Month: June 2020

My partner calls it "not-lockdown", because it's everything but. Freedom of movement is enshrined in the Mexican Constitution, and the Federal Government declared from Day One that it would not infringe upon those rights (imagine a Government respecting Constitutional rights these days!). I definitely appreciate the ability to leave the house at will, without having to explain myself to the authorities; but all non-essential businesses have been ordered to close, gatherings of more than 50 people are banned, churches and schools cannot meet, and public parks, beaches and tourist sites are off-limits. That doesn't leave much to do outside the home anyway. Furthermore, local governments are very powerful here, and many of them are defying Federal assurances by implementing curfews and enforcing quarantines. Some cities are even implementing alcohol bans (another practice the Federal Government has denounced), arguing that alcohol encourages domestic violence and socialisibng. Others, like our town, are screening everyone who enters to make sure they have local ID cards. We live on the outskirts of a small but popular tourist town near Mexico City. It's one of Mexico's most popular weekend getaway spots. In order to stop the tourists from coming, checkpoints have been set up at each of the two town entrances, with only locals allowed in. These checkpoints are run by local neighborhood watch-style groups, ...

Trying to write the daily update for Lockdown Sceptics when Caroline has left me in charge of the kids As regular readers of Lockdown Sceptics will know, there was no update on Tuesday or Thursday of this week. This led to all sorts of speculation, including that the site had been subject to a denial-of-service attack and that it had been shadow-banned by Google! In fact, I took Tuesday and Thursday off because I had to focus on preparing the Free Speech Union's legal challenge against Ofcom as well as pulling the papers together for next week's FSU board meting. I've also been neglecting my editorial duties at Quillette. That's my "day job", as it were, and doing Lockdown Sceptics has been more of a hobby. Continuing to do it every day just isn't sustainable – particularly if I want my marriage to Caroline to survive! So I'm going to be posting updates (and other material) on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays from now on, with weekend posts occasionally. I know a lot of you enjoy your regular dose of scepticism and I'm sorry I won't be able to provide it every day. But there's now a lot more of it about – in the Telegraph, for instance – and I'm confident that in due course even the Guardian and the ...

by David Crowe Masks are being widely recommended as protection against the COVID-19 virus, both to protect the wearer from infection and to protect others from those who do not know that they are infected. The trouble is that most of the scientific evidence and recommendations are against the use of masks by the general public, and some harms from wearing masks have been documented. Despite this, they are increasingly mandated. In some places you can’t walk around outside without a mask, and in others you can’t go inside a public space without a mask. Workers are often mandated to wear them – and now airline passengers, no matter the length of their flight. Evidence for the use of masks The strongest evidence for the use of masks is a Cochrane Collaboration review entitled “

Free Speech Union Asks Ofcom to Withdraw Censorious Coronavirus Guidance or Face Judicial Review Breakfast television presenter and dangerous thought criminal Eamonn Holmes In my capacity as the General Secretary of the Free Speech Union, I wrote to the Chief Executive of Ofcom Dame Melanie Dawes on April 24th to complain about its reprimand of Eamonn Holmes. According to the regulator, the breakfast television presenter had said something that "could have undermined people's trust in the views being expressed by the authorities on the Coronavirus and the advice of mainstream sources of public health information". Holmes’s sin, in Ofcom's eyes, was to say on ITV’s This Morning on April 13th that any theory running counter to the official Government line – such as the one linking 5G masts to COVID-19 – deserved to be discussed in the mainstream media. This was in spite of him saying the 5G conspiracy was “not true and incredibly stupid”. Ofcom said this view – the view that such theories deserved a public hearing, not that they were in any way right or plausible – was “ill-judged and risked undermining viewers’ trust in advice from public authorities and scientific evidence”. In my letter to Dame Melanie, I pointed out that if Ofcom is going to prohibit views being discussed on television that might risk undermining ...

by Mikko Paunio, MD (University of Helsinki), MHS (Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health), adjunct professor (general epidemiology) at the University of Helsinki At the heart of the WHO’s risk assessment, at the start of the pandemic, was the assumption that only 1% of those infected would show no symptoms.New data from China buttress fears about high coronavirus fatality rate, WHO expert saysCharacteristics of and Important Lessons From the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) Outbreak in China The claim that few of the infections would be symptomless – and thus that everyone would become ill and that many people would die – paved the way to weeks of horror stories on the BBC, CNN, and in the New York Times, the Washington Post and the Guardian. And even more sober outlets like the Financial Times and the Economist followed suit, with little by way of analysis of what was actually known. In fact, the WHO’s claim was quickly rebutted by a member of its own Infectious Disease Catastrophe Committee,New data from China buttress fears about high coronavirus fatality rate, WHO expert says but too late to prevent panic spreading. The result was a lockdown across much of the world, the collateral damage from which will do far more harm than the virus. A major serological survey from Spainhttps://www.lamoncloa.gob.es/serviciosdeprensa/notasprensa/sanidad14/Documents/2020/130520-ENE-COVID_Informe1.pdf now shows ...

Signal your opposition to the lockdown by buying this marvellous Lockdown Sceptics mug Finally, the Lockdown Skeptics shop is here! Yes, click on this link and you will be taken to the all-singing, all-dancing Lockdown Sceptics shop. I've also included a link in the top right-hand corner of every page. No need to wear a mask and no social distancing required! In addition to this splendid mug, we have T-shirts in all different colours, hoodies and tote bags. More merchandise will follow... The central motif – a British bulldog muzzled by a face mask – was designed by my 16 year-old daughter and turned into a proper logo by a professional illustrator. I've promised Sasha 10% of the profits so she can enjoy the summer after a miserable three months being under house arrest at our home in Acton. So please get your shopping trolleys out and go bananas. Help me turn the muzzled bulldog into this summer's must-have brand. YouTube Shadow-Bans Peter Hichens Peter Hitchens tells Triggernometry that this is the only face mask he'll consider wearing YouTube is at it again. Today, the company has been caught red-handed "shadow banning" an interview Peter Hitchens did on the Triggernometry channel entitled "Lockdown is a catastrophe". The interview was published at 6pm yesterday, but if you search for for "triggernometry ...

by Kaatje van der Gaarden Albuquerque Mayor Keller, like most politicians, is mistaken. In emails to his denizens, he declares “We’re in this together, because… we are One Albuquerque.” Uh, no. Those with mental or physical disabilities too young to benefit from Senior Resources will find no help at the city’s website. When my caregivers stopped showing up I lied to the non-profit Mutual Aid that I was a senior citizen, just so they’d pity me and drop off a roll of toilet paper and two packages of ramen noodles. Which is more than migrant and day labourers in India have, so I’m grateful. Yet at this point, no-one can deny the long-term effects of lockdown: domestic violence, suicide, child abuse, poverty and despair. Hundreds of thousands of special needs children require in-person education and socialization: online learning is not an option, neither is it for those in an unstable family without laptops, tablets or a reliable internet connection. As a (disabled) Dutch-American Physician Assistant I was already alarmed at the state of US mental health – in the last twenty years, our suicide rate has increased by 35% to an exceptional annual total of 48,000 deaths. We must acknowledge the poor in Level 3 and 4 countries are experiencing a massive decline in maternal health care, TB, pneumonia, malaria ...