Round-Up
No time for an update today, but here’s a round-up of all the stories I’ve noticed, or which have been been brought to my attention, in the last 24 hours (and a special thanks to Mitesh Kariah who has been tirelessly flagging stories up for me for months):
- ‘How to Talk to People Who Won’t Wear Face Masks‘ – Unintentionally amusing piece in Teen Vogue about how to talk crazy non-mask wearers back from the precipice
- ‘Public Health England’s exaggerated death statistics are a scandal that has fed fear‘ – Strong stuff from Matthew Lesh in the Telegraph
- ‘“Game-changing” coronavirus antibody test passes first major trials‘ – New finger-prick test that is 98.6% accurate, apparently
- ‘The media’s Jihad against Sweden’s no-lockdown policy ignores key policy facts‘ – Good post by Ryan McMaken for the Mises Institute blog
- ‘Google will ban ads from running on stories spreading debunked coronavirus conspiracy theories‘ – Does this mean Google is demonetising the WHO?
- ‘Free speech and civil rights go hand in hand‘ – Timely reminder from Kevin Yuill in Spiked that free speech and minority rights are complementary and not in opposition to each other
- ‘Wales is planning for a nightmare scenario with coronavirus this winter‘ – God help the Welsh
- ‘Parents should stop worrying about making their children socially distance‘ – Good piece by Rosa Silverman in the Telegraph
- ‘Man charged with fraudulently claiming $9m in coronavirus relief and gambling with it in Las Vegas‘ – At least someone’s having fun
- ‘No wonder this committee thinks it runs the country‘ – Juliet Samuel takes aim at SAGE
- ‘Why coronavirus deaths remain low in the US despite surge in new cases‘ – Mandatory reading for bed-wetters
- ‘My husband’s drinking problem hit in lockdown‘ – No, it’s not by Mrs Young. Quiet at the back
- ‘Hatred of Donald Trump is warping news, warns BBC’s Jon Sopel‘ – He’s not wrong
- ‘IRS Announces Taxpayers Can Make Checks Directly Payable To Any Corporation Or Billionaire They Want This Year‘ – Did someone say “Bailout”? Nice piece in the Onion
- ‘English universities must prove “commitment” to free speech for bailouts’ – Excellent news in the Guardian
Theme Tune Suggestions by Readers
Only one today: “Witchfinder General” by Carl Douglas
Small Businesses That Have Re-Opened
A few weeks ago, Lockdown Sceptics launched a searchable directory of open businesses across the UK. The idea is to celebrate those retail and hospitality businesses that have re-opened, as well as help people find out what has opened in their area. But we need your help to build it, so we’ve created a form you can fill out to tell us about those businesses that have opened near you. Now that non-essential shops have re-opened – or most of them, anyway – we’re now focusing on pubs, bars, clubs and restaurants, as well as other social venues. As of July 4th, many of them have re-opened too, but not all. Please visit the page and let us know about those brave folk who are doing their bit to get our country back on its feet – particularly if they’re not insisting on face masks! Don’t worry if your entries don’t show up immediately – we need to approve them once you’ve entered the data.
Note to the Good Folks Below the Line
I enjoy reading all your comments and I’m glad I’ve created a “safe space” for lockdown sceptics to share their frustrations and keep each other’s spirits up. But please don’t copy and paste whole articles from papers that are behind paywalls in the comments. I work for some of those papers and if they don’t charge for premium content they won’t survive.
I know it becomes difficult to navigate the comment threads after 24 hours. One alternative to continuing to post below my updates is to move to our new Lockdown Sceptics Forums, which webmaster Ian Rons has just created. You’ll need to verify your email address before you can start posting, but they should be relatively easy to navigate. Apologies for not creating them sooner. Any problems, email Ian here. Or just email him to thank him for creating such a great website.
Gone Fishing Bit
Thanks as always to those of you who made a donation recently to pay for the upkeep of this site. If you feel like donating, however small the amount, please click here. But I’m on holiday until Saturday, July 25th and won’t be doing much work on this site for a week. If you want to flag up any stories or links I should include in future updates, email me here.
Salem 2.0
I thought I’d give my readers something to chew on while I’m on a break: Salem 2.0: The Return of the Religious Police to the Public Square. This is a book about cancel culture that I’ve been working on for a while now, but which took a back seat during the coronavirus crisis. Hoping to get back to it as the crisis recedes – although that’s happening more slowly than I hoped. It’s a work in progress, so don’t expect too much. The shape of it should be pretty clear, however.
To join in with the discussion please make a donation to The Daily Sceptic.
Profanity and abuse will be removed and may lead to a permanent ban.
Hi all
Still tweaking my idea.
https://www.lockdowntruth.org/post/i-have-an-idea-let-me-know-what-you-think
Which do you like MORE?
WE WILL BE FREE
OR
WAKE UP BE FREE
Thanks
LT
WE WILL BE FREE works for me
Wake up be freeis what I`d go forBe free.
We will BE FREE
Wake up BE FREE
BE FREE.
Don’t know where I’m going with that. Be free has a nice ring coukd it be interchangeable. Could groups affiliating ‘pre-tag’ … such and such BE FREE.
Overly complex perhaps.
Wake Up is effectively saying “you’re an idiot”
We Will is more inclusive
Lol
I prefer the latter. WE WILL BE FREE puts that firmly in the future – which makes it a little too distant for me
A thought, but possibly not suitable for your plans, Live Life. Be Free – or vice versa.
WE WILL BE FREE
Right now we are not free, we don’t need to wake up…
I know but the majority do
Good luck trying to reason with the majority… :
Simon Dolan could buy billboards mocking them..
You can’t reason with whom has a plan to kill you…
Haha that’s a great saying!
Just adding a tip:
My wife is a state worker and give me the usual: what is the big problem using a mask?
The only way I reasoned with her was pointing out that the muzzles use extendend to everyone, could lead to higyene problems, people can’t afford to buy etc etc… and that she could end breathing a cocktail of virus and bacterias from the sourrounding shopers rotten masks.
worked as a charm…
by the way an Oxford circus led panel bitching people about: ‘When was the last time you changed your muzzle? You naugty little dirty pig’
/ sorry for the english I’m from Lisbon
Here i am with the novel suggestions. How about: “You’re free. Just wake up.”
How about just reminding people…
YOU ARE FREE
or
YOU ARE NOT FREE!
Now we are talking!
This is false.
Live from whatever freedom you have NOW – if you value freedom. Just because you cant DO what you want and can blame this on whatever – does not mean you are not alive, conscious and able to both give and receive the meaning that you accept as true.
But while you seek freedom somewhere or somewhen else – you are acting from belief in un-freedom and grievance and reinforcing it.
Look at it another way – how you live and die is within a relam of freedom to experience. You are unique – or you can mask in the herd as if freedom from being singled out is in fact freedom to be who you truly are.
You are also free to feel all that you feel and uncover your part in generating the result.
I appreciate the circumstance is one of great or deep disturbance.
Hmm. I like WAKE UP BE FREE. It’s immediate and makes you think. “Who, me? Am I asleep?” . “We will be free” is a bit more “yeah, yeah, OK, and then again, the way things are going, maybe we won’t”.
I really like the caged bird logo, btw.
Thanks.
You get what I mean about the wake up angle.
How about The Who ‘I’m Free and I’m waiting for you to follow me’…
…and freedom tastes, of reality!
Hurray for The Who, not the WHO.
I may go with We Will Be Free as even if everyone wakes up we may still have to fight for our freedom!
I applaud your efforts. Unfortunately some sheep don’t read anything anti covid but just swallow the propaganda. I’m not sure that many people will identify the artwork and wording as an anti lockdown movement. It’s not clear enough. Sorry!
I’d go for number 2
I love it, tell me where to sign. Need a London chapter?
Consider yourself signed up! Which part of London are you in? We have SW covered. Email me at mail (at) lockdowntruth.org
Thanks
But that SW isn’t set in stone it could be made more local if you were in SW too. Or you could oversee the whole of London!
FREEDOM !
(Why faff about ?)
It might get confused with the Wham! song…
Take these lies and make them true – somehow.
Is the problem.
But seeing it clearly is the release of lies as a basis for truth – and truth of itself is the answer.
Only by those who have a clue what that is …
(I’m forever blowing bubbles ?)
I said on yesterday’s update that you’re nicking this (We will be free) from RDawg who has done invaluable work here and on Twitter (even brave enough to publish a photo of himself with Dellingpole.) Please don’t queer his patch.
I have cleared this with RDawg.
So technically your post is very insulting.
How is it technically insulting? Is that different from other insulting? And how would I know you’d cleared it with him? Maybe, technically, you’ve just thrown a tantrum
Hold up guys. Last thing I want is an argument. Remember, we are all on the same side
Bella, thank you for pointing this out and for sticking up for me. Lockdown did contact me yesterday and ask if we could join forces. We have come to a provisional agreement.
Personally I’m not too concerned about the name being used elsewhere/duplicates. My endgame has always been to get the message out by as many means as possible in order to instigate change. I don’t have the means to set up a website and put as much time in as I’d like. I’ve also (regrettably) had to remove all posts with my photo from my Twitter profile because I was getting a lot of personal abuse.
Funnily enough I was actually thinking about changing the name of my Twitter profile anyway. I have a few ideas up my sleeve…
XTC recorded a song in the 80s titled ‘Wake Up’.
Both:
WE WILL WAKE UP AND BE FREE
I still quite like “Our Lives, Our Futures” or “Lives B4 Lies”.
Really hard to get a catchy name that everyone likes.
My favourite one so far has been “Us For Them” which is the schools campaign to prevent masks being made mandatory for pupils.
Go with your gut/ instincts.
How about “Take Back Your Freedom!”
WAKE UP BE FREE…. if it offends them and makes them feel like fucking morons, good. They should feel like fucking morons.
Reject fear
chose freedom
live life
Fear is the virus
Sorry but this entire slogan is nonsensical to anyone other than a committed lockdown sceptic – the whole point is that covid enthusiasts think they ARE free and any restrictions are temporary and entirely justified. They could tout a similar slogan against sceptics – WAKE UP, BE RESPONSIBLE. How would you feel if you read that? That being a sceptic makes you irresponsible?
By all means go ahead if you believe pinning your colours to a tribal mast is what you want to achieve – but if it’s changing hearts and minds then something less confrontational is much more likely to succeed.
You mustn’t use the future tense, because tomorrow never comes. In order to manifest a desire you have to put the desire into the present, so I would say; “WE ARE NOT SLAVES; WE ARE FREE.”
Just my thoughts.
Toby … Correction on your 4 Yorkshiremen. That photo is from “At Last the 1948 Show” which predates Monty Python. Cleese Chapman, Feldman and Brooke Taylor .
We Yorkshiremen take our cultural references seriously
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_nL6isGPhzk
Aye up – younger then as well!
Ah, but I was so much older then
I’m younger than that now
I also believe it was written by the late great Tim Brooke-Taylor and therefore is totally unrelated to Monty Python.
The Winton Centre for Maths at Cambridge University published some interesting data recently. Amongst other things it showed that up until July 3rd 15 people under the age of 19 had died with the coronavirus but also that in 2014/15 116 people under 19 had died of flu.
The new test that can identify the presence of coronavirus also can detect the presence of flu virus.
What are the odds that come this winter we’ll have the prospect of schools being closed and towns lockeddown because there’s a spike in flu virus?
In 2017/18 there were 50,000 excess deaths due, mainly, to flu. In Leicester the city was shut down, I don’t believe there was any increase in hospital admissions, no increase in deaths, if it was OK to shut a city down in those circumstances how much more likely for flu? Where does it end?
Indeed
Large portions of the human race, predominantly in rich countries, seem to have an utterly bizarre idea of what life is all about
I want nothing to do with them any more
I agree. The Romans talked of supplying the masses with “bread and circuses” to keep them happy and docile. Bread and circuses has now become Deliveroo and Netflix – but the truth of that phrase has never been more apparent.
And will have the same ultimate end. We even have a version of barbarians at the gates!
It’s alright – I saw a Roman Centurion marching through Chester today – he’ll sort them out. He was wearing a facemask – which I don’t think is entirely historically accurate.
I agree Nick. I’m really dreading next winter. People are going to be paranoid about catching anything, let alone COVID. Anyone with the sniffles will be told to isolate until spring. 2022.
Toby – re the story above about FoS and Academic Freedom Bill. Wouldn’t it be nice if it was made law that any “Diversity” role appointee in FE (or ideally in any institution) was also made responsible for upholding the concept of “diversity of thought” .. i.e Freedom of Speech within that institution. Would be fun to see them tying each other and themselves in knots (i.e the old woke “what do we do if a muslim is not nice to a gay person” dilemma)
That calendar in Toby’s blog says it all, we have lost months of freedom.
And there’s plenty more to come!
Indeed.
Patrick O’Flynn article in The Telegraph:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2020/08/03/plot-afoot-against-heavy-handed-covid-schemes-like-shielding/
This is the most popular comment on the article – I especially like the closing sentences:
‘8 people died of Covid this weekend, shall I say that again 8 people, even then half of them probably really died from one of those reasons mentioned above. And the Government is seriously considering incarcerating half the population for this when more people are dying through lack of any treatment from the NHS, which has closed down to focus on Covid!
Get a grip and get this country working again. And the Government can stick their germ ridden face rags where the sun doesn’t shine.’
I find the situation in Australia really worrying. Previously we’ve been able to say, Spain never totally got rid of fascism, and most countries on the European continent have a Napoleonic legal system, etc etc. But I always thought Australia had a tradition of freedom largely derived from the UK. So if oppressive authoritarian dictatorship can take over there, the same could happen here. The fundamental problem seems to be that most of the population accept or even welcome this as a necessary reaction to the perceived problem of Covid-19. Analogies with Nazi Germany are often overdone, but most Germans welcomed Hitler as a strong leader whom they saw as the man to deal with the problems of that time. We know how that worked out.
Australia does indeed look particularly scary. I have been watching the dissent into authoritarianism on “The Crowhouse” channel. I didn’t think the Australians would go along with this but they have completely brought into the new plague narrative, then again I didn’t think the UK would either!
Agreed. I thought Australians wouldn’t put up with this nonsense. Quite shocked.
Australia has been uber-woke for quite a while, though.
Some areas are at the forefront of mandating vaccines.
I am completely taken aback at how completely the Australians have bought into the narrative (I am from Melbourne myself) The fact that we have meekly accepted the most draconian of all lockdowns is all the more surprising, considering we have been one of the least affected countries. I can’t help but wonder if the fact that we are so compliant has made us a sort of “test case ” for how far this can go.
Storm Government House and forcefully remove all the deplorables inside it.
Nat if you read this, do you know of any groups of lockdown skeptics in Australia? I’m from Australia too and feel very isolated by the madness of all this.
Not in Australia but at least Down Under – in NZ. Happy to make contact.
Hi Trish. I’d love to have some interaction with anyone down in this part of the planet who objects to what is going on. Do you know of any online places where people like us congregate? There are a few Australians on Off-Guardian, but generally it seems like the number of skeptics in Australia is really tiny. My impression of New Zealand is that it’s the same.
Find me on a FB group I have started up called NZers Border Strategies Discussion Group. We can make contact that way and go from there. If you don’t use FB we can think of another way.
Oh good for you taking action on that front. I’m not on FB, though.
Unfortunately I don’t Sally. I haven’t seen any dissent in the media either but will have a careful look and post here if I find anything. Today I am going to be post comments under articles about the Victoria infection rates, about the increase in testing.
Thanks for replying, Nat. Nice to have some Antipodean input here, anyway. Good luck with everything going on in Victoria. I’m not in Victoria, but I fear that the rest of the country will eventually endure what you’re experiencing. The constant eradication talk is just a tragic delusion.
/r/lockdownskeptics on Reddit. There isn’t any dissent in Aus media apart from SkyNews but that’s not exactly a respected source of news. I commented on articles as well but they won’t listen.
So am I. Only on Reddit /r/lockdownskeptics
I think history has conveniently eroded the extent to which fascism had sympathy here in Britain in the 30s and how seriously a deal with Hitler was considered. I wouldn’t underestimate the strength of “law and order” sentiment in this country. Proof is in the many little commisars around only to eager to remind you of the rules.
Yes, I think it was almost mainstream in the 1930s to think “In these troublesome times we need a strong leader”. In the UK some people took that view but with our traditionally irreverent attitudes to people in power Oswald Mosley was seen as a somewhat ridiculous figure and never came close to serious political power. Maybe the same attitude to Johnson will save us. A deal with Hitler was undoubtedly considered in high places and might have happened if he had been less crazy. (Questions for debate: Was Hitler clinically insane? Is Johnson clinically insane?)
The supposedly liberal and freedom valuing Anglo-Saxon countries are the real, huge disappointment in this whole saga.
I was amazed by all the articles last week criticising Belarus (agitating for regime change) – I know the leadership isn’t ideal – but it has been one of the most free countries in the Europe this year. The West can hardly attack other countries on civil liberties any more, the US ‘land of the free’ has been particularly dreadful.
I don’t know much about Belarus and my gut feel is that I wouldn’t like it there much, and I used to love England very deeply, but honestly right now very little else matters to me, because our govt and many citizens have utterly lost the plot and want to live some alien form of life that isn’t for me
The US of A is what it says, a collection of 50-odd different governments.
The legal makeup of the country is a federation of states.
That is one reason why the covid=related railing against Trump is basically pointless.
What Trump should do is fire Fauci and hire someone sensible to weigh all the science and initiate an adult debate in the media about exactly what different statistics, studies on mask effectiveness, studies on different medications actually mean.
But the media are owned by factions who like things just as they are.
The mainstream media are happy spreading the panic narrative.
If anyone has noticed its ‘free’ western nations where this is happening. I don’t know of any country (I’m not including China) outside the ‘free’ west where governments are still behaving like this. When will people understand that THEY have the power of numbers to overwhelm their tinpot would be dictators?
Interesting to note that China never locked down as a country (just the one province, though very stringently), and that it no longer requires masks in places like cinemas in its bid to return to normality!
FAR more interesting to note that no province outside Hubei got the ‘virus’ in meaningful numbers at any point this year.
Those ‘free’ nations are the main target of this operation.
What I see here (Portugal) is that all the ‘establishment’ parties are in the lockdown muzzles etc narrative… the media was bought again with fresh 13 mil state advertizing money, the pensions were raised, public workers got a raise too.
In my own opinion they can’t do otherwise or the IMFs ECBs would stop lending with bullshit interest rates; to cut it short all this clown act is above prime ministers paygrade.
Remember the stock markets implosion some days before european lockdowns and your pound also took a beating before Boris did some 180º turn…
This is all way much to bad for most people to accept what is happening…
( I follow UK close because I have two kids working and studying in London)
Boris J and his white associates advised by the white SAGE committee with input from middle aged white academics (Fergusson) instituted a lockdown which specifically killed blacks and minorities and saved the high-income white neighbourhood.
Do you think this could be true and that it should be in the papers with this headline?
Perhaps it should, look at this graph
https://twitter.com/jyangstar/status/1289940943462895616
This is a graph to be shown for PC minded . Lockdown in Ontario reduces C-19 for rich white areas
“Lockdown *instantly* flattened the curve for Toronto richest/whitest areas. For poorest/most racialized (top 2 lines), it kept rising.”
Intuitively it makes sense. Minorities are over represented in the essential services but most importantly live in small spaces in a multi-generational households.C-19 spreads best in household. Can you think of a better way for a virus to spread if you lock in these households together for weeks in a lockdown? I can’t.
We will of course not see these headlines and MSM will stop all this information. But how long can Labour keep silent about the Public Health Disaster of the lockdowns?
I normally disapprove of politicians abusing race to gain political advantage, but there may be something in this, and even if there isn’t, anything that hurts our enemies works for me right now.
Agree but this was irony but the facts are interesting
Doesn’t quite fit with them at the same time facilitating the Channel migrant taxi service..
I tried pointing this out to friends at the start of lockdown, as well as the other problems it would cause. 6 months later and I feel I may have brain damage from banging my head against the wall.
I’m Cornish (Newquay area) and did my weekly shop at Aldi last week. Not many people in the store, one other without a mask and no glares or reaction from the mask wearers. I won’t use Morrisons or Sainsbury’s as I’ve been ticked off by both of them for minor infractions of the ‘rules’ before masks came in!
I haven’t been in the centre of town but am happy to report (from what I’ve heard) that most people are ignoring all the social distancing rules – much to my sister’s disgust!.
Can’t read the Christopher Snowden article above about this being a rerun of the Brexit wars as it’s behind a paywall, but it has struck me that, in many ways, the Brexit Debate was similar to what we are going through now. I voted leave. I was living in Spain at the time and sent off for a postal vote. Whenever I met with friends or came to the U.K. for a visit, it was very difficult to be a Brexiteer. It was like admitting that you were an ardent racist or child molester. You were shouted down immediately and had to defend yourself vigorously. Then came the referendum and all the closet Brexiteers came out of their closets to vote leave. No-one was more surprised than me that leave won.
I just hope that something similar happens this time with Coronavirus and that all the lockdown sceptics are just waiting for a chance to emerge maskless from their closets and surprise me again-hopefully sooner rather than later. Am I being too optimistic?
I keep hoping the same Margaret. I experienced this with Brexit too, everyone apart from my office colleagues were for staying in the EU, everything posted on social media was about what a disaster it would be if we left etc etc.
And the same is happening with this. What worries me with this is how it’s really dividing people up and due to the fear the government has put out we don’t need divisions, ideally we need unity. But as everyone for lockdowns, masks, social distancing etc I can’t see an easy end to this.
I think it’s much much worse than Brexit. The stakes are way higher, and it’s global. And the fear factor is higher because people think their lives are at risk.
Ideally we’d all stay and fight. If you can’t stomach that, I guess leaving the country for somewhere saner is an option, if you’re able. The third option is to take a happy pill and forget about it all, but I don’t think there’s a pill strong enough to make me think it’s not all madness.
Yep, the single worst ‘enemy’ we face is the fear of instant death posessed by the sheep. Although it’s completely misguided, it’s real to them, and that’s a powerful motivator.
I am pretty convinced there are a LOT of people who really aren’t personally scared now, if they ever were, but they think it’s all going to go away soon and that there’s some threat than requires an extraordinary response – they just don’t connect stuff because they are apathetic and well fed
Sadly, the Leave voters were, and are still being, ignored. Rather like real science is just now.
I was a staunch Remainer…. not ignoring Leavers anymore. In fact, if we had to vote again, I am really uncertain whether I would vote Leave or Remain.
I think this will be a slower awakening. But I believe it will come.
Exactly the same here.
The expat remainers, the vast majority, almost to a (wo)man, are the new muzzle fanatics.
Even mild expression of a contrary view risks ostracism.
But they are certain all will be back to normal “When we get The Vaccine”.
I didn’t consider in increase new cases of coronavirus in Melbourne could be is due to a corresponding increase in testing – thank you for that thought Toby.
I can’t help but think that means the Government has the ability can increase the number of cases at whim to keep the public compliant. If that’s the case, it is certainly working. The response to the number of daily deaths is a source of panic and despair for everyone I know, and they are terrified to leave their homes for even the time allowed for exercise.
“There were seven deaths yesterday. Seven !”
I wonder what they think kept funeral parlours busy in pre – covid times ?
All over 70 and I don’t know what their comorbidities were if any.
Where do you usually get your “news”?
Less and less from the mainstream media !
That’s better and better for your sanity! Just look what listening to the MSM does to your (and our) compatriots.
“that means the Government has the ability can increase the number of cases at whim to keep the public compliant” Absolutely. That is exactly what our and other governments are doing. Even the BBC’s Newsnight said this (not the compliance bit, but the rest).
And we now know they’re harvesting DNA at the same time and likely making a database to give to Palantir..
Just a reminder that it’s flu season in Australia now…
.
Just had a FOI request back from a local council and it is very interesting.
Either they have deliberately given me incorrect answers or do not know the relevant legislation or are trying o shirk responsibility and bounce it back to central Government.
The question was about them not using the Public Health (Control of Disease) Act 1984 to enforce business restrictions but verbally browbeating small business owners into thinking the verbal discussions on guidelines was all.
Their answers:
1. The name of the “proper person” that is designated for this role.
Public Health England (PHE) not the Local Authority.
In the act it keeps mentioning “proper person”a nd local authorities”, not PHE. E.g.:
Authorities administering Act(1)
Subject to subsection (4) below, it shall be the duty of each of the following authorities—
(a)
a district council,
(b)
a London borough council,
(c)
the Common Council of the City of London, and
(d)
the Sub-Treasurer of the Inner Temple and the Under Treasurer of the Middle Temple,
to carry this Act into execution in their district.
(2)
In this Act, except where it is otherwise expressly provided, ” local authority ” means an authority mentioned in subsection (1) above.
2. How many notices has this person issued.
3. The names of the Justices of the Peace who countersigned the notices.
In response to questions 2 and 3; we do not hold this information as PHE is the proper
officer.
Incorrect, it is there responsibility of the “local authority”, not PHE.
e.g. On the application of the proper officer of the local authority for any district
4. The actual reliable and accurate test used to confirm the individual or premises is infected or
contaminated with the disease as stated.
Antigen PCR test.
I can find PCR tests and I can find antigen test on an internet search, not an antigen PCR test so I think they have them wrong test name/description.
I think a letter back to them is in order s they are wrong on nearly every count.
Just fired this off to the council:
Thank you for the response to the FOI request TWC-55243 but your answers are incorrect and are not in line with the legislation so the Council needs to address this serious matter.
Question 1:
Q – The name of the “proper person” that is designated for this role.
A – Public Health England (PHE) not the Local Authority.
Under the Public Health (Control of Disease) Act 1984 that the original question from myself was in relation to, Public Health England is NOT responsible for enforcement, it clearly states in many places “The local authority shall give notice” not Public Health England or “On the application of the proper officer of the local authority for any district”
Questions 2 and 3 have the same answer.
Q – How many notices has this person issued.
Q – The names of the Justices of the Peace who countersigned the notices.
A – In response to questions 2 and 3; we do not hold this information as PHE is the proper officer.
Under the Public Health (Control of Disease) Act 1984 that the original question from myself was in relation to Public Health England is NOT responsible for enforcement, it clearly states:
PART IAdministrative ProvisionsGeneral administration1Authorities administering Act(1)
Subject to subsection (4) below, it shall be the duty of each of the following authorities—
(a)
a district council,
(b)
a London borough council,
(c)
the Common Council of the City of London, and
(d)
the Sub-Treasurer of the Inner Temple and the Under Treasurer of the Middle Temple,
to carry this Act into execution in their district.
(2)
In this Act, except where it is otherwise expressly provided, ” local authority ” means an authority mentioned in subsection (1) above.
It also states in more than one place “If a justice of the peace (acting, if he deems it necessary, ex parte) is satisfied, on a written certificate issued by a registered medical practitioner nominated by the local authority for a district”.
Question 4:
Q – The actual reliable and accurate test used to confirm the individual or premises is infected or contaminated with the disease as stated.
A – Antigen PCR test.
I can not find anything called an Antigen PCR test doing internet searches. There is a test called a PCR test and a test called an Antigen test and they are different so you have given me an answer that states you use a test that in effect cannot be proved to exist using the name you have called it.
FYI: https://mdmedicalgroup.us/2020/06/29/pcr-test-vs-antigen-test/
So which test do you use?
It is clear that the onus for enforcing the Public Health (Control of Disease) Act 1984 and following all protocls as required for isolating individuals, closing or restricting premises, serving notices and paying compensation does not reside with Public Health England but quite clearly with “local authorities”.
Can you please explain your original answers with the above in mind?
I look forward to your reply with clarifications.
formidable!
This is gold, would you also send this to Toby and post it in the forum? I think what we need to do is collate all these, so when we have the accurate information we can create templates, then everyone here, just fires a letter off to their local council, or CCG or whoever, and we start making a nuisance of ourselves. I think you are right and the gov kicked it back to the local authority (Simon Dolan had a hair dresser shared on twitter, who did this and got them to admit they had no authority to enforce anything and she’s trading with no restrictions). Sounds boring, but letter writing really changes things. I’m the person who asked about NHS appointments today in the update, I really am determined to get to the bottom of where the suspension of local NHS medical apts is coming from, and who is accountable.
Bec, I don’t know whether this is helpful or not, but the other day I had a letter from my GP Practice which said that they wanted to let me know of a service they are providing with “SDHC” – our local “GP Federation”. “Livi is a video GP mobile app that is available on the NHS to patients of this practice” it goes on about how to get the app and what it does which is apparently an “easy way to get a same-day NHS GP appointment” (note it doesn’t say you see your own GP) and enables seeing the GP by video. Then it ends with “If you prefer to book an appointment directly with the practice you can still contact us through all the normal channels”. (phew, that’s ok then).
So, it seems that maybe the GPs are all interpreting things differently. I havent tried to make a face to face appointment as I don’t need one, so to be honest I am not sure whether that would be as normal or not.
Thanks, yes that’s what I’m trying to find out, where does the buck stop and who is responsible for risk assessing and equality impact assessing these services before they decide on service structure. It seems mad to me that doctors just stop offering proper appointments, that surely means someone somewhere did a risk assessment and decided the risk of covid was so grave, the attendant drop in quality and breadth of services was justified. If that falls on the individual GP (it surely must???) then it’s quite simple to terrify them into offering proper services, once we’ve got our facts straight.
Stephen at Law or Fiction isn’t very interested in the law of risk assessment
*IS very interested
Why does spellchecker change is to isn’t? Reversing the meaning of the sentence?!!
It just changed does to doesn’t as well!!
haha, I’ve emailed them, no reply yet, but I put a comment on their risk assessment piece and it was awaiting moderation, and when I looked today it’s removed. So dunno, maybe I’m barking up the wrong tree?
Disable it. Look in a dictionary instead.
This REAKS of a Matt Handjob conflict of interest.
Isn’t he involved with lots of health apps financially?
Wouldn’t it be great for him to get an NHS contract for one or more of them?
Needs investigating – he cannot be impartial if he has financial interests in all developments of new tech like apps..
Reeks.
Conflict of interest.
From within, it’s apparent that the NHS management is trying to stop me seeing patients by not giving me clinic rooms and by trying to force phone appointments only. You can’t safely medically assess and diagnose a patient over the phone, assuming they are even able to talk and understand, and this applies perhaps even more so in a hospital setting where patients have been referred by their GP’s for specialist assessment. In terms of accountability, you can bet any fallout will come to me and not the management. I’m failing to understand why they want to reduce the quality of the service, and stop previously admired services such as joint clinics between professionals for example. It is heartbreaking, and patients will come to harm. I have even resorted to seeing urgent patients in the car park or corridors, and am becoming unpopular for questioning the “direction of travel”.
Just fyi, “antigen PCR test” is the (scientifically inaccurate) name that officials seem to have settled on to describe the standard Covid-19 tests (more accurately qPCR carried out on reverse-transcribed viral RNA).
The term antigen seems to have been added to distinguish the tests from antibody tests, but in this case it is incorrect as viral RNA does not induce an immune response (bacterial DNA can, so could be classed as an antigen).
Amazon Prime Video have a sense of humour! They say you can either immerse yourself in a dystopian nightmare OR watch The Handmaid’s Tale
Just out Int Journal of Inf Dis
https://www.ijidonline.com/article/S1201-9712(20)30598-1/fulltext
“School closure carried out in Japan did not show any mitigating effect on the transmission of novel coronavirus infection.”
That’ll be ignored then.
Japan will have to join Sweden on the naughty step
Hi
Does anybody have any experience or knowledge of how this lunacy impinges on the freedoms of people with Learning Disabilities please? My profoundly autistic, non verbal son, lives in a residential home about 23 miles from me. He enjoyed coming home once a week to myself or his mother. For nearly the last 4 months he has been denied that. When I asked to start bringing him home again was told to make do with Skype or if I insisted he would have to self quarantine in his bedroom for 2 weeks…!! My MP is tentatively involved and the Local Public Health seemingly have no issues. We live in Lincolnshire by the way, which has had 10 deaths I believe. Before I go ballistic I just want to make sure that I had all angles covered. All the best and good luck to everyone
I have nothing to help you with your problem unfortunately, I just wanted to send you good luck for a happy outcome.
That’s appalling. Under Human Rights legislation don’t we all have an entitlement to a private and family life? Would seem to me that your son is being denied that.
Even some convicted criminals in prison are allowed to have visitors again.
I would email the solicitor that Toby has on the bottom of each post (if you look at it without comments enabled), I think some of this falls on the CQC? I am the person who asked the question on NHS apts in today’s update, my quest is similar to yours in that I want to know on what legal basis they’ve mothballed most NHS services, and what are the PSED (equality impact assessments) and Risk assessment obligations and on whom do they fall (ie individual services, or does the buck stop further up or both). I was reading the other day that all they said about visits not being allowed had no legal basis, I suspect with all of it, it’s on really shaky ground. I’d ask a solicitor, I have a strong feeling in my bones all this is just guidance, and organisations and institutions are over reaching, and are not within their rights to do that as it’s not law.
PS this is interesting, notice what they say about the legal basis of risk http://www.laworfiction.com/2020/07/risk-assessments-an-important-chink-in-the-lockdown-armour/
“it does not in law constitute a ‘serious and imminent danger’” – I don’t know who is responsible currently for risk assessing your son’s situation, one would think it would be the home, but if they’ve risk assessed it that the risk to his welfare by locking him up is LESS THAN the risk of covid, then that’s not right. If they’ve concluded they can impact his quality of life etc because the risk of covid is so grave, then I think you probably have a lever to argue that’s a load of old bobbins.
You say he is living in a care home. Legally, that is his home. The care home has no power to prevent him leaving the property is he so wishes. To do so would be a “Deprivation of Liberty” as in the Mental Health Act 2005. Presumably his care plan includes a “Deprivation of Liberty Safeguards assessment. If it doesn’t, it should.
However you might want to check out.
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/covid-19-supporting-adults-with-learning-disabilities-and-autistic-adults
which may provide more ammunition (or otherwise!) for your fight.
Good luck.
They’ve changed all that though, they brought in emergency mental health legislation? They’ve also suspended care rights for disabled people. I know Simon Dolan’s case is important, but I do think we’ll achieve more by picking off each bit of madness one by one. I’ve spent days trying to understand the legal basis for suspending NHS appointments, it’s almost impossible to find out.
“suspended care rights”…… can you post the relevant reference please?
As far as I can discover, the changes to the Care Act relate to the duty to provide care. Information on the CQC website may also be a useful reference point although it might not say what you would like it to!
https://www.cqc.org.uk/publications/major-report/covid-19-insight-issue-3
This is from the Corona Virus Act 2020, but that was revoked on 3rd July and replaced with Corona Virus Act 2020 Part 2 so what I don’t know is where you stand now https://www.disabilityrightsuk.org/news/2020/march/suspension-care-act-act-immediately
Do you have access to an advocacy organization? In Lincolnshire I come up with http://www.voiceability.org which provides assistance to people using adult care or mental health services. I used to be a mental health advocate in Scotland and this is the sort of thing we used to deal with. I don’t know how helpful people are right now, but it is worth asking if they can either help or refer you.
Three reputable alternative media outlets in Germany report that attendance figures at the demo yesterday were much, much higher, many hundreds of thousands people seem the most plausible figure.
Even a former MSM star journo, Peter Hahne, is disgusted at the cover-up and absolutely incorrect framing of the demo and its participants by the MSM, politicians and the police.
There is also video at KenFM today, which gives one a good idea about the sort of people attending it: normal people with entirely legitimate but completely ignored concerns.
https://www.tichyseinblick.de/meinungen/grossdemo-berlin-wieviele-teilnehmer-faire-medien/
https://www.achgut.com/artikel/berliner_grossdemo_die_parteien_wittern_gefahr
https://www.nachdenkseiten.de/?p=63529
The MSM and the politicians ignore all that, of course, but those stories are now becoming wildly shared and many, many more people have now started to smell the rat.
The MSM might just have done our cause a huge favour and started to dig its own grave.
Definitely a MSM to frame protestors as far right and silence opposition. Look at the size of the protest in London on Saturday, yet complete media silence. The only way we can get the truth out is to share coverage ourselves. The Telegraph had an article at the weekend about a drinks party held by Goldman Sachs back in May they were so short of propaganda to publish.
I complained to the BBC about lack of coverage of the UK protest and about the use of the terms “far right” and “conspiracy theorist” in the report of the Berlin protest.
This has just dawned on me, probably everyone else had realised this earlier, but one of the reasons that the BBC is so pro-narrative is I believe that in general they see sceptics as right-leaning libertarians and they viscerally hate people like that, so they are against whatever right-leaning libertarians are for, and for everything they are against.
I think the same goes for a lot of lockdown and mask zealots – they see Toby or Simon Dolan or Peter Hitchens pushing the sceptical point of view and automatically oppose it on principle because of who supports it – it has little to do with logic or necessarily a reasoned position on their part.
It fits in well with the way people think about politics these days – not “is X a good or bad idea, on its own merits, based on my worldview” but “X is supported by people who I have pre-identified as GOOD, so I support it” or “X is supported by people who are BAD, so I must oppose it”. Idiots.
This is what I continually get from remainers. (The dullard ones).
“But how can you want Brexit when *NIGEL FARRAGE* *insert favourite current ‘fascist’ here* does??”
Because I believe what I believe, and what I believe doesn’t depend on what anyone else believes – and especially not on looking good to the ‘right’ people by denying what I believe because someone ‘unpalatable’ also believes the same thing.
Once someone says this immortal thing, I tend to abandon them as a friend and stop making an effort. Not because they disagree with me. Because they have no mind of their own.
I’ve been anti-EU since the Maastricht treaty, when it started to change from being the EEC. Nothing to do with Farage or a stupid slogan on a bus.
Opponent to HCQ treatment told me ‘If Trump likes it it must be bad’.
When John Humphreys left the BBC, he said no one inside could even conceive of anyone voting Leave. Peter Sissons was getting good, too, but he upped and died.
Agree with your last para, “I’ve always voted for [party]” is so daft. The parties change, their members change and the times change. Gotta look at what’s in front of you.
“Definitely a MSM to frame protestors as far right“
As I’ve noted here before, hopefully this will backfire on them badly in the long run, because what they are doing is associating the “far right” politics and people they hate with such a profoundly vicious venom, with truth, common sense and liberty.
It’s like Brexit and Trump isn’t it? People who attended that march have legitimate concerns and are frustrated they’re not being listened to so what do the MSM do? The ones here ignore them while their home country smears them as “far right”, “conspiracy theorists” and even “Nazis”. A bit rich given their history.
Agree with you that the MSM are digging their own grave given that more and more people are turning to alternative media.
From the Telegraph live feed:
2:30pm
Death toll jumps by five in EnglandThe four nations have the latest coronavirus numbers in the last hour:
Inappropriate use of the word ‘jumps’ I would humbly suggest.
As mentioned yesterday, are we now seeing more use of the word ‘infections’ rather than ‘cases’ as it may be perceived to be more scary?
These people know exactly what they are doing when the use certain words – I used to expect better from the Telegraph. Unfortunately, the majority of the population doesn’t pick up on emotive and misleading reporting.
I do hate the language they use when reporting deaths and case/infections. Another word I noticed being used a lot when the numbers started to decline was ‘soar’ to try and keep up the fear.
Death total “soars” as 13 new deaths reported. I laughed out loud when that ‘breaking news’ alert popped up on my phone a couple of weeks ago
And surge…
Or even “rises” can include one death. They never say things like “record low”….
Just this minute had todays alert: UK death toll rises by 9.
Yes that was 9. I wonder what word they will use tomorrow for such an insignificant figure…sky rockets probably!
UK deaths continue to rise!
EXPLODES!
A rise from one death to two is a 100% surge!
Disaster as deaths double!
Coronavirus UK: TERRIFYING second wave likely as deaths EXPONENTIATE!
I too hate the use of the word jump. Has anyone noticed the discrepancy reecently bu the ONS, the have one site where you get the breakdown of tests in pillars 1-4, and then the big headline site, which also breaks down into councils etc. The first site stated 744 positive PCR tests over the last 24 hours, the other site states 938 new infections. A difference of nearly 200! Why?!
This is actually good news in a subtle way. If you look at UK daily deaths on worldometers:
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/uk/
You can see that it has been non-zero but almost completely flat for the last month. It will probably continue to tail down a bit more.
What this shows is that the virus is endemic not eradicated. There is a huge difference. In Australia things went quiet for a month because the virus was nearly eradicated. This means they are due an epidemic and will very likely get one. It is an inherently unstable situation.
The UK is the opposite– at the end of the epidemic with Covid at reassuringly low but non-zero levels due to herd immunity.
The “official” story is that the UK is pretending to be Australia– we’re supposed to have hardly any herd immunity and to have almost eradicated the virus with lockdowns and restrictions. We need to keep testing everyone and jumping on outbreaks to keep it that way. But there’s no way we can be in that situation with as many as 50 deaths per day.
Look back to March 20th. 36 deaths per day. A week later, 284 per day. Another week, 714 in one day. Another week, now four weeks into the lockdown, 1152. If you’re at 50 deaths per day and don’t have herd immunity you don’t stay there for long. Things go south right quick fast in a hurry.
The only time an epidemic grows slowly is at the beginning (when the fire hasn’t started) and at the end (when it’s dying out). We have more than enough hot embers that if there we hadn’t run out of fuel it would be raging again. If we were at near zero I would be more worried, because then there would be a higher chance that the official story might be true.
In fact now that things have settled down so much and we have so many PCR tests we can have another look at the IFR.
About 50 deaths per day. If the IFR is 0.1% that would be around 50,000 infections or 0.08% of the population infected. I think that is about the ratio of positives ONS are finding these days.
If Fergie’s 1% IFR were right there should only be 0.008% positives.
from memory the latest ONS figures to 30 June were an infection to total population rate of 0.04 to 0.05% (i.e.ratio of positive to total swabs, about 59 positives in some 116K tests.)
I think that works out to an IFR of about 0.2% which seems about right. The deaths now correspond to infections about three weeks ago but both are fairly level so it’s much easier to estimate the IFR than in the middle of the epidemic.
OK my estimate was wrong. You can’t divide number of deaths per day by the total number of infections. You need deaths per day over infections per day.
This works out to a much higher IFR. The ONS reckon about 3000 new infections per day, which is about right if you divide the 30,000 current infections by 10– it takes about 10 days to recover, so every day about 3000 people need to be infected to replace those who recovered to keep it at about 30,000. They use some fancier math, which is probably more accurate, this is just my sanity check.
50 deaths over 3000 infections is 1.6%! Maybe it’s not 50 deaths per day– the daily average for the last week was 38.5. And the 3000 has a big confidence interval.
But this is still way too high. That estimate of the number of infections is from the household survey which excludes infections in hospitals. These deaths are not coming from the same population as the tests.
If we look at this:
https://www.cebm.net/covid-19/covid-cases-in-england-arent-rising-heres-why/
The Pillar 1 tests are showing a 0.3% positive rate, and the Pillar 2 tests about 0.8%. But the ONS household survey is showing 0.05%.
Pillar 1 are people in health-care settings. It’s about 6x bigger, so that pushes the IFR down to 0.26%, which seems more reasonable.
But what’s going on with Pillar 2? That’s showing a positive rate of about 0.8%. Pillar 2 is people who turn up in carparks– supposedly random but you would expect some selection bias and to find a higher positive rate than the ONS household survey. But not by 16 times! You would also expect Pillar 1 (healthcare settings) to be higher, not lower.
Perhaps the Pillar 2 tests (which are done by private companies) have a higher false positive rate than the ones the ONS are using.
:o)
“Zoom and FaceTime, like Covid, know no borders.
If you can do your job from a laptop in a spare room, maybe someone else could do it cheaper from far-off India or Africa.”
I think that’s what this particular lockdown loving crowd doesn’t get at all.
Exactly. I tell people who say that they can get used to working from home that they should be careful what they wish for because there might come a point that companies will realise that they can get a Shalini from Mumbai or a Miguel from Manila who can do the same job much cheaper and even better.
“Boris Johnson, the smiling politician who turned hope and optimism into an election landslide, is now a pale-faced bogeyman scaring the country to death.”
I think he and his cabal are still primarily obsessed by their no-deal Brexit and making it look as good as possible next year.
Therefore, they have an incentive to damage the economy as much as they can and can get away with this year, and they are living up fully to that and truly enjoy their destructive mission.
I wish I could believe it had to do with Brexit, I really do, but they look to me like they have bought into the covid narrative 100%, or they know it’s nonsense but are desperate to be found out and/or they are enjoying this
From New York Times. One of the worst fearmonger and biggest supporter of lockdown
“Lockdown measures for the pandemic could result in an additional 6.3 million cases of T.B. and 1.4 million deaths.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/03/health/coronavirus-tuberculosis-aids-malaria.html?smtyp=cur&smid=tw-nythealth
So they know they are pushing for unnecessary deaths on a massive scale.
Umm… how do we know the spike in testing wasn’t planned for exactly reason. I refuse to believe that this is incompetence. How stupid do you have to be to test twice as many people as usual and then be surprised when you see more cases? I cannot believe someone that idiotic would end up in charge. This is premeditated, and i’m certain of it.
I agree – one, two or three isolated instances of illogical decision making could keep me thinking it is sheer incompetence but this much incompetence of such a long period affecting so many people has me convinced there is an agenda. Perhaps not a world take over but there is a reason!
and it would have to be global incompetence – even harder to believe.
NONE of this is incompetence!
In response to the writer from BD20 – apparently it was Bradford council that wanted all areas of Bradford included, not the government. https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.thetelegraphandargus.co.uk/news/18621425.amp/
https://twitter.com/covid_clarity/status/1289979525703630851
“Worried about losing your child to covid? In Minnesota this year, 1 child has died w/ covid. During this same time, 3 have died from drowning, 3 from respiratory infections, 3 from ATV(All terrain vehicles) accidents, 2 from bicycle accidents, 9 from car accidents, and 225 from other things”Minnesota 5.7 million
Can we make a simple leaflet to this using UK stats?
I really want to vomit. The papers are now carrying full page NHS ads.
” Let’s get back to the things we love. Let’s get tested”.
Testing is free, quick and vital to stop the spread of Coronavirus.
From what I can observe, the opposite is true. If you get tested, prepare to be locked down.
exactly. At one point I would have said that we should test asymptomatic just to see how many there are so we can all stop being hysterical. But I was wrong. We are ignoring the obvious adjustment of IFR and pretending that this is just as deadly as some people feared back in March… so increased testing leads only to increased detection which fuels more hysteria. It is all so amazingly stupid.
The same tests that had to be withdrawn a few weeks ago due to being unreliable and unsafe? The same NHS that has been on holiday with full pay for the last 5 months at the expense of the complete and permanent destruction of the economy and our freedom? Vomit is the absolute bare minimum response.
“Testing is vital to promote the spread of lockdown” would be nearer the mark.
How the hell does a test stop the virus?
What they mean to say is – stay at home if you’re ill.
No need for a sodding test. Just common sense and what everyone should be doing anyway to look after *themselves* regardless of others.
They want you tested to get your DNA on file – they even admit it now (see post on yesterday’s thread)
This particular use of language has been odd throughout. Hancock has said a couple of times that we return to normal when people start following the rules.
One would think that a plummeting death rate would be the cue to return to normal. Apparently it’s more to do with how much we obey our masters.
Hand-cock has three choices : he can claim to be ignorant; or he can claim to be stupid; or he can claim he’s being paid to be a shill.
I don’t think that there’s any other options.
All three?
He’s getting off on it?
Follow the rules in Hancock-speak means submitting to testing even if you are symptomless, so your DNA can be collected and sold to Palantir…
Fuck em
how is it free? surely we are all paying for all the tests that don’t even work?
how much do the dumb tests actually cost to produce?
“The things we love” goes on to mention sports, gigs etc. All cancelled. And Bugle hits the nail, below.
Obviously a blatant attempt to rapidly create DNA database of the whole population – tell people NOT to get tested! Probably in advance of vaccine/covipass/both…
Rhetorical… WTF do we need to be tested for? Look at hospital admissions and deaths to see how things are going. If you want to do a sample survey to see how herd immunity is progressing then do that in the usual way. But leave us f*****g alone!
Btw re the testing saw this posted on Simon Dolan’s Twitter, proving they are taking DNA: https://twitter.com/PLucieM/status/1290251997057228801
Never, never, never!!!!
It’s a global Public Health scam. Period. Be very afraid. I am.
Something is going on…..
10 days ago I visited my local surgery for a blood test.As expected, mask required and maximum 3 people in giant waiting area.
Today I receive a circular saying compulsory temperature check at reception with ejection to a swab testing centre somewhere if it is marginally above normal.Maximum 1 person in waiting area.
What can possibly have caused this sudden increase in surgery lockdown?
The National Covid Service
It was me who asked the question in today’s update, I really want to know the answer, there must be (one would hope) a legal basis on which doctors are doing this surely, and more importantly where does the buck stop? is it NHS england, is it the CCG, is it the Dept of Health? Who is responsible, and thus, accountable for this absolute travesty? RCGP say they can’t tell me, so I’ve asked the BMA, my MP, Matt Hancock, NHS England and now my CCG. Key will be whether the gov’s poxy risk and equality impact assessment is sufficient, or whether (as is normally the case) that responsibility also falls on GP practices. Interestingly in law, for risk assessment purposes, Covid is not ‘an imminent or present danger’ – risk assessments have to be on the risk of covid, NOT on the risk of transmission of covid. If that’s right, then they are utterly buggered if they’ve risk assessed it and concluded that the risk of covid transmitting covid is greater than the risk of withdrawing care.
Very good points. But I doubt that you will get other than bullshit – if anything – in return.
I’ve emailed Simon Dolan today, to explain all this, and ask if he’d look. If – as I suspect – the gov with the Part 2 corona virus legislation kicked back responsibility to local authorities, CCGs and health authorities, then I think we can hold them accountable (I’ve done this with something else, it’s amazing what one terrifying letter will do). If we can get clear on the facts then all we have to do is each adapt a template letter and fire it off to our local area. If as I hope, individual practices are also responsible for risk assessing and equality impact assessing, then even better, because I’m in rural Shropshire, the actual RISK (not risk of transmitting) is miniscule, I cannot see how they could have come up with a lawful risk assessment that says suspending smear tests, or breast exams, or proper care for the elderly is proportionate.
Most GP practices are private partnerships, so yes they will be individually responsible for risk assessments.The will have received NHS “guidance”, which they will be slavishly following, but I don’t think that absolves them of ultimate legal responsibility.
Brilliant, this is precisely what I want to find out. Thanks.
Have you emailed Francis Hoar at Field Court chambers?
No, that’s a good idea. Thanks
If anyone is on twitter and can tweet him, succinctly, the question is ‘On what legal basis have NHS GPs suspended face to face appointments, and where does the buck stop for equality impact and risk assessing that decision? What rights do patients have if they are receiving substandard care?’
F.ing ridiculous, a-scientific and against medical ethics.
And the Hippocratic Oath.
They’re trying to increase testing wherever they possibly can – DNA harvesting…
Where I live, I can sit with a co-worker in a pub and have a drink with them.
If i invite them to my home, I could be fined £100.
If I refuse to go to work and sit next to them I would get sacked.
Go figure?
No figuring. This is theology, not science.
Theology is the art aimed at providing spurious rationalisation for irrational myths
The ‘spike’ was caused by people “socialising and not maintaining social distancing” at a time when we were allowed to have 30 people in our homes.
Two of you sit at opposite ends of the bus – mask required. Four of you get in taxi, no mask required.
The virus will kill us all, wear a mask. Under elevens exempt, so must be immune, but they can’t go to school…
Ad nauseum.
Another good 3 point (like Boris!) good message to communicate to sceptics…
There is no sense involved in this.
Trying to make sense of it is as pointless as trying to make a jigsaw where each piece is from a different puzzle.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5O8wa3vY1pM
Thank heaven for Peter Hitchens – his latest tirade on talkRadio.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eNukYWoJWXk
thank you for the link
Just listened to it. Thanks a lot!
There are so many new rules, regulations and guidelines being brought out by our “esteemed” government, that it got me thinking. There must be many people in the U.K. who:
a. Don’t have a tv/tv licence so they can’t watch the news.
b. Don’t have a daily paper.
c. Don’t have access to a computer or smart phone.
d. English is not their first language.
How on earth are they supposed to keep up with the constantly changing situation?
Is Boris going to write them another letter?
Maybe they are happily oblivious to all of this nonsense. I often wish I was unaware.
There are plenty of people round here who don’t know what’s going on because they don’t have a TV licence and don’t read papers and only use the internet for email. They tend to be of a certain age, unaffected by woke bullshit and current day fads…..
And have consequently largely worked put for themselves that it’s complete bullshit. Funny how these people are always called ‘low information voters’ and yet they’re more informed – by not being ‘informed’!
– than younger people.
I’ve always got on better with people a good twenty years older than me and this is probably why.
I think I did get some sort of fake letter at some point actually. I immediately “quarantined” in the bin so have no idea what it said.
I have been writing to my MP regarding lockdown like many on this site. I was surprised to find my MP actually appears to have read and actually replied (not a template reply). She is robustly defending the government, personally I think the figures in the email are completely misleading –
The current UK death toll stands at 45,318. These are human lives – so I will have to say I strongly disagree with you when you say the government have been scaremongering and attempting to “instil fear”. The Government have always aimed to put in place measures at the most effective time, when we think it can make the biggest difference in slowing the spread of the disease, reducing the number of victims and fatalities, and protecting our NHS. I am proud to be a part of a government which has placed human lives above anything else.
The only rules in place are to keep a meter apart and the wearing of the mask. Neither rule seem ridiculous, especially if it means it could save one life. I understand maybe a face mask can be difficult to wear if you suffer from a breathing condition, in which case will make you exempt from having to wear one. In terms of frontline staff such as sales assistants, cashiers and security guards, they have suffered disproportionately from coronavirus. The death rate of sales and retail assistants is 75% higher amongst me and 69% high among women.
No one would want businesses to close, hence the government providing an unprecedented amount of money and support to help companies. But again, if the government did nothing, do you not think the amount of deaths would not have an effect on the economy?
As is the nature of politics and making decisions, we cannot satisfy everyone. There will always be people that agree and do not agree, but my main priority, as well as the main priority of my colleagues in the Government, is protecting as many people as possible and keeping them safe.
She has asked you a question, so the least she can expect is a reply.
“But again, if the government did nothing, do you not think the amount of deaths would not have an effect on the economy?”
It’s a heartless answer, but the true answer is “little if any effect”. The economy has never suffered because of death, flu or otherwise.
Very tempted to reply. As far as I am concerned the 45k deaths figure include a lot of non Covid deaths and people scared to death by the government actions and those not receiving hospital treatment. Also there is no scientific proof people caught Covid whilst working in shops.
It’s difficult to take anyone seriously when they repeat the ‘shopworkers death rate 75%’ statement as they clearly will believe anything Hancock says without actually checking if it’s true.
It is true. Sylvie fact-checked it when he first said it.
The absolute numbers are low so it’s no cause for alarm but it is true and statistically significant (if not any other kind of significant).
To put things in perspective the chance of any man dying with Covid is still lower than that of a woman who works in a shop. And it was only about 50 or 60 people, and who knows what they actually died of.
Yes, 34.2 male shopworker deaths per 100K is 175% of the rate for all working age males per 100K of 19, but the actual number of shopworker deaths was only 43 in total.
Similar picture for women, 15.7 shopworker deaths per 100k is 162% of the overall rate of 9.7 per 100K, but actual number of deaths only 64! And as Julian(?) pointed out at the time, how were shopworkers defined, who knows where and how they contracted CV19 etc etc.
They other thing is, don’t claim the death certificates are falsified, they aren’t. After Shipman, doctors are advised they must put all the contributory causes of death on the cert, the rules are extensive and rigorous. So if the individual either had a positive swab, or a doctor or experienced health professional diagnosed Cv19 from symptoms, that had to be included as one item on the cert. And there’s a good reason for this, enables over the whole country the public health people to tell if any contributory cause of death is widespread, very rare, or what, a useful thing to know.
I’d suggest you need to reply that on the contrary, the only rules in place are NOT 1 metre distancing and face coverings in shops and public transport. The imposition of temporary lockdowns in response to illusory ‘spikes’ in positive tests, which are restricting movement of people and making normal commerce difficult, is killing off economic activity, destroying jobs and bankrupting businesses. You hope her party’s MPs are proud of this and happy to take responsibility for it.
You might also want to suggest that even if the lockdown had been justified initially, its prolongation beyond about 1 June is highly debatable in terms of its net benefits. Refer her to the LSE Centre for Economic Performance Occasional Paper 49, authored by Gus O’Donnell (former Cabinet Secretary) and others. Ask her on what evidence she believes that the saving of one life from CV19 outweighs the loss of many lives attributable to lockdown conditions, e.g. suicides, absence of treatment and unavailability of mainstream NHS services leading to cancer deaths, etc. Ask her if she has any evidence that government sought any study of the net cost and benefits, since as far as you are aware, it has been admitted in evidence to the Science and Technology select Committee that none was commissioned. You suggest that even at this late date she should press for such a study to be presented to parliament. That would be a more useful contribution than uncritically trotting out the party line that ‘saving one life’ outweighs causing unexamined loss of lives from prolonged lockdown, not to mention trashing the economy, depriving children of an education, and forcing relatives to mourn forever the lonely deaths of their closest relatives.
Sorry, rant over…
OK, thanks, I didn’t see the original explanation for this. So basically taking a very small sample out of those who’ve died in total, ignoring all other factors and coming to a conclusion that supports his argument then.
I wasn’t claiming any falsification, but my understanding was these counts were of people who died “with Covid-19 mentioned anywhere on the death cert”, not where it was a cause of death– they record both. But maybe I’m wrong about that?
Sorry, wasn’t a reply to you who are always reliable, I was responding to Darryl’s ‘the 45k deaths figure include a lot of non Covid deaths and people scared to death by the government…’
(They don’t, pity to spoil it by claiming they do, was what I meant.)
My understanding is that the Shipman laws were suspended at the outset of the covid outbreak. Sneaked in, like everything else
This is a disgraceful response.
“I am proud to be part of a government which has placed human lives above anything else”- but only those who tested positive for Coronavirus.
Tosser! Perhaps a quick reply asking “And what about those killed by ill-considered Lock-Up?”
I really need a hard hitting reply with facts to back it up. Can’t let it rest at this.
There’s no evidence lockdown saved any lives, here or anywhere else (just look at countries around the world that did and did not lock down and they vary enormously), and plenty of evidence it cost and will continue to cost lives
All-cause mortality for the year so far is around 360,000. Same figure for 2018 (bad flu season) is 340,000. We are currently running at LOWER than average deaths, so outrun for this year may well be similar to 2018. Not an unprecendented public health threat, so why the damaging reaction that WAS unprecedented?
Placing human lives above everything else is frankly a childish response and misses the point. Human life is important, but a life lived to the fullest extent possible, not a life of fear and restriction and unemployment. And the NHS and other things that make life safer and better must be paid for, so shutting down the economy is not without human cost. Everything is a tradeoff and saving lives at all costs is immoral, unnatural, unworkable and has never been attempted by any government I can think of.
What’s their exit strategy? A vaccine? Good luck – may never come, or when it does it will only be partially effective. We’ve been working on Flu vaccines for decades and millions still die of Flu every year. Track and trace? Simply unworkable in a globalised world, in the UK, and we don’t have the resources anyway, plus most of the people you test will not be ill and shouldn’t be locked up. Herd immunity is the only realistic exit strategy and isn’t that hard to achieve. We are nearly there. Sweden, Sweden, Sweden!
The other issue around vaccines is the sheer folly of accepting a novel injection without proper random controlled trialling … a process that should take years, not months.
Then we have the immunity granted against legal action related to side-effects. That tells a massive tale.
You’d have to be a bit of a prick yourself to accept treatment on that basis!
Bill Gates was very evasive when asked about that the other day – body language was very telling..
Cumulative deaths for Week 30 (today’s data) are 330K for 2018 and 371K for 2020. We are up 40K deaths on a bad flu year in which treatment and vaccination were available. Week 30 mortality is at the median of 2010-19 implying that they would nothave died anyway and has tracked this trend for the previous three weeks.
I agree about the need for balance, but the mortality data really is pretty dire – mostly due to the hugely inflated mortality in care homes. Protective treatments (vaccines and therapeutic antibodies) will come next year, but at the moment restriction of contacts (mainly with the most vulnerable) is the only intervention tool. I’d put most of my efforts into the care sector.
I think that it was the University of Sheffield and ?? that have (in the last week) done a study calculating the mortality attributable to Lock-Up. It’s a fairly conservative estimate.That might be a start. Others may have the reference to hand.
As a personal insight – my review/scan (cancer follow-up) has been delayed for four months. I am not particularly worried – simply because of my personal situation and history. But extend that over the nation and all health issues that need investigation.
Grateful for all the suggestions from everyone. I need to get as much information together as possible for a response.
Take your time with that, it’s easy to pull that apart, CEBM really good for stats, there was a study on healthcare workers (low paid cleaners and porters, not front line staff). Sketch out your reply and we’ll help you pad it out.
Thanks, I certainly think pretty much everything can be refuted.
Apart from examining actual evidence for her claims I think it is worth critiquing the tone of her letter, which is a form of emotional blackmail that should not be left to stand as is. Her claim that she is only concerned about ‘human lives’ takes no account of the lives that will be lost through lack of medical treatment, poverty and financial stress, or of the massive toll this grotesque social distortion is having on mental health (remember when everybody was all about ‘mental health awareness’ about six months ago? Yeah, me neither.)
And ‘saving only one life’ is a meaningless cliche that needs to be retired. She could save more than one life by making it illegal to use ladders. I think you should call bold, full-frontal BS on this emotive manipulation and point out that from a public policy point of view it has no value.
That’s what I would do. But then I would also point out that, as a woman, I regard this letter as an argument against women being allowed to participate in public life.
LIVING WITH COVID-19: BALANCING COSTS AGAINST BENEFITS IN THE FACE OF THE VIRUS has been published by the National Institute Economic Review No. 253 August 2020. It was produced by Professor David Miles Professor of Economics, Imperial College London, Mike Stedman and Adrian Heald.
The Daily Mail produced a very distorted view of the report by Lucy White on July 24th https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8555171/The-cost-lockdown-Britains-economy-not-worth-lives-saved-study-claims.html#comments which reports only 1 of 40 possible outcomes detailed by the Imperial team, that 1 possible outcome being the one least critical of the policy of Lockdown.
The full Imperial report is available here: https://www.imperial.ac.uk/people/d.miles/document/7583/Miles%20Stedman%20Heald%20NIESR/?Miles%20Stedman%20Heald%20NIESR.pdf
The report looks at how a cost/benefit analysis may be produced for the Covid 19 emergency. It is interesting to compare and contrast the findings with the report produced by the NHS and Government Actuaries published 8th April 2020.
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/892030/S0120_Initial_estimates_of_Excess_Deaths_from_COVID-19.pdf
The Imperial report attempts to quantify the ‘cost’ of deaths by using the figure used by NICE, £30,000 per year of life, (this figure is used by NICE to determine the upper limit of health resources that should be expended to save a year of life). The paper discusses various alternative measures but as this figure is in widespread use it seems as a good a figure to use as any. Thus, for someone dying of Covid 19 who, had they not died would have gone on to enjoy 10 years of life, the lost 10 years is valued at 10 x £30,000 = £300,000. The key drivers on the ‘benefits’ or savings side of the equation are; how many lives did lockdown save and how many years of life on average would those victims have enjoyed if not cut down by Covid 19?
On the other side of the equation, the ‘cost’ side of Lockdown, the Imperial team take the figures from the Bank of England and the Office for Budget Responsibility to estimate the cost at various levels between 9% and 25% of GDP which equate to a range from £200bn to £550bn.
The lives saved by Lockdown are placed at anywhere between 440,000 and 20,000 lives. That’s a 22 x variance and goes to illustrate the dire situation we are in when our top economists and statisticians can’t narrow the range of possible lived saved any more accurately than that. Of course the higher number is derived from Imperial’s very own Professor Neil Ferguson who projected 500,000 lives lost. This figure was dependent upon the IFR (infection/fatality rate) being 1% and the susceptibility rate of the UK population to be about 80%. In reality the IFR looks like being about 0.25% an
The government itself admits the lockdown will kill 200,000. It constrasted this against the Imperial College’s random number generator of 500,000 (seriously, it’s garbage, it needs to be run multiple times because it gives different results each time).
Check out Malcolm Kendrick’s blog for the overall cost of each life saved even using the random number of 500,000 people.
This may cause them a problem when the death toll hovers stubbornly at 50k, people start comparing it to a normal flu season, and more people address Fergy’s honky model.
Notice how he’s disappeared? He’s done the further modelling for the ‘second spike’ but has been kept out of the public eye.
Does his mistress count as a bubble? Is social distancing and bigamy compatible? Did Ferguson’s model take promiscuity into account?
These are the important questions he needs to be asked.
Besides, wasn’t he fired? I get the feeling that he was probably rehired immediately and paid as a consultant (probably with a juicy pay rise) and the firing was just to quieten the public down for a bit.
Sanctimonius cow. All the usual platitudes “45,000 death toll blah blah blah, human lives blah blah blah, our NHS blah blah, keeping people safe blah.”
Maybe you should point out that the actual death toll is likley to be considerably lower due to obvious overcounting. Maybe you should also point out that there were 44,000 excess winter deaths in 2014/15 but the government didn’t feel the need to “keep people safe” then (https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/deaths/articles/highestnumberofexcesswinterdeathssince19992000/2015-11-25)
You can always throw Sweden at her. They love that one! A death rate of 564 per million compared to our 695.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1104709/coronavirus-deaths-worldwide-per-million-inhabitants/
Thanks, Sweden is a very good idea. I don’t get the impression I am very popular with her so will go for everything!
The point is, I think, can she (or any other lockdown lunatic for that matter) point to evidence that lockdowns and other restrictions have led to a lower death toll than would have been the case had the government done nothing? Unless you had a crystal ball back in March, I can’t see how you can possibly prove this. And there’s absolutely no correlation between government measures worldwide and the infection and death curves in different countries. In fact, in Europe and most of the states, the pattern has been consistent everywhere regardless of what the authorties did.
Could always quote Prof. Suneptra Gupta of Oxford too. She’ increasingly scathing about lockdown polices and is a highly credible source.
Keep pushing Darryl!
I find it difficult to understand the degree she has brought into the lockdowns work narrative. I think I can safely assume she would happily vote in favour of any restrictions on liberties the government may propose.
who is your mp?
name the bitch!
They are still peddling the old “high death rate for sales assistants” line. Here’s my reply to my MP on it – it was 18 days ago so the data may have changed:
“I have now had an opportunity to review the source of the statistics you quote. The data is wholly inadequate to justify a policy which, quite literally, changes the face of the people in whose interests you govern. The data is being used (I may say abused) to justify a policy decision that has already been taken.
** The report says in its summary:
“our findings do not prove conclusively that the observed rates of death involving COVID-19 are necessarily caused by differences in occupational exposure.”
Now, compare this to the evidence of my own eyes. I have been to various supermarkets locally during lockdown; the staff have not been wearing masks (if they felt that they were in a dangerous workplace they would surely have done so). Almost without exception, they have told me that none of their colleagues have caught the virus. They have been cheerful, not fearful; it was some of the shoppers who were fearful, after a relentless diet of uncontextualized data provided by the government and media.”
I wonder if MPs are given a list of government approved ‘facts’ to state in replies. I get the impression it was the MP actually replying rather than a template reply. The data they use is clearly out of date as even Matt Hancock said the death figures are inflated due to poor statistics.
Of course they are
What a load of disingenuous rubbish. No government has ever done everything it can to save lives, and if Covid hadn’t happened then the next flu season would have occurred with no mask wearing, social distancing etc.
Jesus wept. Another response taken from some template.
Just some comments on the references in today’s comments.
Agree about Brexit – seems like an unhelpful distraction (and I am a leaver).
Kavanagh on our side is indeed welcome (I don’t know much about him, but he’s a big name writer for the Sun so has a platform).
I think he was Political Editor, prior to Tom Newton Dunn. He is semi-retired now. His articles will hit home with a largely white working class male voter – the type Boris kept chirping about after the GE ‘I will not let you down’. Shame he didn’t clear that with his handlers first, or was that just another falsehood?
I was quite encouraged how comments supporting Kavanagh’s article were massively upvoted, and comments from lockdowners massively downvoted. Same with Sikora’s piece in the Mail. Wouldn’t have seen that a few weeks ago.
The JB Handley blog post was excellent. Should be compulsory reading for the perpetually petrified. Though I expect some people wouldn’t get past the second paragraph before their eyes glazed over.
That was another excellent article from Kavanagh. Especially this:
Again this should be tattooed on the foreheads of the likes of Johnson, Hancock, Whitty, Valance and all those responsible for this shit show. Or someone should narrate this article lock this shower of a government and Sage in a room and play the recording on a loop ad infinitum.
Excellent article by Kavanagh. One minor point though – Swedes are not wearing masks on public transport; obviously you get the odd masked person, but it is neither encouraged nor mandated.. In fact Tegnell has specifically said it is NOT necessary!
Had the same thought about Sweden which he did get wrong but apart from that great article.
https://themajority.scot/
Slightly off message here, but for fellow sceptics languishing in Covid Caledonia, this link takes you to the Stop Sturgeon site. The movement is gathering steam.
We can but hope, so please read and pass on to hidden Unionists.
Secondly. went to greengrocer’s : proprietor told me that her 2 daughters are due to return to school on August 11th.
However, her sister, a teacher, has warned her that if 2 cases are identified, by whatever means,school closures will ensue.
Meanwhile ,local drunks and junkies are having a whale of a time-(I’ve just reported open drug dealing in our road to my council contact)- while we lesser mortals still cannot go to the dentist or have unrestricted access to our local library.
Finally, a friend who has been going along with the gagging nonsense, has now started using the word propaganda: glimmerings of hope.
Good luck! Burn the witch!
Maybe Nicola thinks she’s the Scottish Joan of Arc?
Many thanks for the link and will indeed pass it on. Where I am, apart from my neighbours’ conversion at the weekend, too many masks here for my liking!
My Covid Cri de Coeur.
Excellent piece from AIER – https://www.aier.org/article/my-covid-cri-de-coeur/
This is all ramping up in a ridiculous way with the “narrative” forging ahead regardless of any evidence against it.
Where will it end?
Using this method anything could be “written” including a world war where the Covid free countries attack the countries who aren’t doing enough to stop the spread.
Maybe I’m having a bad day
You’re not the only one.
A few of us are.
Everyday is bad at the moment, at least if you are awake.
For the sleepers it is just another day, comfortable in the knowledge your government & it advisors are working 24/7 to make you safe.
I don’t like Mondays …
On a more serious note though, Dave, if every day is bad then the bad guys are winning. Be kinder to yourself; switch off; go for a country or seaside walk. Drink beer.
They rotate troops from the front lines for a reason.
Some German states just to decided to make it mandatory that pupils wear masks when returning to school, in NRW even during class!
Madness.
… and child abuse.
It has already happened in many US states. I live in Washington State, and public schools are going to be mostly online. Private schools might be permitted to operate, but masks are required, all PE, art, music classes cancelled… lunch in classrooms, temps checked at doors, no parents allowed, etc… We already unenrolled our kids and will be homeschooling during the fall.
Bloody good for you, Ryan !
Is there a scientific name for the phenomenon whereby as a threat recedes, the response to it increases to be ever more severe and bizarre? Perhaps a military analogy would be the bombing of Dresden.
Madness?
Can’t remember where but saw a great article on that theme recently. Like the obsession with Nazis 75 years after they were utterly defeated, or the anti-racist hysteria in football 30 years after it was last a real problem in England.
I suppose that it is the equivalent of economics and the sunken costs fallacy.. you have invested so much into this that suddenly abandoning it would be a complete waste of the money you have invested (and you would look a complete idiot!)
Recently, in another context, I read about ‘St George without the dragon’: no threat remains, so main man-O dear!- main person, flails about seeking another enemy/threat etc.
Disappointment eschatology.
Carthaginian? Much like how Rome totally destroyed Carthage even after decisively defeating them in the Third Punic War to avoid them challenging Rome again ever.
The DT ran a big piece on ‘what triggered Johnson to hit the brakes’ talking about all the new infections. It is a hysterical piece.
This is absolute nailed on, total nonsense and BS. This is disgraceful scaremongering by the DT. There is no ‘second wave’, no ‘spike’, just more testing which, surprise, surprise finds more infections. But they are not new cases, they are old ones. The only data that matters is deaths and hospital admissions due to Covid and there are hardly any. The NHS is not overwhelmed, ICU For Covid cases are empty across the country.
The number of infections is a smokescreen. Because the virus is disappearing, to keep up the presence of a deadly pandemic, the government and their advisors no longer talk about deaths, but ‘new infections’.
There is no second wave. Johnson’s and the ‘scientists’ latest mantra about ‘the danger of a second wave’ is pure scaremongering to keep us subdued and compliant and to readily accept another lockdown this winter.
It is clearly untrue, and yet the MSM faithfully parrot this nonsense.
The DT seems to want to be all things to all men.
And all women.
Herd immunity – why not ask for volunteers? I’m intrigued that, as far as I know, it has hardly ever been suggested that (relatively young, healthy) volunteers could be recruited to be deliberately given a (relatively low viral load?) of C-19, in order to speed up the process of achieving herd immunity and help to ensure that it was the least vulnerable who get the disease. (A kind of Covid-19 version of variolation, but with the primary purpose of protecting the many and hastening the end of the pandemic rather than protecting the individual being infected). It’s not a suggestion that I would ever expect this Government to accept, but it just seems strange that it seems it is not something ever suggested even on these forums – or by less-conventional governments. I’m not even saying it’s something that should be done – but why is the idea not even discussed?
Literally no different from having the vaccine.
Actually no, I lie.
The same only IF the vaccine is proved safe and effective beforehand (which it almost certainly wouldn’t be). The message should be – vaccinate thyselves! Go get thee a tiny dose by hugging a stranger!
Great for the needlephobic too!
Yes because they’re not going to cough on you to infect you, are they?
Besides, the raves, the protests and the Liverpool match should have already done it.
Good point but we’re already at herd immunity.
Besides, the government is hellbent on vaccinating us one way or another. Hence “herd immunity” is a taboo phrase.
Despite the fact it’s the phrase most commonly used when discussing how vaccines work……
I really wish people would grow up on this kind of thing.
The same phenomona occurs in animals, so it gets a generic term. But, apparently, it’s treating humans like cattle.
Lol I pissed people off a few weeks back by saying that we are a herd. There’s nothing wrong with being a herd though in a scientific context.
Irony is crippling if you’re perfectly willing to follow the arrows round Sainsburys like a sheep but get really annoyed when someone says ‘herd immunity’.
We are animals and biology is how it works.
Nobody can get past loaded phrases though apparently. Once again the language is more important than anything else.
Maybe they should have foreseen this (with all their fancy psycho analysis behaviour experts) and rebranded it as something fluffy before proposing the idea. Then maybe we could have stuck with the Sweden plan and been gravy.
Population immunity.
Just one word could have made all the difference.
You seem a tad ignorant of the games played with words, that have brainwashed the majority of our brothers and sisters.
And if we do not follow arrows, but get ‘really annoyed’ by abuse of the English language. What then ?
Opinions, eh. One begs to differ.
This viewpoint suggest to me you are unaware of the power words can have on different categories of people. Not ‘more important than anything else’, but a significant factor which we ignore at our peril.
It’s precisely *because* I’m aware of the power of words that I can see through the hysteria.
You however seem very….. sensitive on that score.
That is indeed a valuable skill. Are you saying it is the highest level of understanding ?
One aims for the sensitivity of both an iron rhinoceros, and that of a princess lying on twenty mattresses.
I think the way things are going, cattle might be better treated.
Of course it’s not treating humans like cattle. It’s labelling them as cattle.
People reacting like this to terminology is exactly why we’re in the situation we’re currently in and the cattle in Sweden are allowed to enjoy their lives.
The Swedes call it ‘flockimmunitet’, perhaps a foreign phrase we might import into our language already so rich in useful borrowings?
(Thanks Carrie, I’ve forgiven you your conspiracy King Charles Head for that felicitous piece of information!)
Eh? I don’t understand..
And apparently they’re not afraid of the phrase.
Whicch is probably why their government discussed it openly with them and decided to treat them like adults instead of frightened kids.
Ooh, now we are afraid of a phrase. More straw than Wurzel Gummidge.
Flock off !
Yet again, one begs to differ. You seem to be saying terminology is always 100% neutral – is that right ?
Couple of things from today:
“On the whatsapp group they use the real reason is why go to work before furlough ends as they are getting paid to do nothing but play on x-box and drink and smoke dope? Not worth it apparently and they will milk it as long as possible. their average age is about mid-twenties.”
*shock* I doubt even the LCD enhanced offspring of Nostradamus and Mystic Meg could have predicted this happening.
Politicians, anal retentive bureaucrats and HS+E numpties who cannot think their way out of a wet paper bag are good at those unintended but totally bleeding obvious consequences rules and regulations.
“ On the whatsapp group they use the real reason is why go to work before furlough ends as they are getting paid to do nothing but play on x-box and drink and smoke dope? “
Sounds like the essence of banking and other pursuits of the global capitalist class. What’s the problem
Sounds like he should add the restaurant manager to the whatsapp group ……
I’ve just been out to town to do some stuff;
In the bank the staff have ditched their grinder visors, probably after customer comments.
I was the only one in the Q without a nappy, one of the friendly smiling staff came up to me, no nappy or visor, and asked if I was depositing cash, I was so she was unable to help me at the customer service desk. No one gave a shit about my ugly mush being in view.
Next stop bargain booze, a lady outside was saying she didn’t have a nappy, and promptly followed me in nervously nappy free. No one gave a shit.
Next stop Sainsburys, everyone fully nappied up so I got a few jelous looks, made me feel quite exotic. but really no one gave a shit….
Moral of the story, don’t wear a mask – no one gives a shit…
My wife and her friend have just finished their first maskless shopping trip and were pleased to report no problems at all from masked shoppers.
They had a couple of issues with the staff in Morrisons though.The staff in the cafe were very insistent about the filling in of track and trace forms,they said it was ‘the law’,no forms no food was their attitude.My wife said she thought the forms were voluntary but the person was having none of it,so to avoid a scene they filled the forms in.
Then in the main store the chap on the checkout asked them where they got their exemption cards from because he had asked his doctor for one but they wouldn’t give him one !,my wife told him that exemption was by self certification and you could buy or download one online,his response was ‘that can’t be right,that means anyone could get one’ !.My wife said he seemed to think he knew it all (obviously he seems to know very little) and his parting shot was,’anyway,exemption cards aren’t valid until August 8th’.
Give me strength,how can we fight this kind of idiocy ?.
In your wife’s situation, I would have replied that ‘I will be happy to fill in your form, when you show me how you are complying with GDPR rules, show me a copy of your policy..’. Or else have to hand a copy of the newspaper article showing that the government’s track n trace contravenes GDPR regulations…
Exactly! GDPR is the acronym I couldn’t remember.
The people that ‘enforce’ – in one way or another – the guidance, are regularly the ones that don’t bother to look it up. Whether shop staff or police.
Oh, and remind me to take a copy of the ‘non-statutory guidance’ on track and trace with me, next time I go to Morry’s cafe. Specifically, this:
If a customer or visitor informs you that they do not want their details shared for the purposes of NHS Test and Trace, they can choose to opt out, and if they do so you should not share their information used for booking purposes with NHS Test and Trace.
My problem with the way that’s worded is that it doesn’t say not to collect it if permission is witheld.
It is quicker just to make something up, unless you’ve time to ask to see their Data Protection Risk Assessment Report…..
Once more let me direct you to this excellent source of track and trace contact details:
https://members.parliament.uk/FindYourMP
Teach them a lesson when they have to self isolate every 5 minutes because someone with the ‘rona might have once been in the same building.
Just fill it in with false details.
I prefer it’s to refusing as it wastes someone’s time and gives you a cheap laugh.
By saying, what’s your name, who’s your boss and where do I send a written complaint? And then send a written complaint! They cannot do that, AT ALL, and deserve to reprimanded. Even asking about exemption is disability discrimination. Get your wife to write down the time, and all she can remember and fire it off. We’ve got to fight back, one little crappy incident at a time. The government are stalling on the main legal challenge, doesn’t mean we can’t fight them on the beaches. I’ve done this before, with something else, honestly it really works.
The results are in. At 938 positive tests, there have been more reported today than any day since 26th June. So a question: how long does it take from a test being carried out to when its result appears in the government statistics?
Cases versus specimen date is plotted here https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/
That just seems to give the number of cases reported per date. I’m wondering about the lag between a test being carried out, and when it’s reported. Maybe there is no lag – result reported on day of test, but perhaps there’s a delay of a day or two?
If you zoom into the end portion of the second plot, you will see how today’s reported cases are from specimens taken over the last few days (the purple bars).
And the surge in testing can be found here https://coronavirus-staging.data.gov.uk/testing
Maybe it’s my browser (tried IE11 and Edge), but on those graphs the zoom button doesn’t work, and I don’t see any purple bars. I was just wondering if today’s increase in positives might be attributed in whole or in part to the large increase in tests carried out on 31 July and 1 August.
Notes from the North West (we’re not sceptics, we’re very naughty boys)
Long walk on Sunday, through countryside, cloughs etc. Happily, we didn’t see anybody wearing masks out in the fresh air. That would have been a pointless thing to say, just two weeks ago, but not now.
Coming home, passed pub with large forecourt/seating area. Packed, everybody jammed onto those ‘bench’ tables that seat three a side, squeezed together. Definitely not following distancing/household rules. Any day now, what they were doing (i.e. normal life) will become illegal in our region. Whether it will change anything remains to be seen!
An idea for those who are wearing a mask but still want to protest.
A slogan of :
This is
Stupid
Fits quite well on a mask and is a strong statement. Not for everyone! It is just an idea that came to me so am sharing. It may do some good for someone.
I don’t mean to reignite the debate about bareface versus lanyard etc. I can picture the slogan being an effective protest.
I recon nappies with ”This is stupid” printed on them would sell like hot cakes….
You’d also be able to spot the closet sceptics
Mine was’ This doe,s not work, Worn under protest’
I like
“This mask is as useless as our gvt.”
If you can fit it on
On the t-shirt, with an arrow pointing upwards?
Even easier is to write Placebo across the mask. I have other protest mask ideas as well, but some will be more difficult than others to fit on a mask. One of my new favourites is Make 1984 Fiction Again; some of my own are Mass(ked) Hysteria, Seen But Not Herd, and Anti-Socially Distanced. I’ve got some cloth masks and a permanent marker but I’ve been afraid to bugger it up. I think I’ll start with Placebo and see how that goes.
Much of the younger generations have no idea what “1984” implies – though they think they know about Big Brother.
The people at the demo in Berlin were mainly critical thinking taught Gen Xers, followed by boomers, and, surprisingly, many from Gen Z.
Gen Y in contrast is completely useless and supporting this authoritarianism.
Think Owen Jones…
OBEY
(they live – great cult movie that’s rather relevant right now)
I thought it would only be a matter of time before someone mentioned it. Couldn’t resist linking to the classic sunglasses scene.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aiMLJAZajxg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N9-o-YDcq6I
Who was that masked man?
Masks don’t stop viruses would be my slogan of choice.
A couple of questions relating to the current state of testing in the UK.
– What’s the false-positive rate, approximately? This seems like a really important factor. The lower the number of actual cases, the more the false-positive rate will distort the true figures. Even 0.001% will result in 1000 false positives if you test a million people!
– Is it really true (as tweeted by Simon Dolan today) that the tests are now simply testing for “coronavirus”, not specifically Sars-COV2? I would have thought if this were true there would be a lot more (genuine) positive cases, even outside the usual common-cold season.
Roche reckon 5% for false positives.
https://diagnostics.roche.com/us/en/roche-blog/COVID-19-testing-what-you-need-to-know-about-test-accuracy.html
“Studies have demonstrated that our test is able to detect very low levels of the SARS-CoV-2 virus with 95 percent certainty, and it does not detect other respiratory pathogens.”
erm… so 100,000 tests will give 5000 false positives – a sort of surge of cases…
Houston, we have a problem!
Do they actually state “false positives”, because if it was “false negatives” it would be a different issue to address?
The 5% isn’t the false positive rate (which will be much lower). This figure refers to the sensitivity i.e. whether it’ll pick up a genuine positive.
How do they know if there’s no gold standard for the SCV2 virus?
There’s kind of a gold standard for true negatives which is just to run the test on pineapples and things.
But the problem is the false positives aren’t necessarily with the test itself. They’re contamination and human error.
But they really do need to calibrate the test on recovered patients (who can still have smashed up non-viable bits of virus lying around). Given that we just had an epidemic of SARS2 a couple of months ago this is likely to be a relatively large source of false positives.
Clear. Thanks!
Thanks.. that’s a LOT higher than I was expecting, and very worrying given that the government seem eager to impose local restrictions on the slightest excuse. If they aren’t making any attempt to take increased testing into account when making their calculations (and they can’t be that stupid, it must be intentional) they aren’t going to bother with the possibility of false positives!
I’m also doubtful of Simon Dolan’s claim, as I said if this were happening then it would pick up common cold infections, even this time of year this would result in far more cases being found.
It’s not 5%, it’s probably more like 0.05%, the comment mixes up sensitivity and specificity.
Why the thumbs down? It is straight from their website and this is what they state as a false positive rate?
I never made it up. Check yourself, that is why the link is included.
I thumbsed up to counteract the thumbs down (which wasn’t me
but I think that 95% is supposed to be sensitivity but they’re not very clear about it.
Reading their blurb the 5% is for both false positives and negatives so it balances out.
Some websites give false positive rates anywhere between 0.5% and 30% so pick a number.
I did a major internet search a few days ago looking for info on false positives and articles are getting very hard to find and are getting buried in the dross.
Easy to find the false negative sites that are getting pushed though.
I guess so that they can say “see, in reality there are a lot more cases than we are really finding”.
The false negatives are usually what you care about because you’re deciding whether to quarantine people or not.
If prevalence is so low false positives are an issue there isn’t a lot of point doing testing. Unless you’re a health minister who set himself stupid targets months ago when it might actually have had some use.
I think they’re claiming 95% sensitivity in that statement (in other words 5% false negatives).
They don’t give a figure for false positives but do mention contamination in the context of saying if you contaminate your samples it’s your fault and don’t blame them
It’s hard to put a number on the false positive rate. The BMJ seem to reckon about 5% is a reasonable figure to go with. It can’t be as bad as that or the ONS etc would be reporting around 5% positive.
One way to estimate it is actually to look at the noise in the UK testing. Since there has been no overall growth for several weeks any variation we see will include that caused by false positives and false negatives and so should give an upper bound.
“simply testing for “coronavirus”? Meaning it picks up the common cold? Regardless of government and PHE incompetence, that one would seem difficult to believe. If it’s true, then we all might as well throw in the towel now – it’s NEVER going to go away.
No towel throwing for me – though there’s a few people I’d like to attack with a wet one!
It won’t give you a positive on any other coronavirus (except in some cases SARS1). If they said “coronavirus” they mean “the coronavirus” that everyone is fussing about right now.
..which is exactly what they want, for it never to go away, so we can be kept in constant fear…
The false positive rate is not completely known yet (and there are different types of tests). However, the evidence suggests it’s very high, approaching 100%. The CEBM article on the Roche test mentions a claim of 99.8% specificity i.e. 2 in 1000 tests will yield a false positive. If you Google ‘ONS COVID-19 Infection Survey (Pilot)’ there’s some more info on the matter.
The ONS have noted that if the test had a 99.9% specificity then given the volume of testing the case numbers we are seeing are what we’d expect in the hypothetical of coronavirus not circulating. Given the huge volume of testing being taken place it seems pretty likely that the figures are off.
Not seen Simon Dolan’s tweet but find it unlikely, to be honest.
Great info thanks, I didn’t know the ONS had a figure for this.
Given that they locked down a huge chunk of Northern England for an extra 14 (or even only 5) “cases” and are ready to bring in the troops, the false positives are important and worrying.
Sensitivity is the number of negative results when they should be positive (false negatives), specificity is the number of positive results when they should be negative (false positives)
Sensitivity is actually 1 – false negatives, and specificity is 1 – false positives. But I know what you mean.
Maybe, but I get suspicious whenever they change the language they are using – *nothing* is just ‘accidental’…
Everything else is irrelevant when 1 single case is treated as if it’s spreading exponentially and already infected millions.
Woke Culture pretends to be a tool to achieve Equality for all. On the contrary, it is a Totalitarian cultural/political movement embraced by nihilistic, wayward souls looking for answers to placate their existential pain.
Fabulous interview by The Fat Emperor with Dr Stadler Emeritus Prof of Immunology at Bern University. He explains so much about immunity. It’s on YouTube or get as a Podcast. https://youtu.be/GBRcK-od50Q
here’s the latest leaflet ideas, after comments…
still very wordy but if doubting bedwetters are asking themselves questions – these answer them with simple bullet point facts… (do they do an A1 leaflet?)
Important Covid-19 Facts;
1. Most of the 46,000 who have unfortunately died with (not from) Covid-19 were very old and frail and would probably have passed away in 2020 without covid-19 – On average 11,000 people die naturally of old age every week in the UK (600,000 a year)
2. Of the 46,000 people who have died with (not from) covid-19 nearly 44,000 already suffered from life threatening health conditions. (pie chart?)
3. The average life expectancy in the UK is 80 years – the average age of people dying with (not from) covid-19 is over 80.
4. People under 60 with no serious health conditions have a 999.97 out if 1000 recovery rate from covid-19, and are SIX times more likely to die in a car accident than from covid-19 – the vast majority have no symptoms don’t even know they have the virus.
5. The vast majority of people who died with (not from) covid caught the virus in nursing homes and hospitals. (pie chart 50% nursing homes, 20% hospital, 30% community)
6. A surge in covid-19 testing will show a surge in covid-19 cases – the vast majority of people that test ‘positive’ do not know they have the virus. Because of the inaccuracies of testing 100,000 tests can show 1000 ‘false positives’ for people who do not have covid-19.
7. The healthy population with extremely low vulnerability to covid-19 were told to lockdown in their homes but the vulnerable people in nursing homes were not protected – elderly people with covid-19 were forced back into nursing homes, infecting the other frail residents.
8. It is estimated that over 20,000 people have already died as a result of the lockdown experiment (not covid-19) – people are not getting hospital treatment for heart disease, cancer screening, etc. The Government’s own research suggests that as many as 200,000 people will lose their lives as an unintended consequence of the lockdown experiment.
10. Sweden did not try the lockdown experiment and scientists now believe it has achieved community immunity with less deaths by size of population than the UK and many other lockdown countries Sweden chose not to wreck their economy with an experimental full lockdown. Sweden’s mistake, like the UK was not to protect the vulnerable as most who passed with (not from) covid-19 (70%) were in care facilities.
11. Sweden’s schools did not close and no children or teachers died of covid-19. Other Scandinavian schools re-opened 2 months ago with no uptick in covid-19.
12. Norway, Sweden, Finland and Holland do not recommend the public wear masks as there is no evidence that they help. Masks may cause other health issues.
13. Many of the world’s leading scientists say that the lockdown experiment did far more harm than any good, and will cost many more lives in the long term
14. Many thousands of British workers have already lost their jobs, and with the British economy predicted to contract further then many more thousands will be unemployed by the end of the year because of the lockdown experiment.
For more facts about covid-19 visit www………
Or 5: 70% of the people who have died with (not necessarily because of) covid, caught it in hospital or a care home.
I was trying to avoid %ages after a previous comment but god idea…
Yes. I saw it was for a pie chart.
I was just suggesting that you combine the nosocomial figures, so that the much smaller number of community transfers is emphasised.
Otherwise the community slice of the chart would be bigger than the hospital slice.
It isn’t just the government that can present stats to suit their narrative!
makes sense – combining the two, visually persuasive
V good, sweden’s *initial* mistake was not to protect carehomes, then they did, which is why their figures then fell dramtically, I think I’m right in saying?
But I think risk comparisons really work (like car accidents, or numbers of people who die of other things, or comparative risks etc). Nick triggles chart on the BBC article ‘is it time to release the healthy from restrictions’ is a good graphic.
How about some actual numbers with this bit? “people are not getting hospital treatment for heart disease, cancer screening, etc.” – 3.3m people have missed their cancer screening, 10m people are waiting for NHS care, A&E admissions are down by 60?%, cardiac doctors are warning xyz? etc
14 – isn’t it hundreds of thousands?
Great thanks….
14 – probably, I started with millions and dropped to 1000s after a comment, 100s of 1000s is a good compromise…
Nothing to add, but 9 is missing
yup, sorry should have said, i’v already dropped a few after comments, numbers are just for ref..
You wont lose anything by trying to get each point down to 10- 15 words. Save a draft and try to crush it down. I’m not good with words so appreciate how hard it is. An editor would be brutal and get you down to brass tacks where every word counts.
you are absolutely right – too much to say – not enough space
https://graphicriver.net/item/infographics-template/27901215
Infographic templates like this, I find, are cheap, easily formatted to work with the subject and are easily digested by the brain-dead brain-washed we want to target.
And it’s for all of those reasons and more that I think that this lockdown is more political than health related, even though it benefits both parties.
My cleaner returned this morning. Hurray! She certainly discovered places that have been off my radar for the last few months. Blush!
Anyway, we got talking about the local lockdown and she said she wondered if the government were trying to provoke riots. She’d heard about the “major incident” in Manchester and had sussed that it meant troops available. She’s from Zimbabwe, so not so easily misled as the average Brit.
Well, I gave her a few facts and stats and sent her home with Not 1984 Brainwashed badge. Good start to the day!
Great to hear from you.
Perhaps investing in a litter picker to pick up any muzzles that are left would be in order. You can ostentatiously use it to pick up said muzzle in front of customers or those passing by. Hopefully they would get the hint.
Pick it up with tongs and hand it back to them.
Or post them all to Boris, care of Clowning Street.
That would be a worthwhile campaign for someone to push: pick up discarded face nappies and post them to Downing St.
I can do that, in fact, its very tempting.
Be great if it were to catch on widely….
I suggested that two weeks ago. Put them all in a big box and deliver them with a garbage truck.
Clowning street – love it!
I have just posted the following on the General Discussion forum and would be grateful for your feedback. If it is a rubbish idea then also let me know!
I have just constructed a simple website to give people a heads-up on their rights not to wear a mask. It is located here: https://nomasks.godaddysites.com/
I have spoken to a number of people who do not realise that they don’t have to wear a facemask if they have a “reasonable excuse”. The creation of this is to put all the information in one place. Please let me know what you think?
I could do with more evidence of face masks not working – Google now favours face masks working where it didn’t a couple of weeks ago! Please post links to useful websites and I will add them.
I will get a proper domain name if people think this is a worthwhile endeavour.
Look forward to your comments!
This is useful partic the toolkit http://www.laworfiction.com/2020/07/face-covering-litigation-threats-and-administrative-headache/
Thanks BeeJT – I have added that as a link
The links to the government info site claim page not found. Anyone else want to check it against an old link?
I found this very old one but it isn’t the one with the govt’s printable exemption card on:
https://www.gov.uk/guidance/coronavirus-covid-19-safer-travel-guidance-for-passengers#exemptions-face-coverings
Thanks Cheezilla – I have now fixed the links.
Thanks. I found this too. It has the downloadable examption cert.
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/face-coverings-when-to-wear-one-and-how-to-make-your-own
Like all immature bullies sturgeon is a cry baby. Childish? How else to describe this emotional messaging:
https://www.edinburghlive.co.uk/news/edinburgh-news/nicola-sturgeon-reveals-wanted-cry-18706821
The funny thing – funny in that sinister covid days kind of way- is that just a few weeks ago sturgeon ‘felt like crying ‘ when she saw a photograph taken through a telephoto lens of people enjoying a sunny day at the beach.
https://www.edinburghnews.scotsman.com/news/politics/nicola-sturgeon-felt-crying-looking-portobello-sunbathing-pictures-2860660
Frankly strugeon is unhinged and manipulative among other traits.
she must be a woman. ooops…. did i just say that?
Not very impressive though is it for all the top five leaders in the world rankings apparently given to her. I mean its embarrasing tgat she turns on the water works like a toddler.
Yes, because all the men are doing such a masterful job…..
my remark was banter, there are plenty of examples of excellent leaders, male, female, various shades etc…
the wee Kranky is certainly an excellent politician
I’d love some examples of excellent leaders of either sex. Ain’t noticed any in this fucking mess.
Boris?
That’s a joke right?
why the good ladies and gentlemen on this blog!
that chap who runs Belarus
I don’t think he’s an excellent leader, just because he called something right.
Grrr….
Taken as banter as shown by my first LS smiley I didn’t know I could!
It’s pathetic that a leader of a nation uses ‘I could weep’ manipulation once, but to do so twice over a similar incident twice in just a few weeks feels like a collapse of meaningful communication.
I just don’t take myself or anyone else too seriously, a lesson I’ve learnt through of life, I’m a country bumpkin, so I am behind the times, I do struggle with modern think…
And this from the article:
“East Lothian Council warned people not to crowd their beaches” THEIR beaches!!! This sort of pompous attitude really makes me sick. The beaches are not theirs, they are OURS.
wow
This is precisely right and illustrates where Scotland has got to. Everything public sector is allowing us to live under their leadership. Every turn it’s them leading people. They are servants and they work for us.
When this comes up in conversation with strangers I hear people say – and don’t ever forget they are servants.
It is really unpleasant.
Did the East Lothian Council build those beaches? No, comets, asteroids and stromatolites did. So buzz off!
Stasi Sturgeon is King of the Karen’s. If you call her a tranny on youtube it gets instantly deleted by an AI bot. Hilarious
Maybe, deep down inside, she was envious.
WHO – “no Silver Bullet” and we may never get one.
So basically get back to normal then because we cannot sit and wait years for something that may never arrive.
BBC yet again revel again in scaring the nation.
I really do fear for the sanity of many vulnerable people, this is just plan cruelty.
Why do the WHO have the right to present their daily scare stories?
Because they are the World Health Organization and many uninformed people worldwide look up to them and believe everything they tell us as if it was the word of God.
Report from a Ghost Town Museum:
So I broke my boycott and went to visit the Titian exhibition at the National Gallery after the palaver of the phone booking. There were two queues – one for the permanent collection and the other for members and the Titian exhibition. I was assigned to the latter queue and the only one not wearing a muzzle.
Upon arrival, I was greeted with a dystopian and depressing scene – Sainsbury Wing gift shop closed and staff behind the counter either muzzled up or wearing a visor. The woman who served me printed my ticket then off I was.
Upstairs I had to go through a torturous one way system to get to the exhibition – it’s a small one of 7 paintings all of which was commissioned by Philip II of Spain from the celebrated artist and reunited under one roof after 500 years. Once I was finished, I went to the small pop up shop next door, was told to muzzle up, I replied I was exempt and that was that.
Inside the shop, I simply went for the catalogue then paid for it and was in and out in 2 minutes In the past, I would have done some browsing but now I just can’t be bothered.
On the way out, I decided to pop by to see the newly reopened Room 32. All throughout the gallery, it was almost deserted despite the queue outside. The whole gallery had the air of sadness and dystopia. God knows how it will be like when the mandatory muzzling begins on 8 August.
I was ready for any unpleasantness by carrying my phone with me in my hand, standing erect with head held high and walking briskly. Thankfully no-one bothered me but I suppose its because I’m an ethnic minority and the last thing many people want is to be accused of racism. The only blight was one woman who gave me a strange look but I stopped her by giving her a manic grin.
The gallery staff were lovely and seemed to be relieved at seeing one unmuzzled face that was smiling at them. When one of them asked me if I enjoyed my visit and if I will be back soon, I replied “Not until October and when this insanity is over”
Sad for the staff!
Agree. They were lovely and seemed genuinely delighted at seeing visitors despite the pathetic number. I think as well they responded to me in a positive way seeing that they can see my face and that I was smiling and trying to make it easy for them too.
I don’t think this insanity will be over by October unless the 1922 committee kick this lot out and start again.
Furlough will be though…
Its not only the 1922 committee but when the Great British Public had have enough and take matters into their own hands.
Start prodding the 1922 Committee. Relentlessly.
Yes, arts and culture in this country brought to this, I am an artist and Art is not ‘virtual’ I am 70 and never thought it would come to this. Where is the bloody FIGHT! Well done for fronting amongst this insanity.
You’re welcome. Its sad that none of the directors of the major museums and heritage sites are fighting this nonsense. They’ve been passive and seem not to realise that this will hasten their demise.
I work in the museums and heritage sector and my workplace is grappling with voluntary redundancies in the hope that they won’t have to make compulsory ones. Unfortunately the mandatory muzzling from 8 August in my opinion will make compulsory redundancies an option.
If Bill and Melinda Gates are so concerned to help the world’s poorest population to better health and welfare why don’t they channel their billions towards a safe drinking water supply that one third of people so desperately need?
The irony here is that the WHO highlights this but now thinks lock downs, new vaccines and the suppression of cheap, proven and available drugs (i.e. hydroxachloraquine) are a better bet.
The supply of good, clean water to the two billion plus of people who need it is so obvious a path to better health it can only be dismissed by those who see no financial gain from it.
https://www.who.int/news-room/detail/18-06-2019-1-in-3-people-globally-do-not-have-access-to-safe-drinking-water-unicef-who
I watched a program on PBS many years ago about a woman from M.I.T. who invented an inexpensive device to extract groundwater for some villages in Africa. I forget the exact amount of money it cost to make this device but it was in the thousands, not millions or billions. Have not heard about it since. The United Nations goes for grand projects, not simple ones. In other words, it didn’t cost a lot of money so why bother. I’m sure this documentary is still around.
Who told you their agenda was helping the poor!? Controlling the poor and the population is the aim. Providing clean water would mean that all those poor people would live, love and poliferate and that it absolutely not the plan. Then they might want cars and electricity, cheap clothes and healthcare and all the things we have, which we can’t have, if they do too. Keep up! The Gates are eugenicists and fascists, nothing new there.
Yes. And decent toilets.
Buy your loo paper from these guys and help supply clean water and sanitary toilets to third world countries:
https://uk.whogivesacrap.org/
To quote Bill (he is on film saying this):
“The best way to reduce population is to vaccinate children. People in the third world only have 3 or 4 children because they are unsure that they will live long term – if they vaccinate their children and become confident they won’t die, they only have one or two children.”
Even if this was a noble aim (it isn’t – why does he get to decide which parts of the world get to breed and which don’t?), it’s completely batshit crazy if you take him at his word.
A) The best way to achieve that aim is actually education and free contraception.
and B) Why do you need to make health interventions your INDIRECT method of population reduction rather than the above DIRECT methods?
The answer would be – MONEY. (and power. and kudos)
The people claiming pharma makes no profit on vaccinations are talking complete bullshit…. if you can get enough people to have your vaccine ;P
And what better ‘market’ for your vaccine than a continent full of poor people with corrupt governments who can’t question you even if they wanted to?
He’s vile.
I can get it and would laud him if he concentrated his efforts and money on vaccinating children in the 3rd world against the true killer diseases with proven, conventional vaccines, regardless of whether this reduces births or not.
But I can’t get or accept any wider mandate in those regards- he has no business mingling in the developed world’s vaccine affairs, promoting vaccination for non-true-killer diseases like e.g. Corona, financing the WHO, promoting unconventional and/or unproven vaccines or adjuvants against any disease anywhere.
This is thing – if he wanted to truly help people with vaccines, then….. go for it Bill. Why the population reduction agenda? Why do you care?
If he’s an environmentalist who thinks humans are poisoning the earth, then he should just admit it, join Extinction Rebellion, and dedicate himself explicitly to the cause.
This is why I scoff when people call him a philanthropist.
Gates is NOT a philanthropist. He IS a philanthrocapitalist.
Surely a philanthroeugenicist?
A philanthrocapitalisteugenicistdogooder.
I think he’s genuine. Maybe he got a bit overexcited about Covid but that’s understandable. There are diseases that need vaccines more than Covid and certainly viruses that are much better candidates for eradication. But Gates has done much more to fight those other diseases than we have.
I think the XR vision is for us to go back to the stone age. Gates instead wants everyone to live like an American which seems a worthy goal to me. Check out his travelling wave nuclear reactors.
But what he means by vaccination is to use a vaccine that contains a sterilising agent so that girls can never have children of their own. He was rumbled when people noticed he was only vaccinating women of child-bearing age..
Has this been proven?
No, it has been disproven, see guy153’s intervention several days ago.
Yes.
Hi. I like you. Gates’ reasoning is out anyway. Only economic security reduces birthrate, not health.
Too easy and too logical I think.
And cheap solar energy units.
I thought GPs existed to help sick people. But if you can only see a GP if you’re not unwell why are we paying these people 130K + a year?
Indeed. Think about care homes, where care staff are paid minimum wage and no sick pay have been going in every day. Elderly people need to be examined not just provided with telephone advice.
I wondered that before they became ‘remote’. In my house GP stands for ‘generally pants’.
Yes, try and get an appointment and you are given one 2 weeks away (by which time you have either died or got over it). Strangely, the receptionist will phone you out of the blue to offer (especially for over 50s) a check up for things that the G.P.s get government money for.
G.P.s surgeries are now run like small businesses. This is not to denigrate some brilliant doctors (my G.P. for 27 years recently retired and he was brilliant) but recently I have become a little concerned.
To be fair this was true of my GP even before coronabollox. Can’t even remember the last time I went, even when I was in crippling pain with a tooth infection I just stayed at home and let it pass. Prob for a smear test which they have recenty called me in again for but which I’m (unwisely) putting off simply because I can’t stomach the idea of lying down half naked with a muzzle on while someone fiddles in my glory hole. Cringe. Like some very weird porn film.
No.
Yes, sorry, I should have said before the coronabollox. Your post made me laugh, but its horrible!
Keep your boots on just in case the lighting changes and the 70s prog rock starts to play, you may need to put foot and haul ass (and groryhole
) outta there!
GPs are useless and even more so now. I can’t be bothered to register with one and have not had one for 4 years now.
The uselessness of masks was made very clear to me today when I had loosened up the chocolate powder in my catering sized tin, and then had to cough as the chocolate powder still somehow found it’s way into my throat, despite my boss making us wear surgical masks.
Another good contribution from Sherelle in The Telegraph:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2020/08/03/second-wave-hysteria-smokescreen-no-10s-abysmal-failures/ ‘Let’s pause and take it in for a moment: more than half a year into this crisis, No 10 (and the media) is still allowing incomplete, poorly interpreted and potentially inaccurate data to be widely circulated, fuelling public hysteria’
Not ‘allowing’, in my view, but actively promoting and encouraging it, so we accept a rushed through and potentially deadly vaccine.
It’s encouraging that the Telegraph has become so aggressively sceptical over the last week or so (especially the last few days). They were usually the most sceptical and questioning of the mainstream papers but over the last month or so they seemed to have toned down their attitude a bit, possibly not wanting to do too much to undermine the government and PM’s credibility.
I think now they realise that the party and PM they usually support, simply aren’t fit for purpose or worthy of their support any more!
Another good article by the same writer, written back in April, if it was an omnishambles then I don’t think there’s a word (printable or otherwise) to describe the current situation!
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2020/04/02/britain-has-traded-individual-liberty-terrifying-state-omnishambles/
Yes, agree. Interesting that the mood on Guido has also become distinctly less supportive of Boris and the government. Perhaps the diehard supporters, prepared to overlook issues such as Dominic Cummings and the ‘Barnard Castle Defence’ and the initial phase of lockdown, were happy to keep schtum on the basis that Brexit was going to be delivered. Either they have now realised they were sold a pup on lockdown, or on Brexit (it’s gone pretty quiet), or both?
Somehow the diehards are the ones that get my goat the most, because they in general know it’s nonsense and ought to know better. I mean, I voted for the PM and for Brexit, and am under no illusion that any other party would have handled this better, but I honestly couldn’t give a toss about Brexit now and can’t see how anyone would want to forgive the PM and others for what they have done.
I am a life-long Tory voter. Both my sons are natural Tory voters too. Elder son and husband voted for the Independent in the GE – he was the stood-down Brexit Party candidate and a decent local man. I would have voted for him had Brexit Party stood as such in our constituency. Husband voted for Boris vs Hunt in Tory leadership campaign, but said he did not trust Boris – he was right! Husband has cancelled his membership and told the local party they have lost four votes in this household. My mother, also a lifelong Tory voter has said she will never vote for them again. I agree with you completely, I could not vote for them again after presiding over this self-inflicted disaster. The suffering they have caused so needlessly to so many is unforgivable.
My (Tory) MP is a decent man but I couldn’t vote for him now. It’ll be none of the above.
Agree completely and this will be carried out across the country.
I am often surprised by the level of aggressive trolling in the comments section on the Telegraph on any article disapproving of the government response. I am sure they are paid agitators as they all attack at the same time and use the same standard insults.
Yes. They’re a troll magnet. You do get to recognise the names of the regulars so you can avoid encouraging them.
It might be helpful to fellow LSs to bear in mind some basic principles when trying to change someone’s opinion. And I say this as a hypocrite because, even though I know what I’m about to suggest is effective, I still find myself arguing with people. The key points are that arguing doesn’t work and showing that you are angry doesn’t work (even though it might feel good). Instead, we need to try to show that we understand where the other person is coming from, what their fears are, and then how we can frame our different views in ways that will soothe their fears. Until the other person feels understood by you, they won’t budge. Indeed, they will dig their heels in, so as to justify their position because we are being nasty to them.
So, when it comes to dealing with individual coronaphobics, appreciate that they are frightened (the government has done a good job on them, so we shouldn’t be critical of them), show them that you understand, and only then begin to suggest ways which will help them to feel less frightened and then they can begin to take risks in “exposing” themselves.
With politicians, I think there is no mileage in conspiracy theories. We must assume that they made their decisions out of genuine concern (even if you don’t believe that, act as if you do) and that they have got themselves into a corner and can’t get out of it. Try to understand their fears: political embarrassment, another spike for which they will get the blame for not doing enough, or even just genuine fear for their citizens’ lives (some politicians are OK) or even for their own lives. Show that you understand those concerns. Only then can you pitch LS ideas to whatever politician you are trying to influence, pointing out how your alternative perspectives could address those fears. Asking questions and describing facts also helps. Example: I understand you are frightened of losing votes if we abandon the lockdown, but what will be the effect on your constituents if lockdown continues? Or, I can see that the prospect of another wave would terrify you, so tell me, what are the current figures for positive tests over the last three weeks and how do they relate to the number of tests carried out?
spoken by someone who clearly has experience of the real world – I have dealt with many types of people in my time, you are spot on!
Thank you!
Yup.
What is the point of corresponding with your MP when they have zero input into government policy?
What makes you think there will ever again be free elections?
If millions of people emailed their MPs to protest about that day’s madness, I think you’d start to see change. I know that’s unlikely, but…
You cannot reason with fanatics.
Least of all when they are part of a crowd.
No one ever changed their mind on Leave or Remain during the last infamous 3 years.
The people will only contemplate that it made a mistake when it suffers negative consequences of the Corona responses personally.
Politicians, not even then.
You can sow a seed and move on. It might be reasons of persinal satisfaction that we feel the need to convince people and see the change. That is forlorn. Simply give a killer point and move on.
If it’s good enough and simple enough it will be remembered and may nag. Time is what turns things.
Its amazing how some people will change to your way of thinking when it’s their idea
Have a look at archive film of people raising their right arms to welcome Hitler.
… and try not to despair.
Adolf Johnson?
Adolf de Piffle
I agree that with the genuinely fearful you need a more subtle approach. Not sure about politicians – some of them might be well-meaning but dim and lazy, but I doubt many. Most of of them probably know very well it’s all bollocks but won’t admit it. I see no reason to go easy on them. I want to try and make sure they lie awake at night, worrying they are committing mortal sins. Though possibly appealing to their self interest would be more effective – the trouble is, we’ve got no leverage at present.
What’s your recommended approach with my favourite group – the intelligent but apathetic/gullible?
you can’t fix stupid
Maybe not, but surely if people’s lives continue to be disrupted they will start to apply their intelligence to the issue. Eventually? I can’t believe they really want to walk around with a mask on or be threatened with lockdowns forever.
I recommend sarcastic remarks to highlight the absurdity. For example one of my favourite things to say is the sooner we get rid of this virus the sooner people can get back to dying properly.
Aremen – excellent post. I’l copy it and save it to my computer to remind me how to respond in future. Thanks.
I wish I can up vote this more than once.
It wouldn’t surprise me if these curfews and restrictions at night are going to be used to conduct raids to capture dissidents of the government. They will then either be sent to re-education camps, or simply liquidated. This is the only way the worldwide Communist Revolution can completely takeover. We are living in truly dangerous and dark times.
Forget the ‘Communist Revolution’ : this- here, now – is the Tory Party on the totalitarian March!
Denial isn’t going to ease repression by the homely fascists.
All they actually need is to say you are suspected of being infected then they can ‘take’ you – it is in the coronavirus act..
I believe that the government have decided that being draconian is popular. Focus groups and polls suggest this to them. So, that is how they are deciding to behave. The data is then analysed to fit the narrative.
Being draconian is popular because many people are still afraid. A constant of human history seems to be to support “tough” and authoritarian government when we are afraid. Fascism, Puritanism, Communism and such theologies were popular, especially during periods of fright. The people who supported these did not see themselves as evil. Obviously. Nor did politicians sell it to them as evil. People who burned “witches” thought they were highly moral and protecting the population. We now know that this was evil.
This is what scares me. This authoritarianism that we are seeing now has a perfect cover as a moral crusade to eradicate the virus. If someone really believes that doing that is the path of moral righteousness then they will go to any length to do so. Governments are then becoming intoxicated on being authoritarian and, at the same time are scared that if the music stops then there will be a reaction the other way. Against them. So they just keep doubling down and need to perpetuate the narrative. I believe it will only end after it gets worse.
I hope things do not come to this but The Reign of Terror in Revolutionary France, which was done to “protect people” took many months to end and led to great damage. Psychologically, this is a similar period in history.
wash – rinse – repeat…
Dictatorships are usually welcomed in initially
The authoritarians perpetrated the fear. That’s the whole point. Then they can justify the draconian measures. Hence the fear-mongering continues.
“ Fascism, Puritanism, Communism and such theologies …”
Don’t forget Catholicism, faux- Patriotism … and general Conformism …
That is an excellent analysis.
For what it’s worth, I’ve made a formal complaint to NHS England about the ‘denial’ of treatment from my GP, and I’ve copied it to my MP who has agreed to look into it.
After being messed around by my GP over a steroid injection for a frozen shoulder (all working from home because of Covid, and the one who could do it works two days a week and was on holiday), I went private and paid £210 for the privilege. I couldn’t bear the pain any longer, couldn’t drive, couldn’t work. The doctor who performed this for me also works PT as a locum GP. He turned out to have similar views to mine – I never miss an opportunity to express what bollocks I think the whole thing is. He agreed it was scandalous that GPs were still not back at work, but his thinking was that it was inertia. The GP practice where he had been doing locum work (on the phone obvs) only wanted him on Fridays, so the GP could have a long week-end. As we talked he got more and more annoyed about it and said he would complain.
By the way there are no fewer than 31 GPs at my practice – apparently all ‘working from home’ according to the dragons on reception
They are dragins too. We have the same breed here.
Or from the golf course?
My mum suffered with a frozen shoulder for several years during the 1970s. Doctor suggested heat pads, painkillers etc.
She started Iyengar yoga classes and mentioned the problem to the teacher, sho gave her a very simple exercise to do. Shoulder cured within a week, never returned and no injections required.
Maybe seek out a private osteopath or physiotherapist who knows how to manipulate the ligament back into its groove and can give you exercises to help it stay there.
If you want an osteopath, contact the University College of Osteopathy they have a clinic and might be able to help.
One of my friends works as GP in a big practice. She said they got rid of all locums as they don’t need them any more. A lot of practices have done the same.
I keep seeing excellent clips from Sky News Australia, but I have no way of knowing how representative they are of that channel’s overall coverage. This one is particularly good:
Australians have been filled ‘with fear and alarmism’: Alan Jones
Also:
Victorians cheering on the Andrews govt is a case of ‘Stockholm’s Syndrome’
Are there any UK/US TV channels apart from Fox that regularly, or even occasionally, carry opinion resistant to the coronapanic?
Sky News Australia have featured Johan Giesecke before, and are also pretty strong on freedom of speech from the clips I have seen.
Not aware of any UK TV channel telling much truth. Deborah Cohen has done some good work for the BBC but she’s freelance not staff.
Pretty much just Sky News Australia and Fox regularly (but not always, by any means) allowing a fair hearing for the truth on the coronapanic, judging from the selections I’ve seen.
“Deborah Cohen … freelance not staff.”
That’s interesting, Julian. Where did you pick up that fact?
Certainly, her reporting (not particularly outrageous) has stood out starkly in contrast to quotidian BBC government promos.
I may be wrong but I thought her website says she’s freelance.
Her website does say she is a freelance reporter, no mention of her being a staffer for the BBC or elsewhere.
I was watching Sky Australia’s YouTube stuff in the early days of “lockdown” Alan Jones, Andrew Bolt etc but then YT shadow banned them from me by not making any suggestions. I have to find them and it’s not so easy. I watched a lot a couple of days ago and I think he’s drunk the Covid Coolaid
Judging from that Alan Jones clip today that I just linked, he absolutely has not drunk any Covid Coolaid. Excellent stuff.
Nah, Alan Jones is as wonderfully spiky as ever. Haven’t had any problems with shadow banning either… when I start to type his name, it brings up the latest videos without a hitch.
One person to listen to in Australia is Gigi Foster an Economics professor at the University of New South Wales. The podcast is excellent and provides an well thought through economic and moral argument against lockdown – equally applies in UK. This argument has been missing in so much that we hear in the UK – science doesn’t provide the whole story.
Podcast here: https://shows.acast.com/the-bip-show/episodes/episode-4-prof-gigi-foster-did-covid-19-lockdowns-go-too-far
Also she was on the ABC’s Q&A show (I haven’t watched it yet, but my sister said that Prof Foster acquitted herself well): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d99c1Dydvts
Yes, I encountered Gigi Foster via one of these Sky News Australia clips a couple of days ago (I posted it here) and was very impressed.
Hancock just said on BBC Radio 2 News: “Stories about over 50’s are inaccurate and speculation – of course, we’ve paused shielding because infections are so low“
There it is, Health Secretary saying infections are so low that we can let the most vulnerable out…
Infections are so low
Infections are so low
But we need to look like we’re doing something so
Back into lockdown you go
Very good!
‘Paused’ shielding. Not ‘ended’ it.
Pause is the cividsinister word of choice. This is your new existence. Fucks in suits pause your life at will. Let it loom over you, it will be a relief when it is unpaused. Third reich.
Yeah, spotted that, denying rumours of further shielding and saying we’ve paused the current lot. I don’t know why they even bother, I would have more respect for a flat out liar. At least it would be honest (!).
MH has already lied on TV. He said the reports in the press that the government instructed the NHS to discharge sick elderly patients into unprepared care and nursing homes to free up 15,000 beds were untrue. But journalists and some politicians, and members of the public (including me) had already downloaded both instruction papers issued to the NHS on 19th March, before they disappeared off the internet.
What happens next, ie post Hancock lie
Only one journal I have seen even picked up on it and published a very accurate and hard-hitting article. However, some MPs did and there was a very uncomfortable debate between BJ & KS, in which BJ did a bumbling defence of the paper and said MH’s comments were taken out of context. Since lying is so common amongst government ministers and appointed officials, I guess folk no longer take exception to the practice?
He lied in Parliament at the beginning, saying they had no plans to change the abortion law. Once Parliament shut, they changed the law – no debate…
Perhaps one hopeful dynamic is that self-serving wankers like Hand-cock (pun intended) can be scared when people suss out their idiocy.
If infections are low, they can let out the North of England and call off the troops!
So, there’s also no need for face masks or locking down Manchester and parts of West Yorkshire. Just another inconsistent comment to add to all the rest.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/08/03/travel-latest-virus-free-italy-pleads-return-british-tourists/
Two thirds of Europeans would rather cancel a holiday than wear a facemask outdoors.
Interesting. Governments take note! Also, pro-maskers take note – if you don’t want to wear one on holiday, outdoors, why do you accept wearing one here, in shops, given that tomorrow it might come outdoors too.
That’s actually great news. As an avid traveler, it’s one of the things I cannot and will not do while masking is mandatory on airplanes, shops, beaches, etc. It makes me very sad to think about my life without travel, but I will not comply. The thing is, it’s very hard to know if people aren’t traveling because they’re too scared despite all of the “safety” measures, or because they won’t travel under draconian conditions. I was thinking it’s more the former, but this survey gives me some hope it’s the latter.
They perfectly know that… you can open your shop but you will have no costumers…
They win.
What a polling question that was.
They have more sense than their governments.
So Bingo! The government gets what it wants for its net zero plans – people stop travelling abroad…
Ah yes, zero emissions, but trashed economy, clever
The only Net Zero that we might possibly achieve if this insanity never ends is Zero reasons to keep on living. All the other Net Zeroes are just the impossible to achieve pipe dreams of delusional people.
https://www.spiked-online.com/2020/07/30/the-spanish-quarantine-a-self-made-crisis/#.XyhXnsq6iF4.mailto
Looks like Sánchez shot himself in the foot- declaring Spain was safe for tourists, then making nappy wearing mandatory everywhere.
Oops-should have written face-nappy, although who knows what’s coming next??!!
This should be publicised more – its people voting with their wallets and feet much like the ghost town shops and supermarkets here.
Goes to show that many people are not prepared to accept any more crap. We need a bigger push back to force TPTB to listen.
The government of Madeira just declared muzzles everywhere mandatory and immediately hotel cancellations skyrocketed. They still went ahead anyway.
That’s the problem. Even if people vote with their feet, they don’t seem to care and nothing changes…
That’s because there’s an agenda tha we’re not party to.
This is relevant – The Diagonal Steamtrap
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IxUXviafW94
Brilliant. Still grinning!
Many here may already have read it, but I do recommend Bernard-Henry Levy’s short book on “Madness in the time of coronavirus”. Amongst other thought-provoking observations, he looks carefully at the dangers (originally identified by Plato) of allowing a medical/scientific authority to take over the leadership of a state, and looks back to the powerful doctors of 1930s France who were so keen on eugenics, as a way of “helping” the whole of humanity of course!
I read it as well. Now I’m having the shit scared out of me watching David Icke on London Real with Brian Rose. I’ve been keeping strange bedfellows these days — people I would never have listened to pre-Covid. I was just a middle-aged, regular person living a good life before mid-March and now conspiracy theorists are making perfect sense! Last night I listened to Icke’s March 18th interview with Rose, which was prescient, and now the interview he did yesterday. While it is scary, there are messages of hope as well — like if huge numbers of people do not comply, the psychopaths and idiots can’t win. A simple example he uses is the hoards of people who flock to the beaches despite all of the stupid warnings. The state simply can’t control that many people not complying; same with the protest in Berlin yesterday. Anyway, it’s a great watch for people on this site.
Link would have been nice.
Sorry, here it is.
https://freedomplatform.tv/rose-icke-v-the-answer/
.
Several members asked me to post the reply from my MP (if I received one) to my formal letter challenging the plans for mask wearing to be extended, which had attached 2 pages of 12 evidenced points (which I provided to LS)
Sent: 19 July 2020 20:59
To: DUNNE, Philip
Cc: philip@philipdunne.com
Subject: Government’s new regulation for the general public to wear masks – a challenge
Importance: High
‘Dear Mr Dunne,
Please find my 1 page challenge letter attached with 2 additional pages containing 12 points against this new mandate, which I have evidenced for your information.
I have also posed a few questions about the evidence used to support the government’s changed position and would be very appreciative of receiving this or links to said evidence, which I would like to share with interested parties.
Yours sincerely…’
Received his reply late this afternoon (see below). The robust, reputable medical evidence based on clinical trials for which I asked details or links that supports and informed the government’s change of position is notably absent – he just makes a general reference to SAGE. He ignores the links I provided, plus quotes from relevant persons advising against masks. He also ignores my points about disability discrimination, and the information I copied from another LS member who had referenced the report which placed retail staff affected by the virus far lower than many other workers, including government admin staff.
Essentially – a typical politician’s fudged and vague response when they do not have the grounds to counter a challenge from one of their constituents.
‘Dear ….
Thanks for your message.
It is the case that the scientific advice was not clear-cut about the merits of face coverings until recently.
After careful consideration of the latest scientific evidence from the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE), the government confirmed face coverings can help reduce the risk of transmission in some circumstances, and can prevent further spread of the virus, reducing the risk from wearers infecting others. This is particularly important when people with coronavirus can present asymptomatically.
So I support the steps the government has taken on this. Visiting shops last Saturday, wearing my face covering, I was struck by the high degree of compliance by others entering shops.
If you disagree with the policy, you can of course choose to shop by other means. In doing so, you will be helping to keep safe the sales and retail assistants who have kept our nation fed and supplied throughout this pandemic, for whom the death rate has tragically been much higher than the general population.
I hope you are keeping safe and well through this ghastly pandemic.
With kind regards
Rt Hon Philip Dunne
MP for Ludlow’
“MP for Ludlow” … and time-serving twat on a sinecure.
A millionaire farmer, in a very rural constituency, who still has no idea how most of us live (average income for those who still have jobs) is £17,000 per year, but most are part time, or zero hours contracts, or seasonal positions. The £17k is skewed by a few managers, local government senior staff, and commuters with better paid jobs in Birmingham.
… and in the end, the kicker is that a majority voted for him. There was no compulsion in that.
what a fucking outrageous response.
these people NEED TO GO!
Agree. It took me over a day to write my letter and list the 12 points with care to make sure it was factual and each one supported with sound evidence. Found the reply patronising, and quite honestly really insulting. I am disabled and am exempt from wearing a mask but have already suffered a lot of abuse because I am not wearing one, in spite of 99% of locals not wearing one until the regulation came into force on 24th. Now they are all suddenly passionately in favour of them saying people will be killed as a direct result of others not wearing masks!
it is entirely patronising.
I do wonder what they have on shits likes like him. nasty man.
keep your strength up when it comes to dealing with muzzles and the muzzled!
Doing my best, but was a little hurt this morning to receive a FB personal message via Messenger in response to my querying a photo someone posted of a notice on our village shop door. The notice was directed at people who were exempt for disability or medical reasons. It said they would need to let staff know in advance and the staff would endeavour to bring the items they needed outside to them and payment would also be taken outside. Loads of locals ‘liked’ this and said how helpful and kind it was whilst keeping the rest of the local customers safe. I explained this could actually be perceived as discriminatory because it was barring exempt people from shopping in the store like everyone else, they could not browse, and were being made to wait on the pavement in all weathers. I asked how would people feel if it said black people or muslims instead of exempt people for example? My query attracted lots of nasty comments and one person even sent me a personal FB message saying “Nobody likes you”. I’ve lived in the village for 23 years and been involved in caring for others and setting up a charity to support disadvantaged, sick and disabled locals, so thought such responses were particularly unkind.
who sent you that message on fb? that’s totally unacceptable. I would screenshot what you have as this sounds discriminatory.
perhaps you could could send on to your mp and see if he dismisses you again in such a patronising manner
could be worth documenting it. perhaps on here though you might need to do some redaction
I deleted the comment and blocked the sender. Told myself it reflected more on the sender than the receiver, and was untrue anyway as I have quite a few longstanding friends from those i helped in previous years, as well as friends from former work and social networks. So in theory someone sending a message saying “Nobody Likes You” should not have the power to hurt. (It did, but I’m hoping repeating the above facts will erase the hurt).
That’s crap, I’m in Shropshire too, it’s Hill Billy country with regard to this as far as I can tell. Show them this: (toolkit linked from here is excellent) http://www.laworfiction.com/2020/07/face-covering-litigation-threats-and-administrative-headache/
I also receive a similar patronising reply from my MP.
He didn’t even bother writing my name.
… but, if you’re honest, I doubt that you will have been surprised. That’s what’s so sad.
Disappointed. His reply to my letter about protecting our food standards, farmers and farm animal welfare in the light of impending new trade deals was very long, detailed, informative and he promised to do his best to address this issue. I expected at least some acknowledgement of my points and that he would try to find out details of the new scientific evidence the government said had emerged to support mask wearing.
Dear Ms. Shropshire,
[same old boiler plate shit]
Love,
Your MP.
I was also p…off with his reference to a message, when it was a properly constructed, formal letter with an appendix attached containing the 12 points. Hardly a message as he put it.
Compliance high – so weak! This point is pure irrelevant BS. People obey law because people cannot afford 100 nor want to cause a scene via social shaming. His spin isnt even clever or skilful. Dunne. Done.
He’s an arsehole extraordinaire, and a pompous twat.
From Wiki – Philip Dunne was educated at Abberley Hall School, followed by Eton College and Keble College, Oxford, where he was awarded a degree in Philosophy, Politics and Economics. At Oxford he was part of the Bullingdon Club.
Need we say more!
What a twat.
What an arse!
Ghastly pandemic. What a complete cunt
Dear me that is bad.
Jesus wept. What a maroon and deserves to lose his seat
Sadly I think he has held the seat since he was in primary school. We have had some very good alternative candidates with sensible, logical, practical solutions to local, regional and national problems, with lots of vigour and enthusiasm to make a genuine difference. None has ever managed to get close to Dunne’s vote results.
UK Column are collating responses from MPs. Especially boilerplate ones. Maybe forward your letter and his reply to them?
https://www.ukcolumn.org/
That’s the trouble when the seat is as safe as houses.
What an utter arsehole !,what a patronising response to you when you spent time researching and composing a factual letter to him,the contempt these people have for us is much deeper than I ever imagined.
Most likely a standard reply from his PA, which is what I’ve had. They never answer the question about the deaths of retail assistants,which I believe is zero. All lies anyway, and at the moment they are getting away with it.
Email the MP a link to this page and tell him to search for his name.
Ha, ha, ha! Tempted!
The turnout is gonna be so bad at the next election.
if we ever get another election…
He’s my MP too, he’s not a rebel, ever. I’ve met him several times, he’s actually very pleasant, but if you look at his voting record, he never, ever, ever votes against his own team. I’ve been driving him potty too, he’s now ignoring me.
My MP never even replied to my email. I will never vote for him.
The fabulous couple from the North East who own Hayes Travel and rescued so many branches and employees of Thomas cook was just on Sky – fabulous people being fucked over by the Bozo the clown show…
Perhaps Business is begining to rally. Dragons Den Banantine (sp?) Has annouced he’s offski from Scotland after Sturgeon says gyms will be clised until at least 15 Seotember. Coverage across many papers today.
These Businesses are perhaps some of the most astute and wise. They run circles around your hancock hunt goves.
he fucked the local gym up where I am so I hope he leaves England too!
Business leaders and trade bodies were and are a complete failure since March.
Only topped by the unions.
This is one of the strangest things of this crisis,the almost complete silence of business leaders as the mad destruction of our economy takes place.
Agree. Its as if they have a death wish and are not prepared to fight to keep their businesses running and afloat.
Beware of C4! It has lasting effects!
Yes … I noticed that one not to watch.
Where the f. has proper investigative journalism gone? Is the MSM now almost denuded of principled, skilled journalists?
“Is the MSM now almost denuded of principled, skilled journalists?”
Pretty much.
Deborah Cohen has done a couple of worthwhile pieces, one on Newsnight about Leicester and one on the WHO’s mask u-turn being political rather than medical/scientific
She did a good Newsnight article about Ferguson’s dodgy “science” three months ago. After that, we didn’t see as much of her!
https://motls.blogspot.com/2020/05/deborah-cohen-bbc-and-models-vs-theories.html
turn that shit off brother
total berks’
Sure there was a poll that said 99% of the people would refuse to sit next to an academic, anywhere.
roughly the same percentage they managed to muzzle so cancels out, can we all go back to normal now?
Do academics smell – or/and- maybe its their breath
That doctor was a liar.
Anyone could see the hospital behind her was EMPTY AS THE GRAVE.
(Don’t come from me my mum still watches this swill)
So in Belgium masks are to ‘discipline the people’, Sinister.
Whips are far better for discipline…
Some have to pay for this…
worth every penny
Here in Portugal the narrative is: if we all wear masks the virus would go away…
We are sooo effed with this voodoo xhit..
I think people did think in the beginning that if they complied ……
Totally agree about the continued skeleton GP service. I work in a surgery & while there are now more nurses appts resumed mainly blood tests dressings & smears so far (many others still suspended for other long term conditions) GPs are doing phone calls but some are, to be fair, inviting patients down to be seen and a fair proportion of these are elderly. They are all working from the surgery not home. From what I hear the official line is to see as few in the building as poss but some of our Drs just disregard this. We have to take everyone’s temperature at the door including delivery drivers & ourselves with a hand held device which is wildly inaccurate!
I think GPs are just drug dealers, if you are unwell – get to A&E, but wear a mask..
Mr T injured his toe at the w/e we didn’t bother with GP went to local minor injuries hosp today he had x ray & all sorted quite quickly. Would recommend them. Cut out the middle man no phone calls or sending your photo in.
Interesting, where does the PSED obligation fall do you know? Public sector equality duty, and risk assessments? Is that on the practice, or higher up (CCG say?). I’m unclear on where the buck stops. The reason I say that is I think for risk assessment purposes you can’t risk assess it on the threat of covid transmission (or we’d be closing services left and right on the risk of catching TB, or measles or whatever), covid is not a ‘a serious and imminent danger’ legally I think. But someone somewhere must have risk assessed it and decided suspending smears, or breast exams or whatever vs the risk of covid was a price worth paying, I don’t think that would stand up to scrutiny. I’m checking the legal basis but I think already GPs would fall foul of equality impact assessments.
Also do you know where I’d find out what rights patients have?
(it was me who asked the question in today’s update)
Ta
I would think our Practice Manager follows advice from CCG which incidentally also meets in one of our surgeries but they must be subject to Public health England who notoriously declared anyone who’d had Covid subsequently died of it! As staff we all had to have a ‘Covid Risk Assessment’ asked to declare any long term conditions (I am not a patient where I work) we then were given a score which dictated how much patient contact we had. Sounds similar to the over 50’s screen mad Boris is considering. There is the PALs ( Patient Liaison Service) not sure if this would help you. I would make a huge fuss that your Dad needs immediate & effective GP involvement at our surgery those who make waves usually get results. All the best!
I’m spending some time with other this week (first time since Christmas, since she normally lives 300 miles away) and I’ve been able to talk to her about this – she’s a GP of 46 years’ experience.
She thinks that PHE and the MoH are absolutely delighted about how much more efficient GPS can now be – they’re “seeing” about twice as many patients over the phone and on video calls than they ordinarily could. She’s also absolutely convinced they’re missing a huge amount and patients will suffer as a result. It’s bad enough for someone with her experience, but she says she can’t imagine how the juniors are every going to be able to do it, or to learn to do their jobs properly. She’s just about ready to give up and retire, because this is the kind of medicine she wants to practice.
Anyway, from what I can gather, they feel they must follow CCG guidance, but that certainly doesn’t stop necessary face to face appointments from taking place. Sounds like your father’s GP is being negligent, frankly.
We can cancelled direct debit to BBC 2 months ago. Had enough of their propaganda.
Defunding of the BBC should be coordinated on a grand scale. Several severe blows. Thousands upon thousands, minute by minute.
I can’t quite believe that all this nonsense is still continuing after something like 20+ weeks. It’s like a bloody rollercoaster. Just when you think you’ve hit peak lunacy, something else comes along. E.g. quarantining everyone over 50! Good luck with that one.
My poor wife gets my verbal rage whenever some new ludicrous turn is taken by Kim Jon Boris and his Apparatiks / Useful Idiots.
My wife is a sceptic too and a total legend for her support.
In spite of all the continuing rubbish, here are some things that have cheered me up over the last week or so and quelled the rage:
Hang in there fellow Lockdown Sceptics.
The truth will out.
Stupidest sign of the day. Small village cafe/coffee shop.
“Please wear a mask until sitting down”
Costa are like that – at least in York, anyway.
“but don’t sit on your mask”
“unless you are flatulent”
Six foot vertical distancing?
But…. They’re exempt from mask bullshit aren’t they? (Legally)
Coroni only attacks people standing up don’t you know!
So you’re sat there talking animatedly with someone at a table. Potentially many other people. According to them you will be spreading the deadly lurg to each other in your talk fumes. And yet…. As soon as you stand up, away from those talk fumes, you become dangerous? ? ?
They’ve legally banned standing up in bars and restaurants in Greece yesterday, my ex pat friends are absolutely gutted, it’s economic armageddon over there!
Oh FFS
Everyone will ignore it TBF
Well Greeks will be they now have 9k bed wetting Brits living on the island who are all out of work and drunk on cheap barrel wine and have nothing better to do than be the corona virus nazis. They are terrified of British travellers apparently, having seen all our disease ridden beaches.
Oh God, surely they have more sense. Surely?
What a joke!
And then put it back on when you get up, after having contaminated it with your hands taking it on and off and storing it in your pocket or wherever.
Much rejoicing among our church congregation in West Wales, subject to the Bedwetting Bishop of St David’s.
Not.
Here are the conditions for our one, and so far only, planned open day:
Strange to say, the nearby Catholic church doesn’t mind a bit if you light any number of candles, for a modest charge of 20p each.
Oh, and back in England, this is going to be the drill for taking Communion:
You sanitise your hands.
You take off your face nappy.
You sanitise your hands.
You receive communion.
You sanitise your hands.
You replace your face nappy.
You sanitise your hands.
I am not joking, this is from the horse’s mouth.
I think I’ll convert to the Cult of Sanity.
Because Christianity was always very clear that the most important, most over-riding thing in life is to desperately try to live forever.
Well, the idea is that our loving father only gives us once chance to get it right. And he’s watching us all the time (from a distance!)
So if you don’t think you’ve gained his approval, it’s eternal damnation for you.
Wouldn’t you want to postpone that for as long as possible?
God that sounds awful, but see? There’s the dreaded ‘risk assessment’ again!! I’d ask to see that if you can. See here: http://www.laworfiction.com/2020/07/risk-assessments-an-important-chink-in-the-lockdown-armour/
“on no account are candles to be lit”
LOL! Do flames release the Wuhan Lab Flu virus now?
You’d think candles would ward it off!
It really is time to go Henry VIII
Set up your own church in your house.
I say that like it’s easy but…..
Wtt
You should try to channel the spirit of the early Christians – go back to the DIY house churches and perhaps that way Christianity might have a chance to return to its roots.
Hilarious if it weren’t so tragic.
Good piece on the (bad) state of the C of E by Giles Fraser: https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/08/03/church-england-determined-kill-parish-church/amp/
“The parish, for centuries the bedrock of the Church of England’s engagement with communities throughout the land, is being sacrificed to a growing and inward-looking centralised Church structure that is steadily sucking resources away from it. And though it’s hard for an old Leftie like me to accept, it’s a parable about the dangers of nationalisation.”
Please please please ask them to explain why votive candles must not be lit. Dying to know the answer to that one. Bizarre.
I disagree – the government clearly has NO idea what an arse or an elbow actually are, let alone how to differentiate between them…
Lol
The latest Mike Graham/Peter Hitchens chat on Talkradio today was linked below by Sue Davey, and is well worth a listen. For those of us who have been listening to these weekly chats from the beginning, it’s amazing how far Graham has moved. Peter of course has been fantastic throughout.
In this week’s interview, Peter makes an excellent point about how the frankly staggering government/elite stupidity and sheer imperviousness to dissent over coronavirus comes about, by reference to the previous catastrophe to which we were misled in a similar manner:
“Generally governments seek out the advice they want to hear. This is of course what happened most notably in the Iraq War. All those people in the system who said “don’t do this, this is crazy”, the people who knew about Iraq and understood the Middle East and could tell a Shiite from a Sunni muslim, and things like that, which the government couldn’t – all those people were, immediately they began to say this, they were sidelined and the only people who were listened to were the ones who would cheer for war, and that was also very much the case in the United States. Anybody who’s against it, forget it. And so they end up in their echo chamber of people who agree with them, and that’s where they are now.”
Peter Hitchens: I think Boris Johnson is enjoying this power of decree far too much
Also amused by Graham’s observation that it is quite interesting at his stage in life to find himself a member of the counterculture….
I’ve really enjoyed these chats, Peter is so unfailingly polite and reasonable, even when he doesn’t get the same back, he just patiently wins people over.
What amused me was the way Graham got so much stick for interrupting Hitchens back at the beginning that afterwards he bent over backwards not to do it, and now he lets Hitchens get away with quite a lot of talking over.
I’d noticed how Hitchens just steamrollers on!
He’s like that in real life. A very gracious person. Taught my bolshy teenage commie ass a lesson.
“Generally governments seek out the advice they want to hear”
To enlarge on that point, which is absolutely correct but gives only a mechanism rather than the reason, the next obvious question is: but why did they want the advice they sought?
In the case of the Iraq War that came down to the benefits Blair saw in backing the US in what he doubtless expected to be a safe win, along with the interests of the various lobbies that encouraged and supported him in the delusions that suited their purposes. In the case pf the coronapanic, I think it’s down mostly to a grim determination on the part of all senior government and civil service figures never to face up to the entirely gratuitous catastrophe they have inflicted on the nation, by panicking. If they resist reality long enough, perhaps it will magically change so that it turns out their cowardice and incompetence was actually for the best all along.
Broadly speaking yes. But I’d describe it as a grim determination by Johnson and his cabinet of second raters to distract the nation from the fatal mistake they made in prolonging the lockdown beyond its proper end (you could argue about exactly when that was ), thereby hopefully escaping responsibility for trashing the economy at the forthcoming public enquiry. And enabling them to obfuscate enough to get re -elected in 4 years’ time.
The interesting question is ‘What – and Who – (apart from the bleedin’ obvious fairy stories) links the Iraq debacle with the Covid-19 shambles?
Couple of ideas for posters, knocked up on standard software sorry, so links to Twitter…
https://twitter.com/RobertJ62035232/status/1290351727430909952/photo/1
https://twitter.com/RobertJ62035232/status/1290352019199361025/photo/1
Like the Freedom Thief one best!
It reminded me of Thatcher the Snatcher! (For those sprogs among you, that was 1970.)
I liked the useless masked one.
Both winners then?
I’ve got to go to an outpatient appointment at the biggest hospital in my county so I checked it’s website to see what it says about mask exemptions,no mention at all it just says masks are compulsory throughout the hospital and if you haven’t got one you will be given one at the door.
I emailed the patient information dept. to ask them about exemptions,their reply was that they could not answer my question and they would forward my message to the ‘leader of the specialist Covid 19 team’ !,it truly beggars belief.
Also I received an email from an HGV supplies company I sometimes deal with asking if I would like to buy an ‘HGV,PSV and van sanitiser machine’,’to keep covid-19 compliant’ !!.
I’m now very worried to think I have not had one for the past 33 years and all of the danger I have been putting my staff and myself in.
I really do give up today.
At least your outpatient appointment is at the hospital, so you might get to see a consultant of sorts.
I’ve had two by landline phone – follow-ups on a big op in my mouth last year. You can’t get much more OUTpatient than that.
Not too sure about describing the UK and Aussie PM’s actions as “crazy” and “insane”. Insanity is a defence under the law and prevents full moral responsibility and culpability being assigned to the guilty.
In any case, Australia can give the UK a run for its money as America’s ‘poodle’. Its previous whole-hearted support for the various US interventions in the Middle East is one example. Others I am sure can be found.
So if the actions of the UK and Aussie governments can be seen as plausible examples of them falling into line with U.S directions, then these recent comments in Off-Guardian may be of interest:
Sugar
Aug 3, 2020 6:39 PM
What is driving all of this is the collapse of the US economy and the fall of the dollar.
That ultimately is what has given us a whole barrage of counter measures, Global warming, Brexit and now Covid, they all act to wreck the rest of the worlds economies. The US will not go down alone, they will pull us all down with them, if it takes that, just to keep the dollar as the international reserve currency. Without that they are screwed right back into the stone age, especially since their own greedy Corporate CEO’s exported their entire manufacturing base to China & Asia.
They are desperate and would gladly see us all dead and our currencies destroyed, with them as the ‘last man standing’, to save the dollar.
This empire is not going to go quietly into the night.
Eyes Open
Aug 3, 2020 4:18 PM
Coronavirus is an economic and political response to capitalist crisis. Most of the anti lockdown movement so far seems to be far right led. The ruling class is split.
If the World Economic Forum and Gates/Pharma get their way, humanity and civilization will be destroyed, including the middle classes, the millionaires etc. The world will belong exclusively to a tiny tier of multibillionaires who will turn the rest of humanity into tech monitored serfs.
Is Australia being ‘punished’ by the powers that be because they are likely to be a major trading partner for the UK post Brexit? Just wondering…
John Ward has some convincing stuff on this too.
So this winter, as they allegedly will be testing for Coronaviruses, and not Covid 19, they will be able to up the scores on the doors and make an even bigger lie of it all.
Absolutely! like we here in Lisbon say: they have the cheese and the knife…
I expect the CockN’Clown show will be ruthless. Testing for other ronas, adding up all types and pillars of testing, relentless amounts (probably 500k plus), as well as a dodgy ‘suspected’ count of anyone caught sniffling. Plus if they push out a digital ‘passport’ then they can mine numbers from that too. Absolutely everything to push a nonexistent but scary “second wave”.
No. Each coronavirus has its own distinctive genetic identity. I don’t understand why you say this.
Just to lighten up a bit…
Superb.
Just a thought on all this hand poison we’re supposed to be continually using (I never use it). Where does it all end up? Does it get absorbed into our bodies, causing who knows what long-term issues, or does it end up polluting the environment?
Doesn’t alcohol just – evaporate? You probably wash the rest of the ingredients off when you go and do that other thing you’re supposed to…
Yes it just evaporates. Although I tried some the other day that didn’t and I was left covered in a persistent mucous slime of unknown origin. The guy in the cafe I was in then wouldn’t let me wash my hands with an actual tap.
Sorry but that is hilarious! Because that is the stuff tgat always happens to me.
Never used the dirty bottles of ectoplasm. As was said before those must be collecting grounds for every viral sin going. Simply don’t see them, it’s an easy knack to get into.
I just pretend I’ve put some on and make a show of rubbing my hands together.
Pollutes the environment, encourages superbugs.
Both. Bad for the environment. Rough on your liver.
Is that only if you drink it?
Seriously, some councils were wetting themselves in the beginning about installing hand sanitisers in parks in case the down and outs started drinking it.
Intersting times if johnson locked down hard again ,even if it was only locally would the public take any notice , if businesses were forced to close again ,I doubt they would get financial help this time,would we go along with it I doubt it.
I live in the bradford area we are back in semi lockdown no one I know is taking any notice, sign of things to come?
Probably. Our local news was dishing out the hysteria as well tonight.
Ooooooh people of Bradford, you better abide by the rules oooooh!
To their credit though they did a vox pop (that was edited not live, so surprising) which included several sceptics who were like “Nah this is bullshit”.
I’m glad if people in Bradford are ignoring the new lockdown, I know (although not that well) someone who was due to get married last Saturday, and I’m wondering if the wedding went ahead or not… I’m kind of scared to ask..
How dare Hancock issue edicts just hours before they come into force and mess about with peoples’ lives like that – grrr!
If you enter a boxing ring—expect to be punched! Avoid at all costs the MSM! No matter how much of a sh*t show it is if you so much as snatch at it it will try to dig its claws into you.
I am very, very, very exhausted today.
Starting to take a toll physically as well as mentally this business. The brain being on constant alert is making the bod feel knackered.
Every time I hear a military/war analogy it saps my reserves. I feel like one of the kids from Hocus Pocus getting their life force sucked out by Winifred Sanderson.
(Lol without wanting to insult Ms. Midler, Boris with a ginger wig and green velvet gown….)
Try to spend some time with people who will help you recharge. I wish you well. We need you healthy.
Thanks man, I’m still at home with les rentals. They are strangely quiet about stuff apart from making odd disparaging comments. I think it’s hit home why I’m so angry now. We’ve had quite a few screaming rows over past few months so it feels good to finally be past that. ATEOTD the old farts are my best friends and I still want to be around them more than anyone else I know at the moment, maybe because of the sense of foreboding I still feel about all this. I’m reserving ultimate judgement til the autumn when I think it will become extremely clear what we’re in for.
“Les rentals” ???
I feel like asking the PM what the plan is – prefer to have it whole, now, rather than drip-fed, so I know whether it’s worth uprooting ourselves, and we can carry on hoping, or stop hoping.
the ‘rents brah
very much want to uproot myself. where to go though..
He doesn’t know what the plan is. He just doesn’t know.
Well… either that or he does……
We won’t know until a few more months of this dithering shit passes. After a while there will be NO more excuses, everyone will truly realise nobody is dying any more, and there’ll be a lot more unemployed people. So if the gvt. continue on this path under THOSE circumstances, I think we really have to be worried about all the larger agenda stuff. Rationally I’m still ….. well rational, which keeps me generally upbeat but clearly there’s a worry bubbling underneath that something sinister is behind it all.
Not sure if anyone is interested at all. But here’s a report from Butlins in Bognor Regis; we have just returned from a 4 day break there.
On arrival, no longer do you collect keys from reception. However, two friendly men greeted us with no masks, handed us the key cards, and off we went to our room. No housekeeping, no tea and coffee, but we had a kettle!
Masks only “officially” required in supermarket and to book activities in the indoor shop booth building. I was asked at the door of supermarket to wear a mask, but on saying I was exempt, flagged through, and they remembered me after that. Booking office – same thing.
In the funfair, all ride operators were wearing masks. I presume this was a requirement. Rides cleaned after every ride, only took a few minutes, and with reduced hotel capacity and no day visitors allowed, queuing was minimal anyway.
One thing that did surprise me….I actually enjoyed something about this social distancing rubbish when it came to Butlins….! The restaurants and bars: Butlins have created a new app – The B app – whereby you order food and drink at the table, and it arrives extremely fast, especially the drinks.
Evening entertainment is now predominantly outdoors, and they have a big stage and essentially a load of tables. It’s almost like a music festival within a beer garden! Rules state you must be seated throughout the performances which are usually around 45 minutes. Then you are vacated row by row at the end. Drinks again….brilliant….a pint within 2 minutes of ordering on the app. The rules were well adhered to in the daytime shows, but in the evening, no doubt due to alcohol, the rules went out the window a bit. But no one seemed to get told off.
Anyway, works great now, but not sure what it will be like once it’s cold and pouring down with rain!
I also now know who Rak-Su are, and my daughters were in awe. They put on a good show as the headline act, but sadly, I can see why they are at Butlins!
The food at the Buffet restaurant was served to you at the counters, rather than you helping yourself. You choose which counter you want in advance after a small queue, and then are served the food. But….no alcohol in the buffet restaurant….what’s that all about?! So we only went to the buffet restaurant that one night!
The water park had to be pre-booked for a time slot. Again, this was for the better, and meant everywhere was less crowded. Not sure I saw anyone with a mask in the water park, staff included, apart from one in the outdoor rapids section. Not sure on the logic there!
All in all, I think Butlins have done a brilliant job, under the stupid conditions thrust upon them. There are things they need to improve on, but it will take time. Sorry I keep remembering things as I type….only one family in one lift….trying to go down in the lift on check out was a nightmare….had to haul huge cases down 5 flights of stairs as I was fed up waiting! But niggles aside, it was a great break.
Apart from the shop, and the staff at the funfair, little in the way of masks. Certainly hardly any of the guests anyway.
I’m sorry if I have drivelled on a bit, but I thought someone might find this interesting anyway!
Best wishes to you all, thank you Toby for your amazing work, and let’s keep sticking two fingers up to the establishment who, no pun intended, seek to “mask” their past errors by trying to take credit for preventing a fictitious second wave!
Thanks, I like to read reports from out and about in the real world. The lift thing is a real issue. I think it was matt here a few weeks back who pointed out the impossibility of operating the big high rise office buildings in London under these kinds of rules if even a significant fraction of those employed in them ever return to work. Of course, most of them won’t ever be back, either because they don’t have jobs any more or because they are now working from home permanently. And that will have effects on London commercial property prices and office rents, that underpin a lot of pension and investment funds….
Yup, our future office will be much smaller. Good for those who like working from home, not so good for all the businesses that survive on the money from office workers, and a knock-on effect on those areas, where people also live, who will suddenly find themselves in very quiet neighbourhoods (nice?) but not many shops/sandwich bars/pubs etc.
Or will offices be converted to flats, making a fortune for someone..?
Why would anybody want to work in The City if there are no jobs in the City? There are no parks, no amenities, no entertainment (except pubs to cater for for the after work crowd). Pointless. And even if it did happen, it would only exacerbate the forthcoming London domestic real estate crash (inevitable and I’m screwed when it happens).
Great minds think alike:
https://www.smf.co.uk/publications/new-life-for-the-high-street/
Some will lose fortunes, others will make them, same as ever.
I recall a post where someone said Belfast city centre was quiet even after non essential shops were allowed to open and this was because trade had been lost due to people working from home rather than going to the city centre where they spend money in shops. I would hate to work from home because I feel there would be no clear divide between home and work life.
It’s interesting to to read these kinds of accounts. Big businesses like Butlins and the supermarkets have corporate policies but the local staff can make things better or worse for the customers depending on how they implement them.
Latest daily NHS report says 744 positive tests. Back in mid March we had a day with 744 new positive tests. In March we had a bit of social distancing, pubs open. Today we have a bit of social distancing, pubs open. No one thinks it’s about to explode, how do people rationalise the difference? Do they believe masks make a difference or do they all know that it’s gone & this is all a charade?
I don’t think they rationalise it, they have moved on. Lots of people seem to think very little about things one way or the other, they just drift on…
Mid March it was 744 people who had got sick, self-isolated for 7 days, called 111 and convinced a call handler that they were at death’s door before finally being admitted to hospital and getting a test. And cases were doubling about every three days.
Yesterday it was only 170-odd hospital admissions, the rest being mild / asymptomatic cases tested in the community.
We knew the difference in 1840. Some people don’t know their history.
Went with OH for his eye test this morning-he wanted me to help him choose his new specs.. On the wall there was a large poster:
“Think someone is mumbling? You need a hearing test”
No! Just ask them to take off their mask!
I just popped in to my local supermarket an hour ago and the masked guy who sprays your hands and checks that you’re wearing a mask asked me if I had any symptoms. I told him you were asking me that same question in April! Something’s afoot.
Sprays your hands??
My local Aldi has gel and some sanitizer for trolley handles chucking about near the entrance but everyone just walks past and ignores them. The door guy just nodded at me when I beamed at him as I walked past muzzle-free.
I’ve just got an email from Morrisons about their cafes,one of the comments in it is,
‘all of our colleagues are fully trained in all social distancing disciplines’
Companies are falling over themselves to virtue signal with stupid ‘covid-speak’ like this.
I think I’m also supposed to be impressed that the cafe and it’s tables are cleaned throughout the day.I would have hoped that they were already doing that before this corona madness.
I use a cafe that is normal, dont bother with morrisons any more , dont they realise the hand gel visors , plastic screens put people off,
It all feels so depressing at the moment but I am holding out for when people are no longer being paid by our useless government for doing nothing and have to go back to work – those who will still have jobs to go back to. As I think has been said here before, maybe when people realise the true impact of this on their personal finances they will start to question it more. Love Peter Hitchens, Dr John Lee and Carl Heneghan and all those who can articulate what I feel instinctively but have no public voice to say. Thank you too, Toby, and all who contribute in this forum. You have all helped to keep me sane over the past months!
Same. Reading this site, inc the many excellent comments, feels like a daily therapy session in an irrational, disturbing world. Thank you to all who contribute, and above all, Toby.
One of my neighbours was quite pro-lockdown at first, seemned to enjoy his three month paid holiday. After being briefly back, re-furloughed and now presumably on a redundancy list, he’s way more sceptical. Millions will probably experience similar and I like to think this will propel the reckoning.
Unfortunately that’s going to be the kick up the ass people need to wake up to the reality of this charade
Sadly yes. Then they’ll be hunting the mad axeman who chopped down the
cherrymagic money tree.Being hit in the pocket and stomach should shake them out of their furlough induced torpor. And I think we’ll see more of that as the impact of mandatory muzzling becomes even clearer.
I think that’s our main function: to keep one another sane.
Charge your glasses, folks, drunk to sanity! Long live Toby! Long live scepticism! Death to despotism! Cheers!
Me too , log in here every night and read just so I calm down enough to sleep
Thank you so much Toby and all the people sharing decent info …let sanity prevail
And now folks for your entertainment and diversion we present ‘Hapless Hancock and the Goblet of unspeakable *$*$’ yes its true, I read it in the daily news, our intrepid Health Minister is going to dive into the sewers and find the secret of Covid 19. It’s good to know that the lad has finally found the appropriate setting for his talents.
So today we have had announcements about rapid Covid testing and sewer Covid testing, why? what are they planning to do with all these test results? As the brilliant Carl Henegan observes it is hospital cases and deaths that count, when they duly find *$*$loads of Covid in the sewers what are they planning to do about it?
One of our National Heroes is Nelson and I think that at this stage of Covid we need the Nelson touch ‘I see no ships’. Boris Johnson seems to admire Roosevelt and Churchill but I think they would both have come through with incisive and well defined policies in a way that Boris does not seem capable of doing.
The last document I could find for the UK policy on Covid 19 was back in early March and it described a policy of containment but the scientists seem to have pushed Boris into a half baked eradication policy which is doomed to fail and will cost us dear.
Never before in the field of pandemics has one buffoon lead a nation into such a state of nonsense and tomfoolery!
More “cases” for him to crow about then…
What would Neville Chamberlain have done?
Or is Boris maybe Neville and we await Winston…?
Who could be Winston though?
Sumption? Or is it maybe the one and only Toby? Cometh the hour, cometh the man.
So long as it’s not @*$%& Hancock I don’t care!!
I think it was a signal Nelson failed to see. He saw plenty of ships and carried on pounding them into matchwood even after Admiral Parker had signalled him to break off the action. Battle of Copenhagen, 1801.
(The words attributed to Nelson when told of the signal are “I only have one eye, sometimes I am entitled to be blind and I really do not see the signal.” He would have been a true sceptic!)
(Note to Toby: I saw your note the other day about height. Hope for you yet. Admiral Nelson was 5 feet 4 inches. I’m not sure if he claimed a further half inch or not.)
I know its not possible for everyone but the local beach and cafe keep me sane, where I go most days. The cafe is now all outside, none of the previously small indoor space used, and more tables on the beach which is actually great also put up a big gazebo for some ‘indoor’ space. . Tables all full, no muzzles, children playing on the beach, no staff muzzles, only difference is food and drinks in throwaway packaging, which is weird, the bins need emptying all the time. As long as it doesn’t rain I’ll be there
Same here in West Wales. A thin scattering of nappied numpties, loads of sane holidaymakers having a good time.
Either go to West Kirby on the Wirral to catch the sunset, a wander through the Gwydyr Forest at Betws-y-Coed, coastal walks between Llandudno and Penmachno, and of course all the wonderful hills to escape onto. Even in the rain :o))
Did I read right? – 9 deaths over the last 24 hours? 9 deaths in a country of at least 70 million residents or about 0.13 per million. And we are destroying out health service, our children’s education, our economy, our civil liberties and our culture for what? To bring this down to zero???
Yep.
Zero yes. But what kind of zero. It’s not zero deaths we are after. Zero cases? But the tests have a margin of error that cannot give us a reliable zero. What kind of zero do you fancy?
zero ……plebs?
I think that’s what they fancy. seems to me
Gonna struggle to get to zero infections with 1% false positives!
They are after zero carbon at the same time..
No chance of that with the diet I’ve been eating since March
They have achieved zero education. The first time since about 480AD. Quite an achievement.
Bring the infections to zero. We won’t be released until we take it for ourselves. The day is coming.
Can we enlist this guy from Talk Radio to help us? From this tweet he seems to be on the ball: https://twitter.com/TVKev/status/1290201329902616576
No, because it’s not about the virus.
Exactly.
At long last, I feel the tide is turning. The MSM are now being openly critical (albeit still fairly mild) and people like Carl Heneghan are now being quoted much more often. Even Gove’s wife has tweeted her disapproval of Johnson’s latest idea of locking down the over fifties. In Scotland, young people seem to be turning against First Gauleiter Sturgeon. Have faith, this can’t go on for much longer. When furlough stops, the revenge of the mob may be swift.
I get that feeling as well, very early days but if Boris and his muse (DC) are at all on the ball they will pick this up and act on it.
A friend of ours who’s been a covid hysteric from the start has started to send me graphs showing HOW NON EXISTENT this mass killer really is, erm……..
Had a long chat with a cafe owner. She’s bought in, but knows I’m a sceptic. Civilised discussion, but even she was saying we can’t possibly lock down again…
Hope that hammer’s swinging well :o))
Ok, Time for an update.
I went to look at a new place to live last week, the other side of Ludlow. Took the motorcycle and stopped in Ludlow on the way back. My face mask (helmet) worked fine in WHSmith, no motorcycle reading material in there sadly. And I did a bit of shopping in Aldi. Total mask hell, but the helmet worked great. A lady with a very full trolley even let me go ahead. I’d finished and paid for my shopping before she’d finished unloading. Nice gesture to an armoured up person you can’t see with their helmet on.
Heading to Norfolk for my mum’s birthday last Thrusday evening, took the car as dad doesn’t ride, and stopped in a large petrol station with a decent shop. One mask on an uncomfortable looking 60 ish yr old and an early twenties couple totally mask free like myself. No hassle.
Later I was asked if I had a mask at the Shell in Kings Lynn, I said no, you don’t need one if…. started a nice conversation with an unmasked cashier. Apparently it’s Shell policy to ask, I pointed out there could be problems with those with disabilities. Turn’s out she’d had quite a lot of abuse from customers so far. Not her fault and not fair either.
Today in Moreton in Marsh, walked into the small Tesco to buy something to drink and helmet still on, no problem.
But, I met a nice older guy with a 1200GS similar to mine and he turned out to be a total sceptic. Won’t be taking their vaccine and beleives in a hidden agenda. Seems to be quite switched on. Social distancing ignored.
Leaving him to joing the chip shop queue I bumped into a lovely couple with their bikes on their way back from Cornwall to Rugby. Had a good chat with them and an older guy with his smaller bike who’d been to the chip shop. Seemed like normal, no masks, no obvious distancing people who just like motorcycles getting along.
So, if you want to meet other’s who might be more on side talk to motorcyclists. Our attitdue to risk is a little different to the masses. As much as I love old cars, a motorcycle is my preferred method of transport. I know it’s statistically more risky, but I can mitigate as best as I can for that. It’s up to me to make that difference and my choice. So, if most of them think like me they may have the criticality of thinking to assess risk.
Made me feel rather positive too, maybe there is a silent majority, who are quietly doing there own thing and not contributing to shopping statistics.
I’m heading out somewhere again tomorrow even though I’m the sort that never just rides around. but it’s making life seem so normal, as it would be riding 12 months ago.
Great!
‘Normal’ is the key.
Same with horse riders you’d think but been a female dominated sport I’m sorry to say we have a lot of bedwetters. My husband and son are bikers and bikers certainly seem much more sensible. We were up at Clay Cross the other week to get my husband’s new Tiger 800XCA and there was no social distancing outside the dealer and despite a one way system and requests to mask up, virtually none inside either. Staff were trying to set an example but I had my poodle with me which resulted in a big scrum of staff crowding round to pick him up for a cuddle! So bang went the good example!
I’m looking forward to going to dealers and testing some more bikes. Of course no mask… If challenged my reply would be, but you sell motorcycles (facepalm).
Congratulations with the Tiger 800, looks a great bike. And the poodle for destroying social distancing :>)
Tony Heller on top top form
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tM1CPeUPKZ8
What they said:
Stay at home,
Protect the NHS,
Save lives
What they meant:
Stay afraid,
Lose the NHS,
Give up on living
You cannot reason with that scum! I mock ’em when I can… looks.. body movements… nose out of the muzzle etc..!
I’m gonna buy a ping-pong ball paint it red rubber strap it! and shoping I go!
and for a wallet i’ll use a fancy N95…
eff ’em all
Just been reading about Event 201 conducted on October 18 2019, what timing!
Planned deliberately..
Looks very suss
On the first day of the Wuhan 2019 World Military Games too…
that’s how they pull these ‘events’ off.
if there’s a drill..
Surprise, surprise, look who’s involved in it:
https://www.centerforhealthsecurity.org/event201/about
I voted remain because I never thought the prize was worth the cost but I was fine about leaving, but now seeing the total balls-up this shower are making of covid gives me the hibbie-jibbies about Brexit!
I voted leave and agree with your concern …. clowns
Damn right…
The EU has hardly covered itself in glory either.All major European nations immediately went into nationalistic mode so it sort of vindicated the decision to leave.As for the calibre of our leaders,that is probably a consequence of being governed by others for years now.Eu and USA.
Leaving the E U is only the first step in regaining our freedom,we must throw off the yoke of the USA.
That being said it is all irrelevant if we are made slaves by our own government.
Washington Post, July 21, 2020 at 8:34 AM EDT
‘FRANKFURT, Germany — European leaders took a historic step towards sharing financial burdens among the EU’s 27 countries by agreeing to borrow and spend together to pull the economy out of the deep recession caused by the virus outbreak.’
Not exactly ‘nationalistic mode’ at the moment, then.
Calibre of our political leaders is attributable to nothing other than the electorate.
And selling out to the Yanks is precisely what this government intends to do, a.s.a.p.
But ‘we’ elected them, and we’re stuck with them for now!
Freedom is an unalienable right.
If you know what it means…
Why don’t they ask people to volunteer to get CV19 to build up community immunity? I’d take my chances as I figure I have a 99% chance of survival. This community service is preferable to the constant attempts to shame me into wearing a pointless soggy mask (for the indefinite future). I’d insist on a badge of honour though, to virtue signal. Maybe they could have weekly clapfests for these brave volunteers?
That’s how stupid this has become that deliberately catching an illness is, relatively, an attractive proposition. Feeling ground down.
If they pay handsomely for it yes. :>) Great idea., I’ve not had anything from the government so this might do.
Get Covid, Get back to what we love!
Most of us have probably had it already – to the degree that we were ever going to get it. (Back on my original train lol). In all seriousness.
Quite likely, especially if it began earlier than is currently believed.
Just a random thought. I wonder if they had used the phrase ‘community immunity’ rather than ‘herd’ it would have gone down better? Such preciousness about our dignity seems laughable now!
Totally. Just that word could have changed everything.
Community immunity
Population immunity (I believe this is actually used by a few of our fave sceptic scientists)
Nationwide immunity
Something neutral immunity
Put the ‘unity’ back in Herd Immunity
Collective immunity?
Commununity?
It might get Owen Jones and the Guardian on board.
I use the phrase “collective mass hysteria” for the general reaction. It’s not meant to reassure their dignity!
a) there’s none about to catch.
b) even if you find an infected person it’s virtually impossible to contract it.
Someone on here reported that inside PHE and other health bodies they all know there will be no second wave – because everyone who was gonna die from this has already done so.
A rather depressing strain of optimism but realism is realism. They would never report this is the MSM however because of how ‘disgusting’ and ‘inconsiderate’ it would be (oooh!) even though this is the sort of thing people actually need to hear and come to terms with.
What I find more depressing is how seemingly infantile the general public are when it comes to….. well death.
I think this is because it’s usually out of sight, unless you work for an undertaker or at a hospital. And who likes to talk shop when not in the shop? For most of us, it’s only immediate relatives and friends. So perhaps one funeral a year, possibly two, when you reach a certain age?
Then suddenly, you get confronted, day after day, week after week, courtesy of our headline-hungry press, of people dying of some strange new disease that nobody knows a thing about. Not one or two, but dozens. Then hundreds. Then thousands. Not in a year, but in a single day. More death than most people can handle.
Yes, there has been a collective between-the-ears meltdown, aided by daily propaganda, hammering on and on and on. Then “the” science, claiming that there would be half a million deaths from this new disease in the UK alone.
So I do not altogether blame most people for a bit of a wobble over this. But when they wake up again, I have no idea. Perhaps when the deaths from this fresh “spike” fail to materialise…
About when on here was that reported? And what was the source of that info re PHE? Difficult to navigate this thread!
That’s why it’s important to shunt stuff into the forums, so it can be archived properly.
Soz i can’t remember whether it was Toby or someone in the comments. Someone in the comments I think? Who knew people who worked for public bodies
It’s time they called it what it was – a CULL.
No. Just a culmination.
Just listened to Neil Oliver on Triggernometry and its interesting that he and the two presenters – Francis Foster and Konstantin Kisin have made the same point, that death is completely taboo and people now seem to have the inability to accept that life is finite and that there is an end point to our existence.
It was a fantastic episode. I’ve been saying this for a while about the loss of religious faith and our loss of awe and reverence for the realities of life (birth and death).
Don’t get sentimental about alternative fairy stories. It’s just life – and death, which ends it.
It lends credence to that saying – when people stop believing in God they will believe in anything.
They all thought death had been abolished.
They’re having problems with the vaccine guinea pigs because they can’t find any to catch either. That pesky T-cell immunity…
I would have infected myself back in early March if I could have, and then gone into proper quarantine. I discussed it with friends but they didn’t seem to think I was serious. By then there was enough data to tell me that it would be extremely low personal risk. I weighed up the low risk to myself and balanced it against the benefit to the community of helping to get toward herd immunity. I was specifically thinking of people like my grandmother.
But apparently now by refusing to wear a pointless muzzle, I am the monster and a danger to the sheep.
Thomas Jefferson – We hold these truths to be self-…
https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/thomas_jefferson_157212
We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
Thomas Jefferson
He is soon going to be cancelled and his statues toppled…
Danesmoor sceptics: do your shopping in your local Nisa.
https://www.derbytelegraph.co.uk/news/health/nisa-local-derbyshire-puts-up-4387989
Keith’s a moron.
My local Nisa hasn’t even got any signs up. Business as old normal.
I don’t blame him at all. I live in Derbyshire and our village post office has been the subject of three (yes three!) armed robberies. Our co-op has been ram raided twice. Our land rover was stolen and used in a ram raid in the next village. And these things are happening across the region. Because we are on an A road linking to a motorway we attract a lot of criminals from outside the area. Police are barely interested.
https://twitter.com/LadyGodiva1144/status/1290382538687619073
More of this please!!
“Fully referenced facts about Covid-19, provided by experts in the field, to help our readers make a realistic risk assessment”.
“The only means to fight the plague is honesty.” (Albert Camus, 1947)
https://swprs.org/a-swiss-doctor-on-covid-19/
He meant the plague of Fascist oppression.
So do we.
Rolling Stones, Beggars Banquet:
Jigsaw Puzzle
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5O8wa3vY1pM
I’m logging off in a minute and going to bed, because my circuits are fried. But my gloomy thought is: Maybe we deserve it?
A nation this lazy and complacent, so incurious about the facts, so compliant with silly, nonsensical rules, so accepting of overbearing authority, so self centredly obsessed with individual personal ‘safety’, with no regard for others simply deserves to get its bottom smacked.
A population this terrible at maths and critical thinking, so distracted by easy, indulgent ‘wants’, utterly neglecting ‘needs’, that takes for granted that someone else will take care of things, surely deserves some greasy, second rate little tin pot dictator to take the reins?
I mean, we – here – are a tiny minority. Most people really want this. Are OK with it. Celebrate it. Wear their little face flag to signal to others they are on board with it. That being the case, maybe we Brits deserve no better fate than to end up broke, with us all being bossed around by corrupt, bullying cops, and harridan rule book clutching medics, teachers and ‘public servants’. Our own behaviour surely sets the scene for censorious comments in the street, judgmental tuts in shops, curtain twitching approbation as we go about what once was our private business.
And a country so indifferent in the face of such abject human suffering caused by it’s actions, not just here, but abroad, to the most vulnerable people of all, that treats shutting down its wealthy – to most people rich beyond your wildest dreams – economy as if we’re on some jape of a gap year, doing zoom yoga as if it was all a game, that takes away from people who’ve worked hard, or just those who hadn’t got much to start with, must simply deserve to go to the dogs, and literally become what it already morally is – bankrupt.
Sorry so miserable, but I am just so fed up, and more to the point, this is really scaring me now. Look at Venezuela, we think it can’t happen to us, but it can, it can happen anywhere. You don’t need a conspiracy, this is just how power works if you let someone take enough of it.
Well to cheer yourself up, you could consider that in the past the solution to nations with elites that had become as disfunctional as ours currently are, was often external military conquest.
Liberate us Sweden!
That really made me laugh, thanks you two! An invasion, it’d be dad’s army!
Bring back the Vikings!
We have been conquered we just haven’t realised it for 75 years.In winning the 2WW we bankrupted ourselves and became America’s client state.
Not going to disagree…
Nobody deserves it, least of all us
– but nobody deserves this. (Except maybe Handjob and friends).
People may be dumb and jaded and historically illiterate and totally devoid of principles but they still don’t deserve this. They will get it though. They WILL get it. Let’s hope they don’t get it too late.
<3 Have a nice sleep Bec maybe we can meet in dreamland where all this is just a….nightmare
Thanks, I’m just tired and jacked off, you’re right, nobody deserves this. Sleep well. My dog just got the ‘zoomies’ – she’s 40kg with an arthritic elbow, I think even she could tell desperate cheer up measures were needed!
Your point about indifference to suffering struck a chord with me. I have been depressed by this too. Looking on LinkedIn for some work, I was saddened by posts of successful former colleagues boasting about how much money they have saved on trains, how lockdown has been wonderful for their health etc…
I am happy for people who have had a positive experience through this, but saddened by a general ignorance of the breadth of suffering and destruction caused.
They will do a U turn when they’re handed their P45 and unable to find jobs quickly. Suddenly those train journeys would be viewed towards rose tinted specs.
And if they think lockdown has been wonderful for their health, they won’t be thinking that while being unemployed.
And we’ve got no money for a health service.
Yep so we’ll have more deaths from cancers, strokes, heart diseases, suicides not to mention more people who will be diagnosed with depression, schizophrenia, bipolar…the list goes on.
And, ‘we told you so’ will be no bloody comfort at all. The only comfort will be I hung onto my integrity, my moral compass always pointed north, and I had the integrity of my own mind. I do feel despair sometimes, it’s so sad.
Actually I think it’s a great comfort to keep one’s integrity. Would you rather be a deluded zombie halfwit?
It is, it’s the only thing that matters. I’m rereading Ralph Waldo Emerson’s “Self Reliance” to keep my resolve up!
Exactly. I will laugh like a drain when the former lockdownistas will claim “actually I was against it in the first place…..” we should never let them forget that they aided and abetted this tyranny in the first place.
Probably diagnosed incorrectly, online.
We’ll see more of that the longer this fiasco goes on.
I read the UN report on children (if you want to sleep, don’t read it, it’s absolutely f**king unconscionable), the suffering we are inflicting on the third world. 13m girls will never go back to education, flogged off into servitude, sexual slavery or forced marriage. Little girls! Starvation, death, disease just horrific. Illegal logging in the amazon, big game poaching, dead orangutans, on it goes, turtles choking on facemasks and PPE ocean litter. And that’s just the start. Here, lonely old people, abused kids, abject poverty. I honestly want to smash the nature walks and banana bread “rocking the lockdown” brigade in the face!
PS doubly so if they are ‘socialists’.
The pain seems to be falling disproportionately on the the most vulnerable. Such as a single mother in a high rise flat with a couple of children, with all lines of support stopped.
How strange that skepticism about lockdowns is not a left-wing cause, as well as a conservative one.
What is depressing is the feeling that I have no power. I have written to my MP and joined groups like usforthem.
What else can we do?
Remain sceptical. Not give in. It matters.
I hear you brother, I’m doing the same. I’m trying to talk about it, I’m adopting a ‘bright and breezy’ chatty approach in shops, ‘Gosh, when will this madness end? Hahaha’ and then when they get talking I just drop in a ‘it’s such a worry about the unemployment that’s coming though, isn’t it?’. I did it once at the till in the Tesco Express, was about 15 people in the queue, and they all then chipped in! Must remember moments like that.
And don’t get me started on middle class lefties, they are in my opinion, as much to blame as anyone, because they have a lot of social capital, many of them are in influential positions (see the Twitterati, the press, pseudo sage etc) and all this is the most gargantuan act of selfish entitlement I’ve ever seen. Lockdown very much is a middle class indulgence. It drives me potty. They don’t care about the ‘working man’ at all, they just hate the Tories, and even with that, it’s not grounded in any real analysis, it’s just student posturing, and about that mature. They might as well still be shouting ‘bollocks to the poll tax’,. I unfriended one on FB in April, she only just noticed yesterday, she was really angry and asked me why.
I said, you shared Miriam Margoyles post wishing death on the Prime Minister. I don’t give a shit about Boris but he’s a human being, but more to the point, you are meant to be a feminist, and Boris’ fiance was one of John Worboys rape victims, and was at home, heavily pregnant and worried out of her mind. That’s why. I’m happy to report that at that, she went quiet and f**ked off.
“ with us all being bossed around by corrupt, bullying cops, and harridan rule book clutching medics, teachers and ‘public servants’.”
No – Being f.ked about by know-nothing Eton ‘educated’ Tory wankers, bullshitting Bullingdon Boys and assorted spivs, snake-oil and fireplace salesmen, elected via the Night of the Living dead that is the Tory f.ing Party, aided by a non-opposition of similar privileged non-entities and friends in the associated similarly educated whores’ profession of the media.
Discredit where discredit is due.
If you keep up with my comments, you’ll know I don’t spare the posh boys but you must admit, every little clipboard clutching Hitler is currently having the time of their lives! And it is doctors, nurses, teachers, shop workers (in some cases) coppers, council officials, etc etc etc all rejoicing that someone is finally telling them what to do, and they can do the same to others (for instance it was me who asked the question in today’s update about the NHS withdrawing care, that’s not posh boys, that’s doctors deciding to do that to their own patients, even our GP receptionists are feeling very emboldened). My point, we get the leadership and society we deserve, the fact that people don’t feel invested in it, that’s it’s precious and hard won, let alone that they have an absolute obligation to conserve and protect it, in honour of the dead, the living, and as the yet unborn tells you exactly what moral state we are in!
It’s not just the UK and Britons, it’s almost every other people on Earth as well.
This mankind cannot do critical self thinking anymore, it has therefore become unable and resultingly does not want to live enlightened and free anymore.
As such, it doesn’t deserve it anymore.
In my dark moments, I just think history is repeating itself. All those boys who laid down their lives, all those women and kids who suffered and kept the show on the road, so we could say ‘never again’ and here we are …
My favourite greasy spoon in Chinatown has reopened and its refreshingly normal despite many of the staff in masks and the communal tables in the middle having been replaced by smaller tables for those on their own. No hand sanitisers, no bizarre arrows and no screens. Cash only as well.
Bonus is I got 50% off my lunch
Also had no issues inside Chinese and Korean supermarkets, I noticed that the staff who served me seemed to respond positively to me being unmuzzled.
Ok I’m gonna go to bed now because I’m knackered.
Questions though — will check on the answers tomorrow
Are they still doing those ‘randomised’ test trails where they sent the tests via post? Remember before they were doing the testing for antibodies etc. and it was several different universities that were doing it?
Did we ever hear any results from any of those testing programmes (or the one by Porton Down more to the point)? Did anyone take part? Did you get your results back if you did?
Are all the tests that are now being performed outside of clinical settings ‘pillar 2’ i.e. voluntary walk-ins? Does workplace testing class as pillar 1 or 2? Does non hospital but medical (GP) testing class as pillar 1?
I’m asking because I think it would be useful to set up some kind of network where people’s tests are recorded by them outside of the system, to see if what they’re being told re: their own test is what is reflected in the results. Also to track these alleged positives that are coming back from clean swabs / people who never attended their appointments.
Basically is what people are being told about their OWN test result true?
Imagine if every single person tested also gave us the ‘result’. We could see if our results match official ones.
Not gonna happen obviously but even having just a few results could flag up discrepancies. (I would LOVE to know if those stories about no-shows being automatically marked positive are true)
Are people being asked to sign anything when they are tested? Don’t think it is ok to retain DNA without people’s specific permission..
Are people being asked to sign anything when they are tested? Don’t think it is ok to retain DNA without people’s specific permission..
Listened to Neil Oliver on Trig last night as my substitute bedtime story.
He was excellent. So articulate and seemed a genuinely nice bloke.
That was an excellent episode. Well done to all three men.
I went to a petrol station, an Indian take-away and a small supermarket today, at different locations in central Scotland. I was unmasked in each of them, very much in the minority – I don’t think anyone else in the supermarket was maskless. But I wasn’t challenged anywhere and I don’t think there were any stares, as if I had just arrived from a different planet. Small steps perhaps, but we need to keep going with it.
We do, we do, we do.
At the stables yesterday, a little girl of about seven or eight was having a riding lesson while wearing a face gag. Just her, one pony, snd the instructor – fanatical about distancing – in a huge and very airy indoor school. I wanted to cry, and still more, to go and scream and scream in her cretinous parents’ faces. (They were waiting in their car.) But it’s not my stables, and they were desperately needed customers.
If we don’t show our faces, a time may come when nobody ever sees a face outside their own homes. End of the human race, enter the zombie race. A vile rag obliterating the human face. Forever.
Agree totally Annie. The best thing about coming back from Spain was that out and about in the UK, you can still see people’s faces. It really brought home to me how dehumanising the face nappy is.
All I can say is poor horse, prey animals scan body language to read intent, that kid deserved to be bucked off, it’s testament to the character of the horse, not the adults involved, that she wasn’t.
Also the replies on this tweet
https://twitter.com/DHSCgovuk/status/1290369345462231040
are amazing and heartening
night all
Hilarious , the best ones are in the offensive section
Wow, perhaps the tide is finally turning!
Definitely heartening! Thanks and sleep well.
Thanks for posting this – the replies are overwhelming blasting the DHSC propaganda (get tested and you can go to gigs again). Blackmail and everything so wrong about this advert – think it may have backfired spectacularly and people see through this shit…
My favourite reply:
“Are you testing for ANY coronavirus? Or specifically CoViD????
Because I’m pretty sure the common fucking cold hasn’t stopped me from going to gigs in the past”
Brilliant – well spotted ! DHSC hoisted by their own petard – some great put downs from the Twittersphere. The DHSC really do take us for fools.
Who not normally post anything from this channel but this one has got to be seen by the good folks on LS.
https://youtu.be/Wmfeg_bl-T0
That’s well funny
Brief note – my first time to Chester today. Much more normal than I thought! About 15%-20% mask wearers on the streets (including a Roman Centurion!) – I didn’t go in any shops – not my thing. Down by the river – crowded – no crazy covid-dancing, vast majority bare-faced and smiling. Lovely! Disparity of messaging – official 2-metre distancing signs, but kiosks signs telling people to stay 1 metre apart. Many people ignoring that anyway. Very positive and happy vibe up here in the Chester region. Lovely to hear a busker at the river – not heard live music and singing for a LONG time… Stay positive folks!
Buzz has built up again then. Good to hear.
Cheers for Chester. Lovely town.
First time I heard live music in a shopping area since this madness began, it made me feel quite teary – there is so much we are losing with all this, things we took for granted like just mingling normally as you describe.
I think the health professionals know very well that the main vector of transmission has been the health service. The virus cut a swathe through the very elderly, in hospitals and care homes, carried by health care workers. The main aim of policy has been to try to reduce the infection of health care workers, so that fewer of their patients die.
But now the health professionals have got the bit between their teeth, and decided that the target is zero death with Covid. You can die of anything you like except Covid. They don’t care about the impact on the public, because their world view is essentially uncommercial.
Or making a fuss about community tranmission draws focus away from nosocomial infections and eventually people might forget.
I think it’s a watch the birdy, you’re right. They basically massacred our oldies, denied them their loved ones, kidnapped relatives (we lost two, were essentially awol in the system for five weeks, we didn’t even know where they were, let alone what was happening), they are trying to delay that shit hitting the fan as long as possible, a mythical second wave helps them out.
It’s not the health professionals , it’s this government’s fault.
Gov fault ?!!!!
health professionals r sheep now?! ( rethorical)
Yes, UK government ‘s fault for panicking and insisting on NHS emptying hospitals to make way for 500K CV 19 assumed to be desperately sick cases, which were never likely to materialise under any remotely realistic assessment.
Doctors could have refused to comply, they did not, they collaborated, and then sat around playing cards, or at home on furlough and didn’t speak. They more than anyone knew the truth and they covered it up.
They still are.
No surprise. Nazi doctors murdered mental patients, killed and tortured victims in concentration camps, collaborated with ultimate evil. Being a doctor doesn’t make you a hero, just a more dangerous coward.
Your right,they were just obeying orders.
It is health professionals, they know this is wrong, yes they’ve been warned not to speak, Dr John Lee has managed it, as have one or two other doctors. What happened to ‘first do no harm’. We have to stop just blaming the government, we elect the government, they work in service of society, WE are society. That’s everyone, doctors and health professionals included, they don’t get a free moral pass, they need to down tools and refuse to comply until the health service is restored.
Think back to where we were when this happened though. There are always a number of very old and frail people in hospital awaiting discharge, because they can basically propel themselves from bed to toilet without falling over, but for whom no care package has been arranged. They need that because they can’t make a meal for themselves without pouring boiling water over their feet if left alone, i.e. can’t live independently. In other words, the consultant has certified they’re fit to leave, but they haven’t a safe place to go. Then government tells the hospital, get them out, we’ll need the beds for the (illusory) Covid influx. So care homes were leant on to take them. And at the time that was seen to be more important and less dangerous than it turned out to be. A misjudgement at government policy level, not a clinical misjudgement.
You seem very keen to defend the government and the NHS while rubbishing people here who post accurate information. Why? When your inaccuracies are exposed you say you had a bad day. Sorry, that’s not how debate works. If you are proven wrong you admit it.
Read my comment again, rather more carefully. It is a criticism of the government. Not a defence of it. Name any inaccuracy you’ve found, I’m not proud. I’m not aware of rubbishing anyone posting accurate information, please elaborate .
As I’ve said to you upthread, the fault does not just fall on the Government. We lost two family members under lockdown, both had 5 weeks in hospital, the NHS treated them appallingly. Staff who had not much to do, didn’t even let us know where they were, didn’t read the notes of one – serious dementia, had forgotten how to eat and drink – they basically dehydrated her to death. We’re hearing reports like that all the time. Stolen personal affects under the ruse of personal affects having to be destryoed, staff sitting around playing cards, ambulance drivers told to drive around empty with blue lights flashing, doctors saying they had empty wards.
Anyone – ANYONE – who cared about patients would have rung the news desk of the local paper. Where are those stories? I even read a report of nurses, with so little to do, got in a mobile hairdresser and all got their hair cut and coloured on a mini spa break. Staff had preferential queuing and slots in shops, free data on their phones, discounts, free pizzas, and on and on (friend of ours is a midwife, she was embarrassed, still took all the perks though) and contrary to most other workers in this country, were on full pay.
That’s before we talk about 60% down on A&E, whopping swathes of cancer patients missed, and GPs deciding to zealously implement ‘guidance’ to the detriment of their patients.
All these doctors took an oath. To first do no harm. This is not just bickering about Government policy, this is life and death.
And now we have imminent economic collapse and 10m people waiting for healthcare, NHS staff, who now not only are crying about a pay rise which in my opinion they didn’t earn, will soon be the few people with a protected income.
This government policy is unconscionable, those at the front line of it have a moral obligation to speak up and bring it to a stop.
The hostile relationship between social care and the NHS is well documented, I find this ‘yay the NHS are heroes’ until someone points out some of the the flagrantly cruel things the NHS has done, and then it’s ‘yes but not THAT NHS’ really bizarre. The NHS did that. Medics, who knew full well what was going on, didn’t speak.
Same here in Portugal….
IMO local opinion: they just don’t care…they r fkin animals… I think about all they have done for the last 20 years to be right now: MPs prime ministers, presidents, directors etc…
When in end March I saw muzzled elder persons under rain at supermarkets qeues and no one gave ’em chairs …
The lack of respect for the elderly is the really big scandal of all this, it’s all a huge reversal, ‘save lives!!!’ they scream, what they mean is ‘MY LIFE’ and we sacrificed our old to pander to the neurotic, entitled fear of the affluent ‘worried well’.
40,000 ‘extra’ deaths of over 80s is not “a massacre”. It is roughly 1/12 – 8% – more than you might expect over the course of the year. In fact, I strongly suspect that, when we get to the end of 2020, we’ll find that there are pretty much exactly as many over 80s alive in the country as we would have expected there to be without the virus.
I’m not justifying or defending the policy, I’m just warning against getting carried away when looking at the scale of the death toll. That’s what the zealots do and they’re wrong.
Blame the public.
It’s a bit like that awful “public education” advert with the fat guy eating chips while watching tv.
Obesity isn’t the fault of the food industry and the supermarkets, encouraged by government dietary advice.
It’s because YOU are a bunch of lazy junk-food-snacking slobs……
We are not just the ‘public’ though, we are the electorate, we are society, we are ‘we the people’ and the government work for us, we put them there, and now we have to get them out of there. We are not passive in this, we are participants, hence my despair, it’s only when a marauding bunch of bastards start dismantling it that you realise how much an obligation we ALL have to protect it. That’s on us as much as Matt Hancock.
We won’t.
Nonsense isn’t contradicted by bigger nonsense.
And yet that appears to be the strategy of the health professionals.
Under the WHO guidelines a mask would be a medical device used in the prevention of disease .
https://www.who.int/medical_devices/full_deffinition/en/
The 1984 health act prohibits the government from using any prophylactic treatment without consent from the individual.
Therefore, I believe making someone wear a mask is illegal. Are there any legal experts that could check this out?
lol…
‘lol…’
I meant good luck going into a court complaining…
don’t know about there, here, how to say it; ‘IRS’ is not working …
They also are useless unless they are surgical quality and only used for a short time- HSE
The packaging for the horrid things states outright that they confer no personal protection.
Some brands’ packaging state outright that they don’t protect against Coronaviruses – any Coronaviruses.
But the President if the Royal Society says they are efficacious, and the President if the Royal Society is an honourable man.
Or maybe he isn’t.
Maybe he can only read mathematical symbols, not letters.
Maybe he’s an arsehole.
But this is a totalitarian government that suspended all human rights overnight – literally – on 23 March.
Midlands Protest planned
https://twitter.com/befree200/status/1290256058850537480/photo/1
Just read this comment in The Telegraph:
They don’t even need a test, in care homes if there is a single patient tested positive, it is assigned to all fatalities from the care home, it is also added if a deceased had coughed or had a fever in the month before.
Surely this is not right, but it wouldn’t surprise me if it was.
I believe doctors are allowed to assign a death to Covid even if no positive test was conducted. Symptomology is good enough I think for the certificate.
I heard they do it remotely on info from the care home, then off it goes to be registered, remotely
Correct. Although the rest is wrong, one patient testing positive doesn’t mean ‘assigning all fatalities in the care home ‘ to CV19.
Yes it is right. Dr John Lee wrote a good article in the Spectator about death recording, said it was a scandal.
It is wrong.
I do wish people would at least attempt to find out information before posting:
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/guidance-notes-for-completing-a-medical-certificate-of-cause-of-death
I wouldn’t say wrong, this line in the guidance is pretty much a carte Blanche:
“Medical practitioners are required to certify causes of death “to the best of their knowledge and belief”. Without diagnostic proof, if appropriate and to avoid delay, medical practitioners can circle ‘2’ in the MCCD (“information from post-mortem may be available later”) or tick Box B on the reverse of the MCCD for ante-mortem investigations. For example, if before death the patient had symptoms typical of COVID- 19 infection, but the test result has not been received, it would be satisfactory to give ‘COVID-19’ as the cause of death, tick Box B and then share the test result when it
becomes available. In the circumstances of there being no swab, it is satisfactory to apply clinical judgement.“
That is not carte blanche to assign CV19 as a cause of death ‘in care homes if there is a single patient tested positive’.
NHS reported deaths for the past 3 days reported 14, of which 5 were suspected to have had Covid 19 but not tested.
The proportion has traditionally been pretty low, but has increased recently as numbers have dropped. They are down about three quarters from late June.
It very much is. The doctor can claim it’s a reasonable assumption.
…what you might not realise Sylvie is that very old people who die of respiratory disease often have multiple pathogens in their lungs…there is really no reason to prioritise Covid 19 in the absence of a positive test.
Another interesting thing here is how many times the actual test result has been shared and the certificate/reporting numbers adjusted? Particularly if it turned out that Covid virus was NOT present? Anyone know where to find out, or if in fact this actually happens?
But it’s usually quicker to come here with a question, where nearly always there’s some incredibly helpful person willing to provide an answer.
Sorry, it was a bit tetchy, long day wrestling with other people’s money problems.
No problem
I do wish people who post links would read them. See section 5.4 – I was totally right, Doctors can certify Covid 19 as cause of death without a positive test result. It’s also interesting to note the section on diabetes. It’s clear to me that diabetes is the real cause of death in a large number of “Covid” cases.
Of course they can, if you were a GP who’d seen it all before you wouldn’t need a swab to tell you the obvious. I am well acquainted with the content of the link, thank you. Diabetes is not ‘ the real cause’ of death, it is one of the well attested co morbidities making it likely CV19 will finish you off, alongside ischaemic heart disease, atrial fibrillation, obesity and other circulatory problems. Also, as it turns out, kidney and renal issues.- see e.g. the article Swedenborg references from the Danish study above.
Pleased to report that there were many more mask-frees in the local supermarket today. Up from maybe 1% (me!) to perhaps 5%.
Every little helps…
Total compliance in Newcastle (T&W) city centre
If you mean masks, I was in the Grainger Market last Wednesday. It was about half and half.
I was talkig abou shops, should’ve been more explicit. Do they still close the market at stupid hour?
Does anyone watch the Anonymous videos?
What’s the general take on them?
The most recent one sums up the corruption around vaccines well.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=niJRTThkXrs
Anonymous are pro lockdown. This video is out of character for them, and must be something staged if YouTube are not taking it down.
No acceptable level of infection. The Puritans have spoken. My emphasis below:
Stephen Reicher (SPI-B): “David Nabarro (WHO) and I on Channel 4 News: there’s no acceptable level of infection – we need a systematic policy to drive the pandemic down along with gold standard test and trace to deal with outbreaks and comprehensive public information”
https://twitter.com/ReicherStephen/status/1290045245216841729
Seems ages ago when Michael Ryan stated instead, that the Swedish approach is the best way going forward, because we have to live with the virus for quite a while, if not for good- and the latter was actually confirmed today by Mr. No Silver Bullet himself.
They obviously don’t speak much to another anymore from their home offices in their rent free lakeside palaces in Geneva?!
I guess the WHO staff, the politicians, civil servants and still safely by a multinational employed of the world will only get it when their own salaries are halved or eliminated.
https://twitter.com/Covid19Crusher/status/1266838813906743297/photo/1
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.05.24.20111823v1.full.pdf
“Characteristics and predictors of hospitalization and death in the first 9,519 cases with a positive RT-PCR test for SARS-CoV-2 in Denmark: A nationwide cohort”
Maybe a bit boring article with description of comorbidities importance in deaths of covid-19.But the numbers of the study is impressive and they have analyzed 9,519 SARS-CoV-2 PCR-positive cases(228 677 tests) of whom 78% were community-managed, 22% were hospitalized (3.2% at an intensive care unit) and 5.5% had died within 30 days. There are no IFR calculated here. But all co-morbidties have been counted.
One interesting thing
“Authorized healthcare workers comprised 23% of all PCR positive case (Table 1). Of these, 122 case(5.6%) required hospital admission, 12 cases (0.6%) required ICU admission, and <5 cases(<0.2%) died within 30days of positive tests”
That is clearly much more than in influenza and shows the severe nosocomial dimension with Covid-19
But the table in the link is absolute best. Showing age and number of co-morbidities0% mortality under 50 and even up to 70 without co-morbidity only 1 %
Nice study, thank you. Interesting that in Denmark they locked down early March, and relaxed again only a month later! Also that because of their citizens’ unique ID, they could link all the patients’ previous med conditions, drugs prescribed etc, and get a full picture.
‘In this nationwide cohort of SARS-CoV-2 PCR positive cases and test-negative individuals from the
general population in Denmark, we found that older age (e.g., >70 years), male sex, and number of
comorbidities were risk factors for hospitalization and death. In the absence of comorbidities, the
mortality was, however, 5% or below until the age of 80 years. After controlling for age and sex,
virtually all comorbidities that were prevalent in our population, including e.g. hypertension, heart or
lung disease, obesity, and diabetes were associated with severe disease or death from COVID-19.
Particularly strong associations were observed for hospital-diagnosed kidney disease, severe psychiatric
disorder, and organ transplantation.’
Health care workers wear masks all the time…
Where is today’s London Calling episode? I was looking forward to it. The soothing dulcet tones of Toby’s and James’ voices, is just the tonic I need after a long Monday.
Melbourne makes an interesting case study at the moment. It has been about 3 weeks since masks became mandatory and they seem to be having no discernible impact on increasing positive numbers of tests, neither do the severe lockdown measures. The most obvious positive correlation seems to be the number of tests carried out. Conclusion: the infections have been there all along, “it’s the testing, stupid”
Why are you assuming that that’s not a purpose of testing—to drive media reported “cases” up?..
That clearly seems to be its main function now. We are hearing very little about deaths now on the MSM now.
Oh, but just imagine how much worse it would be without the masks!
Well, who couldn’t see this one coming: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/health/coronavirus-nhs-waiting-times-covid-19-treatment-a9651961.html
Dumb f’cking a*sery!
Truly scandalous. People will die in their thousands every year for the next decade or more. We might see a 100k early and unnecessary deaths. Meanwhile Sweden has kept its health service pretty much intact by avoiding a total lockdown.
Saving the NHS by wrecking it for the next ten years……
Yep, but if the crawling fearmongering Not Independent Don’t Make Me Laugh is reporting it, it’s a start. Except that it isn’t the impact of the bloody virus that’s done it. Has any Independent reader got the brains to work that out?
It was always about the money. A once in a lifetime opportunity to prune the services provided by the NHS to a new “normal”.
Ditto jobs, e-money and, for me, the most alarming thing, a national DNA database and – if they go about it the right way – social control measures, coercive “good behaviour”.
Dystopian nightmare.
Yes, dystopian. A cacotopia. Seems a good word to revive, especially because of the resonance with ‘caca’, and it sounds even worse that dystopia.
An excellent suggestion when recalling the most visible symbol of this fiasco, the “face-nappy”.
We have a kakistocracy in charge now.
Hi Cambridge N and James. An Oxford man writes:
Should it be cacotopia and cacistocracy (or preferably cacocracy)
or
kakotopia and kakistocracy (or kakocracy).
Got to get agreement on the spelling, for the banners
Enjoyed this. Apologies if already posted
https://youtu.be/nfXF16Jp-Jc
Hi all
Just saw a guy on Anna Brees’ site and he simply wanted to know “How many we are?” (Sceptics/dissenters)
It hit me like a truck!
I looked at domain names but felt that the slightly tweaked version of “How many are we?” worked better.
I can really imagine marches through the worlds capitals with banners asking “How many are we?”
What do you think?
That or “We Will be free”
Thanks
Interesting.
We are, comparatively speaking, few.
So were The Few.
It would be silly to push the comparison very far. We don’t defy death in the sky.
But we do defy the death of.the human soul.
The many will owe us a little.
Found another sceptic yesterday; got a taxi and return to Tesco, as I got back in the driver said he noticed I had not worn a mask and heard me say ‘I’m exempt thanks’.
The return journey was spent chatting about how rubbish the covid/lockdown was. After I paid my fare the driver showed me his Facebook page, lots of videos by Vernon Coleman and others.
34,000 followers but all in Turkish & Russian.
i’ll let you into a little secret about taxi drivers, most of them are coke snorting whore fucking lunatics. Good guys, can’t fault them.
https://twitter.com/befree200/status/1290256058850537480/photo/1
Protest planned in Birmingham
I think “How many are we?” is better than “We Will be Free.” We will be free is the sort of slogan that might put people off.
This is for the person who, like myself, was wondering why London Calling wasn’t broadcast today:
LondonCallingPodcast
@calling_podcast
We regret to have had to inform Her Majesty that this week’s episode of “London Calling” is now scheduled for Tuesday. #ThereGoesMyPeerage
5:29 PM · Aug 3, 2020·Twitter Web App
Utterly disgraceful BBC article from the shameful James Gallagher.
Ifs and buts and maybe….
The worlds children deserve better than this journalist pedalling scare stories when he has a had his education and is sitting comfortably at home enjoying his opportunity to strike fear into everyone.
What are the BBC gaining for letting this continue in this way?
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-53638083
Couldn’t agree more. When you read the study (which acknowledges similarities to the Ferguson approach), it is an orgy of assumptions and predictions. Modelling may have its place – but why do these studies get headlines in the MSM when evidence based studies (from the likes of eg Carl Heneghan) get ignored? Where is the balance? Bad journalism!
I am still incredulous on why Carl hasn’t been offered a full BBC interview in the ways other University Professors get on a daily basis.
Is this BBC bias to make this last as long as possible to bring down Boris?
Or BBC bias to protect Boris and his shambolic leadership. The longer this runs the less people will remember etc and then Boris can declare his personal victory etc etc.
The economic and psychological impacts on the country being carefully airbrushed out.
I agree – scaremongering article.
For Twitter users, James Gallagher’s twitter address is at the bottom of the BBC article if you want to let him read your views.
But this is the BBC… They do this for everything. Their “environment” correspondents daily plant scare stories about “climate change” which are inaccurate or downright lies. They always use weasel words such as “scientists say” or “experts predict” to give the impression that these are facts and are correct. They will take some blurb from an interested party and reprint it on the website as fact without doing any “journalism” i.e. due diligence. And the reporters do not have professional training in these areas. Justin Rowlatt for example is the “Chief Environment Correspondent” and all sorts of biased rubbish comes out under his byline. You would think that we was a scientist. Wrong – his degree is in PPE,
So what is the BBC gaining you ask? It is being allowed to continue with its in house doctrines without any reference to facts or reality.
Tedious I realise, but do complain, quick five min form online. On another campaign Im involved in, this has had results in terms of forcing them to balance their output (albeit slowly and reluctantly)
Seems James Gallagher has ‘form’.
https://meassociation.org.uk/2016/11/formal-complaint-from-the-countess-of-mar-to-bbc-director-general-about-coverage-of-the-fitnet-story-13-november-2016/
James if you are reading this, just for a moment imagine you are a school or university student or a parent who loves their children and wants the best education and life experiences for them.
To wake up and read your daily scare stories is destroying their mental health.
Your article today is bizarre, are you politically spinning this or just enjoying yourself making the young helpless and desperate.
Take a long look at yourself and ask if you could do better.
Think how that article can be re-written with the sensationalism and you may start to be taken seriously.
Please, for the sake of us all.
Powerful statement from Australia calling on Australian government to be held accountable…
Covid time to wake them up
https://youtu.be/6jGIl9JlfNI
https://makeaustraliahealthyagain.org
The news reported that Nicola Sturgeon says she was nearly in tears when she saw crowds of people in Scottish pubs, I also nearly wept that this is the level of our leadership in this crisis. Somehow the idea that we were going to contain this virus has morphed into the idea that we must totally eradicate this virus at all costs. We cannot afford eradication, not socially, economically or the effects on other aspects of healthcare. Our leaders are arrogant and deluded if they think they have the power to defeat this virus
Ironically the summertime asymptomatic spread of this virus may be a good way to protect us from future problems. There is no crisis, at least not in the UK, apart from crisis created by headless chicken politicians running about panicking over dodgy test results. Giving these politicians covid testing has been like giving the children a box of matches and then wondering why the house burnt down
That infuriated me too. You imagine her screaming and screaming and screaming till she’s sick like Violet Elisabeth Bott. The day before she was very upset about kids playing on a beach at Portobello. Then she was advising everyone, especially Muslims for Eid, not to travel to the north of England. Usually I don’t bother, but I was so cross I commented in the National that I hoped Muslims and everyone else ignored the First Minister and started getting on with their lives. I received a reply saying something like “Yeah, go out their (sic) and hug the virus, do everyone a favour.” Yet many Scots won’t hear a word against wee Crankie.
Many developed countries in Europe have encouraged migration, particularly Britain, circa 12 million new citizens since 1997.
That is a good thing with obvious benefits to migrants and host country alike. Britain is, in fact, a nation of migrants. English is an international trading language constructed from many different vernaculars.
The indictment is that, as a consequence of uncontrolled immigration, European developed nations have not looked after migrants as they should have been looked after
This is evidenced:
‘….some subgroups of migrants, including refugees, asylum seekers, and irregular migrants are particularly vulnerable to infectious diseases and may have worse health outcomes than the host population. In a number of EU/EEA Member States, subgroups of migrant populations are disproportionately affected by infectious diseases such as tuberculosis, HIV, and hepatitis B and C. Consequently, screening and vaccination programmes may be of benefit for newly arrived migrants’
European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control Nov 2018
Whatever its effects on the likelihood of contracting covid 19, there can be no doubt that BCG vaccination for migrants would undoubtedly have conferred health benefits:
‘The current evidence about BCG vaccination and prevention of acute respiratory infections is of high quality, as it is supported by results from 2 systematic reviews (one including meta-analysis) and 4 RCTs, which provide high level of evidence for prevention studies’
https://www.cebm.net/covid-19/does-bcg-vaccination-protect-against-acute-respiratory-infections-and-covid-19-a-rapid-review-of-current-evidence/
So uncontrolled migration is yet another example of ‘The Good Intentions Paving Company’
‘6 of the 15 countries most affected by COVID-19 — the United States of America, Germany, the Russian Federation, France, and the United Kingdom — were among the 15 countries from which the highest amounts of remittances were sent in 2018.’
‘Low-skilled labour migrants in crowded dormitories have been disproportionately affected by the pandemic. Examples from Saudi Arabia and Singapore, where the Ministries of Health have provided official data on the migration status of individuals who tested positive, show the differential exposure to the virus of the migrant population. According to the Saudi Ministry of Health, 75 per cent of all new confirmed cases as of 7 May 2020 were among migrants. Over 95 per cent of the confirmed cases in Singapore by 19 June 2020 were migrants, with over 93 per cent of the total cases being related to migrants’ dormitories’
Migration data portal June 2020
We know that many migrants often live in poor conditions in Europe.
‘The current inspection received evidence from 43 stakeholders, principally NGOs. Of these, two thirds (29) focused on poor property standards, with frequent references to defects, damp, dirt and vermin. Almost half (20) referred to the unsuitability of the accommodation provided for particular groups of asylum seekers’
An inspection of the Home Office’s management of asylum accommodation provision February – June 2018.
And that they suffer disproportionately from covid 19
‘Male immigrants from low- or middle-income countries are two and a half times more likely to die from the coronavirus than men born in Sweden.
Immigrant women have one and a half times higher risk than Swedish-born women.
The study covers over 3000 deaths from COVID-19 in Sweden between 5 January and 7 March. The researchers have linked the deaths to registry data for each individual.’
Science Norway 28 June 2020
If the WHO really wanted to do something useful, it would be to advise immediate BCG vaccination for all migrants who have not already been BCG vaccinated.
”These findings suggest that BCG-Tokyo has a protective effect at all ages.’
NCBI 04 Aug 2010
No wonder the governments of Merkel, Macron, Johnson and others are trying to distract us with endless pettiness.
This indictment is a grave one and leads directly to these and other leaders, including, particularly, Blair.
Well, it’s true that Britain is a ‘nation of migrants’ in recent history, using the percentage of foreign-born residents as a measure. But the UK, and before that England, did not have any significant immigration before about 1948. Unless we are going back to the Dark Ages I suppose.
The “White British” are overwhelmingly descended from the people who were living here 4,000 years ago.
And each migratory enrichment resulted in decades or centuries of conflict before integration (Romans, Anglo Saxons, Vikings, Normans). I think the Huguenots were the only significant migration where integration was swift and without conflict. Something to do with them being very similar culturally to the English and particularly hard working.
English ? We were Britons until all those foreign types started coming over.
The Huguenots fled to England mainly in the 16th and 17th centuries, England was a thing by then.
Yes, agreed. Not so much the other four groups though.
(Am I the only one who feels sorry for the Jutes – always getting left out.)
You make a powerful argument against uncontrolled immigration, and a powerful one for more defence spending, particularly on mobile armoured formations, which, I believe, were in short supply at Hastings.
No they’re not. We’re a nation of mongrels and immigrants – and all the better for it.
… although, I admit that the last few months provide circumstantial evidence of the decline of intelligence through in-breeding.
that’s such bullshit. I’m Pictish and the Pictish people have lived in Fife for ten thousand years, we didn’t need some diversity from some far flung shithole coming here telling us how we could be “better” just because they’ve come here. Folk like you make me puke blood
“We’re a nation of mongrels and immigrants”
No, that’s flat out false. You’ve bought the establishment propaganda over the past century or so, designed to suppress resistance to mass immigration for the purpose of importing cheap labour.
The “facts” you think you know are simply false, and those falsehoods have been systematically taught to our children in school and pushed into our households by the BBC for decades. You have not been exposed to effective dissent on the topic because it’s mostly censored.
The truth is better described by Cambridge N and Ossettian above. The only sense in which “Britain is a nation of immigrants” is that there were indeed historical movements of peoples, but that’s on the scale of millennia not recent history. In fact, for the past few centuries, until the past few decades, immigration into Britain did happen, but was numerically and genetically trivial. Where there were immigrations that were culturally significant, such as the Huguenots, they nevertheless involved tiny numbers compared to today’s movements.
Unsurprisingly and not unusually, you are very sensitive to being propagandised, except where the propaganda suits your own political preferences.
Immigrants are just people fleeing their own shithole to come here and tun us into a shithole and allowing the government to silence the majority who don’t like this.
Well – a succession of recent governments from Thatcher onwards has done a pretty good job of creating a deepening shit-hole without any external help.
Mrs Thatcher saved this country and the fact you don’t know this shows how your a dumb fuck lefty wanker
Am I on the guardian blog?
“Many developed countries in Europe have encouraged migration, particularly Britain, circa 12 million new citizens since 1997.
That is a good thing with obvious benefits to migrants and host country alike. Britain is, in fact, a nation of migrants.”
I don’t suppose you could run through those obvious benefits, I’m drawing a blank.
Thanks.
“Many developed countries in Europe have encouraged migration, particularly Britain, circa 12 million new citizens since 1997.
That is a good thing with obvious benefits to migrants and host country alike. Britain is, in fact, a nation of migrants. ”
First, the factual error: Britain is in no honest and relevant sense a “nation of immigrants”. In fact for the past few centuries numbers of immigrants were relatively trivial, until the C20th, and especially the late C20th. Immigration was occasionally culturally significant, but never in sufficient numbers to be genetically or demographically significant. That you believe you “know” that “Britain is a nation of immigrants” is the result of intentional, systematic propaganda over decades.
Now the issue of migration, good or bad. Migration is obviously neither entirely good nor entirely bad. There are advantages and disadvantages to it, and which carries the balance varies according to the circumstances and, especially, the numbers. Mass immigration is almost always a bad thing, because it is massively destabilising. We have had to have unprecedented restrictions imposed on our fundamental freedoms of speech and of association in order to accommodate the mass immigration of the C20th and C21st.
Diversity does have some inherent advantages, but it also (contrary to modern US sphere dogma) has significant disadvantages. Fundamentally, a nation state works because there is sufficient cultural homogeneity for laws and norms to be adopted largely by consensus. Increased diversity weakens and ultimately destroys the possibility of such consensus, leaving only repression to keep society in order. A culturally diverse state is an empire, not a nation.
And of course, mass immigration leaves the nations losing population impoverished, losing people who are in many cases their most dynamic and best educated, and monies sent back to support families can never fully replace their energy and competence.
Good article by Richard Littlejohn in the Mail
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-8589477/amp/RICHARD-LITTLEJOHN-Britain-Covid-coma-NOW.html?__twitter_impression=true
The one by the owner of Pimlico Plumbers is in a similar vein: Get back to normal now to prevent total economic disaster.
Is the tide turning? There are more such articles and the coronaporn is no longer unchallenged.
From where I work, I can see the tide rising and falling hour by hour. When it turns, at first you scarcely notice. It advances slowly, slowly.
Then there’s a rush. Swoosh. Tide is in.
The tide on the River Dee between Connah’s Quay and Chester behaves differently from most tidal rivers. Due to the shape of the estuary, the tide ebbs for almost eleven hours. But when the tide turns, it floods for an hour, pouring upriver in a gushing flood.
I believe we are standing during that quiet moment, just as the ebb eases. The flood is coming.
I want to believe you Nick but I’m not sure where and when that flood will come from at this rate.
Drip drip, yes I think the tide has finally turned. The comments below the article are certainly different to what they were in May and June.
Whitty and Johnson screwed up last week, many had been patient but Friday broke that resolve.
Happy to buy your assessment hotrod. Please don’t be wrong!
In Scotland I fancy some are getting lazy and we are getting a sense of no personal threat, the kind if tgreat SAGE din’t want.
Once remeberance of Gulf War Syndrome occurs I hope tge vaccine effort will flounder as the lockdowns surely will.
Good times to come.
Can we pin this article somewhere so everyone can read and share onwards today?
Have asked Toby if that can be done.
Excellent article. Especially this:
This is perhaps the reason why our MPs don’t care – they haven’t been furloughed, their jobs are not threatened, there’s no bankruptcy or redundancy hanging over their heads like the Sword of Damocles.
This also shows that we don’t need that many MPs. What purpose do they serve anyway?
Slash their numbers and slash their pay (minimum wage tops). To be an MP is supposed to be public service and if they don’t like it, they can find jobs elsewhere that would pay what they think they’re worth.
From the BBC
“Players who deliberately cough at other players or match officials can be red-carded, say football’s rule-makers and the Football Association.
The International Football Association Board (Ifab) said such an offence fell within “using offensive, insulting or abusive language and/or gestures”.
It added: “As with all offences, the referee has to make a judgement about the true nature of the offence.”
The guidance comes amid the global coronavirus pandemic………….”
Glad that has been sorted out!! Whole new meaning to being hacked down from behind
Was just in McDs this morning. Saw the mask notice and about ordering so since the restaurant was open I thought I’d sit down instead. When I’m ordering I heard a voice saying I needed to wear a mask while using the touch screen. Then I look round and a young girl who works there is telling me I need to wear a mask.
We basically got into a slightly heated spat. I said “It’s not law” she replies with “It’s the guidelines”. I’m saying “Do you want my money or not?”
All this while I’m still finalising my order. I’m half ignoring her anyway. She ends up muttering I was being rude.
I then sat down at a table and went up to the counter to pick up my meal. Then sat down and ate. After about5 minutes I walked out and ate the rest in the car.
I noticed the track and trace but didn’t have my phone. Wouldn’t do it anyway. I was trying to be as normal as possible. And I wanted to eat.
She never asked me if I was exempt. But I don’t blame her for having to follow the “rules” but don’t be surprised if there is kickback.
This will bring division if we let it. There is also no point in fighting it. Just do what you want. Be normal. Lead by example where you can without being too enraged!
That’s a derelection of duty on the part of McDs on not informing their staff of the exemptions and not to challenge customers lest they end up in the dock for disability discrimination and violation of the Equality Act.
Very bad. I would complain if I were you.
I understand but don’t see the point. I’m waiting for the shame to come. This will break and those who went along with it are going to have to sit and stew in the fact that as Jordan Peterson points out, yes you would have been a Nazi
That’s wonderful. Please share!
Offering you sincere thanks Howaed for your persistance and the work of your group Corona Ausschuss. We all need precisely what you are doing. Many thanks. Please don’t give up contacting Toby. I feel sure he will be very pleased to learn of your actions.
I find that Google offered an automatic translate option when visiting the site:
https://corona-ausschuss.de/ueber-den-ausschuss/
It looks interesting, take a look.
Thanks Howard! Just had a look at the site (scroll to bottom for English version). Good overview/introduction by the lawyer who has founded this group. Worth a watch and I hope we can see some of the live streams translated.
Up early this morning so I decided to take a look at how Toby’s site has developed over the course of this panicdemic. It’s hard to believe that he only started LS on 15th April, less than four months ago, but it seems he’s been here forever for us all.
The first page started with one solitary comment. Since then (dare I say it?) the number of comments has grown exponentially and is reaching a thousand every day.
Many of the early posters seem to have vanished (gone back to work?) but we’ve been joined by new ones. There are the regular posters: Biker, Bart, BecTJ, guy, Tim Birdie, Nick Rose, Poppy, …….sorry I can’t mention you all but you know who you are. I feel like you’ve become friends.
Many of you have contributed from your own areas of expertise and experience, whether that’s I.T. and computer modelling, medicine, social work, or like kh in the service sector. All these have been so valuable in helping us access the facts.
There have been those comments that made us laugh, made us cry, made us angry, but helped sustain us by pointing out that we were not alone and isolated and that there were real people going through exactly the same situations that we were ourselves. There will be many people who come here just to read, but never comment. We appreciate your presence too.
It’s also interesting to look at how the headlines have changed too, from the early days looking at the economic impact of lockdown, through to discovering that this was never going to be the new bubonic plague and most importantly, the gradual awakening of minds.
One thing that must never change however is our determination to fight against the abomination that has been inflicted on us. As Mark would put it, “Never forget, never forgive”
Thank you Toby, thank you everyone.
you remembered me first in your list, how cool is that. I’m still here pissed off that this whole mess, still not wearing a mask and still hating every second of this. Johnston truly is a fucking fat useless bastard and i can only surmise that for him to be doing he’s either a child fucker and they’ve pictures or it’s just plain old money that buys him. We can see if we have eyes how none of the people in Westminster are there to do the bidding of the British people. Like in Trumps America no matter how deep you go the swamp is deeper. You’d have to be Capitan Nero to get to the bottom. Blood is gonna be spilled on the streets and from neighbour to neighbour because if this shit carries on for much longer millions of people are gonna have nothing How long do those middle class wankers watching the BBC and smugly telling the rest of us how we should all be faggot mask wearing black live matter loving fucking cunts before they have to suffer?
We stand on the brink of the total destruction of the UK and for what? fifty thousand dead people from the flu. People die all the fucking time and this flu ain’t fuck all different. This whole sham has nothing to do with the flu and everything to do with killing us. The masses will be begging for a vaccine and they’ll troop off and get it where upon millions will die from it and no one who takes it will be able to have children. Then the people at the top can have the earth to themselves while cattle like us will all be dead. I’m not even joking. They are gonna kill you. This is why i’m always saying there is gonna be a war. Between those who want to live with all it’s risks and those who support their own genocide because they’re so comfortable they can’t see the coming holocaust. The two wars were nothing to what these people have planned.
How could I forget your posts Biker and your determination to stick your head above the parapet? Your language may be ripe and if I met you in the flesh in all your leathers, you may well appear terrifying to me, but here on this website, you are my friend! Thanks.
I’m actually a very cultured, intellectual, happy go lucky person whom wouldn’t hurt a fly. I create art and music and ride motorcycles very fast for the thrills. I swear a lot in my posts but would never swear in public, my mother would not approve and since my mother is the living embodiment of Mrs Thatcher and i still respect her so i conduct myself if she were watching. You will find that almost all bikers are very smart people who are engineers and the like. The image of the bad ass biker is some kind of gay Hollywood shit from the minds of drug addled fantasists who think being a biker is like being a Hells Angel.
Totally agree with you, we bikers are very nice people.
I just love the idea of your mum being the living embodiment of Mrs Thatcher!
Right down to the hair and pearls. She’s in her 80’s and still sharper than almost anyone you’ll meet.
Cheerful Biker ! A very good morning to you too sir.
i’m preparing to go to my friends funeral tomorrow and i feel like he’s got off lightly, the bastard. He’s dead now and doesn’t have to suffer this pish. Lucky fucker.
Give him a good send-off.
I’ve just checked government advice and apparently once you’re cremated they have to quarantine the ashes for two weeks before you can scatter them and then you’re only allowed to scatter them while wearing a mask and five miles out at sea. .
Quarantine the ashes ?!?! Stunning fuckwittery – what temperature do crematoria function at ?
“the gradual awakening of minds”
Absolutely. But in tandem with the gradual awakening, mostly here and at a few other sites where sceptics gather, there is the bizarre, pig-headed refusal to wake up.
The failure to notice or respond to the seamless transition from flattening the curve to terror of even the occasional potential “case”.
The refusal to face up to the contribution of increased testing to increased “cases”, as Bella Donna pointed out just now.
The continued determination to pay attention to the nonsense pumped out by modelling, proven disastrously wrong time after time, instead of looking at what actually happens, as Will just pointed out.
But as you rightly say, this site has been a great place to thrash out the issues with intelligent and informed people. Free discussion really does get closer to the truth than debate controlled by “experts” with suppressed dissent. Shame that we as a society have over the past few decades moved away from the former and towards the latter, a shift that has been brought into sharp focus by its effects in this coronapanic.
If and when the worst is over, remember who pushed us into this mess, and who tried to suppress the truth and how and with what arguments they did it.
As you rightly remind us, Margaret: never forget, never forgive.
You’re welcome. I do despair especially with my sector, the compulsory face nappies on 8 August would ensure that compulsory redundancies will be on the cards in my workplace. So in the next few months, I can look at the possibility of being out of work. Thanks Boris Jong Son and Lieutenant Gruber.
The day of reckoning can’t come soon enough and indeed we should “never forget, never forgive” and of course, “never again”
That’s a surprise, Scots kids haven’t been at school for 6 months, the school system has been in freefall for years & hey-presto the kids have suddenly produced record results! Well that’s taken the Scots back up the league tables. Well done Nicola.
BBC running story this morning that if schools & office workers go back we’ll have 2 x as bad an epidemic this winter. Well that probably puts a tin-lid on the recovery.
How can you bear to watch it?
I guess there’s a “know your enemy” argument for keeping an eye on the msm’s propaganda output. It’s a dangerous game, though. When you gaze into the abyss the abyss looks back. Or to move to a more recent writer, it can be like in the Lord of the Rings, where Denethor uses the Palantir to spy on Sauron and is led to despair – you can be affected by propaganda even when you are in theory alert to the possibility.
Quality, Mark. It is beyond most people’s comprehension the technical and psychological expertise the bad guys have in this area.
Just thought, Pippin was also a victim of the very advanced communication/control method too. And he just picked it up for a second …
An article on Palantir technologies.
https://www.investors.com/news/technology/palantir-ipo-multi-billion-dollar-deal-wrapped-in-an-enigma/
“The company acknowledges that its technology is used to kill people.”
“Conversely, Palantir also is helping the Department of Health and Human Services understand how coronavirus is spreading.”
Is normal life ever going to resume? I’m beginning to seriously wonder.
It’s up to us.
Indeed. As St Benedict has said “an idle mind is the Devil’s workshop” and when they’re working they won’t have time for all of the bollocks that comes out of the MSM and antisocial media.
Just a thought. I was in church last Sunday, not because I am a churchgoer normally but to show some support to an institution in the community. One of the saddest things I have seen in this entire Covid/ lockdown ‘fiascoutrage’. The minister at the front in face panties and visor muffling his way through the service, no hymns of course and then for communion the masked congregation shuffled disconsolately to receive the ‘body of Christ’ . Not his blood of course – sipping from goblet strictly banned. The most pathetic thing was seeing on the projected screen at the point where we normally turn around to others around and say ‘peace be with you’ and shake hands, the words ‘Please refrain from sharing the peace’ – summed it up really. The CoE and its ridiculous leader, wet Welby, has become one of the most supine, grovelling handmaidens to this disgraceful assault on people’s lives. I mean if you don’t actually have the faith that God trumps any earthly hysteria then you really are lost….
The powers that be see this as way of removing religion from our lives. What a God sent opportunity (forgive the pun) to erase God or so they think.
I’m not religious. If anything I’m anti-religious. I’m not involved in church, or the recent Eid celebrations, but I am furious about those choices being stolen from people who are just trying to lead peaceful, law abiding lives. And as for that theft being based on fake ‘science’, while the real facts are ignored, well, the phrase ‘righteous indignation’ comes to mind.
I do not think they could have succeeded if religion hadn’t already been effectively erased. The idea of suspending church services out of fear of spreading a relatively minor disease is pretty fundamentally humanist and anti-religious. Then again, my impression is that that is exactly what the mainstream church hierarchies are these days – basically humanists posturing as Christians.
Not to say that there aren’t genuine Christians around. They just aren’t the ones running the show.
What we’re seeing is the true dominance of the religion people really believe in, which one might call “Scientism”.
I actually think our relationship to the other religions has become healthier by being less literal. In the middle ages people would have been coming to the churches in the genuine belief it would literally and directly protect them from whatever plagues were doing the rounds at the time. We still see that behaviour but it’s focused on mystical pronouncements of “The Science”.
Not sure it’s necessarily healthier overall, just different. The worship of Science has made people every bit as unduly credulous towards authority as worship of other gods ever did.
I see the opposite of any ‘worship’ of ‘science’ at the moment – what’s going on is much more yet another fer-driven religious cult.
I don’t mean the worship of Science– that’s a horrible religion. I mean it’s healthier to take the established religions less literally.
Perhaps, though I tend to be tempted by the “conservation of human credulousness” position.
I’m not sure it’s necessarily healthier overall, though. As with so much “progress”, it’s just different.
The worship of Science has made people every bit as unduly credulous towards undeserving human authorities as worship of other gods ever did.
Pseudo-Science and Pseudo-Scientism.
‘Proving’ an already foregone conclusion and then not allowing for any dissent.
Made for and spread by TV.
Does ‘The Science’ show they were not protected ?
Do get out of that ‘poor me’ religious silo.
I have every sympathy with you wishing to follow your persuasions. But this isn’t ‘anti-religious’. It’s ‘anti-society’. It’s affecting everybody who engages in group activities in the widest sense – be it cinema, theatre, knitting circles, musical performance – you name it.
I’m not Christian myself, I’ve just watched the progress of religion in our society, from a broadly sympathetic perspective, for some decades now. I am pro-Christian, though, albeit mostly as it was when it contributed to building European and Anglo-Saxon societies into the most powerful and objectively best, on many counts, the world has ever seen. (By no means perfect, of course, and you could as well say “least worst” as “best”, but that’s mere semantics).
In some countries Christians risk their lives to meet together for collective prayer and worship.
When church services were suspended by the government, the church effectively said yes please, we would like to be closed down. We need to show how we are still the moral heart of the nation.
I also think many in leadership in the CofE actually believed this was bubonic plague again, so dangerous, that parishioners could not be trusted to make the decision to risk attending.
“we are still the moral heart of the nation.”
Oh per..lease. ‘Religion’ and ‘morality’ aren’t identical.
There will be a lot of church-goers involved in perpetuating this scam – starting with Welby.
“Oh per..lease. ‘Religion’ and ‘morality’ aren’t identical”
That is obviously true. I didn’t say they were.
Church leaders, as with many in prominent positions outside the church, associate looking good with being good. It’s quite pharisaical.
“the church effectively said yes please, we would like to be closed down. We need to show how we are still the moral heart of the nation.”
Perhaps that’s what they thought they were saying. In fact they were just saying that their faith is subordinate to the convenience of the secular authorities. And not in a “render unto caesar” sense, either.)
“I also think many in leadership in the CofE actually believed this was bubonic plague again, so dangerous, that parishioners could not be trusted to make the decision to risk attending.”
I do not think that is credible. They might have pretended to themselves that was what they were doing, but the basic facts were so clear even at the outset, that this was a disease that would kill a few percent at most, that nobody could honestly see it that way. Rather they saw it as a way to signal their supposed “if it saves one life” virtue, just like the other humanists. A true Christian would say that faith is more important than such small risks of death and that while all reasonable precautions could be taken, that should not be allowed to actually halt basic practices, and while they would mourn those who might perish a little sooner than otherwise, they would do so in the sure and certain hope of resurrection etc..
I don’t believe the CoE leadership regard critical thinking as their fiefdom. You can see this by how they’re 100% on-board with the other mass delusion which is climate change hysteria.
It’s fine if they want to avoid critical thinking. But then they should shut up when the adults are discussing complicated issues outside their areas of expertise…
But it is isn’t it! Churches are, and always have been, a repository of human lives as lived through the centuries – history in the form of a (quite often) beautiful building.
Denying access to this history and the reassurance it can bring is, to me, shocking. The spinelessness of the bishops throughout lockdown has appalled me.
I’m not religious but have always loved looking at churches to ‘read’ the community it serves.
I should think you are!
I’ve been spared the ineptitude of the clergy fortunately, although I have friends within the local congregation. All incredibly law abiding, mild mannered (how do I fit in you may well ask), generous people but which perhaps partly explains the adherence to lockdown rules.
They don’t serve communities, they serve the government.
I am an active member of our church (Methodist) and on several committees so am expected to be very much a part of it. Our first service in the building will be on August 23rd (where we have to say goodbye to our minister who is moving so a sort of special occasion). The son of one of the property committee members went down with the virus so naturally they are trying to rigidly stick to the rules.What has been suggested so far makes me feel I would be better staying away, and since in theory I am down as door steward duty that day I cannot really do that as I would be asking people to do things (like sanitising hands, get your mask on, THAT is your seat) that I strongly disagree with. No idea on what the mask policy will be and in fact the Methodist Church hasn’t updated their guidance after BoJos latest decree but if I have to read the lessons with a mask I shall decline that as well.
The church should have been one of the large organisations campaigning against all the silly rules but of course with Welby in charge of the COE that is not going to happen. I keep asking myself what Jesus would have done, it is worse than the crucifixion.
Thanks Howard – this looks very professional. The English version is now at the top rh corner of the site (though no translation yet for the ‘experts’ page).
How can Germany organise a demonstration of over 1m people in Berlin yet in the UK we have under 500 in London? The two nations are very similar in most ways, I feel, so the extent of scepticism should not be widely at variance.
Does anyone know who is organising the gathering in Birmingham on the 15th – I’d like to know under whose banner I’d be marching!
I would be very interested to see detail regarding the accuracy of PCR tests and their fitness for purpose regarding coronavirus/covid 19 detection
I cannot believe the government and so called experts haven’t worked out that with increased testing you will discover more of the virus! What is evident is that the virus isnt as harmful to the majority of people as they made out. In fact most of us are immune to it. Yes that’s right immuned because our immune systems are doing their job! Clever aren’t they?
As per Dr John Lee, the most common CCP Virus symptom is nothing!
Yep. It’s a red flag that the tests are not reported as a percentage of the tests taken.
I have a sneaking suspicion, call me a cynic, that they are well aware of that!
Oh yes, they know what they are doing and it seems to be going to plan. Piss off the natives enough, so that they will gladly roll up their sleeves, for the Bill Gates genocidal witches brew, jokingly called a vaccine.
More f’cking modelling rather than observing the data from every other country on the planet that shows schools reopening make no difference to the spread of this cold. The scientists are loving their fifteen minutes of fame and are determined to maintain the grip this hopeless government has allowed them over the country.
If only it WAS just 15 minutes!!
Totally agree. The closure of schools is one of the greatest cruelties of this fiasco and I cannot believe that, on this point if no other, they cannot bring themselves to do what is so obviously right and get these poor children back as normal.
My daughter is has an autoimmune condition, is undergoing chemotherapy and her medical team are happy for her to return to school. Three paediatricians have now told me that Covid simply doesn’t affect children yet still this nonsense is perpetuated.
And there it is. Concrete evidence. Real medicine. Parental consent. All being ignored.
Certainly cruel to parents, but joking aside teachers are the main problem and they are now looking for 12 months holiday every year.
There is a lot more going on that “scientists” basking in the limelight. There is a concerted effort being made to take most of us down. The Bill Gates vaccines are springing up like weeds and are the main tools in this genocidal purge.
Just been in my local Spar. Queuing to pay (no mask, but am in Wales!) and saw display of ‘ready to wear, easy clean, reusable masks’ for sale – one set for adults and one for kids – ‘one size fits all for each. Was interested in the ‘easy to clean, reusable’ bit advertised so looked at the back of packet for cleaning instructions- wash at 40 degrees…. how on earth is that going to kill germs?? And I am thinking not thinking of Covid virus necessarily, but also of the non-Covid variety/bacteria that will accumulate on these things as people wear them and carry them around ? Pointed it out to person behind plastic screen and face visor at the till who just shrugged! Went across the road to buy fruit and veg from street market just reopened. Cheered by friendly non mask wearing market stall people. Great conversation about stupidity of it all and those people supposedly on furlough going on long holiday breaks over summer. Lady next to me shared she has been working all through this, as have I, and commented that if one more person tells her they are ‘bored’ she will not be responsible for her actions. Said I would be right behind her, and told her about this site which she had not heard of. Reminder to me to get out more and keep spreading the word
Some towns in France are making masks compulsory outside your house. Since they realise that masks are expensive, some mayors are kindly insisting that the cost should be reimbursed! Apparently the number of covid19 patients in ICUs has gone up by 13 in a week. Don’t know how many there were before. Don’t know the age of these people. Very depressing.
To reply to myself, there is a good site here https://coronavirus.politologue.com/carte-de-france/ which shows numbers of deaths, numbers in hospital, numbers in ICUs, numbers who have gone home. A glance at the reanimation column suggests there are about 300 people in intensive care at the moment in the entire country. Surely the health services can cope.
The insanity virus is obviously spreading across borders.
Bonjour Jane,
whereabouts are you?
I’m in the Aude.
Dear Government/MSM/’Experts’,
You know how kids can’t go back to school, cos they and the teachers will instantly die?
Well, how come, right now, they are out playing in the street, nursing their dollies, riding their bikes, falling all over each other, meeting their mates in shops and hanging around on corners, without dying?
Asking for a citizen. Thanks.
and playing in parks, touching the swings and play equipment other walking child biohazards touched seconds ago, not anti-social distancing, not muzzled, talking and playing with each other (oh! the horror!) how can such behaviour be permitted?
Had the misfortune to sit with the wife while she watched ITV news last night. It made me and.
On Central News the amount of lies and idiocy spewed as fact about social distancing, track and trace and what you MUST do was just sickening,
Then on the main news Emily Morgan the ex-political now health editor was doing a bullshit piece on the new testing kits etc and at the end (which is not included in the little videos on their site or I would post a link) was her complaining to the main teleprompter reader that the importance of testing was not getting through and “more needs to be done to get this through to the masses”.
Calling us “the masses” just showed the contempt that these semi-educated media luvvies have for us.
That was me madder than hell.
I would write to them and OFCOM but no-one ever acknowledges any correspondence.
But testing is important.
It ensures a sufficiently high number of false Positives, even if the virus was completely eradicated.
Therefore, it ensures that the politicians and the media can suppress and brainwash the masses for good.
Sadly, yes, that seems to be the point. Stalin’s Russia creeps up on us daily.
I’m reading Stephen Kotkin’s books on Stalin now. The parallels are very scary.
I
m readingPlague of Corruptionby Judy Mikovitss a must read if you are even remotely interested in the health of humanity.and Kent Heckenlively. I would say it
Why don’t you just turn off the TV and go do something less boring instead? Good show that, i used to watch it when i were a kid, though i never made it past the titles because i took their advice and fucked off outside on my bike or with a football or an air riffle and did stuff kids in the 70’s did. It’s almost like those who watch tv now have to watch it and believe every word that comes out it, it’s truly frightening.
I timed my after dinner beer in the garden wrong and screwed up.
Thought I had missed it.
Lesson learned – if I mistime the beer again go and have another one. Getting picture no sound for days for getting drunk is infinitely better than sitting through MSM news.
You and your wife’s big mistake is watching this sh*te in the first place. First rule of staying sane and ‘normal’—don’t read or watch ANY mainstream news.
I know, it was a mistake by me, should have left her sitting there by herself.
For some reason she likes watching the local news if if it is all bullshit as she says it is. I think it’s to see if somewhere or someone she knows crops up or on Central news it’s to see what natty suit Des the weatherman is wearing that evening.
I switched off the bbc around 3 weeks ago and haven’t switched it back on again. I quite enjoy getting the headlines here instead, once someone else has had a chance to demolish them.
Sitrep from sunny Darlo.
Went out for dinner at a country pub last night with Mrs Biggles and two friends. It was our first time since the pubs re-opened so I wasn’t sure what to expect.
I have to say that I was pleasantly surprised as the only real difference was the socially distanced tables inside (there were also tables outside on a patio area). In theory there was a one way system in operation but everyone could go pretty much where they wanted. There were no plastic screens anywhere, there was no hand sanitiser and the staff weren’t wearing masks. There was also no track and trace. Overall it was very enjoyable.
The only disappointing aspect of the evening was the attitude of our friends. We didn’t really talk much about Covid-19 but as I had taken my mask exempt card along in case it was needed (it wasn’t) I decided to show them it. Tony is 67 and has COPD so has a real reason to have one. His response was ‘It’s OK, I’ll keep using the mask’. Sue is 70 and has had health problems for the last 15 years. All she said was ‘Why would I have one of those?’ I didn’t say anything as it would probably have ruined the evening but it just shows how people are sleepwalking into this and how compliant they are.
In a way it was a shame that there was no track and trace as I had already worked out my strategy. For my contact details, to paraphrase Eric Morecambe, I would have given them all the right numbers, but not necessarily in the right order.
Yes, the compliance seems to be almost universal. I was shopping at a Tesco yesterday [in Suffolk – a region with extremely low levels of virus infections] and must have seen at least 100 people. Everyone but me was masked (all staff too) – so at least 99% compliance. At least noone, staff or customers, seemed to pay any attention to my state, though.
They probably didn’t like to say anything, because you are obviously going to die, poor love.
We went to a pub lunch on Saturday.
Completely normal experience, no requests for phone number, no masks. Some people were sitting inside, some outside.
There was a Chinese family with small children near our table. Then we see a mother and 7 year old girl put their masks on and go to the toilet inside. I despair!
If in the future it is firmly established with copper bottomed certainty that wearing masks was utterly pointless – will there be a reckoning? I doubt it.
Even if it is established, as I am convinced, that masks spread disease rather than stop it there still won’t be a reckoning.
Yes, that’s my view – they’ll be no reckoning. Sorry about that, honest mistake. That’s alright then.
Unless evidence or whistleblowers can be found that the whole thing was a con, or that politicians/scientists recognized their initial mistakes but then decided to double down on them rather than change course, or that Sweden booms healthily henceforth while we will get a higher death rate and a huge long lasting economic depression, any reckoning by them and above all the whole people, will be far off or never, allowed to, happen.
Have you noticed that the media stopped mentioning Sweden now?
Haven’t they ever. Sweden proved them all wrong.
There’s been a week or so about a month ago when the media was trying hard to prove that more people were dying of COVID-19 in Sweeden using various statistical tricks, when that failed, they just shut up.
Yep.
And Belarus is proving that even Sweden was and is being too strict and that SD is bogus, unless used for mind or dissent control, or torture.
Which is not surprising, considering that SD has never been evaluated scientifically, but is solely based upon the high school trial of a 14 year old girl, discovered by and tweaked for warfare purposes by two GW Bush admin hawks.
It won’t happen in our generation whatever the truth. Science progresses one funeral at a time.
Ultimately the truth always wins but it can take a long time and it is bigger than the scientists themselves, who are often just as biased and unable to make good judgements as anyone else. On balance I don’t think this is necessarily a bad system. Out of all those people bloody-mindedly and irrationally chasing pet theories some will turn out to be right and make new discoveries.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planck%27s_principle?wprov=sfla1
It happened in Russia and China, when the ‘reckoning’ was quite severe. This time, I would suggest, there is more justification for a similar response.
Naughty scientists, stop it now !
Are you by any chance an alumnnus of one of the Max Planck Institutes, strangely, I had been wondering that?
Nothing so distinguished
I’m just a bumbling amateur dabbler.
Meanwhile in Singapore:-
— https://www.rt.com/news/496996-singapore-wearable-contact-tracing-visitors/
Yikes – implants next!
I think that’s what this means:
“will receive an electronic monitoring device”
usual Orwellian newsspeak of course
receive
obey
etc
Thus is interesting,
https://twitter.com/Tanya_USA/status/1290553199565438978?s=19
All cause weekly deaths below five year average – again. Six weeks running, now, but you know…. virus.
But they don’t talk about deaths any more.
I heard on the radio this morning that opening schools will lead to a huge second wave. What are they talking about?!
All my friends and myself cannot wait for the schools to open.
Many primary schools actually opened for the last 2-3 weeks of the summer term and there were no spike or any increase.
No, it’s ‘cases’ now, or ‘infections’, which is probably more correct, ironically, but sounds scarier. When more and more infections are seen to be mild or less, they will probably switch to talking about ‘the spread’. Or make something up yourself, it will probably come true!
Not sure if this is an important point or not, but is either ‘cases’ or ‘infections’ the correct word ? They don’t sound right to me, if the testee is healthy. ‘Positive tests’ perhaps ?
They’re not in the business of ‘correct’ words. As long as it conveys “the relentless spread of this killer disease”, it will do.
I think infection is the right word – not case, which suggests sickness – but I see where you’re coming from. When you consider how many different things we’re all infected with, that cause no symptoms and no sickness, it seems too emotive a word to be used for something that is, for the overwhelming majority of people, essentially harmless.
For a full month in Holland, no ill effects
This looks really interesting, Howard. You can contact Toby directly at realtobyyoung@gmail.com
Quite like this slogan seen on Twitter:
Yeah, pretty succinct. That and “If masks work, why did we lock down? And if they don’t, why do we have to wear them?“
Two corkers in one thread !!!!!
That’s a good one!
If I can pretend your mask works, you can pretend I’m wearing one.
That sounds like a great idea for a lapel badge!
How apt although the article itself shows the bias of Tim Adams in this question – “It is a huge challenge to confront, say, diehard conspiracy theorists, or anti-vaxxers with such scepticism. Have you had experience of conversion moments?”. If Carl Bergstrom is a “trenchant critic of the current response” then that would suggest the bullshit is coming from the side of the people leading the response.
Carl Bergstrom: ‘People are using data to bullshit’
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2020/aug/01/carl-bergstrom-people-are-using-data-to-bullshit
That’s pretty comical stuff, right there. When exactly did the left fully transition to being the “dissent is evil”, “populism” smearing, “the establishment is all-wise and all-knowing” conformists that they now are?
because leftists have never been able to think for themselves and can’t bare those who can. This is why they are always wrong.
Entirely in-character for the Guardian. “Always accuse the other side of that which you are guilty of.”
Wow, the Guardian is just pure toilet paper now. Been on a rapid downhill trajectory since Snowden. Coincidence?
Richard Littlejohn speaks for us today:
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-8589477/RICHARD-LITTLEJOHN-Britain-Covid-coma-NOW.html
It’s a good article but he goes nowhere near the real reasons. He does say that most MPs don’t have a clue what’s going on. Some of the commenters do, though!
Well what a surprise, the “researchers” saying there will be mass mayhem when schools re-open are from our old friends at University College London who gets lots of money from?
You guessed it.
The comments on the Daily mail page are good though, lots of slagging off and non-believers out in force.
Funny how all these prophets offer absolutely zero evidence for their premonitions
Yes they’re at it again with their modelling. Second wave could be 2.3 times worse than the first (the usual “reasonable worst case scenario”). Notice how the DM says it will definitely be worse:
Reopening schools in September WILL lead to a catastrophic second wave of coronavirus unless NHS test and trace drastically improves, major study claims
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8588977/Reopening-schools-cause-second-Covid-19-wave-unless-test-trace-improves.html
Second COVID-19 wave twice as big as the first without effective test, trace, isolating strategy, says new modelling study
https://news.sky.com/story/coronavirus-second-covid-wave-twice-as-big-as-the-first-without-effective-test-trace-isolating-strategy-says-new-modelling-study-12042000
Whomever this Major Study is he’s full of shit.
I heard that he’s being considered for a knighthood.
They give Jimmy Savile one so wouldn’t be surprised.
it’s pretty much a who’s who of establishment crooks and peados
I think he hangs around with General Cockup and Private Parts
And Master Baites
Go on then … and Roger the cabin boy.
lets get the whole lot ..
and Seaman Staines
And so on we go on our merry way. . . . .
It seems like, apart from the usual suspects e.g. Whitty, one of the sources of this Fail piece is a report by UCL ‘experts’. UCL has close links with ICL and they have funding from Google.
Also, look at this:
https://www.uclb.com/?s=covid
and this (guess who, albeit in 2017?):
https://www.gatesfoundation.org/How-We-Work/Quick-Links/Grants-Database/Grants/2017/09/OPP1176940
And hot off the press:
https://www.ucl.ac.uk/consultants/news/2020/jul/ucl-covid-19-gender-bias-research-expand
Bookmarked. Are you the Howard Steen artist of “Lockdown Magic, the Masked Riders of the Apocalypse”? (Those who cannot remember it, Toby used it: https://dailysceptic.org/2020/07/23/ )
Number of children in the USA who have died from novel-coronavirus: 86 Number of children in the USA who die every year from the seasonal flu: ~500Number of children US 74 millionNever close schools for seasonal flu. You might close schools in a flu pandemic but in that case the deaths of flu in children would be much higher.
https://downloads.aap.org/AAP/PDF/AAP%20and%20CHA%20-%20Children%20and%20COVID-19%20State%20Data%20Report%207.30.20%20FINAL.pdf
A joint report from the American Academy of Paediatrics and the Children’s Hospital Association
Data from almost all US states cases, hospitalizations, deaths in children of Covid-19
https://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/146/2/e2020004879
COVID-19 Transmission and Children: The Child Is Not to Blame
Went shopping yesterday with the missus and our 9 yr old nephew (all unmasked). On entry, a few big name brands and the shopping centre itself informed people to wear a mask. Said “no thanks” each time and that was it. Not a dickiebird after.
Only issue was a confused chap in the traditional sweet shop saying I needed to be “exempt” not to use the hand sanitizer (I hate that stuff)
Politely informed him thats to do with masks, not hand gel.
Needless to say I left without making purchase (my waistline thanked me anyway), but almost felt bad for the guy. Really not his fault he was confused by all this. And at least he actually brought up exemption.
Some people maskless or at least wearing under chin. A few stares too, but think if you feel strong enough to do it, get out and show your face.. figuratively and literally.
“if you feel strong enough to do it, get out and show your face.. figuratively and literally.”
Exactly. Every unmasked face is a blow against the normalisation of this abomination.
And don’t forget to smile and walk with your held held high.
Always smile
they don’t like it.
Indeed. That said I’ve sensed positivity from muzzled members of staff who see my unmuzzled smiling face
Someone glared at me at the National Gallery for being unmuzzled then looked away when I gave her a smile then a manic grin.
Is Face Streaking a thing ?
If you’re feeling brave, karen, try a google search on mask-related sexual activities …
Ta, John, think I’ll pass.
Indeed…get your bits out! =]
Face masks make you stupidWhy face masks are a form of dehumanisation
https://thecritic.co.uk/face-masks-make-you-stupid/
Haven’t read it, busy, but 10/10 for the title alone.
This is not philanthropy. Philanthropy would be providing the world with clean water and sanitation. But not this.
At least (as his other videos have demonstrated), Bill Gates is such a poor public speaker that he can’t even verbally whitewash or dissemble. He just comes out with it.
https://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2020/08/04/side-effects-of-fast-tracked-vaccine.aspx?cid_source=dnl&cid_medium=email&cid_content=art1HL&cid=20200804Z2&mid=DM614256&rid=932017903
The new word is ‘Philanthrocapitalism’. Gates is a Philanthrocapitalist and a particular evil one at that.
So, according to the ONS, deaths for week 30 of 2020:-
Total: 8891 (up from 8823 prev. week, down from 5 year average of 9052)
‘flu/pneumonia: 958 (up from 879 prev. week)
COVID-19: 217 (down from 295 prev. week)
‘flu/pneumonia:COVID-19 ratio is over 4.14:1 (guessing masks aren’t stopping regular ‘flu/pneumonia?), COVID-19 deaths as a proportion of all-cause deaths: 2.44%, ‘flu/pneumonia: 10.77% (guess we’re going to be self-isolating due to ‘flu soon!)
https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/deaths/bulletins/deathsregisteredweeklyinenglandandwalesprovisional/weekending24july2020
This is the 6th week running that total registered deaths are below the 5 year average. How on earth can you say you are in the middle of a serious pandemic when fewer people than average have died over the last 6 weeks?
It is more like Hapless Hancock & Witless Whitty are suffering from a serious bout of headless chicken disease, rushing around and wringing their hands over nothing and making us all suffer
Got this link off the UN website and set-up on July 22nd 2020:
https://covidlawlab.org/
“The COVID-19 Law Lab initiative gathers and shares legal documents from over 190 countries across the world to help states establish and implement strong legal frameworks to manage the pandemic.”
It goes on about vaccines (no surprise), advancing and adhering to human rights (yeah right) and to enforce actions (yep, that’s the plan then).
So countries can see what others are doing and follow suit I guess is the ultimate plan so everywhere has the same laws.
It’s done in partnership among others of the WHO and the O’Neill Institute and Centre for Innovation in Global Health who gets money from the O’Neill Institute plus others.
From their website:
“The Center for Innovation in Global Health Policy and Law is partnering with The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Cooper/Smith, and Georgetown’s Ethics Lab”.
So same old same old then but a different route mentioning ethics etc and I guess “doing it for you own good”.
There’s your Global Governance via the back door. Once they’ve got that in place it’ll just grow and grow. It’s for our own good after all
ONS Death stats just out & for the 6th week running total registered deaths below the 5 year average. Total 8891 against average 9052. These are the stats that really matter & they do not justify recent lockdown actions.
Started in London, Week Twenty, which week it now ?
(Just saw IMoz below, Week 30)
But, but, but, but New Cases !!!!!! Reeeeeee !!!!!!
Found an actual Government Department that works.
It’s the MHRA Yellow Card Scheme Defective Medicines Report Centre, Inspection Enforcement & Standards Division.
Wife is having pretty serious side-effects from a medicine she has been on for a while but the manufacturer has changed.
Reported it on Friday, got an e-mail on Saturday (surprised me) from them asking more information.
Today they wanted more information and 5 minutes ago official request gone to manufacturer to investigate.
Wonder if they will act as quick once all the side-effects of the vaccine will start appearing.
https://yellowcard.mhra.gov.uk
Coming soon in the UK?
Americans should start wearing face masks AT HOME, Dr. Deborah Birx says — RT USA News
FFS!
Yes, I’ve heard this before as well – I think the Texas governor (or health “professional”) suggested it as well.
But there’s friction between Birx and Trump, so not sure how that would play out:
https://www.9news.com.au/world/donald-trump-deborah-birx-pathetic-coronavirus-response-nancy-pelosi-usa-news/46036f4b-39d2-4800-a311-b7a1d3c6e880
“US President Donald Trump has labelled the co-ordinator of his coronavirus taskforce “pathetic”.
The president appeared to be lashing out at Dr Deborah Birx for her dire warning about the spread of COVID-19 around the country.”
If there was real friction, Trump should get rid of Birx and why not Fauci as well?
Guaranteed some Yanks have lists …
For Toby
The bodycam footage of George Floyds arrest was released and it’s clear he was tweaking out having trouble breathing before any cop intervention. He was looking all of what he was – a junkie as it appears.
So all those BLM riots that were already off the mark are glaringly off the mark. Fake news all the way.
Like Covid.
Do you think old Sir Kneelalot will say anything?
Here it is on youtube:
EXCLUSIVE: Police bodycam footage shows moment-by-moment arrest of George Floyd for the first time – YouTube
It was leaked by the Daily mail and reported on RT.com (I know, not 2 of the best sources at times).
That is absolutely bizarre to ‘leak’ footage at this stage. You really have to wonder what games these people are playing – is this released now because protests are fizzling out? and need a boost?
see my comment just now Daryl – search for ‘news benders’ if you can’t find the comment
Do not smear RT like that.
Can’t imagine many journalist being brave enough to speak out on this, it would be MSM career suicide.
Agree, the whole BLM riots and endless protests since look incredible preplanned and orchestrated. Political gesturing and rituals before sports events have a cult like look about them. BLM seems to have taken over as the main religion of America. There are some very clever and evil puppet masters pulling the strings at the moment.
Off topic.
Not off-topic really, when lockdown and social distancing rules are carefully *not* enforced for particular groups and causes…
He is well out of his head. Looked like a drug induced psychotic episode. Also, he was a big chap and resisting . The police were handling him, in quite a reasonable, polite and cautious way given the circumstances, Certainly he was stressing out and hyperventilating. Obviously the video cuts out at the important point where full restraint has needed to be applied, so we dont know from then on what happened, but certainly the impression that the BLM narrative tried to portray that this was a quiet law abiding gentleman going about his daily business who without justification was attacked and murdered by police just because of his colour has been shattered just a little
So the treatment for breathing difficulties is now a knee on the neck?
No, but a knee on the neck is (was, anyway) a common control method used by police and others.
In this case, it had tragic consequences for this particular big, hardened thug who was obviously drugged and irrational at the time. Then an intentionally false misrepresentation of the event and of the individual involved (BBC version – “gentle giant”, reality – convicted armed robber) was used as hate propaganda to whip up support for dishonest and radical political causes around the world.
But clearly none of that bothers you. Instead you seem to get upset by someone pointing out the falsehoods underlying the propaganda.
As Mark said. The issue is that the case against the cops is much much weaker than assumed, if there’s a case at all. Because now it gets buried in specifics and nuances rather than “police brutality”. As for the knee on the neck, was it actually on the windpipe? There’s that as well
The whole eruption of outrage can only be seen if a simplistic narrative is maintained. Which requires broad brush assumptions and lacks precision in the data.
Precisely the same as with the reaction to Covid.
My expectation is he will be convicted anyway, for reasons of political necessity.
As such he will morally be every bit as much a wrongfully imprisoned political prisoner as anyone in any of the routinely demonised “repressive” regimes.
I got beeped at by a guy on a roundabout yesterday possibly for not being fully in my lane but nothing serious. I looked at him. On his own in the car – wearing a mask!
I had a guy pull out from stationary parked, had to swerve to avoid his careless driving and he was wearing a mask too so worried was he for his safety.
I hate the fact that as a lockdown sceptic I am always on the defensive. All the solid evidence is on our side (the latest being Professor Heneghan’s demolition of the Northern “surge”), yet we are always in the position of opposing the orthodoxy. You can quote the professor until you are blue in the face, but your Oxbridge-educated opponent will say “That’s all very well, but remember the scenes in the Italian hospitals.” And then you have to start chipping away at that ‘fact’ with what sounds like speculation – you will be familiar with the arguments.
But if you think about it, it is like belief in UFOs – where the Covid believers are the UFO fanatics. Their argument is the equivalent of “How do explain the 26 people who all saw a flying saucer land in that field?”. And you are the calm and sober scientist saying “There is a logical explanation. It was probably the weather balloon that got lost two days earlier”.
Somehow, the relationship between the calm, rational explanation versus the lurid sensational headline has become inverted. They see us as the crazy “conspiracy theorists”, but we, in fact, are the calm, rational ones; the ones who gravitate towards the ‘rational explanation for everything’. So faced with a BBC headline penned by some unknown journalist in response to a government press release versus Carl Heneghan’s analysis, I’ll go for Heneghan every time. But they make me feel as though I’m irrational for doing it.
Weather balloons ? Pfaff !
This so-called “orthodoxy” is very recent. More or less at no time in history has the response to a virus of this nature been to shut down society indefinitely and wear masks. The burden of proof is on those who are advocating unprecedented measures for a virus whose effect is anything but unprecedented. To be brutal, they simply cannot point to enough dead people to make their case stick.
The new “orthodoxy” dates back to at least 2010, when it was spelt out in the Rockefeller lockstep document scenarios.
You cannot reason with fanatics, least of all when they are part of crowd of equal-minded.
See Fascism, Brexit, Corona.
I actually saw a UFO of some kind, just once and it was nearly fifty years ago. The memory is very clear, so yes I am a UFO believer, of sorts. However, I don’t care whether or not, you believe in my UFO experience. This point distinguishes me from the brain dead proselytising Covid official narrative true believers.
A UFO is of course, simply something that is not readily explainable, in terms of known technology or geophysical phenomena. It doesn’t need to be little green men leaping out of flying saucers on the White House lawn. I wonder whether you falling into your own (BBC type) trap here?
Yes, I should have said “flying saucers”, not “UFOs” which, as you say is simply a neutral term.
Two petitions to sign/share:
Allow sports venues to operate without COVID-19 restrictions
Allow pubs and restaurants to operate without COVID-19 restrictions
Thanks for those,signed both.
Anyone had a Civid charge added to their bill in a restaurant or pub? https://twitter.com/Chelz65/status/1290354918969282560
My barber was more expensive. But he and his colleague both had BARBICIDE® covid-19 certificates on the wall. I felt a lot safer …
I think the Parliament petitions have been rigged mate. Some recent ones where you’d expect take off have grown at a ridiculous snails pace, eg
https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/313310
And in Peru, where a military controlled lockdown was put in place on March 15th only 13 days after it’s first case was declared AND had mandatory mask use in place from April 7th outdoors, STILL managed to see their cases climb and peak nearly 3 months later?
https://www.covibes.org/public/Peru
Comment seen on Con Home site:
I find the level of support that the PM apparently retains is truly unbelievable. I don’t know anyone who thinks he’s done a good job. A quick review:
* Less than 1,500 people without any underlying major medical conditions have died from a virus.
* Around 45,000 people have died with the virus in their system but no-one knows how much the effects of the virus actually prompted their death and included in this total are any people who had the virus and recovered but then died of another cause. In essence, the death statistics relating to the virus are very suspect to say the least.
* Entirely by coincidence hardly anyone seems to have died of influenza recently; strange that.
* Around 55,000 people die from a ‘normal’, bad flu season and 85,000 people died in 1968 from a very bad flu season.
* Notwithstanding the above figures, the freedom of individuals in the UK has been reduced in a draconian fashion, courtesy of lockdowns, social distancing, etc., etc. and an estimated 200,000 people will die as a result of missed cancer and other treatments whilst the NHS has been obsessed with the virus, not to mention suicides and the general state of depression and stress in existence throughout the country courtesy of ‘project virus fear’.
* Just by the way, said lockdowns and related measures have crippled the UK’s economy and plunged our country into a quagmire of debt for future generations to pay off.
* The lockdowns and other measures were meant to shield the most vulnerable people in our society, so to help this along, some fool or psychopath in either the NHS or government thought it a good idea to send infected people to nursing homes, which had the result of killing off an awful lot of very vulnerable people. Genius.
* Now that the death rate from the virus is thankfully down to very few, the government thinks this must be the right time to muzzle everyone in the country, when many, many experts contend that at best face masks are completely ineffective and at worst they can help to cause people to be infected with the virus or diminish their immune system so they catch something else.
* The Government next ignore an apparently successful treatment regime using hydroxychloroquine + Zinc + Antibiotic and instead spend a fortune of tax-payers money upon vaccines that alter the recipient’s DNA to work, have not been tested to the usual rigour and expect everyone in in the country to rush out and get a jab as soon as the wonder cure is available, without explaining why anyone would want to risk taking such a dodgy vaccine to possibly prevent a disease that has a survival rate in excess of 99%.
* Next in the pipeline we apparently have so called ‘health passports’ to make sure that all citizens can evidence that they’ve had the potentially dangerous jab they they neither want nor need and if they cannot so evidence, they will be denied access to services , transport and goodness knows what else.
Unbelievable, completely unbelievable. This is either all part of a very sinister plot shared with other countries world wide (if one believes a million voices on the internet) or surely the most appalling governmental incompetence this country has ever witnessed.
That is a very fine summary and it’s not incompetence.
It cannot possibly be incompetence – NO ONE is that incompetent.
Brilliant. Spot on. I always err towards cock-up rather than conspiracy but even I am beginning to wonder.
The only way they can still be judged to act in good faith and with a positive intent is, that they know something they can’t tell us yet, and that they try to prepare us for, or don’t want to upset us too much until that event occurs.
The movie ‘Deep Impact’ provides an example for that.
There is simply no other rational explanation for most governments actions anymore.
Another possible rational explanation is that they want to keep this nonsense going to cover up their initial mistakes, or because they like the power and the attention it gives them. These are all quite common human weaknesses and character flaws, to which politicians are subject as we all are, but in more normal times in a “free” society the opposition, the media, the judiciary and public opinion prevent them from the worst excesses. Saving lives gives them perfect cover.
I’m still leaning towards incompetence, or more precisely gross incompetence followed by psychopathic arse covering. If they weren’t all psychopaths then I would have to lean towards conspiracy. These are evil, relentlessly self-serving, psycho scumbags of the highest order, who do not care about their country, their population or the planet.
The illusion of incompetence is part of the plan.Its a trick to disorientate us.
If you look and listen carefully they have told us everything we need to know.
Whitty told us it wasn’t a serious disease.
They told us masks are next to useless
They told us the end game is a vaccine when Boris unveiled the Nando’s plan.
Also all the other western governments are acting in the same way.
This is not about a virus and never has been,as to the governments true intentions who knows but I doubt that they are benign.
Maybe Boris was ‘chosen’ for us, because he has always played the ‘buffoon’, so they thought we would just *not notice*, or simply brush off the ‘incompetence’ and just put it down to Boris’ well-known eccentric ‘act’…?
I agree. They have spelt it out clearly and truthfully, then systematically buried the truth in a load of contradictory nonsensical “rules.”
Wankock used to speak coherently but is fast mastering Adolf de Piffle’s ability to waffle and bluster. The slimy Gove has always been an absolute master of long-winded erudition that manages to say absolutely nothing meaningful.
Did anyone on here access the government commissioned report that was published last summer, coincidentally after numerous governments around the world had met to discuss the so far unsolved problems of lack of affordability of
and
I found it by accident when doing some research on proposals to change the UK state pension age to 75. It was quite lengthy, detailed and with some highly alarming and drastic solutions proposed, as well as moderately drastic ones, and more reasonable, palatable ones. Interestingly the most alarming and drastic recommendations came first under each heading. Have already seen some of them beginning to creep in under this pandemic, but the original proposal was to look at the options over the next 2 years.
The report was too large to download, and i only skimmed through chunks of it so I made a note of the link so I could revisit and read chapters one at a time. But it disappeared around January and the link now says page not found. I know some others saw it because it was mentioned by a few via FB. But I have not mentioned it to anyone other than a few close friends because even they said I sounded like a conspiracy theorist, so goodness knows what the reactions of other folk would be.
Outstanding. Thank you
Longer Lockdowns Associated with Much Worse Economic Outcomes
https://www.aier.org/article/longer-lockdowns-associated-with-much-worse-economic-outcomes/
This is obvious .But sometimes you must document and record it and comparing the different states with different lockdown in US is done in this article which might have some interest
No, it’s good. Thanks.
I reckon there are only a few ways for covipanic to stop:
1 – the government admits it’s been misleading and lying to everyone;
2 – some high profile celebs get on board and start speaking out;
3 – civil disobedience/unrest;
4 – a scandal of some sort that exposes the lies;
5 – a well-respected mainstream journalist suddenly sees the light.
I’m getting increasingly worried. Too many people are naive about it all, although everyone I’ve spoken to since Friday has been a skeptic. I’m in the North West and I’m affected by the non-sensical local lockdown, I’m worried if it is left to local councils they’ll just keep it going indefinitely. People I know think it’ll be over soon but I just can’t see it, they’ll be introducing masks for schools next, and even outdoors too the rate they’re carrying on. I seriously think that Boris Johnson isn’t in his right mind.
I don’t think (1) is going to happen, ever. But the others, yes, over time I think we’ll see more of it. And (6) neutrals and those badly affected by the nonsense will gradually tire of this and start to question things more. It will take time.
Good point. I know 1 will never happen, although the Norwegian PM did admit to being fear driven. Bart, I’m not sure about number 3 happening the way people have just put up with things so far.
I’m not sure how much time we’ve got.
I think it will be more number 3 – the mandatory muzzling has seen a massive decline in High Street footfall to the point that even supermarkets are now being affected. It will get worse come 8 August when even museums, art galleries and cinemas will very likely go in the way of shops while libraries, concert halls, leisure facilities might not bother reopening. This will mean more redundancies and businesses and institutions going bust.
Then come October when the furlough scheme ends and more people join the ranks of the unemployed they might decide that having lost everything, they have nothing to lose by rioting and engaging in massive civil disobedience.
I was thinking maybe number 3 or 4,but after seeing the sheer overwhelming compliance by the zombies in my town this morning I think civil unrest seems unlikely.What really stood out to me today was the slavish compliance with masks etc across all age groups and the look of total defeat in most peoples eyes.
Maybe not now but when this lot gets hit in the pocket and stomach or if they’re retired find their pensions raided then they might just wake up and realise that they’ve been had.
Not many people know that there was law passed some time ago that allows the government access to take money from your bank account if you do not pay a fine… What’s to stop them dipping into people’s bank accounts for a ‘Covid’ fund of some kind?
That’s rather sinister. However the CPS has invalidated any previous fines and have ordered those fined for violating antisocial distancing guidelines be refunded if they’ve paid.
Do you have a source for that, Carrie?
Bl***y h**l – where did you hear that? What law was it, do you know? Didn’t Greece do that a couple of years ago and raid people’s savings and pension pots to help pay off the huge national debt? I know HMRC has the power to access your bank account if you don’t pay your tax bill, but if what you say is true, that is a massive cause for alarm. Is it why the government is trying to phase out cash do you think, as well as making sure they close the back door on the cash in hand job black market?
I agree Bart,I’m hoping that will finally wake most people up but an extension of the furlough scheme at the last minute wouldn’t surprise me either.
Sunak has ruled that out but yeah that wouldn’t surprise me either.
That said I seriously doubt it will have much effect. More businesses will simply go bust come what may and even those who manage to hang on won’t be able to afford the contributory payments.
Bart Simpson – I simply cannot understand why Lockdown Sceptics are the only apparently well-informed, rational and non-brainwashed people who have worked out where this is all going from October. With a crashed economy, no job and none left to apply for, no money to pay rents or mortgages, pay bills or even buy food, what on earth do all the brainwashed folk think is going to happen to them and why is avoiding one little flu like bug worth all this universal pain and distress?
The hope for solution is a vaccine of course. There’s bound to be ‘fraying at the edges’ afore one is found. People might start “voting with their feet” before then and they’ll just be a general collapse. Sorry to mix my metaphors – and when I say “feet” maybe I should say “faces”.
faeces?
This article, if disseminated widely enough, might increase the number of people thinking twice about agreeing to a hastily produced vaccine: https://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2020/08/04/side-effects-of-fast-tracked-vaccine.aspx?cid_source=dnl&cid_medium=email&cid_content=art1ReadMore&cid=20200804Z1&mid=DM614275&rid=932407084
WTF does Gates know about vaccines? He never found any for his software. In fact didn’t care.
I’ve read that Gates has a personal agenda – he is very vocal about his belief that the planet’s population needs to be drastically reduced and soon. Didn’t he fund the development of a vaccine before which was only given to young females of fertile years which was later found to have an ingredient that effectively made them sterile? Or was that just fake conspiracy theory misinformation, that should not be given any credence at all? (I’m still suspicious of his and Fauci’s financial connections).
I’ve tried guiding believers to NHS England’s Daily Covid-19 deaths website to look at the numbers. So far no takers. They can ‘hear’ me but they’re not listening, you can tell by their reactions.
When unemployment takes off and the furlough ends it’s going to start focusing peoples minds but what kind of Police state will be trapped in by then I wonder?
Same here
There is no ‘hope’ or ‘solution’ in a vaccine, unless you’re talking about the Final Solution of course. Oh wait, it couldn’t happen here.
Seen the video on mercola.com where Gates fumbles while trying to minimise the side effects that everyone in the vaccine trials (of the Moderna Covid vaccine) suffered? The stats (on Mercola’s site) are worrying, to say the least..
3 would be the best bet but as everyone knows on here you can’t talk to the bedwetters and we’re in a minority. Even when face masks become mandatory everywhere there will still be compliance and us who claim exemptions will be treated like Jews in Germany in the 1930s. That’s how dark it is becoming. Johnson is very much in his right mind (the one he demonstrated in 2019 when he prorogued parliament and lied to the Queen.) Be careful what you wish (vote) for.
I sometimes wonder if “the tide is turning” is our equivalent of the bedwetters’ “two weeks!”. Something we all want to happen and get excited about if apparent but still hasn’t come to anything yet. I’m pinned my hopes on furlough ending (tapering off this month) but it might take something unexpected and/or big to wake up the sheeple (vaccine going wrong?)
2 & 3 is our only chance of escape and I think 2 will follow 3, not the other way around. We need to start getting organised and fast.
1 will never happen and 4 is impossible with the media being all-in with 24/7 fear porn since day one. They have as much face to lose as the Govt at this point.
5 happens occasionally, Telegraph has a few voices of reason, but I doubt any paper will stick it’s neck out
Tony Blair told Times Radio:
On some estimates 70% of people with the disease are asymptomatic, so if you are only testing people with symptoms you are losing the majority of people from your testing strategy ….
Hmmmm. And what strategy would that be then?
Did anyone point out that an asymptomatic disease is not a disease at all?
Bring back Lord Denning!
You would think that given many eminent and powerful organisations would have us believe that the world faces a grave threat, they’d have done some studies that showed strong evidence one way or the other regarding asymptomatic transmission, given that, as Professor Blair points out, so many are asymptomatic. I haven’t seen much evidence from these bodies that they actually want to find out more about the virus so that they can modify their response to be more appropriate.
I’ve seen two studies on “asymptomatic” transmission, all based on sample size of 1 (yes, -o-n-e-) and if you actually read the “studies” they’re so full of holes that you can’t even use them to stop paccheri from falling through into a sink!
Yeah, great idea. Let’s test everyone and then the higher number of “cases” can be used as justification for more strict lockdowns.
These ‘get tested’ ads are an outrage! https://twitter.com/DHSCgovuk/status/1290369345462231040
I understand they’ve now replaced the dictionary definition of evil with a photo of Tony Blair.
There’s a new article in the Spectator entitled ‘Wearing a mask is good manners’. (https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/wearing-a-mask-is-good-manners). I can’t seem to comment on it there. I wanted to say that he (she?) will have to put up with some bad manners from those of us who won’t submit to tyranny. It may seem a trivial thing, but it’s not actually trivial to be forced into public humiliation and unwanted conformity on completely false and irrational grounds.
I think wearing a mask when you are speaking to someone is bad manners – but, of course if you saving their life by doing so that’s more than good manners!
Sneezing/coughing into somebody’s face is bad manners. Sneezing/coughing into a handkerchief is good manners.
Holding the handkerchief to your face while you’re talking to somebody when you’re not sneezing/coughing is just rude.
The thing is, people do actually pull their masks down to sneeze and caugh!
When I was in spain I saw a bloke walking along sneeze into his mask, hillarious!
It would be grim to sneeze into a mask wouldn’t it. Ugh
I have a mission for you fellow sceptics and anti face nappy champions.
This morning, after doing some naked shopping (you know what I mean) in two local shops, no questions asked, pleasant chat with the staff etc, OH and I ventured into the food hall of the out-of-town M and S. No problem going in-the faceless ones were in full force, except for the staff. OH insisted on wearing his lanyard but I refused to do so as I believe that it is akin to having to wear a star by Jews in Germany during the war.
Going down the first aisle, a clinically obese man made a comment to his equally obese wife about us not wearing face masks. Because we are free they really resent us don’t they? I turned and informed him loudly that I was exempt. Afraid OH was a bit less polite so the man lumbered off.
I immediately reported this incident to the floor manager and pointed out that although he could not control his clientele, it was his company’s job to inform shoppers on a regular basis that there were lots of people who had a reasonable excuse for not wearing a mask and that these people should never be challenged. I also pointed out that someone, somewhere could be landed with a hefty fine in contravention of the Equality Act 2010 if this harassment was a regular occurrence. I think he got my point.
This is what we need to do therefore. Each shop we enter, where we are asked about masks or each incident of harassment to which we are subject, we need to go to the management and registered our displeasure. Ask them why they haven’t made it clear that lots of people are exempt and why they are discriminating against us. Ask them where are their posters explaining this. Hopefully they will soon get the message.
Courage mes braves!
I like “less polite”.
Well done Margaret.
Perfect. Gonna try it in my local coop soon. I’ve been putting it off and not been in a shop since the mandate came out. But that is the lesser of my angers as I am in the northern lockdown zone. If you look at the government’s guidelines for this area it is actually illegal to have a guest in your home or garden! Illegal!! Most people in this area I know are ignoring the new restrictions but I have been wondering about people like myself, retired so no job to lose, breaking the law and going to court to make a point. My mother in law who is 79 says she will do the same.
Not illegal yet. Probably by weekend. Ignore either way.
I had also wondered about sending store managers the first few pages of the laworfiction legal pack which talks about the need to protect staff under the Equality Act (2010).
http://www.laworfiction.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/Face-Covering-Exemption-Notice-with-Law-Explained-24-July-2020.pdf
Ozzie, don’t wonder- just do it!
Good for you and love the bit about going out ‘naked’!
No its not good manners to wear a mask, in fact it’s the very opposite.
No masks and No social distancing.
If you’d worn a bandana over your face going into a shop a year ago you would have frightened someone and the police may have been called. Now it’s good manners. Very convenient how mores change. I agree, it’s bad manners because it’s sinister – like it’s bad manners to scowl at someone for no reason
Fortunately there’s enough comments saying the article is daft and I’ve upvoted on all of them. (You have to join Disqus to comment which is a pain in the arse)
To my mind the mask mandate is problematic for many reasons:
1 no need where very low incidence of virus
2 no evidence they work – more they don’t and dirty left in pockets
3 unlikely passing someone in a shop will risk infection – 15 minutes
face to face needed. Most transmission is personal and domestic.
4 supposed to be about preventing asymptomatic spread – which is not proven anyway and spread needs sneezing and coughing. Spread from breathing through nose unlikely – asymptomatic person won’t be coughing etc.
5 When do we stop wearing a mask – flu, colds, tonsillitis, d and v viruses – seems likely all these once normal illnesses next become added to the taboo list.
I don’t need to go on with this list because we all feel the same. Perhaps we can ask Carl Heneghan to help out with this.
All true, and besides physics (virus size vs cloth gap size) standing in the way of their possible efficacy, much more should be made of point 3 to highlight and establish the absurdity:
IF the distance the aerosol/virus travels is indeed relevant and could be reduced by wearing a mask, this can only be relevant and prevent the infection of someone else, if that person stood at that reduced distance from you then, i.e. BETWEEN 1.5 to 2 meters away.
The mask would make no difference at all at distances above 2 or below 1.5 meters!
So, the probabilities of preventing just 1 infection through wearing a mask- IF they worked as such at all- are in truth absolutely minuscule, 1 in the millions.
The Norwegian study presented a calculation as such, and even at its ludicrous 40% efficacy assumption, it calculated a reduction of most 1 infection per 200.000 inhabitants per week- if all inhabitants wore at least a medical mask and were trained properly in its correct use.
(The study established from the start that cloth masks are medically completely pointless, or, as we know, actually harmful.)
As I pointed out a few days ago, if it takes 200,000 people wearing a mask to stop a single infection, with an IFR of ~0.25, 800,000,000 people would have to wear a mask to save a single life.
As Chris Whitty remarked back in March:
“Wearing a mask if you don’t have an infection reduces the risk almost not at all.”
A good piece as an antidote to this nonsense is:
https://thecritic.co.uk/face-masks-make-you-stupid/
which was listed on LS a few days ago.
The article is by one of Toby’s and Delingpole’s former heroes: Robin Aitken. So he is another name to join the growing list of Rod Liddle, Steve Baker, Chris Snowdon et al. – those you thought were reliably sound but show themselves to be deficient when it comes to critical thinking. In this case, he thinks that if lies have been told that have scared the population, it’s OK for the liars to tell further lies about what will make people “safe”. And that those who know it’s a lie should go along with it because it’s good manners! You couldn’t make it up.
Robin Aitken may have slipped up this time, but I can recommend his book ‘The Noble Liar’.
It covers how the BBC twists the media message to suit its own ends. RA worked there for many years and it’s a great exposé of BBC groupthink.
Yep, I picked it up after someone here recommended it and it’s pretty good.
Rather ironic if he suddenly can’t see through the BBC propaganda now, when it’s even more blatant than ever.
Absurd headline from the disgusting BBC. 803 deaths in a day is not a high number in a country with a population of 1.4 billion! Even the UK, with a population of 66 million, has had daily death totals higher.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/world-53591031
25,000+ people die every day in India.
is that from “having a problem with your computer” ?
600,000 die naturally annually of old age in Uk population 66 million
transfering that over to India’s population
13 million die naturally annually in India from old age with a population if 1.3 billion
thats 35,000+ each day
oops – I shoulda read Chicot’s post first…
India’s death toll is low for its population. Goes back to what we all know already – this isn’t a dangerous illness to the young and India has a young population.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-53645748
You’d have to have a heart of stone not to laugh!
Got what he deserved
What a great idea – fine everyone who goes for a test
No testing = back to normal
Excellent picture for a country with large landmass. This is not a second wave but everything is a first wave over this huge landmass. Could something similar happen in bigger European countries?
https://twitter.com/Covid19Crusher/status/1290527072566247425/photo/1
“All the regions that have led the “2 wave” in the USA (and were actually 1st waves locally) are rolling over. The steepness of the decline in the South suggest herd immunity might be reached in some States (Louisiana, Florida).”
https://twitter.com/Covid19Crusher/status/1290532190061764608
“Mauritania is another African country were lockdown loosening in May led to an exponential flare-up of COVID infection for a month, followed by a 90% collapse in new cases as herd immunity likely kicked in. Interesting comparison with lockdown control-freak neighbour Morocco.”
It seems to be a natural experiment going around in the world where dirt poor countries can’t afford lockdown and the pandemic becomes a natural curve very fast rise but see also the very quick decline. Can’t discuss hospitalizations, deaths etc in these very different countries but there must be some advantage for these countries to get it over quickly. An endless lockdown in some form of another with pain just adding up over time.
That’s why Whitty and Vallance were against lockdown and recommended the football and Cheltenham went ahead.
Funny how they stopped giving useful advice somewhere along the way ….
Probably because of official ‘muzzling’ with threats of losing their positions, hundreds of perks and gold plated pensions if they didn’t tow the line.
It’s why and how mankind has survived up until 2020.
Our current approach is the unique, first time experiment, with very likely disastrous immunity and health consequences.
But then, as some say, that’s exactly the point and why we/they are doing it in the first place.
https://www.aier.org/article/is-immunity-a-case-of-rothbards-lost-knowledge/
Hi,
Can anyone tell me if the North West lockdown is actually in legal effect yet? Someone has told me it isn’t but I get the feeling that it is.
Thanks.
Today’s Sun has this:
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/politics/12306520/lockdown-rules-north-law-100/
£100 FINES for people breaking lockdown rules in the North of England are to be signed into law today.
Health Secretary Matt Hancock is set to publish and sign the new coronavirus regulations which will force people in the new targeted areas in Greater Manchester, parts of Lancashire and West Yorkshire not to visit other people’s homes.
Got to love the Sun – “force people not to visit other people’s homes.” Ffs.
OK, thanks – so basically I could have had my friends over at the weekend after all! Unbelievable! Where can we find the law when it is actually published by Hancock?
No, you couldn’t, cos it would have been against the guidance, even though it’s not law. Except yes you could, because we ain’t standing for it!
It will turn up here (probably today, then), or someone will have a link on here or in the news.
https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2020-2029
Thanks.
Notice the scum media always say “£100 fines”, when it’s actually a £50 fine that doubles if you don’t pay quickly enough. Imagine, trying to make things sound worse…
Not been fined for mask noncompliance yet but I do regard the early payment scheme as a two-for-one offer lol.
Our press don’t do things like that? Surely not?
As I asked on here the other day, how does the government ensure that information about rules/guidelines/ laws, whatever you want to call them is disseminated throughout the area to which they apply?
It needs to be in a shedload of different languages for a start, plus Braille and sign language and what about those considerable numbers who can’t read anyway? The television and newspapers only give us the broad brushstrokes of information and not the finer details.
It takes me all my time to find what is today’s law which might of course have changed by tomorrow. Information overload at its finest. I think it’s designed to confuse so that no one follows it anyway, just like the government has given us so many get out of jail free cards with masks.
Is ignorance still bliss?
Really good point, how can people possibly know all this?
Why, you simply read the government information. You’ll need to check about every five minutes, though! And don’t forget the law may be different in your town, but there are exemptions, and really it depends on whether it’s raining and if so, in what direction. Oh, and sometimes a cafe is a shop, but then it’s a cafe again, but not if you are under eleven.
The govt website spelt out the “guidelines”. Regarding the law, they used the words WILL BE a lot. So the Sun was probably right.
It may be like before, that people assumed that there was immediate legal force to the relations before they were actually *written* into law…
When they announced the lockdown on Thursday night, they said it would be reviewed after a week. So why bother to make it law? Worrying!
Because the ‘promise’ of a review was designed to placate people and avoid protests. They have no intention of living it imminently!
Isn’t Leicester still locked down?
Yeah, this is huge concern for me.
Imagine them letting you think that…
Guidance right now. They say they will pass law. More nonsense coming on Saturday, so the actual law will probably encompass it all. Don’t “get the feeling”, that’s what they want – check!
Apologies if this is already discussed this morning, but I have been looking through The Lancet Child & Adolescent Health article that is being widely disseminated in today’s MSM as scare story of the day. You can download from here, second article on the list:
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanchi/onlineFirst
Professor Bonell was just interviewed on Sky – he doesn’t apparently know anything about the Track & Trace system – Umh! – but then he is neither a doctor nor a natural scientist, but a public health modeler, and a Neil Ferguson lookalike. I digress. Key takeaway:
‘We modelled the spread of COVID-19 using Covasim (version 1.4.7), a stochastic agent-based model of SARS-CoV-2 transmission. The model was developed by the Institute for Disease Modeling (Bellevue, WA, USA); further details of the mathematical approach used for Covasim have been published previously as a preprint’ ….. ‘This approach is similar to that in the study by Ferguson and colleagues which informed the implementation of lockdown measures in the UK’.
I despair. At what point are we going to stop using these discredited models – and modelers – and rely on thorough analysis of the actual data, as per Carl Heneghan and his team?
Modelling is the approach to take if you want to avoid doing science.
‘This approach is similar to that in the study by Ferguson and colleagues which informed the implementation of lockdown measures in the UK’.
It really beggars belief that people still write that kind of thing as though they are unaware of just how dramatically the Imperial study has been discredited (at least for anyone paying proper attention to reality).
It’s incredible either way, either that they should still be unaware how worthless and damaging the study proved, or that they should be aware of it and still see it as something to refer to as though it boosts your own work’s credibility.
Not because I think there’s a connection,but just to put it out there, Bellevue is a Seattle Suburb, right next to Redmond and is stuffed full of Microsoft offices.
Thanks for that Matt. It prompted me to Google Covasim – the ABS model used. Guess what, the article has the following statement: ‘This work was supported by Bill and Melinda Gates through the Global Good Fund’!!!!!!!
Is there any of this shite at all that doesn’t trace back to Gates???
The commentary by John Edmonds (yes, him), comments that the Panovska-Griffiths model doesn’t take into account that increased infection rates might just as well result from increased transmission by adults freed up to return to work because their children were back in school. The Australian nursery school piece, based not on a model but actual data, is pretty pointless for drawing any relevant conclusions. Covers a period up to March, so out of date, tiny number of children involved, etc. Etc.
“Data, data, data. I cannot make bricks without clay.” Sherlock Holmes.
Observation:Theory::10,000:1
Meanwhile over at Guido:
https://order-order.com/2020/08/04/confidence-in-scientific-advice-sees-double-digit-fall/
And lots of lockdown-sceptical comments..
Anyone with good computer graphics skills fancy working on this suggestion?
Turn the government’s “Stay Alert – Control The Virus – Save Lives” sign into
“Stay Afraid – Control The People – Save Boris”
Might be useful to turn into T-shirts or badges.
Also, for those who feel intimidated enough to consent to wearing face rags in the shops (and I am one, as I’m stressed enough without becoming even more anxious about being assaulted by vigilantes – no lectures please), it seems to me that the face rags are a potential own goal by the government: if we could get a simple enough message, someone, even Toby, could sell masks with a suitably anti-mask message on them, turning the masks into something we could use to our advantage.
Great idea!
Thank you.
Love the “Stay Afraid – Control The People – Save Boris” slogan.
I think a guerilla sticker campaign with stuff like this on would work quite well, if we could get it going in sufficient numbers.
I’ve raised the idea of guerilla stickers recently but this design idea is much better than mine. I might see if I can find time to put a design together. Perhaps see if we can find a compliment printers and resell them, perhaps in Toby’s or Carl Vernon’s merchandise shop.
Yes – we could stick them everywhere. Inside loo cubicles on the back of the door is a good place – captive audience. Anywhere where people linger is good: bus stops, backs of bus seats, etc.
I’ve been to ASDA this morning and wore my face nappy (the lanyard is on order but hasn’t arrived yet). I got Defund The BBC on my nappy, but I’d still rather go without it.
Then do so. I had no probs in my Asda, chatted with staff etc. Hold your head up and smile.
Just go without it. You don’t need a lanyard.
how many fucking times do people need to be told if you wear the mask you are the problem. Grow some balls or fuck off
Biker – I may have misread your comment to JustMe? If I have my apologies, but I found it rather startlingly and unnecessarily rude and personally directed. If I had been the recipient I would have been quite taken aback.
Biker, we’re not all like you. Try and remember that.
Print this on a t-shirt
Excellent. Lots of great ideas for T-shirts and stickers.
Maybe “I support loved ones dying scared and alone”
See how that hits the feels.
Or kids – Can you imagine “Daddy, daddy, where’s my daddy” being the last thing a dying child hears in today’s NHS.
Sobering isn’t it?
How many of you who don’t want to wear a mask but are too anxious to not wear one, have considered a visor instead? Classed as PPE. Copied this from gov website mid July. I don’t think it is still there, but I copied and pasted it into a Word document, and printed it out. I used one for a medical appointment and nobody challenged me. For shopping I am exempt. 3 trips to shops so far and 3 shoppers who looked as if they were planning to say something about me being mask-less peered at the badge with lanyard then walked on without comment. No issues with staff – all smiley and friendly.
PUBLICATION – ADVICE AND GUIDANCE
Coronavirus (COVID-19) Phase 3: staying safe and protecting othersPublished: 15 Jul 2020
Directorate: Communications, Ministerial Support and Facilities Directorate
Rules on staying safe and protecting others to help suppress the virus.
Face coverings
In enclosed spaces, where physical distancing is more difficult and where there is a risk of close contact with multiple people who are not members of your household, you should wear a face covering.
People must by law from 24th July wear a face covering in shops and on public transport and public transport premises such as railway and bus stations and airports. This applies to open-air railway platforms, but not to bus stops.
There is no evidence to suggest there might be a benefit outdoors from wearing a face covering unless in a crowded situation.
Physical distancing, hand hygiene and respiratory hygiene are the most important and effective things we can all do to prevent the spread of coronavirus. The wearing of face coverings must not be used as an alternative to any of these other precautions.
What is a face covering?
A face covering can be any covering of the mouth and nose that is made of cloth or other textiles and through which you can breathe.
Religious face coverings that cover the mouth and the nose count as face coverings for these purposes.
You may also use, if you prefer, a face visor but it must cover your nose and mouth completely.
When applying or removing the covering, it is important that you wash/sanitise your hands first and avoid touching your face.
After each use, you must wash the face covering at 60 degrees centigrade or dispose of it safely.
(My own bold italics)
Have you all seen the disgustingly corrupt picture (which vanished a few minutes ago!) from the BBC News home page this morning? It’s a picture of a schoolgirl (school bag on her back, so no doubts) wearing a mask, with, as far as I can tell, a big smile under the mask. Subtle message from the BBC to copy this role model when sending your children back to school. Ironically, she’s wearing the mask very badly, and all the pesky covids will leak out of the sides, killing millions.
I’ll be interested to see what happens here in Sweden when the schools go back in a couple of week’s time – ie whether there is any uptick in cases.
Everything is going well here looking at this morning’s hospital stats, where for the first time, Stockholm is NOT the region with the most people in hospital!!! Stockholm has 20 fewer hospitalised Covid patients than on Friday..
Eleven of Sweden’s 21 regions – ie over half – now have 5 or fewer people hospitalised with the virus.. I reckon in the next week there will be regions with zero…there are already 7 regions with no intensive care cases..
Excellent news. The MSM will be furious. I went to the Wikipedia page to look at the situation in Sweden:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_pandemic_in_Sweden
Unfortunately the main graph and some other graphics further down in the article have not been updated for a few days. I don’t suppose you do Wikipedia by any chance? Alternatively, I can update it if there’s an English version of the data somewhere.
I did however, feel somewhat stressed in reading that Amazon are planning to open here in Sweden. Possibly a sign of my having developed ‘Covid paranoia’ (!) – them opening here been on the cards for a number of years – but having read online the other day that the level of Covid restrictions and ‘power’ over countries is in proportion to the US’s level of influence in that country, the thought of Jeff Bezos starting to exert power over Sweden worries me a lot.
Either he is crazy, and over-estimates how big the market here is, or this move is being used as a way of trying to exert more control over Sweden..
Or maybe I am just paranoid!!!
I have a copy of it, but I can’t post it here. I just keep getting the message “Input is too long”. Any ideas?
This is my source of data; Dagens Nyheter newspaper: https://www.dn.se/nyheter/grafik-det-nya-coronavirusets-utbredning-i-varlden/
Scroll down to this heading: *Patienter i Sverige som just nu vårdas på intensivavdelning (IVA)* (patients in Sweden who are currently in Intensive care)
The three columns show name of region, total number of hospitalised patients, and the number of that figure who are in intensive care. So for example in Stockholm, there are currently 49 patients in hospital, *of which* 8 are in intensive care. The numbers in brackets with + and – show the difference between today’s figures and the last issue of stats (which was last Friday)
At the bottom you get the totals for the whole country.
It is quite disturbing how the BBC now automatically use mask pictures even when they don’t make sense, clearly some sort of subliminal messaging trying to normalise masks. I was also disgusted by that one today. Other recent examples include every story about Scotrail being accompanied by a photo of a man with a mask walking in front of a departure board (why not a photo of a scotrail train?), story the other day about extending isolation to 10 days accompanied by photo of someone masked standing by window (why wear a mask in house on your own?) and the all time classic announcing the eating out vouchers with photo of 5 masked people in a restaurant (no comment necessary)
Looks like today’s story has now had picture replaced with a stock photo of children in a classroom without a mask to be seen. It would be interesting to know what prompted them to change it.
Howdy, ya’ll. New Englander here – been reading this site for about as long as it’s been up – the Comments section in particular has been a source of much relief, nice to know there are folks out there who aren’t so taken with the present Airstrip One-ing of western civilisation. I wrote the following Fbook post yesterday re: masks and the private response was quite telling –
“Muzzles don’t work. They make us dumb and dull and paranoid and stressed. It’s not a question of ‘being a team player,’ now, not when you don’t get to decide for yourself if you agree to the terms of the match to begin with. Liberalism is founded on consent, and every time Authority manages to convince people otherwise it takes decades, sometimes centuries to repair the damage. I’m harping on the mask drama in particular because it’s becoming a shorthand all it’s own, a small window into peoples’ souls where superstition reigns and critical distance is seen as a mark of mental disorder. Whether or not we wear a mask seems to me to be about our self-image and our place in a political social club more than it is about keeping ourselves and others truly “safe.” Most masks mechanically cannot keep you safe from common rhinoviruses and coronoviruses (the latter being a hard plural, remember, since there are dozens and dozens of them which already infect and kill scores of human beings every season) – unless you are wearing a custom-fitted N100 respirator in an acute and STERILE clinical setting you are hopelessly open to being infected and to spreading infection around, JUST AS YOU HAVE ALWAYS BEEN YOUR ENTIRE LIFE. You have passed along a smorgasbord of pathogens since coming into the world – that is part of your role as a mammal – and there is a high probability that you have been involved in a chain of viral transmission that has resulted in the deaths of many many people, most of whom will be unknown to you, none of whom you are responsible for – so why pick this most dumbed-down, mass-cultish, politically-theatrical of newscycles to be conditioned by Authority into believing you exist outside of the cycle of Nature and that natural death can be controlled for by bureaucrats and megacorps if only more LAWS can be written and more MEDICINES can be forced down your throats? Masks don’t measure ‘team spirit,’ they measure fear and loathing and cynical self-preservation. That’s why I can’t justify wearing one anymore, no matter how much intimidation and aggression comes my way – mask-wearing is about dividing up obedient people and disobedient people, many of whom could be getting along just fine if they hadn’t been meddled with and frightened / demeaned into retreating to their blinkered partisan lookouts. While I don’t always relish brushing up against certain sets of shoulders (I am still a bit of an art snob, me) I know the other side is too rotted by illiberalism and authority-worship to be taken seriously anymore.
(Continued:)
(Continued
Well, get on with it, man! Don’t leave us in suspense….
Welcome Sam!! But… I really want to know what the response was!!
Apologies friends, I couldn’t reply to my original post because it had to be approved first. The rest:
“I had a conversation recently with a recently-converted pandemic-response skeptic – we came to the conclusion that masks are a small part of a wide-scale movement towards complete Pavlovian thought- and information-control, tiny little tools of mass demoralisation that indicate a willingness (often subconscious) to indulge in seemingly-mundane pseudoscientific lies so as to 1.) keep ourselves reassured and compliant so that we never forget to mouth the right mottoes and genuflect in the right moral direction for the sake of thickening the herd (ie a ‘moral camouflage’ gambit, a kind of sinister ‘herd immunity’ that dovetails perfectly with the goals of the global police-state); 2.) focus our collective paranoid energy on an external recurring Enemy so that we never have to think of ourselves as fragile or suggestible or cowardly (alá the phenomenon of ‘social cancellation’), which goes along quite nicely with adolescent-power-fantasy “Woke”-brand agitprop (sponsored by CitiGroup and Nike and Apple and Google et al, one must always stress!); and finally 3.) avoid evidence-based value-neutral knowledge production, call it impossible (or “white”), render the natural sciences politically and industrially corrupted beyond all repair, bow to the correct corporate totems and panic at the right political time instead, divorce ourselves from Nature ever the more and continue the western Progressivist slide into permanent State-dependent childhood with a “clean conscience”, beginning with Authority-approved identities and costumes (this medieval path to Darkness falls in squarely with many 21st century transgender / transhuman fictions, eg “born in the wrong body” and “sex is a spectrum” (plus medical enslavement / body mutilation / thought police & speech codes / “glitter family” collectivism & sexualisation of the child (a hallmark of Dark Age madness). He and I disagree on certain minor details but I think the back-of-the-envelope sketch here is about right. I would add that small lies accepted widely tend to build up into convoluted systems of reassurance that weasel their way into the ‘spirit’ of a nation and which are used to rationalize the need for the telling of them in the first place – how the sausage of dogma is made, in other words. Such a system is unfalsifiable up to a point, much like anything theological, and also affords the makers of the lie a measure of plausible deniability when eventually they or their successors are held to account for the horrors they’ve caused: “it was for your own good,” “for the glory of Mother Church,” “for the sake of national Unity,” etc. See: the Council of Nicaea, the Malleus Malificarum, the 1st Congress of the Comintern.
And don’t forget, folks – the data shows us EVERY DAY that masking-up ain’t done a golldarn dang thing. Reject the muzzles, muggles.”
Private messages in response ran the gamut from “I wouldn’t have suspected you for a Trump supporter” (of course) to wishes of pain and ruin more generally. Such little things, such tiny things!
Behind the paywall but a brilliant article by Andrew Lilico in the Telegraph. He is becoming nearly as reliably excellent in his opinion and analysis as Janet Daley.
You can read any article at the Telegraph by hitting a certain key twice as the page loads, but as Toby disapproves of circumventing paywalls I won’t say which key.
Go on!—-give us a clue?
More generally: Reader. View.
There’s be no Escape from a severe telling off from Toby if I did…
When the Irish Taoiseach, Michael Martin, announced his masking edict on the 15th, July, he said:-
My government and I have received very sobering advice from the National Public Health Emergency Team. The concern about the rise in the number of cases over recent weeks is very real.
The “recent weeks” he referred to could only have been a reference to the previous eighteen days or so as before then the number of cases was generally falling
In the eighteen days before the announcement there were 256 cases.
In the last eighteen have 510. Which doesn’t suggest the mask wearing is having a great impact (the number of cases has increased in the last week especially.)
The number of people dying is little changed. It was sixteen in the eighteen day period before the announcement and fourteen in the last eighteen day period.
Don’t take my figures as gospel, I’d like my figures to be checked. I can’t imagine anyone will want to do so but here is the website to use if they do:-
https://www.gov.ie/en/publication/b6a9e-updates-on-covid-19-coronavirus-from-july-and-august-2020/
Seen displayed in a front window (somewhere) in big letters:
Want a lockdown?
GET A TEST!
Sadly not on a main road but a few people will see it.
Maybe we can start spreading this message somehow!
Mask On, Mask Off?
During a brief trip to a supermarket, I noted that this week’s charade is playing out as follows….
Not wearing a mask:
Me
Young mother with young child
All supermarket staff
2 x uniformed Police Officers
Wearing a mask:
Almost everyone else, none of whom batted an eyelid at non-mask wearers.
An amusing and senior curmudgeon who said, “f*cking moron” behind me as he walked past. If he was talking to me, it was to my back, so I could neither tell nor react. What made it funny was that the mask muffled it to such a degree that it sounded like he was talking to himself.
I came away with the impression that nobody is any more or less scared than they were a fortnight ago, but that they are mostly polite, law-abiding and non-confrontational.
The man that swore would be exactly the same chap that would accuse you of queue barging, or of taking the last item of a product that he needed, or of having a child that was too noisy and so on and so on.
It seems perfectly obvious that if the government told people to get out and about and get the economy moving – even if there was no ‘science’ to back it up with – they would comply.
Modern Britain loves instructions. Just issue the right ones.
Apologies if already mentioned but I just noticed this:
‘Of the deaths registered in Week 30, 217 mentioned “novel coronavirus (COVID-19)”, the lowest number of deaths involving COVID-19 in the last 18 weeks and a 26.4% decrease compared with Week 29 (295 deaths), accounting for 2.4% of all deaths in England and Wales.’
https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/deaths/datasets/weeklyprovisionalfiguresondeathsregisteredinenglandandwales
A 26.4% decrease…..that’s a big decrease…..in one week……
Week 29 is 13-19 July
17th July?
‘Health Secretary Matt Hancock has called for an urgent review into how coronavirus deaths have been recorded in England.’
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-53443724
Just saying………
the news benders:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pCSdNUWNefA
they told us back in the late 60s
If they waited a bit longer they could have had a higher R number and prevented even more cases…
Melbourne’s stage 3 lockdown prevented thousands of coronavirus cases, research data shows
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-08-04/melbournes-coronavirus-lockdown-worth-it-burnet-institute-data/12521434
And how many of those cases required hospitalisation or resulted in a fatality?
I did a model recently that showed if nobody is ever born eventually we would eradicate death.
Every person not born is equivalent to one death prevented in the future. The sooner we start the more deaths we can prevent.
This is why I love this site!!!!!
This is what this country needs now. Simple, clear thinking that will save lives and get this country back up on its knees. Hurrah.
Professor Ferguson has improved on this model by positing an infinity of non-births (based on an extrapolation of reversed reproduction rate ie the -R2 rate) which will result in an infinity of saved lives and the award to him of the Nobel Prize.
Life can be fatal.
Now you sound like Uncle Bill!
The masks will prevent any future pregnancies.
Or am I wearing it wrongly?
NSW(Australia) 12 new cases today 4th Aug
This week 86 Known source 74 Unknown source 12
Last week 74 Known source 71 Unknown source 3
Hang on, haven’t we seen that pattern before? Yes, UK just before it started to pick up first with unknown source increasing.
And this is not in Victoria, Melbourne. Shall we guess that masks and lockdown won’t stop this?
Update Melbourne
RECENT FINES:
161fines issued cards
60 for no masks
Someone bought a car after 8 pm
Police had to smash windows of 4 cars after occupants refused to give details
38y/o woman not wearing a mask smashed police woman’s head into concrete-she’s been charged+bailed
18,686 cases averted? How very precise…
They turned me into a newt…
My 9-year-old daughter is a staunch lockdown sceptic. She wants to announce her theory, so over to her:
the goverment have been obducted by alians !!!!!!
and they’re trying to take over the world, also, the masks make the alians able to control us. NEVER EVER WEAR A MASK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
More sensible than anything from government or their experts so far.
She talks more sense than our so-called experts!!!
And it’s neck and neck in the race for a new PM. The Rt. Hon Biker being seriously challenged by Miss Dee!
Hope you’ve got her talking to all her friends… get them sceptic early!!!
Try taking part in a study by the ONS, really screw up the answers nd data.
https://www.ons.gov.uk/surveys/informationforhouseholdsandindividuals/householdandindividualsurveys/opinionsandlifestylesurvey
https://www.ons.gov.uk/surveys/informationforhouseholdsandindividuals/householdandindividualsurveys
Some interesting snippets on the ONS July 24th deaths info:
Would these be collateral lockdown deaths by any chance?
The coronavirus (COVID-19) has had a large impact on the number of deaths registered over the last few months and is the main reason for deaths increasing above what is expected (the five-year average). The disease has had a larger impact on those most vulnerable (for example, those who already suffer from a medical condition) and those at older ages. Some of these deaths would have likely occurred over the duration of the year but have occurred earlier because of COVID-19. These deaths occurring earlier than expected could contribute to a period of deaths below the five-year average.
Nice of them to admit it. Wonder if whoever sneaked that gem in will be fired?
Region name Number of deathsFive-year average DifferencePercentage above average
North West 1197 1210 -13 -1.1
Yorkshire and The Humber 817 888 -71 -8.0
So why the localised lockdown in the North West, Yorkshire area?
Eid.
Oh and a bunch of presumably naughty, socialising white folks in a nobby part of G.Manchester.
And because they can!
You know, folks, I’m feeling down. It’s all I can think of… Down… Everything is going down!
I mean:
Covid Hospital Admissions: Down
Critical Care Bed Occupancy: Down
No of people in Hospital: Down
All Cause Deaths: Down
And it all keeps going down, what can we do (sniff)??
Sadly the BS Index is UP, rising inexorably, reaching daily new highs.
New page is up – https://dailysceptic.org/2020/08/04/latest-news-94/#comments
Thanks Toby for creating this website and bringing together the writings of so many experts on the subject. I have learnt a huge amount and am spreading the message of Covid scepticism far and wide.
Wake up be free – because that’s precisely the problem people are like robots doing as they are told I feel like shaking people to wake them up to this shite
Went into Starbucks today for a coffee. Turned off Bluetooth on my phone to stop the tracing app, then the girl asked for my contact details. Gave her a phone number with one digit incorrect, and refused my surname. She smiled, put “Smith” and served me with a smile. No mask of course, it’s a food outlet so I didn’t need one. My mask exemption badge stayed in my pocket.
I showed it to a friend (72 yr-old) and her eyes widened with delight. “Where did you get that!” she said. “Lockdown Sceptics link; arrived in three days…” Yay! Her cleaner asked for the website, too. The exemption tag has a bright orange “MASK EXEMPT” ribbon.As it happens, I have a genuine condition which is so cringmaking that I can’t wait for a police officer to challenge me; I’ll make it the worst day of his life.
My wife and I have agreed that we won’t put any worker’s job at risk by making a fuss in front of their management; the managers, however, are fair game. So delighted, this mild protest has improved my mood no end.