Mumsnet Survey – Quarter of Parents are Bedwetters
Mumsnet published a survey today asking parents how satisfied they were with the arrangement schools put in place to re-admit some children in July. It contains this horrifying finding:
Among parents whose child was offered the opportunity to spend some time in school before the summer holidays, 23% say they did not take up the offer. The top reasons included:
* concern that their child might transmit COVID-19 to family members (48%);
* confidence that homeschooling was working well (39%);
* concern that their child might catch COVID-19 and become ill (38%); and
* worries about the local or regional infection rate (32%).
I don’t suppose I need remind readers that there isn’t a single documented case, anywhere in the world, of a child passing on the virus to an adult and the risk of a child under the age of 15 dying from COVID-19 is lower than the risk of them dying from a lightning strike.
PCR Test
A reader with a background in infectious diseases has emailed me in answer to the question I posed yesterday about the reliability of the PCR test. This won’t surprise anyone.
Your reader’s comments on the PCR test are interesting. It’s worth noting that the test have been in existence for decades but has never been fully tested for efficacy. The manual issued by the Center for Disease Control (CDC) in the US actually states the following at the very start of the document: “Results are for the identification of 2019-nCoV RNA. The 2019-nCoV RNA is generally detectable in upper and lower respiratory specimens during infection. Positive results are indicative of active infection with 2019-nCoV but do not rule out bacterial infection or co-infection with other viruses. The agent detected may not be the definite cause of disease. Laboratories within the United States and its territories are required to report all positive results to the appropriate public health authorities.”
So it was acknowledged not to be virus-specific reliable but nevertheless made positive PCR results notifiable. Brilliant stroke.
Meanwhile, the reader who posed the original question has followed up with a few more:
There are two other aspects of Government testing I find confusing and misleading
When working with biological and biochemical test data, it is important to understand what the test is measuring. There is a general perception, endorsed by the media and Government spokespeople, that the RT-PCR test detects the presence of the virus in swabs. It does no such thing. It detects a segment of one component of the virus, namely the RNA molecule contained within the virus capsule. The segment detected could have arisen from an intact viable virus particle, from a non-viable virus particle or from residual material or debris from virus particles destroyed or degraded by the host’s immune response.
Where the donor has symptoms and their swabs produce a positive result it is reasonable to conclude that they are probably infected with the virus. On the other hand, where the donor experiences no symptoms at the time of sampling nor within the next few days, most likely a positive test result would be derived from debris of degraded virus particles, in which case the donor would neither be infected nor infectious. This latter point neatly explains how donors can test positive but be asymptomatic: they would have been infected in the days before testing with symptoms unnoticed or inconsequential and which infection their immune system effectively fought off.
Of course, all testing to date assumes that we know what the pathogen causing COVID-19 is. Many years ago, Koch proposed criteria for establishing the causative agent of infectious diseases and these have been adapted to encompass viral diseases. Essentially, they require that the virus be isolated and purified, that it is shown to replicate in relevant host cells and that it demonstrates the symptoms of the disease when dosed to an appropriate animal. In January, RNA from a supposed virus was sequenced, shown to be related to the Sars virus and named SARS-CoV-2. Perhaps your readers may know to what extent the criteria have established that SARS-Cov-2 is the causative pathogen of COVID-19. In particular, I am not aware that any virus has been shown to induce the same symptoms and disease progression in animals.
Back in December and January, when COVID-19 was new and spreading rapidly, assumptions had to be made and shortcuts taken. There was no time to do the basic studies in logical order. We are now 8-9 months into the disease and there has been time to do these studies. Until they are done, we have to take it on faith we are testing for the right causative agent.
Simon Dolan Appeal to be Heard
Good news on the legal front. Simon Dolan’s has been given permission to appeal the High Court’s verdict on his Judicial Review. Here’s what it says on his CrowdJustice page:
Our challenge against the UK Government lockdown will continue to be heard after the Court of Appeal yesterday ruled that the case highlighted ‘fundamental’ concerns over the accountability of Government Ministers.
The Judicial Review will now proceed to a rolled-up hearing expected to be held at the Court of Appeal during the week commencing the 28th September after a ruling was handed down by Lord Justice Hickinbottom.
The hearing will decide on whether the case should progress to a full Appeal which would see the Government once again pressed to defend the introduction of measures which were described by the court as “possibly the most restrictive regime on the public life of persons and businesses ever”.
Lord Justice Hickinbottom said that the legal challenge “potentially raises fundamental issues concerning the proper spheres for democratically-accountable Ministers of the Government and judges”.
Owing to Government restrictions, our first hearing was held virtually. However, Lord Justice Hickinbottom ordered in his review that the case should be “considered by the full court in open court, and the Applicants given any opportunity to make good their case at least on arguability”.
You Think Trying to See a GP is Bad? Try a Dentist!
I got an email from a reader who has been left feeling disheartened after making a dental appointment.
Today I took a call from my dentist about an imminent check-up and filling. Previously I have never had any qualms about going to the dentist but I now confess to twinges of apprehension…
It is not hyperbole to say I felt as though I was being prepared to face an Ebola outbreak or a nuclear leak. First of all I was given an over-the-phone medical. The whole emphasis was on danger: the risk I posed to them and the risk they posed to me and what was being done to mitigate it. I started off getting irritated but by the end of the call I was grinning. Sometimes that’s all the you can do.
In summary: I cannot enter the surgery as it will be locked. I must wait in my car or stay a minimum of 2 meters from the front entrance until called on my mobile. A minimum of two metres? When I’m out on the street? That is beyond ridicule so I won’t even try. On entering I will immediately have my hands sanitised and can bring neither people nor possessions in with me. I will then have a face nappy applied, something which I have successfully avoided until now. I explained that I cannot wear one and have a lanyard. They were clear – no mask, no entry, Again, the emphasis was on the danger I posed to them. Should I have a coughing fit I could endanger the staff, all of whom appear to be my age or younger.
I was advised that my mask would be removed for the actual check-up and work, which was reassuring.
Finally, I was told to use the loo before I left home as the toilet is for staff only. Normally this wouldn’t be an issue but it’s a one-and-three-quarter-hour drive for me, time for the treatment, and a one-and-three-quarter-hour drive home. I did say this may be difficult if I was caught short. I was advised that if I absolutely needed it then they would comply – but – their rules state that if I do then no one else may use if for a period of one hour (huh?) and it would then need to be “deep cleaned” (double huh??). So, no pressure then. I’ve no idea what they felt I might do in there but I suddenly felt very grubby. I have decided to change my usual breakfast routine and will instead have some toast and no liquids at all. I can’t put those good people through that.
COVID-19 as a Workplace Hazard (Part 3)
I’ve published the third articl in a series for Lockdown Sceptics written by a senior occupational health therapist about the difficulties the Government and its agencies are creating for businesses that want to re-open, this one pointing out that older workers may not be allowed to return to work when the economy grinds back to life. He sets out the problem in the opening few paragraphs:
Employers are seeking to return staff from shielding, but can only do this where they can demonstrate that the role is “Covid-secure”. Some employers are requesting their occupational health providers assess staff and advise of their “Covid-age”. Covid-age is a scheme that has been developed by occupational health doctors to stratify employees based on their risk of experiencing severe illness or death as a result of COVID-19.
You’re supposed to start with the person’s actual age and then add additional years for various reasons, e.g. high BMI, ethnicity, gender, medical conditions. This then results in the individual’s Covid-age. There is then a ‘traffic light system‘ that applies to you depending on your Covid-age – green, yellow, orange, red
It is immediately apparent that the higher your age, the more likely you are to fall into a higher risk category.
Don’t imagine that if you’re prepared to take the risk – or even sign a waiver, absolving your employer of any legal liability should you die of COVID-19 – it will make any difference. That doesn’t apply to normal workplace hazards – employers cannot escape liability that way – and it won’t apply to Covid.
I have no doubt that employers will err on the side of caution and prevent employees with a high Covid-age back to the workplace. Doesn’t matter how prepared the employee is to take the risk. As long as COVID-19 is regarded as a workplace hazard in the conventional sense, employers will not be able to take the employee’s own view into account. This will lead to individuals who are quite prepared to risk catching Covid losing their employment on medical capability grounds.
As usual, the Government appears to be aware that it has dug itself into a god almighty hole, but hasn’t a clue how to get out of it and the measures it’s taking to “restart” the economy will inevitably make things worse.
All three “workplace hazard” articles are in the right-hand menu under “What is the Exit Strategy?” This one is worth reading in full.
Beware the Bedwetters – They Can Now Demolish Your House
There was an extraordinary story in the Telegraph yesterday. The Prime Minister has given a broad range of powers to local authorities to contain outbreaks, including getting a magistrate to order the demolition of your home!
Councils will be able to draw on six separate Acts of Parliament to impose lightning closures of public buildings, order mass testing, ban events or shut down whole sectors of the economy.
They will also be able to limit school openings to set year groups and restrict travel to key workers only.
The power to demolish buildings, however, is perhaps the most striking inclusion in the Government’s Covid-19 Contain Framework.
The document, published by the Department of Health and Social Care, advises councils that, under the Public Health (Control of Disease) Act 1984, they can apply to a magistrate “to impose restrictions or requirements to close contaminated premises; close public spaces in the area of the local authority; detain a conveyance or movable structure; disinfect or decontaminate premises; or order that a building, conveyance or structure be destroyed”.
It raises the possibility that care homes, factories, offices or even private homes could be bulldozed as a last resort if the virus starts to run out of control, although such measures have not been considered necessary during the outbreak.
Downing Street regards local or regional lockdowns as the way forward in containing coronavirus.
Given that the UK Government is unable to properly interpret the data about the prevalence of infections, what hope is there that Town Hall Sir Humphries will get it right?
When will this madness end?
Has Any Country Developed an Effective Covid Tracing App?
Lockdown Sceptic‘s Covid tracing app correspondent – an experienced techie – has been in touch to point out that the apps don’t appear to be working anywhere. It’s not just our app that’s practically useless – they all are. Here’s his round-up.
When pressed over the lack of a UK contract tracing app at PMQs, Boris claimed that no country has a working coronavirus app. What about Germany with 12m downloads, replied Sir Keir Starmer, brilliantly skewering him over his bizarre claim, said the Independent.
Germany and many other countries do have some software you can put on your phone. Indeed, there are so many of them that MIT Technology Review has a Covid Tracing Tracker currently listing 46 of them. But do they work, as in stop the spread of corona virus, and would they be legal or socially acceptable in the UK? How many people have to download the app for them to be effective? An Oxford University study claimed that such apps would have an effect at all levels of uptake, not just the widely reported 60%. That’s what the modellers say, so what happened in practice and was Boris or Keir correct?
Singapore’s TraceTogether was the first major Bluetooth-based app, downloaded by 2.1m Singaporeans or 35% of the population. Unfortunately, that didn’t include the migrant workers living in dorms who account for the majority of Singapore’s 44,000 infections. The Government admitted its tech wasn’t ideal because the phone has to be unlocked with the app running in the foreground for it to work, a problem that other countries releasing apps later should have heeded. The app also drained the phone’s battery, so people removed it. The Singaporean Government is now pinning its hopes – and a whopping $73m – on a wearable device instead.
Australia was quick off the mark in April with its Covidsafe app. It only detected 1 in 4 encounters during testing, with phones having to be unlocked and running the app in the foreground, but that didn’t stop Australia’s health minister, Greg Hunt, promising Australians in lockdown: “It will help us as we seek to return to normal and the Australian way of life.” He reckoned 40% of Australians needed to be using it for it to be effective. Three months later, only 24% of Australians had downloaded it. Was it helping return Australia to normal life? ABC reported its impact was hard to measure. In Victoria, authorities have yet to point to a single COVID-19 exposure that was not picked up by manual contact tracing. In New South Wales, there’s only a single instance of a person being contacted using app data. Was it worth the $2.75M?
Germany’s app was built by the software giant SAP and Deutsche Telekom, and launched in mid-June along with a massive advertising campaign involving leading DAX companies and the German Football Association, the DFB, according to the Guardian. Helge Braun, the head of Angela Merkel’s office, said downloading the app amounted to “one small step for us, but a giant step in our fight against the pandemic”. That resulted in 6.5m downloads on the first day alone. One month later, the Government was boasting 16.2m downloads, 20% of Germany’s 83 million population. Because of the decentralised, privacy-respecting nature of the tech, we don’t know how many people were alerted by the German app. Well that’s the theory, anyway. In practice, we know that by July 20th a grand total of 660 Germans had been alerted by their app. Perhaps something to do with it not working unless –you guessed it – the phone is unlocked and the app is running in the foreground? Small step or giant leap? It was certainly a giant bill: €20M. And they open sourced it, so if you want €20M of software for free you can download it here.
In Ireland their bill was only €850k and 1.4m people – 28% of the population – downloaded it, 91 of whom received an exposure alert. What about France? It was launched in June, with the digital affairs minister Cédric O proclaiming: “From the first downloads the app helps avoid contamination, illness and so deaths.” Two million people were moved by that appeal to download le app. The headline on the MIT Technology Review article about it sums up what happened next: “Eight million people, 14 alerts: Why some COVID-19 apps are staying silent.”
Are there any apps that work? It seems unlikely given that the underlying physics of radio signal propagation does not work as the technocrats think it does. As I pointed out in Lockdown Sceptics back in June, Trinity College Dublin researchers found that signal strength could not be relied on outside of the lab as a proxy for proximity. China has a different approach, which may work, but given that it depends on handing over so much personal data, such as all your bank transactions, it would not be legal or even socially acceptable outside of China. And of course there is no sign of the Chinese app being withdrawn now the infection has passed, reports the New York Times.
So it appears that Boris was right snd Oxford’s modellers were wrong. No country has a working corona tracing app. Lockdowns don’t work and neither do the apps. Does that make Boris sceptic of the week?
Dr David Nabarro, Special Envoy to the WHO on COVID-19 and Lockdown Sceptic
Dr David Nabarro, a Special Envoy to the WHO on COVID-19, gave an interview to Mark Dolan on TalkRadio yesterday in which he made some sceptical noises.
“I don’t think that British society can tolerate more lockdowns and economic deprivation,” he said. “I think it’s wrong for children not to be going to school. What are we able to do as a society in order to push this virus back and get on with our lives?”
The interview begins at the 21 minute mark.
Government Refuses to Disclose When Mask Diktat Will be Reviewed and Admits Evidence is Weak
Sir Graham Brady, the Chair of the 1922 Committee, submitted a written Parliamentary Question asking the following on July 17th:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment his Department has made of the efficacy of routinely available, non-clinical face masks in preventing aerosol spread of viruses.
The answer he received – which only arrived today – is unintentionally hilarious:
In June 2020 Public Health England conducted a rapid evidence review on the efficacy of different types of face coverings designed for use in community settings, and the effectiveness of face coverings to reduce the spread of SARS-CoV2 in the community.
The review found evidence from eight laboratory studies that materials commonly used in non-medical masks such as cotton and polyester may block droplets with a filtering efficiency similar to medical masks when folded in two or three layers. This evidence was limited by variations in materials, study design and testing methods, and judged to be weak.
The review identified evidence from epidemiological and modelling studies that mask wearing in the community may contribute to reducing the spread of COVID-19, but again the evidence was limited by study design and quality.
‘Face coverings in the community and COVID-19: a rapid review’ is available to view at the following link.
So the evidence that routinely available, non-clinical face masks are effective at preventing aerosol spread of viruses is… “weak” and “limited”. Shock!
Why the insistence that we wear them, then?
He also submitted another question on July 17th, quite reasonably asking when this absurd, un-evidenced policy will be reviewed:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if he will publish the criteria according to which the legal requirement to wear face masks in retail settings will be ended; and how frequently a review of that policy will take place.
He got the following response, again not received until today:
As of Friday July 24th, members of the public must wear a face covering when visiting a shop or supermarket in England.
In addition, the Government is running a major proactive communications campaign on face coverings to alert the public where they are now required to wear face coverings and educate the public on how to correctly wear one.
The Government will keep the regulations under review and will continue assessing if measures need to be put in place for other settings going forward.
So a Conservative MP had to wait three weeks to receive a non-answer to his question.
If the Chair of the most influential backbench committee in the Conservative party cannot hold the Government to account, what hope do the rest of us have?
The Insanity of the Corporate Insolvency and Governance Act 2020
A reader who runs a small business has flagged up something that passed me by, but which sounds deeply alarming.
Are you aware of the Corporate Insolvency and Governance Act 2020 which was sneaked into law on June 30th?
This bit of legislation effectively does, amongst other things, the following:
* Shuts down the ability for small businesses to serve statutory demands for non-payment of invoices.
* Absolves every director of any company operating in this country of responsibility for their actions between March 1st and September 30th. Meaning the usual claw-back under the wrongful trading laws and fraud is suspended.
* Creates an impossible situation where Coronavirus can be blamed for anything and everything – regardless of truth.
* Compels small companies to continue supplying non-paying companies with good and services.There’s been nothing about this in the press at all – which is a surprise to me as it effectively means any commercial contract entered into this year is void. This has been confirmed to me by a solicitor – who told me that it is so badly drafted that it could cover anything.
I run a small design business in London which has been effectively destroyed by this lockdown. As you would expect, nobody is paying any invoices, and we are now owed £60,000+ with no prospect of ever getting it back. We will be closing our company and losing our livelihoods because of this.
We’ve received essentially zero help from the government. All that is on offer is a vague promise of a grant for between £1000 to £5000 – which nobody can seem to tell me how to apply for.
This all means that it’s impossible to run a small business in this country as contract law has been effectively suspended – the larger zombie company will always win by default, as it is so expensive and risky to take them to court now – which no-doubt is the intention…
I’d appreciate it if you could raise a bit of awareness of this – as I’m sure there a lot of people who will be negatively affected.
Irish Health Authorities May Be Over-Counting Covid Deaths by 60%
A report was published last month by the Health Information and Quality Authority, a statutory, government-funded agency in Ireland which monitors the safety and quality of the healthcare and social care systems, drawing attention to possible errors in the Covid death count in the Emerald Isle. Here’s the killer bullet point:
The officially reported COVID-19 deaths may overestimate the true burden of excess mortality specifically caused by COVID-19. This may be due to the likely inclusion within official COVID-19 figures of people who were known to be infected with SARS-CoV-2 (coronavirus) at the time of death who were at or close to end-of–life independently of COVID-19 or whose cause of death may have been predominantly due to other factors.
How long before our own authorities admit the same error? (Hat tip to InProportion2 for flagging this up on Twitter.)
Dispatch From the Melbourne Gulag
The Lockdown Sceptic reader who penned the “Postcard From Melbourne” I published last week has added a P.S. following the imposition of an even more draconian lockdown by Victoria state Premier Daniel Andrews, known to disgruntled locals as Kim Jong Dan. Here’s an extract:
A beautiful winter Sunday afternoon was ruined by our hapless (or is that hopeless?) state Premier announcing in his gravest tones that Lockdown 2.0 and mandatory face nappies just aren’t doing the trick. We are all being very naughty and not doing as we’re told and so the ‘State of Emergency’ is being upgraded to a ‘State of Disaster’. This involves a near total shutdown of non-essential businesses, an 8pm-5am curfew, no travel further than 5km from your home and you’re only allowed out for one hour of exercise per day. Schools are closed, weddings banned and numbers at funerals are limited. Welcome to Lockdown 3.0.
Within minutes of the announcement, queues were forming outside supermarkets and by the end of the day the shelves had been stripped of fruit, veg and fresh meat by panic buying locusts. They obviously stopped listening to Kim Jong Dan’s doom-mongering before he got to the bit where he said supermarkets would remain open.
Worth reading in full.
Round-Up
- ‘Is the UK in a better position than we think?‘ – Surprisingly robust piece by Nick Triggle, one of the BBC’s Health Correspondents. Repeats the point I’ve made that the ONS data apparently showing infections are on the rise is based on just 24 people testing positive in the past fortnight
- ‘Close pubs before schools if infections rise, ministers told‘ – The Children’s Commissioner for England Anne Longfield has urged the Government to close pubs rather than delay re-opening schools
- ‘How universities shut out conservative academics‘ – Good piece in UnHerd by Matthew Goodwin about Monday’s Policy Exchange report
- ‘Local lockdown in Aberdeen as Covid cluster grows‘ – Pubs are being closed in Aberdeen thanks to a single cluster of cases being detected among customers of a pub called the Hawthorn
- ‘Doctors criticise “barmy” rules forcing them to treat patients who refuse to wear face masks‘ – Good news – bedwetting GPs can’t refuse to treat patients who refuse to wear face nappies
- ‘Up to 1,500 jobs to go at WHSmith over ‘slow’ lockdown recovery‘ – Another high street staple is in the toilet
- ‘Petition launched as frustration grows over decision to close Bradford’s gyms‘ – Frustration is growing in Bradford over the shutdown of gyms following the imposition of a local lockdown. Energy Mill Gym in Shipley is refusing to comply with the new edict. Congrats to them
- ‘How dare politicians scapegoat the young for their lockdown failings‘ – Good piece by the young Madeline Grant in the Telegraph
- ‘Shutdowns hit the big picture at Disney‘ – The US giant, which has a market value of $212 billion, made a third-quarter loss of $4.7 billion, compared with a profit of $1.4 billion in the same period last year
- ‘Cornish beaches as busy as bank holiday every day‘ – Excellent!
- ‘Sex BAN for Northern couples who aren’t in a “bubble”‘ – Something tells me those “Red Wall” seats may not all return Tory MPs at the next General Election
- ‘Risk of severe COVID-19 disease with ACE inhibitors and angiotensin receptor blockers: cohort study including 8.3 million people‘ – New paper in the BMJ shows heavy smoking can… save your life. Here’s the killer finding: “We observed a markedly decreased risk of both COVID-19 disease and ICU admission in smokers. The apparent protective association was greatest for heavy and moderate smokers and most markedly on the risk of ICU admission which was 88% lower in heavy smokers compared with non-smokers.”
- ‘Misleading media coverage of Sweden’s response to COVID-19‘ – Excellent comment in the BMJ pointing out how much about Sweden the public health panjandrums get wrong
- ‘Why Covid hasn’t been Boris’s Black Wednesday‘ – Good piece by Patrick O’Flynn in the Spectator
- ‘Will reopening schools really cause a second spike?‘ – Ross Clark in the Spectator asks a question to which the answer is clearly no
Theme Tune Suggestions by Readers
Just one today: “You Got it All Wrong” by the Hives.
Small Businesses That Have Re-Opened
A couple of months 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 (and some of them are at risk of having to close again). 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.
Forums Back Up and Running
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.
We have created some Lockdown Sceptics Forums that are now open. Initially, they became a spam magnet so we temporarily closed them. However, we’ve found a team of people wiling to serve as moderators so the Forums are back up and running. Any problems, email the Lockdown Sceptics webmaster Ian Rons here.
“Mask Exempt” Lanyards
I thought I’d create a new permanent slot down here for people who want to buy (or make) a “Mask Exempt” lanyard/card. You can print out and laminate a fairly standard one for free here and it has the advantage of not explicitly claiming you have a disability. But if you have no qualms about that (or you are disabled), you can buy a lanyard from Amazon saying you do have a disability/medical exemption here (now showing it will arrive between Sept 8th to 19th). The Government has instructions on how to download an official “Mask Exempt” notice to put on your phone here. You can get a “Hidden Disability” tag from eBay here and an “exempt” card that looks like as if it’s been issued by the NHS for just £2.79 from Etsy here.
Don’t forget to sign the petition on the UK Government’s petitions website calling for an end to mandatory face nappies in shops here.
A reader has started a website that contains some useful guidance about how you can claim legal exemption.
Meanwhile, there is a land, far away, where the mask-wearing lunatics haven’t yet taken over the asylum. It’s called Holland. More here.
Stop Press: No, wait. From 9am this morning face nappies have been made mandatory in parts of Amsterdam.
Shameless Begging Bit
Thanks as always to those of you who made a donation in the past 24 hours to pay for the upkeep of this site. If you feel like donating, however small the sum, please click here. And if you want to flag up any stories or links I should include in future updates, email me here.
And Finally…
The weekly London Calling podcast that I do with James Delingpole is a day late this week because when we recorded it on Monday I forgot to press the record button! Needless to say, it was the best one we’ve ever done. Anyway, we re-recorded it yesterday and you can listen to it here. Quite a lot of the discussion is devoted to asking whether we should formally apologise for so enthusiastically backing Boris. I imagine a scene in which I’m standing outside the Pearly Gates, pleading for admission, and God says to me: “Well, you helped set up four schools, you founded the Free Speech Union, you’re devoted husband and loving father, you give money to beggars, you’ve done a certain amount for charity… but you did write this 5,000 panegyric about Boris Johnson. Sorry, that’s a dealbreaker. Down you go.”
You can listen to it here. And if you enjoy it, please do subscribe.
Discussion
Comments
This week across the site:
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My idea to spread the word: if they want masks let’s give them masks everyone should start wearing one around their arm like a captains arm band with a message sharpied on it like “ the government is lying” or something to that effect
https://qactus.fr/2020/08/03/q-scoop-le-juge-des-referes-condamne-la-ville-de-strasbourg/
“Eureka! France: Court orders city of Strasbourg to remove requirement of mask-wearing in public spaces! Wearing a mask is unjustified because of the absence of a health emergency and the order to wear a mask infringes upon the right to a private life”
And only from France
Bloody hell! Human rights law actually comes in useful for something!
Definitely should repost on today’s page (now up).
New LS News now available.
Thanks Toby!
It is disappointing that there is no real reporting with data about the current upsurge of cases in Europe which would be of utmost interest to analyse whether it is the last phase of the first wave, the second wave or a testing artefact.
You would first need data clean without serology tests, which seems to be reported together with PCR cases in some countries.
You would then need the percentage of PCR test positive of all test done, then asymptomatic or not, and if test being part of surveillance/occupational health screening or tests required by patients with symptoms. Then assessment whether cases have been abroad. Then new Covid-19 hospitalizations and deaths from Covid-19 (and deaths should be from new cases, not deaths occurring late from the first peak). Finally, information in which locality the cases occurred and whether it corresponds or not with the primary outbreak.
You would think ECDC would have that information but can’t find any useful information anywhere. Governments now imposing local lockdowns or restrictions and new quarantines from different countries should be guided by these data in the first place.
Spain clearly have an upsurge in all categories above and also a real outbreak… Read more »
I won’t buy the blame game. My personal reason for not giving a s is that we are talking about a flu like ‘disease’ with an IFR of 0,1-0,2 % with an incubation period of about 4 days and some sort of closure after three weaks…
about 1% or a little more of the population everywhere dies every year..
Does anyone else wonder if we will eventually get coronovirus denier laws and prison sentences? There don’t seem to be many more routes left for our glorious leaders to weazle their way out of this lie, while avoiding their own well-deserved prison sentences. (Note I am absolutely not making any comparison to the Holocaust)
Anything is possible, TBP. In a land where it is illegal to visit your friends or relatives in their own home… Anything.
I wonder how easy it would be to buy the staff uniform of your favourite supermarket.
You could go in unmasked and totally unchallenged. You could aslo stand at the door announcing no mask required, do what you like kind of thing.
And if you could come up with a good enough excuse, you could refuse entry to anyone wearing a mask!
haha…like it
This would be hilarious – if we weren’t being held to ransom because of it:
Rupert Soames, the boss of outsourcing giant Serco has defended the fact that the average contact tracer has contacted 2.4 people each, as part of the test-and-trace system, saying it is “improving all the time”.
Serco’s chief executive, told Today:
“Let me tell you, we’ve got 10 Nightingale hospitals lying vacant, we’ve got 30,000 ventilators that are not being used. The government has to start somewhere with capacity and the fact is that we’ve got too much capacity, or more capacity than we need right here, right now, today.
But, naturally, the government has taken a decision to over-provide to begin with on the basis that we can always reduce it.
I mean, we could increase the number of calls per agent by reducing the number of agents who are there and I am pretty sure that the government, over the coming weeks, is going to start reducing the number that we have. But you would expect it to start at a high level and then try to adapt it.”
(From Grad live)
Nobody to track = nobody to trace
What???
@TobyYoung it would be good if you could try and promote the site via parler. Not a single post from you since 24th June.
The first beavers to live wild in Britain for centuries are to be allowed to remain in their new home on the River Otter in east Devon after a five-year reintroduction trial.
The government gave permission on Thursday for the reestablished colony to remain in the area, the first wild breeding of beavers in 400 years and the first legally sanctioned reintroduction of an extinct native mammal to England.
Is Mutt Wankock in charge of wildlife now? Allowed and permission, sound eerily familiar!
it’s in the name wancock, river Otter, by Ottery St. Mary.
May be worth signing this petition as one way to start holding the government to account:
Come clean about PPE and publish all the contracts
https://actionnetwork.org/forms/ppe-procurement
No. PPE, testing capacity, too slow into lockdown, too fast out of lock down, Dominic Cummings and Barnard Castle… all neat little distractions from the main event. The government want us to focus on operational details so that we don’t pay attention to the elephant. Labour are playing this game, I won’t.
Headline in the Irish Independent (paywall so I haven’t linked):
“Diminished cancer services and fears of 130pc increase in waiting lists: The Covid disaster health chiefs want to keep secret”
Apart from describing it is a “Covid” disaster as opposed to a lockdown disaster, the media in Ireland is finally waking up.
Off topic – or is it? I’ve got Office 2016 via a Microsoft account I bought on Ebay. Notice pops up “password needs updating”. No worries, it’s happened before, just log in and change it. Ooh look – they want me to have an app and provide a phone number for ‘authentication’. Funny that should happen just now. Fortunately, the licence cost £1.49, so it will be easy to say goodbye.
Two-factor authentication has been rolling out for a while now. It’s definitely a way of harvesting mobile numbers, but I imagine that’s more for spam than tracking.
I don’t want Bill ringing me when I’m washing my hair, so it’ll either be a licence key or open source for me.
I feel the same – fortunately you can also authenticate via an app so I use my work iPad instead.
Amazon, eBay, PayPal – they’re all after your mobile. I say No. Is there no alternative method for MS-Office, via email or something? How are people without a mobile manage going to manage this?
At a quick look, it appears to be just App or phone call, can’t be arsed delving into it. They’re not getting either of them.
Got email from paypal making the registering of your phone number mandatory – wonder why???!!!
So blatant what they are up to – get details by any means necessary.. stop online shopping if you don’t provide a phone number..
Paypal doing the same, asking for mobile number..
Track & trace cannot work because the numbers don’t work. If a large proportion of cases are asymptomatic, most cases will never even be identified. Say 60% straight off missed. Then tracing is always less than perfect – say 70% which means 30% missed. Then there’s false negatives in testing – said to be as high as 30%. You can model it simply, and very quickly in an active epidemic T&T has no real effect. Governments were fooled by South Korea, where whatever led to low cases, it wasn’t T&T.
An Innate resistance or immunity mistaken as ‘asymptomatic infection’ I suspect.
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/london-in-limbo-can-the-capital-survive-this-crisis
Calling for the government to rule out another national lockdown or a London lockdown, because “To view this pandemic as a binary of health vs economics would be misguided. We now know that lockdown causes severe economic and wider health costs.” (emphasis mine)
I just do not understand why we keep hearing things like this. What did people think would happen if people were confined to their homes and prevented from carrying out work, education and leisure activities and denied access to healthcare? How, how, how can it come as such a surprise? I have zero knowledge or interest in economics but it was glaringly obvious to me from day one that this would be the result. I just don’t get it!
What gave you the idea that people “think” as a matter of course?
Haven’t read the article because I don’t subscribe to the Spec, but often “we now know that ….” is a euphemism from someone who has said something all along for “you [finally, you halfwits] can’t any longer dispute that…”
Yes, if in March you had predicted it (as we, in fact, all did), the ‘midwits’ would have said “There is no evidence for that..” or “where is your data?”.
Even worse you were undoubtedly a ‘granny-killer’ who put the profit of evil corporations above people’s lives (said in as shrill a voice as possible…).
“We now know”
Funnily enough, I was saying this from the start. Now, admittedly, I’m not an economist or a health expert. However, it seemed pretty obvious to me from the start that it’s the economy which pays for (via taxes) and provides for (via productivity) the health service. This is before we even take into account any of the other hundreds of obvious things the economy does that are related to well-being.
I know it’s the Daily Fail but if they say 10% of covid-19 deaths to be removed from the numbers you can bet it’s a lot more in reality:
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8599213/Thousands-Covid-19-deaths-wiped-governments-official-toll-counting-fiasco.html
Heneghan is hitting just the right tone I think, not naked scepticism but spreading it wherever he goes.
Exactly. I’ve had responses from friends who will listen to him where they are turned off by more direct sceptics such as Wittkowski, because he isn’t dogmatic about the situation but just questioning and unassertive.
Different approaches work in different situations and with different people, basically.
I think for people who are very frightened (or as I suspect is more the case now, who are embarrassed about how frightened they’ve been) he allows them a way out.
One thing I’ve learned in all the campaigning I’ve done over the years, nobody is ever going to say, ‘thank you for that, I am totally wrong, and you are right, what on earth was I thinking?’ – it just doesn’t happen. People need a graceful exit. We all hate being wrong, and I think as this goes on we’re going to have to resist the temptation to rub it in and say ‘I told you so’.
Indeed, and that’s very frustrating for those who have had to put up with as much outright stupidity, costly nonsense and literal abuse as we have for resisting their idiocy.
Agreed, it’s really hard.
True. There is also the Yin and Yang method. Either a slow realisation or a thump on the back jolting you into enlightenment. Either way the conversation you have after is a lot easier
Well said!
It’s not a bad article and the comments are very encouraging.
Ahhh! numbers!
The world is governed by numbers. There are 9.6 million Jehovas witnesses on the planet and the number at the heart of their beliefs is 144,000–no more no less. This is the number of people who will go to heaven, the remainder having to live out their lives by re-birth in a paradise on earth.
If nine million people voluntarily believe this— and we are talking intelligent, educated, well off decent sorts—does it come as any surprise when governments the world over use numbers (any old rubbish, it doesn’t matter) to further their nefarious aims?
Use the evidence of your eyes and experience to guide your judgement. Numbers can mean anything and everything to those who weaponise them.
This article suggests it should be a lot more in America – no doubt much the same here: https://childrenshealthdefense.org/news/if-covid-fatalities-were-90-2-lower-how-would-you-feel-about-schools-reopening/
https://www.nber.org/papers/w27608#fromrss
A rather intriguing study from US using smart phones to localize staff working in multiple location despite rules against in outbreaks
“The full extent of staff connections between nursing homes—and the crucial role these connections serve in spreading a highly contagious respiratory infection—is currently unknown given the lack of centralized data on cross-facility nursing home employment. In this paper, we perform the first large-scale analysis of nursing home connections via shared staff using device-level geolocation data from 30 million smartphones, and find that 7 percent of smartphones appearing in a nursing home also appeared in at least one other facility—even after visitor restrictions were imposed. “
“Results suggest that eliminating staff linkages between nursing homes could reduce COVID-19 infections in nursing homes by 44 percent”
Quite likely a contributing factor in what happened in care homes in Sweden – lots of people here on multiple part-time contracts in different homes.
Some people are saying Labour should be getting the tories by using the real data and all the stuff talked about on here but Starmer is one of them bought and paid for secret government types. Just like Corbyn was a MI5 agent. All angles are covered by the state. Everything that our culture debates and argues over is all controlled by the same hand. The only debate not allowed is personal autonomy. No question of a massive downsize of the government and a return to a free market. No question that us humans can lives our lives to the best of our own abilities left alone to enjoy or not our own work. We are prisoners in a world wide economic prison where the state makes the rules and the public, most of whom are only too happy, guard themselves. We pay for our own tyranny.
I’m afraid that only a handful of people understand what we are even missing out on, most haven’t the scoobiest they are still being treated like school children. Oh and don’t be thinking i’m alright jack, fuck it i’m loaded because this isn’t about money or careers but about your right on planet… Read more »
And use cash while you can
Up with Anarchy!
Except doesn’t work:
‘In 1997, Albania fell into a state of anarchy, mainly due to the heavy losses of money caused by the collapse of pyramid firms. As a result of the societal collapse, heavily armed criminals roamed freely with near total impunity. There were often 3–4 gangs per city, especially in the south, where the police did not have sufficient resources to deal with gang-related crime.’
Seems to me people on the left should be looking for some genuine politicos to support instead of Labour just as much as those on the right like me should be looking for an alternative to the right of the “Conservatives”. Some meaningful choices needed in our politics.
You could argue for the LibDems or Greens on the left I suppose, but the former seem as coopted as ConLab, and the latter too loony (but it’s not my opinion that counts, there). On the right there was UKIP and other Brexit parties, but they were single issue and that issue (hopefully) is decided, or will be soon. There’s the odd fringe nationalist party on the right, sch as EDL etc, but nothing yet that strikes the correct tone for me, at least.
Of course, party politics can only get us so far. It’s more about a generally bolshy and uncooperative attitude towards governmental nonsense imo.
The SDP? They are a bit leftish economically for my taste, but given what we see the Tories doing currently on that front it can’t be much worse, and they seem sounder on social issues, immigration, nation states, freedom of speech (sounder if you’re “right wing” on those issues, that is…).
Didn’t like the SDP back when they were big, so haven’t paid much attention to them now they are fringe. I suspect there would be a place for them if you live in a strongly Labour constituency where the best you can hope for is some social conservative sanity combined with leftish economics, based on your description.
Hi Biker,
I effectively spelled it out for Kier Starmer in a letter at the beginning of May, here’s part of it:
“I’m not writing this to ‘score points’ over one party, I am not a member of any political party so I have no ‘ulterior motive’, I’m simply writing because it seems that we are sleepwalking into a socioeconomic disaster and only a minority of people is speaking up about it. There seems to have been unthinking, blanket acceptance that the lockdown is the ‘right thing to do’, yet the objective evidence seems to say otherwise.
Many people say that Covid19 is the biggest threat that this country has faced for decades, yet according to the science that doesn’t appear to be the case, it would appear that there have been similar outbreaks in the recent past that have not received such attention, for example, there were approximately 50,000 excess deaths in 2017-2018 according to the ONS.
On the contrary, the biggest threat that this country has faced for decades is the government’s panic and irrational response that threatens the life and livelihoods of thousands of people.
The government’s policy appears to be short-sighted at best and… Read more »
Good points all. I think you meant millions rather than thousands in several places thuogh.
Brilliant Kevin. I have suggested a forum section (under Politics ….) for posting letters to MPs. I posted one I sent to Sir Graham Brady there yesterday. Maybe you could post this there for the record?
Good stuff, Kevin. But we all know, it all gets ignored. The only thing that will shift any of them is if they really, really think they are going to lose votes. Then they will turn on a sixpence. Look at my town; it votes Labour, that’s it. Grooming gangs, bent MPs, you name it, they still vote Labour. If you installed Adolf Hitler as Labour leader today, with the Ku Klux Klan as shadow cabinet, they would vote Labour in an election tomorrow. Lost.
Starmer is likely paid ‘opposition’. I read a while back that the reason Kinnock’s family has been and continues to be so well-provided for in the EU is that he was ‘groomed’ by people higher up to *play the role* of a ‘useless’ opposition leader, on the promise that he would subsequently be ‘well looked-after’, and that has proved to be the case…
https://tolonews.com/health/10m-covid-19-cases-afghanistan-health-ministry
“I have argued that Afghanistan has hit herd immunity. There is even less doubt now as a small local antibody test has shown that 31.5% of the surveyed have been infected.”
https://twitter.com/Covid19Crusher/status/1291261970918891521/photo/1
Afghanistan 37000 cases 1300 deaths and estimated 10 million infected
From a comment I read. Old man with lots of health issues, including difficulty breathing. Also partially deaf. Would his doctor give him a mask exemption? No. Instead doctor wrote him a prescription for an FFFP1! No chance here to print a lanyard off the internet. So the man puts on the mask but doesn’t cover his nose and queues up at the fish counter in a supermarket. Woman beside him in the queue asks him to wear his mask properly. “Did I ask you if your grandmother rode a bicycle?” says the man. Now there’s an answer to shut up a busybody. Only it didn’t. The woman selling fish put in her tuppenceworth. The security guard is called. (For an old man whose wife’s on crutches, mind you.) But the old man puts the security guard in his place too. “The law says I’ve to wear a mask. Look, I’m wearing one. It doesn’t say anything about how or where. End of story.”
Yep, he’s right.
The legislation describes the face coverings that are acceptable and says they have to be worn.
Nothing in the legislation says it must be on the face or covering the nose for mouth or worn as per manufacturer’s instructions – which would be good a step back of mask boxes state “not for medical use” or “not to be sued as PPE” or “no protection against viruses” .
Definition of the verb “to wear” on merriam Webster:
transitive verb
1
: to bear or have on the person
The Mail and The Sun appearing to be turning.
Add in the Nick Triggle piece and Newsnight yesterday.
Sorry, replied to wrong post but good news anyway.
https://www.volkskrant.nl/nieuws-achtergrond/vertrouwelijk-rivm-rapport-ventilatiesysteem-verspreidde-virus-in-verpleeghuis~bdc4943d/?referer=https%3A%2F%2Ft.co%2FgaNVfrni0s%3Famp%3D1&utm_campaign=shared_earned&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter
“This is big: Confidential study by Dutch scientific advisory board concluded that HVAC system (and hence aerosols) played a role in outbreaks in nursing homes.”
“All employees wore surgical masks btw (except during breaks). To be sure, the document says the evidence is “suggestive of aerosol transmission” & that more research is being done before the final conclusions are published. But they have alerted nursing homes abt the findings.”
https://twitter.com/KoenSwinkels/status/1291104557330837504/photo/1
This is a google translation from Dutch..They found virus in the ventilation system
I think it was Prof John Nichols, who called this as the route to transmission, way back in early March. Their studies from the SARS outbreak, had found poor plumbing and ventilation had spread the virus through buildings.
And perhaps Alexander Lukashenko Belarus about risk in schools
Open the windows!
The absolute state of full fact, they are at it AGAIN!!! https://fullfact.org/health/local-guide-covid-cases/
They elide cases and ‘infections, and do not talk about hospitalisations and deaths, let alone the unreliability of the PCR test, or indeed what it is testing for.
You can annoy them with the little feedback button at the bottom of the article.
“Was this item (?) useful to you ?” No.
“Why not ?”
Replied ‘you do not tell us of the greatly reduced number of deaths”
Done, thanks. Every little helps.
Me too.
Replied with a bit pinched from here:
PCR tests currently being carried out in the UK can’t distinguish between the live replicating virus and non-infectious viral debris.
PCR test results are completely unjustified and may be based on results from people who have already ‘zapped’ the virus some time ago.
https://www.cebm.net/covid-19/are-you-infectious-if-you-have-a-positive-pcr-test-result-for-covid-19/
I’ve said this before but I can’t see this going away now until the weather warms up next year. If the measures are getting worse during the height of summer, what do you think is going to happen when flu season arrives and it inevitably gets conflated with the coronavirus?
https://www.theage.com.au/national/victoria/elderly-residents-to-return-to-site-of-deadliest-covid-19-outbreak-20200805-p55itd.html
“Elderly people including some still infected with COVID-19 will be returned to the site of Australia’s deadliest outbreak as early as this weekend under a repatriation plan being developed by St Basil’s Homes for the Aged and the federal government.”
Melbourne is following NYC,UK style of emptying hospitals to receive younger patients by sending elderly infected patients back to the community(care homes). You do not need to be an epidemiologist to know the end result.
not enough dead in Australia to satisfy the globalists so they’ll just have to send sick old people out as weapons to kill loads of old people. The most repugnant thing of all being your average nurse or doctor goes along with it. They shouldn’t be excused. You couldn’t use the i’m only following orders excuse in a war tribunal so you shouldn’t be allowed to in this case especially when you’ve handed over people you know will kill others. or maybe every scarier than that is these doctors and nurse don’t know what they’re doing.
Morning All!
Here’s a thought.
The big social media platforms are avowedly left leaning.
They had egg on their faces when their ‘own’ data was used by Trump and the Brexit campaign to target advertising at specific groups likely to support these campaigns for different reasons.
Post-2017 they have changed their model from being an organic ‘public square’ for sharing ideas to a media channel where ‘approved’ ideas are pushed onto people.
What are so many of our colleagues and neighbours so successfully fearful or compliant or unquestioning of the handling of the plague? Because they have been coerced by social media content designed to appeal to their personality types?
These platforms have simultaneously launched a ‘woke’ broadside where outlandish left wing ideas are being peddled (eg defund the police).
Anyone who shows any ability to think critically or questions any of these narratives is dismissed as a right wing nutter or an anti-vaxxer.
It’s been going on for ages. I was perma banned on twitter for saying men can’t be women (hate speech), and I was suspended on facebook for a week, with no warning whatsoever, on the same topic, when pointing out that putting men (who think they are women) in women’s prisons might be a bad idea, because men commit (I quoted the data) 99% of all sexual crime, and there is no evidence *anywhere* that a fervent belief that you are not male changes this fact, and as confirmed by the MoJ, over 50% of trans inmates are sex offenders. This violated their ‘hate speech’ rules.
People can however share violent porn, illegal porn, and revenge porn, including child sex abuse on Facebook and it doesn’t violate their community standards. Particularly in this area, there is a really nefarious angle to wokeness, which is about breaking down boundaries in terms of access to vulnerable women and children, and nine times out of ten, if you look at who is really promoting it, they tend to be dodgy as f**k (see the recent case of https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8568833/Paedophile-Labour-councillor-worked-childrens-home-walks-free.html)
Exactly the same thing happened as is happening with lockdown, and the insanity is… Read more »
Do what i do and tell anyone who says to me that i’m right wing explain to them how right wing isn’t right wing enough for me and i had my way i’d dismantle almost every single thing the government does and you’d be left to work and live from your own efforts taking nothing of mine to hand out to others and people who haven’t made provisions for themselves in old age or sickness. Tell them they are cowards hiding behind the government guns and they make you feel like puking blood. Surprisingly i’m still well liked by my friends, most people already feel what i just said but they haven’t the courage to say it or even admit it but we all know what’s mine is mine and you embarrass yourself if you try and claim otherwise.
That kind of shit to a lefty or a conformist just blows their mind leaving them speechless and yet filled with more virtue so they can lie with more conviction that they aren’t just as self interested as i am.
I’m definitely in favour of natural justice when it comes to child abuse, and rape, our court system is entirely broken. I think we’d then see a large drop in sex crimes, because there’d actually be consequences.
“First they came for the racists, the homophobes and the sexists…etc”
Hate speech was always the beginning of the end of political freedom of speech, It’s just that most people were too stupid, hypocritical or intentionally corrupt to grasp that the cant they endlessly repeated when it suited their purposes actually had real meaning and applied in this case. Once you start to infringe liberty by intolerance of opinions you dislike, you open the door for creeping oppression, which will spread inexorably to other areas.
We saw it spread first to be used against non-“racist” opponents of mass immigration generally (the always intended targets) and to Brexit advocates, then to feminists who fell foul of the “homophobia” nonsense in relation to trans stuff, and then we saw the structures developed for use against “hate speech” used against supposed “misinformation” to suppress dissent against the coronapanic.
Either you have complete political freedom of speech, or you have tools for censorship that will fall into the hands of zealots,, eventually. And the supposed distinction between state censorship and “cancel culture” censorship is in practice nonsense as well. You are just as effectively censored if it’s imposed by systematic cultural intolerance as by… Read more »
agree
I know, it’s the Sun let’s hope more of the MSM sites keep running this:
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/12325214/coronavirus-death-review-lower-toll/
But this is weird.
Matt Hancock will now step in and bring the figures in line with Scotland and Northern Ireland, who only count a death as Covid-related if it occurs 28 days after a person tests positive.
A second weekly measure, which records fatalities within 60 days of infection, will also be established.
It’s as though the government is reluctantly accepting the 28 days cutoff, but just in case it makes the figures look too good, it’s going to draw attention to a ‘worse’ set of figures with a 60 day cutoff. They didn’t have to create that 60-day tier, and no one would have criticised them for it.
An insight into the government’s motivations? It really does look as though they want to keep it looking as bad as possible, even when given an ‘out’.
I don’t see why there should be an arbitrary cut off time, it’s not like it’s hard to test the deceased for COVID-19… Just f’king quid padding the numbers—the one thing no epidemiologist would ever consider prior to COVID-19!
it’s not like it’s hard to test the deceased for COVID-19
Are you sure about that? Isn’t that one of the main topics we discuss? It’s possible to test for the presence of fragments of RNA up to 83 days after the person shows symptoms, but whether or not that equates to them having ‘Covid 19’ is another – philosophical – question. It’s possible to test for antibodies, but some infectees don’t develop them, or they fade because the disease isn’t serious.
And whether it was Covid which killed the deceased is a whole other dimension.
Well, you have the choice between T cell reactivity, antibody, and PCR, and you choose an arbitrary cut off point in time? Which is the one likely to be least reliable?
But I don’t know what it is that you’re trying to do ‘reliably’? If the aim is to ‘test for a Covid-19 death’ then it seems to me that none of them is reliable. But the cutoff of 28 days makes ‘it’ slightly more reliable!
I didn’t say reliable, as though reliability is binary, I said don’t use least reliable (to the point that it’s actually entirely arbitrary).
I thought that was very strange too. What are they playing at? No prizes for guessing which set of figures the MSM will be reporting.
It’s arse covering. Handcock admitted on TV in April that there was no study for the effects of lockdown, before going into it. I believe the SAGE minutes confirm this?
If the figures begin to show that a lot of these deaths might not have been been caused Covid1984, then we, the general public have a right to know what caused them.
https://www.idonotcomply.org/about sharing in case useful to anyone else.
https://twitter.com/mgmgomes1/status/1291162358962937857
This is extraordinary. A scientist who has already published several articles discussing reduced herd immunity for Sars-Cov 2
Now her latest paper being rejected because
“Given the implications for public health, it is appropriate to hold claims around the herd immunity threshold to a very high evidence bar, as these would be interpreted to justify relaxation of interventions, potentially placing people at risk.”
Her commets seems reasonable
Her paper said
“Building on a model-based analysis of 4 European countries we elaborate on the prospects for the pandemic to be resolved by the end of 2020. Our analysis suggests that herd immunity thresholds are being achieved despite strict social distancing measures.”
Her argument
“I would not dream to suggest that policy should be guided by these views alone, but shouldn’t this be a factor among others in debates and decisions about public strategies.”
What is going on? This is very disturbing if dissenting papers are censored in scientific journals. I find it very disturbing.
It’s happened before, regarding statins.
Doesn’t follow the government narratives so anyone wanting for the covid fear story to continue will be happy to discredit such an article.
It’s very scary, no critical thinking allowed anymore. And forget about common sense!
Censorship is real
It happens with Climate ‘Science’. Husband was a well-established academic in energy sphere and was publicly vilified and his work censored. There was a very political left-wing – actually Marxist – agenda, and the mantra ‘you just have to believe’. That agenda comes first, and ‘the science’ that backs up that agenda only is used. He quit as an academic in the early 2000s.
They do even worse with counter-AGW narrative
Dissenting papers are always censored, there’s too much money involved.
That reference to the herd immunity threshold is highly ironic. The standard ‘herd immunity threshold’ is derived from an ultra-simple, artificial model without any evidence whatsoever, except its own output. It is not derived from real world data. Gomes suggests a more sophisticated model that better fits real world data. It seems to me that Gomes is getting a lot closer to that “very high evidence bar” than Neil Ferguson.
Toby may enjoy a video I saw last night about The Rise of the Midwit, because it is illustrated with an image of Adam Rutherford.
This is a term I hadn’t heard before, but according to the video it refers to a person who is above average intelligence but not as far as being super-intelligent. The presenter’s thesis is that these people are now in possession of dumbed-down doctorates, and running the universities – with devastating results.
It highlights some of this person’s traits:
Conformity. The idea is that increasing intelligence does have some correlation with increasing social and intellectual conformity, up to a point. These people don’t go past that point, and therefore cannot tolerate non-conformity, and are unable to see it as potentially a good, necessary thing in others. ‘Liberal’ values. Another correlation with intelligence up to a certain point. While the more intelligent are not particularly concerned with such trivialities, the ‘midwit’ again sees it as central to his mission. Credentialism. These people aren’t really intellectually equipped to seek the ‘truth’, so their version of an argument is the trading of credentials. An aspect of this is that in their view, people from outside a field… Read more »
Interesting and gives a lot of food for thought. Unsurprisingly I see a lot of these traits in my in-laws both of who were university lecturers – they were experts in their field but sadly were not really in tune with the real world. My late mother-in-law especially was disparaging about people in business and couldn’t seem to comprehend that without businesses turning in profits there would be nothing to pay her salary and all those public services she claims to want to save.
The description also fits in with a lot of my colleagues especially those in the millenial age bracket. The first two is especially entrenched as its something they’ve grown up with and which they have carried into our workplace which seems (at least to me) for them to be an extension of university. They don’t seem to like to hear the opposing view and use their antisocial media accounts to virtue signal and jump on every fashionable bandwagon possible.
I haven’t seen the video, but this is I think an interesting and perceptive post.
It ties in with my hypothesis that these people have infiltrated all our institutions (i.e. all public and much corporate life), and now hold sway. Truly independent thinkers are weeded out as ‘not being team players’, resistant to change’ when they refuse to go along with orthodoxy, and the like.
Hence the utter failure of our institutions to deal with even a relatively small upset such as CV. With the weakness of our institutions, this further ties in with my hypothesis that eventually we were going to suffer this collapse, this collective nervous breakdown, anyway; and that CV has just the vehicle, not the cause.
A little while ago I recall a discussion I had on here concerning the correlation (or lack of) between intelligence and the capacity for independent thought. I can’t be certain, but it may have been you or Bart S. who replied?
Yes, someone posted a link to this excellent piece:
http://paulgraham.com/conformism.html
I think Toby highlighted it in his round-up the next day.
Interesting article. And all fairly apparent if you think about it. Just about everyone on here is on the RHS of the axis I am sure – which is consistent with us still being a minority
More worrying is the fact that common purpose graduates infest the public sector.
There’s also The Peter Principle at work: something along the lines that people are being promoted to their level of incompetence.
“An aspect of this is that in their view, people from outside a field cannot comment on fields they are not formally qualified in; their arguments are not admissible.”
Haven’t seen the video so I don’t know if he makes the connection, but that does tie in with the”woke” idea that you have to live someone’s life or lifestyle in order to be able to comment on it. So only black people can talk about black lives, only women, women’s lives, only perverts, homosexual lives,etc etc. But of course, that is only applied to negative or non-woke commentary – the woke are perfectly entitled to say woke things about other lives and lifestyles.
But a major aspect of humanity is that life is about learning to understand by proxy rather than just direct experience, by experience and intelligence and empathy.