RNA in the vaccine go into the cytosol of your cells where the enzymes in there turn them into antigens. They don’t go into the nucleus where your own DNA lives and they don’t insert themselves into your own DNA (although some viruses do do that and it’s quite an interesting phenomenon).
Yes immune reaction certainly can be a problem.
Immune enhancement may be due to a phenomenon where the wrong antibodies actually help the virus to infect cells, but I don’t think that is what was happening with the SARS1 and MERS vaccine candidates that caused enhancement. However there are other ways that enhancement can happen and it is a genuine concern with Covid vaccines.
https://ca.reuters.com/article/topNews/idCAKBN23V32K?utm_source=reddit.com
“Ontario will allow some people who test positive for COVID-19 but do not have symptoms to return immediately to their workplaces with precautions, separated from those who do not have the virus, according to guidance released on Wednesday.”
This highlight a big problem for countries relying on often foreign farmworkers, meat packing workers etc. This would include UK (thinking of enormous turkey/chicken factories in East of England,I hope they haven’t started mass testing these workers yet!!).
Let’s see what happens in Germany,Canada,US. Mass testing and enormous asymptomatic carriage might endanger food supply in the end. But bonus for the vegetarians.
I often wonder whether, if you refused to eat anything but politicians, would you count as a cannibal or a vegetarian. Of course, the decision would be even harder if you restricted yourself to Greens!
i think this is what you mean!!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FjE080TGEEk
Of course, at some point that would have to happen. Here they are finding hundreds of asymptomatic cases every day. Since they put them as well as every contact of those asymptomatic carriers under quarantine for 14 days, at any given time there are about 20,000 people under strict house arrest, about twice the prison population.
They are determined to make life as difficult as possible.
Confession of a DT troll who calls himself Mike Davies!
I’m also a member at the Guardian, et al, in order to disseminate agit prop against Labour.
Splitting them is my current theme, persuading the Hard Left that the only way for them is to start afresh.
I have a separate identity on those sites to plead with the moderates that they need to expel Marxists sympathisers.
It’s great fun!
Hmm – they seem to be doing all right anyway!
If the resistance consists of nobs like Mike Davies, they obviously have nothing to fear.
You deserve a knighthood, Toby. But all sorts of disreputable people get knighthoods, so perhaps not.
Sweden’s Covid Expert Says the World Still Doesn’t Understand
https://www.bloombergquint.com/politics/sweden-s-covid-expert-says-the-world-still-doesn-t-understand
On Friday, Tegnell won a very public victory against the WHO, after lambasting the organization for making a “total mistake.” The WHO had initially placed Sweden in a group of 11 countries where it said “accelerated transmission has led to very significant resurgence that, if left unchecked, will push health systems to the brink.”
But the WHO then amended its assessment, and said Swedish contagion rates are in fact “stable”. It linked the high number of cases to an increase in testing.
Interestingly this u-turn by the WHO was not widely reported. This is me just finding out about it in this article.
Quite a positive report for the MSM and it’s great to read how Tegnell managed to challenge the dreadful WHO propaganda.
Since Sweden has obviously stuffed the virus, it’s a shame that Bloomberg emphasises Swedens ‘world’s highest Covid-19 mortality rates’, even including the same-old graph to show this and then reminds us that other EU countries will not let the virus-ridden Swedes travel to them!
Interesting, though, that Bloomberg focuses more on Sweden’s strategy for CV19 and not quite so much on desperately wishing for more corpses to prove that their no-real-lockdown approach was so wrong.
I wonder if the EU’s attitude towards Sweden will result in them following us out. If you remember, Micron made the same threat to us unless we locked down. If Johnson had a pair, he could have said that if Micron did that, we should destroy the Channel Tunnel.
Annie’s vision of the wrath to come, with apologies to W. S. Gilbert:
Characters: TOBY, OUR GREAT MIKADO, VIRTUOUS MAN
BO-JO
KRINKI-KRANKI
KWAK-KWAK
TOBY, OUR GREAT MIKADO, VIRTUOUS MAN I forget the punishment for terrorising and enslaving the entire population of the United Kingdom.
BO-JO, KRINKI-KRANKI AND KWAK-KWAK . Punishment??!!. (They drop down on their knees )
TOBY Yes. Something lingering, with boiling oil in it, I fancy. Something of
that sort. I think boiling oil occurs in it, but I’m not sure. I know it’s something
humorous, but lingering, with either boiling oil or melted lead. Come, come, don’t fuss.
BO-JO. (in abject terror). If your Majesty will accept my assurance, I had no
idea –
TOBY Really?
KRINKI-KRANKI. I only enslaved and terrorised the Scots.
KWAK-KWAK. I’m only a slimy little Welsh git.
MIK. That’s the pathetic part of it. Unfortunately, the Act says ‘terrorising and enslaving the entire population of the United Kingdom.’ There’s not a word about having no idea –
BO-JO No!
TOBY Or only enslaving the Scots –
KRINKI-KRANKI No!
TOBY Or being a slimy little Welsh git –
KWAK-KWAK No!
TOBY Now, let’s see about your execution – will after luncheon suit you? Can you wait till then?
BOJO, KRINKI-KRANKI AND KWAK-KWAK Oh, yes – we can wait till then!
TOBY Then we’ll make it after luncheon.
KWAK-KWAK I don’t want any lunch.
Brilliant!!!
Annie you really need to get out more. Oh sorry no you can’t……
Excellent!
Excellent. Was the first draft written on the back of a torn-down Covid notice?
No, they’re too slippery!
Bagged three this morning.
Is it just me that is troubled by the term ‘virtue signalling’ as applied to mask wearers? Does calling them this not imply there is some virtue to be signalled by wearing a muzzle? Wouldn’t ‘ignorance signallers’ be a better term?
Unfortunately Old Bill, these virtue signalling muzzle wearers believe that they care for our health hence why they’re wearing them. No amount of logic and pointing out scientific research will make them believe otherwise.
It’s not meant to imply there is actual virtue that is being signalled, just that the signaller is making a deliberate statement to indicate to others that they consider themselves to be virtuous
For many people, compliance itself is seen as virtuous. Clapping, kneeling, mask-wearing all show that you are a compliant member of society ready to obey orders from your betters, and therefore good.
How sad it must be to have such a paucity for independent thought that anyone would consider those that initiate clapping and kneeling etc as being their betters
Theme tune suggestion: “Say it ain’t so (Bo) Joe” by Murray Head, although I prefer Roger Daltrey version.
Sage have today said we are coming out of lockdown too soon and we should expect cases to rise in july and a lot of problems in the winter.
Sage are very consistent in that they never say anything positive!
I think this is probably reporting on the interview on the Marr shoe this morning. It’s not exactly what was said. There was some “it would have been better if we waited till cases weren’t lower” but also an acknowledgement that it couldn’t go on forever.
Show, not shoe
I thought Marr’s shoe was an appropriate place for such BS (DS?).
Where was this SAGE advice published?
In fairness, looking at Germany and other countries, after easing restrictions there has been a SLIGHT increase followed by very quick correction to the downward trend. Even Suneptra Gupta says there will be an increase in cases through winter. So they’re pretty much stating the obvious. It’s the tone and language these SAGE scientists use that is troubling – and lack of decent follow up questioning.
“How much of an uptick are you expecting? Does this justify remaining locked down and all of the adverse affects that come with it? – No?… Well fucking pipe down then!”
I suspect there will always been a rise after a lockdown so it’s best to just live with it.
Yes, these interviewers are so bloody wishy washy. Leaving aside their personal views or agenda, I think a lot of it is just laziness.
In business, if someone is presenting a proposal or plan, and those plans or predictions are vague, you’d not let them get away with – you’d ask them what the numbers are going to be, within a range, and ask them at what point certain contingencies would kick in.
Mainstream ‘elite’ journalism has been a disgrace during this fiasco. If anyone ought to be saying the Emperor has no clothes, it’s them. That’s what they are there for – otherwise we’ll just have government briefings directly, without the pretence that anything is being properly questioned.
I don’t know much about the history of journalism, but maybe the entry criteria for journalism school need looking at – a questioning mind is surely a requirement.
If you read David Edwards’ book, Free to be Human, he explains how journalists are at the mercy of their editors, who kowtow to their advertisers and aren’t too concerned about quality journalism. That was written about 20 years ago. Things will hardly have improved since.
I’m sure the editors and advertisers don’t help, but am not convinced that’s the whole story.
A really good journalist ought to be like a dog with a bone, and have a passion for asking truly difficult questions. If many of them were like that, I think we’d see it coming out even just a little, but I certainly haven’t.
I get the impression a lot of them got where they were by being able to write nicely, say the right things at the right time and impress the right people. Apologies to any decent journalists reading this!
Read the book.
We should keep SAGE in Lockdown and get on with our lives!
Agree Bella. It bugs me that they are wheeled out to offer their ‘pearls of wisdom’. The arrogance winds me up – NF being the biggest cheeky fucker of the lot
SAGE can Foxtrot Oscar! This perpetual can kicking until Gates’s vaccine arrives on the scene is ruinous to our country but the globalists don’t care because money and power over the people is all they crave.
yep anybody hear Giggling Gates on NBC last week? Just evil, the way he giggles when he says we cannot resume any kind of normal until everybody in the world get his vaccine. He gulps nervously when he says he wants to role out his vaccine even without testing. This guy should be in prison for the rest of his evil life.
He appears to be seriously unhinged in that video – he is clearly enjoying all this..which is disturbing in itself, and should make any sane person doubt the wisdom of agreeing to take his vaccine!
They will simply count all flu cases in winter as corona cases and call it a second wave. They are so predictable.
A SECOND wave of coronavirus will hit the UK from October and more may lose their lives, a top scientist predicted today.
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/11974093/second-wave-uk-october-winter-sage/
It seems more and more likely that we will have another lockdown in October, as leaked recently by someone who knew someone in government. (Did I hear this on London Calling?). If ever there was a way to make the original lockdown look justified, it’s to engineer a second lockdown, even if it’s just a little one that costs the country just a few billion, some painful disruption and some extra non-Covid deaths. And of course, it highlights the desperate need for a vaccine.
They can think that, but they can foxtrot oscar if they think I’m going back into lockdown. Never again.
Me neither. I doubt they will get the youngsters back inside into lockdown either.
More click-bait fear porn – try to ignore it.
‘Another’ lockdown? Would we actually notice the bloody difference at the rate we’re going!
I wonder whether the floated Leicester lock-down is a trial run for this. I also wonder whether the October lockdown narrative has nothing to do with a return of the virus – it is perfect cover for dealing with anticipated full-scale civil disobedience that will likely emerge once the economy really starts to tank in or around October?
But on the other hand, they’ve already given the green light to rioting as long as it has a woke theme.
I find it quite extraordinary the amount of economic harm and human misery our elected politicians are prepared to wreak on this country purely to save their own arses. Deeply psychopathic.
yep just evil
You’re right, but the chief offenders are the zombies who let it happen. No police state can survive if the people don’t police themselves. Like Orwell’s Proles, Brits only need to shake themselves en masse and the tyranny would just drop off.
Orwell again: ‘Until they become conscious [of the Covid lie, in our situation] they will never rebel, but they need to rebel in order to become conscious.’
Oh no!
I’d better go hide in the cupboard!
They could never afford it
I saw a copy of a document somewhere on Twitter, showing that September is when they are planning the second wave and lockdown to happen..
I share the frustration of so many on this site.
The normally sound Freddie Sayers of UnHerd was a bit less than sound in the Telegraph today
‘The real story across Europe has been….none has yet been hit by a second wave…if countries like Denmark can return to near normal without seeing a second surge…..their early lockdown policy looks highly effective’
No it doesn’t.
In fact the Danish government overruled its medical advisers in imposing the lockdown in the first place and then moved ever closer to its neighbour Sweden in restoring normality with alacrity when it became clear that the lockdown was pointless.
‘For lockdown critics, this is actually an inconvenient datapoint-one major argument against lockdowns was that they would simply delay the pain..’
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/06/27/beware-bad-news-evangelists-see-covid-second-wave-behind-every/
No it isn’t
‘As any fule kno’ common cold coronaviruses are seasonal:
https://www.medscape.com/answers/302460-86798/what-are-the-seasonal-patterns-of-rhinoviral-coronaviral-enteroviral-and-adenoviral-upper-respiratory-tract-infections-uris
So, like lockdown, a ‘second wave’ is a one way bet. Common cold coronaviruses and influenza will both be back in December…every December, for heaven’s sake! But the damage has been done. Many have paid the ultimate price….and those responsible will have to account for their actions.
The key point, as we have seen, is that, by December total all causes mortality just about everywhere, for 2020, will be back close to the five year average:
”I cannot now remember when exactly I realized it was going to be a knockout win, on the data, for the anti-Panic side, but it was in March. Absolutely every data-set we have gotten has confirmed it, and we should have re-opened on Easter as Trump wanted (he had lost control of the government by this time, if he ever had it, to a defacto Corona Coup-D’Etat regime, or as I have called it, the Fauci Junta).
Now, it is true the pro-Panic side was always able to say, “It’s too risky; we have to wait and see.” The problem with that was/is, once you embrace that line, it’s not easy to let it go. In other words, Better-to-Play-it-Safe-ism, once unleashed, becomes itself like a virus which you cannot contain. Two weeks of wait-and-see shutdowns turned into Lockdown Forever demanded by a population that had converted to a religious cult.
The net harm from the lockdowns will be quantifiably hundreds of times worse than the virus itself in human-life terms; politically, force were unleashed that caused unpredictable but destabilizing and tragic outcomes including as the rise of a Red Guard-style Maoist race-cult, a rival cult to the Corona Cult itself but largely symbiotic with it.
We can now all but close the book on this: The anti-Panic side was right.
Nowhere did we see anything like a horror-movie virus-apocalypse, excluding the sensationalized pseudo-reality of the media and social-media; there are millions who still, I assume, believe an apocalypse either did occur or was very narrowly averted by heroic politicians and “front-liners.” Perhaps such people will never let it go. This post is meant for others, those who believe in evidence, and for the historical record.’
https://hailtoyou.wordpress.com/2020/06/16/against-the-corona-panic-part-xiv-total-mortality-data-in-europe-now-confirms-the-wuhan-coronavirus-was-comparable-in-magnitude-to-flu-waves-of-the-2010s-the-panic-and-lockdowns-are-fully-discredit/
I can’t read the Telegraph but this is crazy. An early lockdown causes a second wave, there is no way it prevents it. Surely Sayers must understand that? He’s not stupid.
The Archbishop of Canterbury is not sure that he’s happy with white representations of Jesus Christ in Church of England churches. Needs to be thought about, apparently.
I don’t think so.
https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2020/06/27/archbishop-of-canterbury-urges-us-to-rethink-white-jesus/
The church has always twisted and turned with cultural tides. Are you a believer, Mike? If so, how is this any different to allowing gay marriage, abandoning creationism etc etc ?
It’s airbrushing the past.
We can we sure of one thing, anyway,
. No future archbish will need to ask whether statues of today’s contemptible little man need to be removed, because there won’t be any.
I’m Catholic, Annie, but I follow a youtube channel called Anglican Unscripted. It’s absolutely joyous, American Anglicans talking common sense and no fans of Justin! Enjoy.
The Catholics don’t support gay marriage and a Catholic priest discovered the Big Bang. The Catholic Church accepted it before the scientists. And evolution never contradicted Christianity, including at the time of Darwin, despite how atheists tell the history of it.
I’d never accuse Catholics of being anti-scientific. It would be absurd.
It’s Anglicans being anti-God I can’t stand.
Indeed, I often wonder if Welby believes in God – though, I am absolutely certain that God does NOT believe in Welby!
He may have something here, but before we talk ethnicity surely with all the long billowy clothes, touchy feely approach and the sandals isn’t it more likely He was actually a She? It’s a little inappropriate for the ArchBish to ignore the gender debate.
Shesus – that’s a whole new kettle of (two, of course; plus a few loaves) fish!
I was interested to learn one of the sculptures at BBC broadcasting house by Eric Gill (a very dodgy individual) contains the engraving ‘OBSCVL-TA’ which apparently means ‘Listen and Obey’. Given their coverage of Covid-19 I thought this was quite appropriate.
There was a small anti lockdown gathering in London yesterday, perhaps 100 people. I wonder if the government will take any notice of lockdown skeptics if they don’t get out in more sufficient numbers. Unfortunately the Unions and Left seem to be fully behind unlimited lockdown and they are the only ones who seem to be able to get the numbers out for mass protests. The silly restrictions just keep rolling in from government at the moment.
In the whole of my adult life, the only mass UK demonstrations which appear to have influenced Government policy were those against the Poll Tax and, to be honest, they got quite violent, something I’m not advocating.
In 2003, over a million of us, some say many more, marched in London against the illegal Iraq War and achieved nothing. My husband has always maintained that if we’d all sat down in the road and refused to move it might have worked as the police could not have suppressed so many people. As it was, they just stood around and laughed at us.
Quite honestly, the only thing we can do is to practise civil disobedience as much as possible. Easy to say for a retired couple, rather harder for someone trying to re-open their pub but the more people ignore the rules, refuse to wear muzzles, anti-socially distance etc, the more we are denting the delusion for those still in its grip.
Also, however hard it is to talk to the brainwashed, keep talking to them anyway, support each other, get behind the legal challenge, write the letters (at least someone has to read them) and find any way possible to build the resistance to what in this house we’re calling the war on the British people.
A tiny victory re: my post about the idiocy of our local councils. The county councillor got back to us agained and it looks like our village public toilet could be re-opened soon.
You have to take the smaller victories whenever you can. It’s still a victory!
Well said. Lots of little victories add up.
Above all, be free in your head. And never despair.
agained = again. Sorry, senile!
I remember the poll tax managed to mobilise many local people in my town to march against it in town. It was marvelous to behold just ordinary people. It really scared the powers that be at the time. I have been on many marches and I went on that march to stop the Iraq war, it was the biggest march I have every seen and it made absolutely no difference at all.
I can’t help thinking that this has set the tone for any more marches being viewed as utterly pointless, unless it is a state sponsored march like extinction rebellion or BLM then the state over plays the numbers underplays and trouble, supports the motives behind the march and recruits marchers etc.
The Iraq War is the reason I don’t – and have never – protested. It happened about the time (my late teens) I should, as a lefty, have been attending anti-war protests but having seen the biggest protest I’d ever witnessed be completely ignored by politicians in my formative years, I’ve just never bothered. Sad it isn’t it.
However I have no doubt I would be involved in actual civil disobedience in the streets if anything truly sinister were to happen re: bodily, intellectual and historical fidelity. Whether this civil disobedience would involve defending cathedrals with a baseball bat or chaining myself to a GP surgery door to avoid it opening for mandatory vaccination remains to be seen.
Sadly this is true. 17 years on and Iraq is still a complete mess and we have added Libya to that list now. The elites never learn the lessons of interfering in the middle east.
Well done re the toilet!
The Countryside Alliance and Not in My Name movements were huge but sadly made no difference.
Guerrilla tactics are needed at the moment methinks!
Congratulations on getting the public toilet open!! It maybe a small victory but it means a lot!
I am sure they would probably ignore protestors and probably demonise them in the media. However, social media platforms are making it difficult too decent by deleting and shadow banning critics. Maybe taking to the streets even in very small groups helps get the message out – I personally don’t like attending demonstrations.
I feel frustrated that lockdown sceptics are more or less completely ignored on TV to deliberately create an impression that lockdown is a great success. There is a lot of very misleading information in the media supporting the lockdown narrative, some of the recent government advertising has been also been pretty sickening featuring sad looking old people asking people to self isolate so they don’t die.
At the moment the prevailing narrative means that there is no room in the MSM for sceptical views on anything, only the tame op-eds from such as Peter Hitchens and Allison Pearson, the house eccentrics. They pose no threat at all or they wouldn’t be there. Similarly BLM and XR are nothing like grassroots movements or, again, they would not be tolerated. I think it’s what used to be called ‘The Spectacle’ and has been promoted to keep us distracted.
We also know that 77th Brigade etc patrol blogs like this and all social media. We could also ask what the 13th Signals are up to. The Government has followed the advice of the Behavioural Insights Team to the letter and paid the media to keep the fear porn levels up. The briefing performance would probably bear analysis by people trained in subliminal techniques: the short, emphasised phrases, the veiled threats, the rule of 3 etc. I have only seen extracts of them as I don’t watch MSM but I’ve seen enough to note that they all they all did the same thing so they must have had training.
A pertinent question would be, why is it still going on and why are we not back to normal? This is why I am not a cock-up theorist!!
I agree with adopting guerilla tactics up to the level people are comfortable with. It is quite easy to take down notices like Annie does (and we do), refuse to comply with anti-social distancing ‘rules’ and avoid masks where you can, even put up alternative information – you should see our front window – pity we’re not on a main road, but hey! Oh, and keep talking.
The MSM have been a disgrace. With a few exceptions the MSM have been pushing the doom porn this is the new black death and lockdown is necessary narrative. The MSM have shot themselves in the foot. Large sections of the economy have been unable to operate and I wonder how much advertising revenue the MSM have lost from the lockdown they slavishly support.
I think it was a cock-up to start with, and has turned into a cover-up, on a global scale. Not a co-ordinated one, but I just think no-one wants to be the first to say the Emperor has no clothes. If the government admits it was all an over-reaction, it’s political suicide.
This is why they’re gnashing their teeth at Sweden. The inconvenient child, lol.
“In 2003, over a million of us, some say many more, marched in London against the illegal Iraq War and achieved nothing.”
Yep, I was there with my family. The only mass demo I ever went on (conservatives don’t generally do demos). The results pretty much confirmed me in my opinion that, as you say, they don’t achieve anything unless, as with the dupes for the BLM scum, they are just parades pushing what the ruling elite already wants.
Great piece from Off Guardian yesterday on the reliability of the PCR test and whether the RNA is actually of viral origin:
https://off-guardian.org/2020/06/27/covid19-pcr-tests-are-scientifically-meaningless/
There have been many articles expressing concern over the reliability of these tests. Half of me thinks the scientists only look for what they want to find and the other don’t really know what they are looking for because the virus seems to react differently to certain types of people.
The Chemistry Nobel winner who invented the test said this was a poor use of it (not sure what is a good use).
The good uses are far too numerous to mention as PCR is the foundation of all DNA / RNA assays. This will include cancer profiling, organ matching, evolutionary studies, identication of micro-organsims, stem cell transplants, forensics. The list goes on and on. Probably one of the most important lab based techniques ever invented.
Thanks, is it any use for detecting C-19 (assuming C-19 is an infectious agent)?
That’s the million dollar question to which I have no answer.
I would say that it has the potential to be good at Covid detection but no idea if the tests, as they have been currently designed, are up to the job.
Very concerned about the lack of the gold standard ie virus isolation for Sars-Cov2.In influenza we always had viral isolation and growth of the virus as a possibility in the diagnostic arsenal but rarely used because of costs involved etc. The indirect test like PCR for influenza always had a golden standard in form of viral isolation. And the need to develop an influenza vaccine every year always make the actual growth of the season’s influenza virus very important. I can’t understand that when pharmaceutical companies now are developing Covid-19 vaccines then they must have living virus available for the production. Then why are there not more publications of viral growth of Covid-19 in patients available? This would be especially interesting to see in severe cases of Covid-19 and also to exclude co-infection of other pathogens. If the quotation is correct in the off guardian article, it is unclear whether the 4 published articles about the origin of Sars-Cov2 virus really was actual viral growth. I am surprised that there has not been more discussion about the right use and misuse of the PCR test in the medical establishment as regards Covid-19. This will only fuel speculation of a hoax virus and you would think that proper scientists would like to prove viral isolation and growth and not rely solely on indirect PCR test. They should also try to prove the Koch postulates again in a better experiment.
Surge in Leicester! What does that mean?
It probably means a couple of people have tested positive after flying back from Pakistan.
Fear porn. Ignore.
That’s what I thought. There are 658 cases or so out of a population of 418000 so about 0.1 percent!
SHUT IT DOWN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I gather Patel is actually threatening a new lockdown there because they’ve been testing like mad and found what they want.
Selective lockdowns, beloved of totalitarian states everywhere. I urge you to read about the testing scam:
https://off-guardian.org/2020/06/27/covid19-pcr-tests-are-scientifically-meaningless/
This info should be dynamite but of course …
I think it’s inevitable we’ll see some “test” local lockdowns over the summer.
Collective punishment – supposed to be illegal under the Geneva Conventions. Ooh they will be so scared of that one!
More testing, more cases. No increase in hospital admissions. Infection rate is 0.06%.
Project Fear!
Is 658 an estimate from random testing or actual tests, if so how many were tested?
Is there significant additional people rocking up needing ICU treatment?
In data downloaded from the government’s Covid19 statistics page, there were actually only 69 daily lab-confirmed cases in Leicester with ‘specimen dates’ on the 14 days from June 3rd to June 16th. Compared with 82 for the previous 14 days. The 658 could be an extrapolation based on the ONS random sampling exercise but it is far too precise. It should have been ‘95% certain to be somewhere from 200 to 1400’
Latest twitter from Simon Dolan
So burn the masks
Hug friends and strangers
Go to shops that welcome you, not treat you like a leper
Choose a pub that wants you there
Get an illicit haircut
Enjoy life
The Govt have stolen enough.
And so say all of us Simon!
That’s the best poem we’ve had on this site!
This is an extract from ConHome which made me sit up!
And the Covid epidemic has also, tragically, underlined the racial and ethnic inequalities in many societies, not least our own. The disproportionate impact of the virus on BAME communities is both heartbreaking and a reproach. The reasons for this particular tragedy are various and require further, rigorous, investigation. But there can be no doubt that they reflect structural inequality in our society which must be addressed.
What on earth does the writer suggest? Is the virus racist? What proportion of BAME deaths as opposed to white were there, because we are not told the demographics.
It’s certainly misandrist and much more so, and seems to have a thing against us baldies too.
On the other hand it favours smokers: that must be a first!
Less likely to catch it, more likely to die from it if we do.
Amazing how far off the mark a report can be or want to be.
The answers are: Vitamin D deficiency, then insulin resistance, then other health issues.
We don’t need to know the reasons in order to know that white people are to blame. Amazing!
Ah yes, ConHome, the home of the ultra-left Con voters.
And much of the PCP as well from what I can make out.
“The disproportionate impact of the virus on BAME communities is both heartbreaking“
No it isn’t, you liars.
And although there will obviously be the usual suspects who would like to smear this as a “racist” statement, it actually isn’t. I don’t feel “heartbroken” by any deaths of strangers unless perhaps they are unusually tragic for some reason. Ordinary deaths from disease just don’t cut it for me, generally. Does that make me a heartless misanthrope? Possibly, I suppose. But I suspect it just makes me honest, and all those who claim to disagree, dishonest, sentimental virtue signallers.
This kind of nonsense, almost universal in modern US sphere societies, is a sentimental, inflationary abuse of language. It seems to reflect, perhaps, a multi-generational lurch to the opposite extreme from past idealisation of the manly stiff upper lip.
Personally, if we are going to have one extreme or the other, I prefer the older approach.
Most stupid statement from the press briefings (and it’s a tough field to run in)
“Every death in a care home is a tragedy”
Really?
What do these people say when they encounter real tragedy, real heartbreak?
I don’t know – I really don’t. We live in a world where superlatives and hyperbole have been hijacked to describe the everyday.
There’s an awful lot of ‘battling’ the virus and ‘winning the war’ around at the moment. It’s all so meaningless and tiring!
Meaningless, tiring and deeply damaging, because it distracts from the correct course of action which is to concentrate dispassionately, objectively, realistically, far-sightedly on the most appropriate, proportionate way for a government and a country to react to such a situation.
Do all lives matter?
It’s an interesting question. I would think almost everyone, even the most ardent lockdown supporter, would feel in their own lives different levels of grief at the loss of someone close to them, that would vary with the age of the person that died. Somehow people seem to want to show they care MORE about the old and ill in general than they would about, say, their own grandparent.
I’ve tried to have a few conversations with pro-lockdown people about this kind of thing, without much success. I’ve sort of given up for now, as I don’t want to completely alienate everyone I know, and all of my colleagues. I like a good debate, but people mostly don’t seem up for it. They get bored, or irritated.
Believers don’t like their beliefs being challenged
I think I worded my do “all lives matter” joke all wrong
Most people who spout that twaddle mean ‘MY life matters and I don’t care a bean what happens to anybody else.’
Well, I have always considered myself pretty selfish, more than usually preoccupied with illness and death, and not as young as I was, and haven’t lost my job. But the logic circuits refuse to be bypassed. It would be less distressing if I were able to think all of this nonsense was actually the right response. Now I’m just angry and depressed.
I would think almost everyone, even the most ardent lockdown supporter, would feel in their own lives different levels of grief at the loss of someone close to them, that would vary with the age of the person that died.
I beg to differ. You don’t love according to age.
To a point, yes.
I think I worded my do “all lives matter” joke all wrong
If one wishes to get hot under the collar about racial discrimination, far better to focus on how the lockdown has robebd BAME people of liberties, and ,as they are often in insecure jobs, cast them in to total poverty. Not to mention how police who weren’t too pleasant to them before now have an excuse “ensuring adherence to minister’s guidelines” to turn too when they want to be arbitrarily oppressive. No BAME people are particularly worried about how the virus is a little more dangerous to them than it is to white people, but many are bloody furious about how lockdown has stolen their jobs, ruined their family businesses and given the police more powers to pick on them with. Anyone who states “BLM” and does not oppose the lockdown is the most idiotic hypocrite.
That is from Michael Gove’s speech, isn’t it? Has he not read that ‘BAME communities’ are likely affected more due to them having difficulty absorbing vitamin D, ie a genetic reason? Nothing to do with racism or inequality.. as far as I know, BAME communities can access the NHS like anyone else..
Also that more BAME are diabetic, or have sickle cell, which can puts them in a risk group..
He hasn’t, because he’s read the government report on the subject, which didn’t focus on any kind of science, but focused on the ranting opinions of selected people from the BAME ‘Community’ and published it as fact.
Michael Gove seems to read widely (if you look at the number of references for that speech), but sadly as you say, as far as the virus is concerned, he has obviously been very selective in whose writings he reads – and the same applies to his reading on climate change!
This was part of a speech by Micheal Gove. It’s awful, and reproduced in full on the Spectator website, if you can bear to read it. I got only as far as the bit you quote and gave up in despair. I wrote a comment below the article making my disgust clear, as a few others did too, regarding this quote.
The virus isn’t racist, but one could strongly argue that the lockdown is (see my other comment). And any argument that can help get more folks turning anti-lockdown is worthy of mention.
That’s a “conservative” publication? Yuk!
Hope Classic FM, Yorkshire Tea, the Ashmolean and all those who posted those black squares in support of BLM saw this:
https://twitter.com/LozzaFox/status/1277216625213743112
Spot on. They haven’t read the BLM website.
I have a huge amount of respect for Laurence Fox. Shame he is not a politician.
I know someone who works in marketing dept. of
@premierleague
. The ‘off the record’ word is they’re SEVERELY regretting getting into bed with BLM & the kneeling nonsense. Their dilemma now is ‘how do we back out of this & save face?’ Many players also feel bullied into kneeling.
I suspected that would become the case.
Starmer’s going to regret his grovelling too!
That’s interesting and that’s probably the same discussion going on in the HQs of the likes of Classic FM and Yorkshire Tea – realising that they’ve been had and what do they have to show for? Angry customers quietly boycotting their products.
The Premier League made a seriously bad decision…it could have offered a bit of verbal support like Yorkshire Tea (now forced to bring in a nearly 50% reduction in price to keep their sales up). I guess they were terrified of Black players kneeling at the start of matches, being watched by white players not participating. Of course that might still happen after the crowds are back in the stadia…
Once again the lesson is that to appease in the hope you will please is misguided.
and i have noticed a lot more Yorkshire tea adverts on tv recently – especially the (professional yorkshireman) Sean Bean one.
However Yorkshire Tea clearly going through a particularly woke period.. Only a few weeks ago they were promoting that they were now 100% carbon neutral
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nlmtWFaDLOg
so that is BLM and climate change ticked.
Next will be the new advert showing a miserable old person stuck inside the house staring listlessly out of the window with a voice over “dont go outside or you will catch covid and die. Stay in and have a nice cup of tea”
These days that might be construed as anti-semitism, as opposition to Zionism is now conflated with anti-semitism.
That potentially puts Starmer, in particular in a difficult position. Fox has asked Starmer if he supports it. Lineker has already replied to say no.
In regards to those “second waves” in some US states, has anyone noticed how the deaths per million are still rather less than in most european countries, but are still climbing. I’d guess that by locking down early they suppressed the virus, but as they have unlocked it has gone back to spreading as it naturally would. I think only when, in those places, it reaches the kinds of deaths per million seen in europe will it start to tail off. It looks like anywhere which locks down too early lacks any built up immunity* in the population, and is doomed to have the virus get in with what would otherwise have been its first wave as soon as they unlock. Anywhere like the UK or France, which supposedly both locked down too late, is locking down for no reason, as the peak had already passed. Anywhere which locks down at a supposedly optimum time gains no benefit over somewhere like Sweden which just let the wave sweep through naturally and is now seeing slow and steady declines in hospital admsisions and deaths. After the natural first peak, which can be delayed by early lockdowns (but those lockdowns merely damage civil liberties, the economy and all non-covid healthcare capacity whilst simply saving up covid deaths for later), the virus seems to decline and the only flare up in small locations where, one assumes, it hadn’t spread so much during the first wave so immunity* levels were lower in those places.
*I am having to assume here that herd immunity is being reached at lower than predicted levels, either with “epidemiological dark matter” of people who aren’t susceptible to infection at all due to prior exposure to other coronaviruses, or by some weirder mechanism. Herd immunity at lower penetration of infection into the population does seem to fit the data of most countries pretty well.
I mentioned yesterday that I’d been pondering about natural resistance/immunity. If the assumption is that there is none then the conclusions made to “best fit” the data may result in such things as superspreader events, high levels of asymptomatic spread and generally explanations for non uniform or skewed data.
The simplest explanation that would cover many of the observations on the data is that not everyone is as susceptible to the virus as assumed. A superspreader event could just be a freak coming together of many susceptible people in the same place or a large gathering could look like high levels of asymptomatic spread if only a small proportion of the gathering are susceptible.
It’s not definitely the case but if somebody looks at that data with predefined assumptions then they may well come out with the wrong conclusions.
Dr Vernon Coleman has reposted this video, which apparently mysteriously “disappeared” the first time he posted it, concerning the behaviour of the drug companies with regards to vaccines. Especially the upcoming one!
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=IRmIY9oWRP8
Had a feeling that one would disappear quick – his YouTube days might be numbered. Maybe he should go back to using his alternative terms to get round the censorship.
I rather liked the one where he referred to “stuff” and “stuffing” !
Vernon Coleman deserves as much listening to and sharing as we can muster. Lockdown dissent at its finest. A true human being.
http://www.vernoncoleman.com/main.htm
Good opinion piece in The Times business section today. I won’t post the whole article, just the concluding paragraphs. “We cannot afford any longer to wallow in a state of dread, cowering at home as the country falls behind on every measure of civilisation that counts — unproductive, diminished and pathetic. The preoccupation with daily death counts, the R number and so forth should stop. This impoverished existence in lockdown must end and never be repeated.
Britain should wake from this induced coma, turn off the alarm and ignore the virus fanatics. There is a great deal of lost ground to be made up: debt, unemployment and insolvency have all piled up during the shutdown. Now the nation must graft furiously to prevent the damage becoming a self-reinforcing spiral of despair. We have the capacity to reconstruct our lives, but first we need to muster our courage and apply ourselves like never before.
Luke Johnson is chairman of Risk Capital Partners and the Institute of Cancer Research”
HUZZAR!!!
Sounds like a well written article. I was trying to say to a friend earlier that I would happily take the risk to myself of opening up the country completely and just getting back to normal, if only for the sake of the under 50s who really aren’t in any danger of dying whatsoever. Why should they have their futures taken from them, their country shut down, their lives and finances ruined? These poor kids can’t even go and watch live football – I’m just watching the Newcastle v City game and thinking how awful it is that it all has to be played behind closed doors. No wonder the youngsters are rioting in the streets. I am in my mid 60s and fairly vulnerable, but I don’t want the country closed. If I die of this virus, so be it. Sometimes, the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.
Can we make it the under 52s
54s
54s… 52s… 65s… 80s
It serves to illustrate the point. We don’t want to die, but those of us who are here (on this site)would prefer to make our own decisions about whether to enjoy life and indulge in potentially risky behaviour than to have our behaviour regulated and dictated, regardless of how meaningful life is afterwards.
I suspect there is a very large contingent under the age of 35 (none of them here) who think it’s probably for the best for government to decide what everyone can and cannot do, because death is unthinkable and state regulation is always the answer. This may make their own lives more awkward, but since they’d pretty much surrendered “fun” anyway, they’re OK with that.
I’d rather live before I die, not drag out an unlife as a zombie, thank you very much.
I’m with you.
Agree 100%
I’m 33 and am firmly in the camp of believing this lockdown to be the single greatest political blunder in living memory.
I know of at least one person here who is around 20.
21 here, and I take great issue with the gov telling me what I can and can’t do. Death is natural and I have my entire life ahead of me so I’ll be damned if I’m to be locked away and have any kind of meaningful living taken away from me.
73s
Or the healthy no matter what their age.
Even the unhealthy should have a choice!
To all who want it. I’m fit and (again) active, no thanks to the stupidity of this government. I’m 54, but even if I was 84 I’d rather face what’s coming on my feet than staring at four walls slowly losing my mind.
Open it all up, and send out a message that should have been the message from the start: grow a pair and get on with your lives.
Just Had cancelled my Sunday times as I could not take anymore of their endless doom and photos of masks and other such nonsense.
recent change of editor and hence direction. seems to be going more woke. i only still get it for the crossword
Stop supporting them and buy a book fo crosswords!
Hear, hear!!! I read that article and all I can say is “amen”
Luke Johnson has been a quite prominent lockdown sceptic on twitter as well.
Sad to see the Telegraph, who had almost, almost turned to our corner, have done a reverse ferret. Their main page is currently as hysterical and bedwetting as the BBC’s.
I was pondering on subscribing to it, but I think I’ll hang onto my money. I’d cancel my BBC licence, too, but I need it in order to watch Talking Pictures TV and other channels that show subversive content from pre-woke times – which I think I need to see in order to stay sane.
I stopped paying for mine in April. They sent me a letter saying that my license was being extended to November. Presumably this gives me time to think about it.
However, I am so angered by the attitude of the BBC not only to the virus, but also their capitulation to cultural marxism and wokeness that I sometimes think I may even be prepared to go to prison over it.
Until this year I steadfastly supported the BBC, believing in the principle of public service broadcasting, but now I absolutely detest it.
The majority of their commenters will lap it up!
The Telegraph seem to invite the bedwetting columnists in for one day each week, then revert to sanity afterwards. lets hope they revert to sanity again.
I think you’ll find that journalists are not generally told that they must all voice the same opinions.
So, yes I agree that this is very disappointing, but project virus fear-porn is the most successful campaign that a government has ever launched against it’s own people.
It’s only to be expected that a great many newspaper journalists will fall for it too.
I noticed that too – a sudden about turn. Do they have a different editor on Sundays? I have a subscription which I’ve cancelled twice and then renewed simply because I need to keep up to date with international travel regulations, and those are very complicated right now! But come September I will be cancelling the subscription if they carry on in this new vein.
Please tell me this isn’t true:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/06/28/businesses-back-final-clap-coronavirus-workers-uk-plans-biggest/
Next Sunday at 5pm everything stops for this drivel. Worse, we are all being encouraged to put a light in our windows the night before in remembrance of those we have lost to the virus. This is pretty creepy/scary!
Straight from the North Korea playbook. I, for one, will not be out clapping for the National Covid Service.
Quite. I think on latest estimates the NHS has killed more people than it has saved from the combination of ‘stay at home’ till it is too late, failure to stop the spread of infection within hospitals, the over-use of intubation and the deliberate strategy of sending the elderly back to care homes. The management team, and at least ten layers of the bureaucracy below it should be up on manslaughter charges.
It’s true, and I for one will be sat inside grumpily drinking a beer and cursing NHS workers under my breath.
It’s not the fault of the people employed by the NHS matt.
Remind me to be out that evening. And 5pm the next day.
I shall be in, with my curtains firmly closed at 5pm.
Hiding under the stairs!
Anyone thinking of clapping next Sunday should read the post by Peter Thompson below about mental health problems being ignored by the NHS during this lockdown, and the following thread (beginning “From the BBC website”).
It’s presumably some sort of psychological technique to keep us all onside.
Mrs 2-6 is a carer, has been for almost 30 years, very experienced and she only get the minimum wage and that is topped up with some wierd payment scheme. Clap for the carers? It would be better if they were paid a bit more really.
Clap like an idiot night innit?
I agree completely. It is not just that there are too many bureaucrats, but that the pay received by pretty inexperienced and limited skill ‘suits’ is way out of kilter with those doing the proper jobs ie. delivering the treatment and medical care.
5pm, Sunday 5th, that’s after the pubs reopen. lets hope that the lure of beer can draw everyone away from this evil state-worship. Incase it doesn’t I’ll try to remember to be outside and bellowing some antilockdown slogans in my area.
I’d rather play “God Save the Tsar” on full blast.
Shan’t be clapping for them, they’re being paid to do their job.
That’s easy because we haven’t lost anyone that we know.
Nope. Haven’t clapped yet. Not about to start now. Why would people commemorate those that died from/with covid but not those who’ve died of all the countless other things people have died of this year. I’m waiting for the announcement of the covid compensation fund for the ‘victims’. At that point my head will explode with fury.
https://twitter.com/BallouxFrancois/status/1277186968116477952
“I suspect it is far safer to get infected by an asymptomatic carrier, and ideally outdoors, as this is expected to lead to a lower infectious dose, which may a key determinant of symptom severity. It might be viewed as a form of ‘variolation’ (see below)”
Very interesting theory. Less dose in sunny weather. Perhaps the reason the spikes in Southern states in the US might be a test case for this theory. Those spikes seems to relate to the BLM demonstrations. Watch out for death spikes or not in those states in a few weeks time.
I suspect that inadvertent ‘variolation’ is the basic mechanism behind much of our non-antibody resistance to Covid. Rory Sutherland wrote about variolation in the Spectator as far back as April 1st.
A few dissident thinkers – including me and the economist Robin Hanson – have wondered aloud whether, in the time before a vaccine is available, there might be a role for an earlier practice called ‘variolation’. …are there gains to be had from also ensuring that if you are infected, you aren’t infected very much?
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/the-world-s-best-virology-lab-isn-t-where-you-think
It seems like there is much speculation and very little in the way of facts or evidence here. Since the PCR test is widely admitted to be unreliable (and may actually be useless) all we have to go on is people getting ill or dying and even the most determined lockdown proponent can’t do much to change the increasingly vanishing number of real cases as opposed to supposedly positive tests.
I understand that the WHO has given conflicting advice on aysmptomatic spread. Whether or not ‘variolation’ is relevant, Robin Hanson is not much of a dissident, in my view, if he thinks a vaccine is something to be desired!
Being pro-vaccine doesn’t make one not-a-dissident. Vaccines have historically been one of the most effective anti-disease measures. As long as people oppose the lockdown they should be welcomed as standing in defence of liberty.
Our knowledge of how our immune and other systems deal with viruses is pretty incomplete, it would seem, and the role of virus load appears to be a puzzle but variolation sounds plausible to me.
I have suspected for a while now that the vast majority of those not actively and effectively isolating (ie only effective where no one in the household is going out and about) have been exposed to the virus. Even with social distancing the likelihood is the virus is floating on the air in supermarkets and other poorly ventilated indoor areas. I wouldn’t be surprised if our bodies go “on alert” when a new threat is identified and a full range of defences is activated.
It sounds very plausible. Hendrik Streeck (the Heinsberg guy) has suggested the same thing.
I think a big determinant of severity is whether the virus infects your lungs at all. Most colds don’t– they’re just “upper respiratory tract infections”. You usually have a cough but that’s just your larynx and pharynx getting infected not your lungs. Any lung infection, Covid or not, is potentially serious.
Why do these viruses infect the lungs of some people and not others? It’s a numbers game and if you have a higher viral load there’s more chance of the virus getting down there in the first place. And there are other factors such as that the lungs themselves may be more susceptible to infection if you’re old or smoke.
Wearing a mask will also likely increase the risk because you will be breathing your own virus back in from behind the mask, and also having to breathe more deeply because it’s blocking the airflow.
If you can experience Covid just as an upper respiratory tract infection (as the majority do) then you get the immunity and it’s all good.
I would say if you’re old, your lungs will definitely be more susceptible to infection, just as everything else is getting a bit knackered.
I agree with your comments about masks. The modern masks seem designed to create a perfect pathogen breeding ground – nothing like the loose-fitting surgical masks that Chinese people were fond of wearing in previous generations.
Can’t find it now but I was reading a research paper that had compared the respiratory infection rates between carers who wore cloth masks and those that wore no masks (this was a study done a good few years ago). The carers who wore cloth masks had a significantly greater incidence of respiratory illness than those that wore nothing.
Well that would be interesting if not surprising. As I have observed from shopping trips, people with masks tend to fiddle with them and hand to mouth-nose area is the classic infection route (both ways). No doubt care workers also fiddle with their uncomfortable sweaty masks.
BTW I had noticed long before Covid came along that I always started to breather more shallowly when on the crowded Tube in London. It was a kind of unconcious reaction that gradually became more conscious over time. I began to do the same when entering shops after the Covid outbreak occurred.
I wonder if anyone else had reacted in the same way? Given deep lung infection is the real risk of Covid-19 I think my shallow breathing strategy may be a good one…you are being exposed to the virus and so getting to grips with it via your bodily defences but you aren’t inhaling it deep into your lungs.
This may relate to the increased risk for obese people. I think we will have all noticed how very obese people’s breathing can become very laboured even with mild exercise, so they will be breathing much more deeply in such circumstances as going round the shops, walking on an incline, climbing a few steps, picking up shopping etc.
Lockdown believers answering the call of the Morlocks
I click on the Comment Image and get 403 Forbidden. Am I right in thinking it was a still from the 1960 version?
Yea. Not sure what happened there. I thought it very apposite. Will try to repost tomorrow when sober.
Pretty telling numbers here. A lot of US States with >50% of deaths in care homes.
43% of U.S. Coronavirus Deaths Are Linked to Nursing Homes
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/us/coronavirus-nursing-homes.html?auth=login-google
5 States that didn’t lock down:
Iowa (51%), North Dakota (64%), South Dakota (43%), Nebraska (34%) and Arkansas (33%)
The March ‘19 Barcelona waste water test is still really bothering me.
As far as I can see, either it’s a simple mistake (except there seem to be similar results pretty consistently for months afterwards), or the test they’re using on waste water is wrong, in which case all of the other results produced are probably wrong, or the entire narrative is wrong. If the virus was kicking around in Barcelona more than a year before the UK lockdown and Nearly 9 months before the virus was picked up in Wuhan, then the idea that it originated in Wuhan is at least questionable, surely? Not to mention absolutely all of the prevailing theory on how and when it spread through Europe.
Would welcome ideas from anyone of a scientific bent on this.
I suspect the March 2019 result was an anomaly, and I don’t see similar results for months afterwards.
Here is the original paper: https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.06.13.20129627
The graphs and tables are right at the end. Table A on the last page shows 6.4×10^2 Genome copies / L for IP2 (which is part of the genome) and 8.3×10^2 copies/L for IP4 on March 12, 2019.
Everything else in that table is “No Ct”, i.e. nothing. So that’s September, October, November and December 2019, all nothing.
It is possible there was a small outbreak of Covid-19 that died out again in March 2019 but it seems more likely that this was a false positive.
The meaningful result however is panel D on the previous page where we see copies / L starting on January 15, peaking, dropping suddenly and coming back on the day they had a lot of rain, and then dropping on May 18. That curve follows very closely the actual reported cases in Spain from the peak onwards.
If we assume the actual epidemic (rather than the reported cases) was symmetrical (in accordance with Farr’s Law) and look at the mirror image of the reported cases after the peak to the end, that matches up perfectly with things having started on January 15.
Matt, thanks for linking the pre-print. I agree it is likely an anomaly. What would be interesting would be if the researchers had also assayed February 2019 (they did January and March, but not February). As per my reply to one of your posts a couple of days ago, there is a very large annual mobile/IT conference in Barcelona every February that attracts senior people from around the world. Interestingly, insofar as there are Chinese visitors, they would be more likely to be from Beijing rather than Wuhan. Could there have been a very early version of the virus (SARS 1.5?) circulating in China during Q1 2019?
Yes you make a good point. The problem is we only have tests for January, March and September. There could have been a whole epidemic of SARS1.5 starting around March 2019 and lasting until around July 2019. It might have had enough RNA in common to match on those two parts of the genome. It could even be the mystery “dark matter” virus that is giving people immunity and explain why Barcelona was less worse hit than Madrid because maybe SARS1.5 never got to Madrid.
So why don’t they test those other months? Maybe they already threw away the samples before any of this was a thing, having only a limited amount of space in the poop freezer.
But there should be lots of other places where waste water and also medical samples can be tested and it will be interesting to see what comes out.
Did Sars 1.5 get to Greece? Greece’s figures are incredibly low despite having a lot of factors in common with N Italy – young-old households, major air pollution in Athens and high levels of tourism.
I was just wondering if Toby’s comment “The fourth estate, which has largely slept through the crisis, is beginning to stir. It’s going to get ugly – very ugly – and I cannot see how Boris can hope to win the next General Election” might be in some way linked to the recent DT stories about the potential removal from post of a certain Mark Sedwill? There are wider discussions about Sedwill’s octopus-like tentacles within the UK state, for example https://hat4uk.wordpress.com/2020/05/28/clapping-the-men-in-the-shadows/….
Sedwill’s being replaced. So not so powerful then.
“I cannot see how Boris can hope to win the next General Election”. I wondered whether Toby was seriously considering the idea of founding a new party.
Is he a politician?
No, he wasn’t born one. But he could no doubt improvise.
I think he pretty much was born one…his father Michael Young was extremely well connected in the political world. Perhaps we should ask Toby to name all the politicians he met before the age of 18! lol
Toby’s father was a prominent politician. I think he has always had very sensitive political antennae. He’s from a left wing background but like many has ended up more on the right because of the insanity of the contemporary left. I think that makes him a very good candidate for creating a new political entity in the land.
“Nevertheless, I can’t see how Boris can lose the next election.”
I can.
Yes, there is that. But as we see in the USA, the consequences of people being educated into Marxism in universities is working its way into the political system.
Despite having a terrorist-supporting, extreme Marxist, and pro-nationalising-everything leadership, despite being mired in accusations of anti-semitism, despite blocking implementation of the Brexit referendum vote, and despite having numerous parliamentary candidates who had made all sorts of unpleasant and extreme statements, Labour won over 32% of the vote, equating to one in three of UK voters. That should be cause for pause…
Oh yes, and there is this also about Mr Sedwill… https://hat4uk.wordpress.com/2020/05/07/exclusive-mark-sedwill-the-halo-trust-conflicts-of-interest-covert-intelligence/
Boris is sacking him.
Let’s not forget it is the Civil Service that has politicised itself. The Blairite appointees – people like Gus O’Donnell, Lord Kerslake and many others – haven’t been off our screens commenting on political events since their retirements. This is a clean break with tradition, where in the past the highest civil servants would only intervene very occasionally after retirement.
And of course what have we learnt from their political commentary? That none of them support Brexit or Conservativism. They are clearly of the Left, clearly pro Remain and clearly pro-EU. Kerslake was hired to advise Corbyn. He probably did so to be a spy in the Far Left camp, because I think really all these recently retired civil servants sound much more Blairite than Far Left. That’s where their real sympathies lie.
By offering their opinions on a range of highly political issues, they have destroyed the illusion that the Civil Service is not political. Of course it always has been political. But in the past a decent distance was maintained.
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.06.26.20140814v1.full.pdf
Here is Prof Levitt’s newly published paper about trajectories of the Covid-19 epidemics.
This article is for advanced mathematical minded but interesting discussion about the project of estimating the scale of the pandemic in each country and the possible end.
https://www.covibes.org/public/World is the website with the best graphs associated with his project
https://www.researchsquare.com/article/rs-35331/v1
This might have been posted before but interesting the 80% background immunity discussed before in multiple posts questioning the traditional high herd immunity required according to the models.
“Cross-reactive SARS-CoV-2 T-cell epitopes revealed preexisting T-cell responses in 81% of unexposed individuals, and validation of similarity to common cold human coronaviruses provided a functional basis for postulated heterologous immunity[9] in SARS-CoV-2 infection[10,11”
In plain English, that means there’s a lot of pre-existing immunity which is effective at, presumably, low viral loads?
lol, er, I’m not sure that’s stating it “in plain English”.
It will have to do!
Even Netflix is at it now. ‘Freaks’ is a story about an eccentric father who keeps his daughter locked inside. He creates an illusion that the outside will kill her through fear and propaganda. Coincidence or convenience? No.6 in the charts right now!
M. Night Shyamalan started it with ‘The Village’
Just watched it tonight! Entertaining mindless nonsense – even the missus stayed awake through it!. The father was right – it was no illusion – they were out to get them both if they ventured outside.
Had anyone seen the anti-Semitic tweets from the official BLMuk over the last day or so?
These views are the same as those anti-Semitic views the far left in labour were spouting, which the whole MSM would report every day.
I would advise those on here to make complaints to companies supporting BLM like Sky, the FA Premier League, eBay, PayPal, etc. If your a customer then it will hold more water.
I’ve started sending complaints already as there is no way I’m supporting a group with Nazi views.
Yep…I’ve been reading about this and it’s been discussed below.
Premier League are of course refusing to engage with the real Football Fans on this issue.
Cheezilla stated below (and this has the ring of truth about it for me):
I know someone who works in marketing dept. of
@premierleague
. The ‘off the record’ word is they’re SEVERELY regretting getting into bed with BLM & the kneeling nonsense. Their dilemma now is ‘how do we back out of this & save face?’ Many players also feel bullied into kneeling.
I can imagine it, there are some red faces now at these companies.
I have complained to Sky TV as they have forced a BLM app on the TV guide home page. I have told them they need to remove this from my setup as they are forcing political propganda onto me for an extremist group. I believe they may have breached their t’s and c’s doing this.
I was thinking re Sky that Rupert must be totally gaga otherwise I was sure he would have put a stop to it..But of course it is now owned by Comcast , who also own NBC one of the leftist American media brood. It’s difficult to imagine but I think the US news media is slightly worse than our own with the honourable exceptions of Fox and OAN.
Comcast sounds terribly corrupt from this (from Wikipedia):
“With $18.8 million spent in 2013, Comcast has the seventh largest lobbying budget of any individual company or organization in the United States. Comcast employs multiple former U.S. Congressmen as lobbyists. The National Cable & Telecommunications Association, which has multiple Comcast executives on its board, also represents Comcast and other cable companies as the fifth largest lobbying organization in the United States, spending $19.8 million in 2013. Comcast was among the top backers of Barack Obama‘s presidential runs, with Comcast vice president David Cohen raising over $2.2 million from 2007 to 2012″