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…
Discussion
Comments
This week across the site:
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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″
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.
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!
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
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.
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…
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… Read more »
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.
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%)
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.
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… Read more »
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.
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.
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.
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
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… Read more »
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.
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.
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!
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!
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’
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… Read more »
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… Read more »
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… Read more »
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.
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.
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 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… Read more »
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.
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..
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.
Theme tune suggestion: “Say it ain’t so (Bo) Joe” by Murray Head, although I prefer Roger Daltrey version.
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
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,… Read more »
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.
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.