How to Keep Pubs and Schools Open? Merge Them
This piece in the Daily Mash is quite funny.
TEACHERS have announced that they would be willing to relocate schools to pubs as a compromise to keep both open.
As scientists warned that curbing coronavirus might mean closing pubs so schools can operate normally, educators have volunteered to teach classes from behind the bar.
Primary teacher Lauren Hewitt said: “The wellbeing of children is at the forefront of everything I do as a teacher, and drinking heavily is at the heart of everything I do out of school.
“It’s a visionary solution. There are blackboards at both, beer gardens can double as playgrounds, dividing up a bill between six is a maths exercise, and the kids can go on Tripadvisor to review the pub for their creative writing.
Worth reading in full.
Victorian Police Chief Threatens to Smash Car Windows and Drag People Out for “Non-Compliance”
This video is pretty shocking. A black-shirted police chief in Victoria threatens to break car windows and drag out the occupants if they refuse to tell police officers why they’re out of their homes. Chilling.
Government’s Test-and-Trace App to be Relaunched
The Government has concluded that the world-beating test-and-trace app it has already spent more than £10 billion on isn’t fit for purpose, something the rest of us concluded long ago. The Times has the story.
Ministers will launch a scaled back version of the coronavirus app this month after accepting that it was not accurate enough to be used for contact tracing.
A version that tells people about infection levels in their area and allows them to use personal information to calculate a risk score will be trialled.
The app was originally developed as an automated form of contact tracing, but is likely to begin instead as an individualised information and advice service informing people about their personal exposure to coronavirus.
The functions being explored include alerting users when they have been in contact with more people than usual.
While Bluetooth signalling showing that phones have been near each other is not yet trusted as a basis for instructing people to self-isolate for two weeks, officials hope that giving people data on how many close contacts they have could encourage them to stick to social distancing guidance.
These new functions are due to be tested in trials in coming weeks with the hope of having an app available nationwide in time for winter. NHS Test and Trace is planning to launch an app with whichever functions prove effective, in the hope of being able to add automated contact tracing later.
The service has previously announced plans to allow people to book coronavirus tests through the app and use it to scan Quick Response codes at pubs and restaurants so patrons can be alerted if other customers test positive. Although contact tracing was the original stated aim of the app, it is now being downplayed by a business plan that refers to the technology as an “app that supports the end-to-end NHS Test and Trace service”.
The revival of the app came as Times Radio uncovered evidence that some contact tracers have done minimal work since the NHS Track and Trace programme was launched three months ago. One said: “Since mid-May I’ve done two calls. I know some people who’ve had no calls in that time and some who’ve had four or five . . . Most of the time you sit around and watch Netflix.”
£10 billion of taxpayers’ money up in flames so tens of thousands of people can sit around watching Netflix all day. Couldn’t they have done that at home?
Worth re-reading yesterday’s magisterial round-up of the failures of trace-and-test apps around the world by our very own test-and-trace app correspondent.
Stop Press: Richard Dobbs, former McKinsey Director, has devised an ingenious way of measuring the effectiveness of the Govt’s test-and-trace app in the Spectator. According to his Harding-Hancock Test, it’s not faring well.
My initial estimate is that at the moment, Harding-Hancock Efficiency is at a potentially catastrophic level of less than 5 per cent for England. That means that for every person successfully isolated, there are around 20 not isolated, potentially spreading the infection.
Ambulances Reluctant to Take People to A&E
A reader with a friend who works in the care department of a Midlands local authority has passed on an alarming bit of intel.
Another reason for increased home deaths I’ve come across is the practices of ambulance crews. I’ve visited people who are having some sort of crisis or relapse and are waiting for an ambulance. The crews are still operating on the basis of treating people at home and only very reluctantly taking them to A&E. This is the policy still, despite the crisis having passed months ago of no critical care beds. Previously the policy was “if in doubt take them to A&E”.
One of the crew members said last month that they haven’t been so unoccupied in his career.
How Reliable is the PCR Test?
A scientist has got in touch to weigh in on the subject that’s been debated on these pages over the last couple of days: How reliable is the PCR test?
Having read Lockdown Sceptics today, I thought I’d add in a bit more about screening. I’m senior scientist in a biotech company and have been involved in some diagnostic development so have some experience in this area.
This is a useful article that explains some of the issues with the PCR test in relatively understandable language.
Although I don’t think there is much doubt about SARS-CoV-2 causing COVID-19, your reader is absolutely right to be concerned about false positives in PCR screening.
The main focus on understanding the PCR test’s performance is on the high “false negative”, which means that the test isn’t very sensitive, i.e. many patients with virus don’t test positive. However, what I cannot seem to find within the literature (and maybe another reader can point me in the right direction) is what the “false positive” rate is. All the studies I can find are on patients with COVID-19 and working out how often the test fails to identify them as infected (depending on sample type, between 10 and 70% of the time). But I can’t find a study where a large number of known negatives patient samples have been screened to work out how many would come out as positive. This is assumed, probably reasonably given the nature of the test, to be low and that a positive result probably indicates you have the virus, meaning the test is quite selective. But the actual false positive rate for the test is either not known or is very difficult to find, especially in the context of screening labs where they do handle positive samples and so there is also the risk of cross-contamination.
So what the problem? It is this: we base policy decisions on positive results and not negative ones.
To illustrate the issue, imagine we have a false positive rate of 0.1%, i.e. 1 in 1000 results. Pretty impressive for a test. However, we are screening 10,000s of individuals. If within this screening population there are a lot of infections then the 1 in 1000 false positives is not an issue as it is lost among the multitudes of true positive results. Even the false negatives are not too much of an issue as trends within such an infected population are probably meaningful. However, what if you screened 30,000 individuals without COVID-19? Then you’d get 30 positive results. In fact, at a large population level you can never get to a “0” and COVID-19 will be with us forever!
Given that policy decisions affecting millions of people are being based on small changes in positive results within a large sample size then understanding both your false positive rate and false negative rate is really important in deciding if a trend is real or just statistical noise based on screening artefacts. The errors (over- and under-estimates) are really critical in deciding if there is a trend: is 19 positive tests in 30,000 tests different from 24 positives in 28,000? What are the error bars on the tests? Taking it for granted that all positives are real and that the test is always under-reporting the true figure (based on the false negative rate) is not a safe assumption, especially as we don’t do confirmatory tests in the vast number of cases. However, given Prof. Heneghan’s recent blog regarding the “increase” in COVID-19 cases in England, which was posted earlier in the week, it seems that in England we can’t even normalise data to account for number of screening tests, let alone take a more sophisticated analytical approach which attempts to include an understanding of the analytical error in assessing data trends.
There’s something really dispiriting about his final point. He’s quite right of course. If public health officials can’t even control for increased testing when analysing trends in the testing data, what hope is there of them factoring in something more complicated?
Another reader has got in touch to flag up this letter to the BMJ by Brendan Healey of the Public Health Wales Microbiology Department, warning of the dangers of widespread testing when prevalence is low because of the risk of false negative and false positive results. He concludes that it may cause more harm than good.
The harm afforded by false positive results should not be ignored and the potential for adverse consequences during periods of low prevalence needs to be taken into account when deciding on testing strategies. We recommend that testing strategies need to be more agile and decisions on screening of various populations should be flexible and respond to the changing prevalence in the community/setting that is being investigated. Large volume screening at a time of low prevalence has the potential to do more harm than good and some of these strategies should be temporarily suspended. Some of these strategies are likely to be of greater benefit in interrupting transmission during periods of high prevalence and we propose that they are re-instated when the prevalence in the community or particular settings warrant such an approach.
Finally, a retired Professor of Forensic and Biological Anthropology has got in touch with his thoughts on the PCR test. What’s interesting about this email is the detail concerning how false positives might arise.
I’m writing to comment on PCR tests from a forensic science perspective. DNA based PCR tests used in forensic labs are extremely sensitive – like RNA based RT-PCR tests used to detect Covid-19. They will reliably detect in the region of 10 or fewer copies of the source DNA or RNA. Contamination with intrusive DNA or secondary transfer of DNA is widely recognised as a persistent risk in forensic. The tests are so sensitive it is realistically impossible to totally exclude the possibility of contamination – of the source or during the analytical process. Amplified DNA (PCR product) is a particularly potent source of contamination of the next DNA PCR reaction. The use of appropriate controls at all stages is necessary to reduce the risk of contamination and permit its detection. Unfortunately, there are examples of both lab and scene based incidents of contamination that were not detected until rather late in the prosecutorial process. There has also been a big scandal – involving Randox – of drug control tests allegedly being faked (hence compromising the actual results).
I’ve just been looking over the publicly available NHS Guidance and SOP and – while it does emphasise the need for proper viral containment and describes ‘positive control’ RNA to make sure the reaction has worked and reduce the risk of false negatives – the document offers little or no consideration of contamination or cross-contamination as a cause of false positives. These are systemic issues, not just related to the choice of test kit.
I would be reassured to know what measures the NHS have in place to detect false positives via the inclusion of negative ‘blank’ controls 1) at the virus RNA extraction step, 2) in the RT-PCR reaction step and 3) to detect contamination of the RT-PCR reaction with previously amplified DNA (or other measures, where appropriate); and what the rate of contamination of negative extraction and RT-PCR controls has been during testing.
Frankly, if we are doing 100,000 tests a day, I’d be surprised not to see more than a few contaminated blanks and by implication contamination-based false positives of this kind, but this may have more significance to earlier results, as now there seem to be hardly any covid positive cases left to provide a source of cross-contamination (although in certain circumstances the positive control RNA might).
In such situations, complacency can easily arise.
I’ve been in science and technology for 38 of the last 40 years, and if Boris and Chris Whitty et al. are doing anything based on the science, then sadly I’ve learned nothing.
He concluded by pointing me to a commentary on the PCR test in the International Journal of Molecular Sciences by Stephen Bustin and Tania Nolan published in April. They conclude:
RT-qPCR testing programmes for SARS-CoV-2 are wholly inadequate, poorly organised and surrounded by confusion and misinformation. Comprehensive testing is not hindered by availability of suitable assays, reagents, equipment or testing capacity. It is delays in the bureaucratic validation and approval process and lack of involvement of the wider research and commercial service provider community by public health laboratories that are at the heart of the testing conundrum.
Ouch!
Could Possession of the Bible Become a Hate Crime in Scotland?
There’s an excellent piece by Andrew Doyle in today’s Spectator about the awful Scottish Hate Crime and Public Order Bill. This dreadful Bill promises to make Scotland the least free-speech friendly country in Europe, including Hungary.
Scotland’s new Hate Crime and Public Order Bill was ostensibly proposed to repeal outdated proscriptions against blasphemy, but will instead usher in a range of new blasphemy laws by stealth. Most controversially, part two of the Bill pertains to the offence of ‘stirring up hatred’, which criminalises anyone who ‘behaves in a threatening, abusive or insulting manner’ or ‘communicates threatening, abusive or insulting material to another person’.
Moreover, the Bill explicitly allows for intention to be put aside. If behaviour or material is ‘likely’ to stir up hatred against any protected groups (defined by age, disability, racial or ethnic identity, sexual orientation, transgender identity or ‘variations in sex characteristics’) then whether or not the perpetrator intended to do so is immaterial. Even an actor playing a bigoted character could be prosecuted under the proposed laws. An entire section of the Bill is devoted to the ‘public performance of a play’, which specifies that actors and directors can be found culpable if members of protected groups find the material offensive. So if you are troubled by the anti-Semitism of Shylock’s detractors, or the Islamophobia of Tamburlaine’s decision to burn the Quran, you can complain to the Scottish police. Next year’s Edinburgh Festival should be interesting.
The implications for stand-up comedy are similarly dire. As practitioners of an art form that often teases the limits of public tolerance, comedians frequently find themselves involved in free speech battles. The dean of the Faculty of Advocates, Roddy Dunlop QC, has already warned that stand-up would not be exempt from the SNP’s Bill, and that even an old-fashioned ‘Scotsman, Irishman and Englishman’ joke may be perceived as discriminatory. Certainly, some of the more subversive acts that regularly appear at Comedy Unleashed, a night I co-founded in London, would be at risk of prosecution should they venture north of the border.
The Bill even goes as far as to criminalise the possession of ‘inflammatory’ material, which is why senior Catholic bishops have raised concerns that possession of the Bible could become a criminal offence. Let’s not forget that Leviticus 20:13 calls for the execution of gay men.
It won’t surprise you to learn that the Free Speech Union is vigorously opposing this Bill. We have submitted evidence to the Justice Committee of the Scottish Parliament drawing attention to its shortcomings that you can read here.
Round-Up
- ‘New cancer diagnoses fell sharply as the coronavirus pandemic first hit‘ – Cancer diagnoses in the US fell dramatically between March 1st and April 18th
- ‘McDonald’s nugget horror: Aldershot girl, 6, chokes on blue face mask found inside chicken‘ – The sheer extent of the collateral damage caused by every measure associated with the lockdown continues to surprise me
- ‘Sluggish footfall in first full week of mandatory face coverings‘ – The Retail Gazette reports that the introduction of mandatory face masks in shops only increased footfall by 2.8% compared to the previous week. Footfall is down 36.7% compared to the same week last year
- Alan Jones eviscerates Kim Jong Dan – Marvellous tirade against Victoria state premier Daniel Andrews by Sky News Australia commentator Alan Jones
- ‘COVID-19 Measures Have All but Wiped Out the Flu in the Southern Hemisphere‘ – Interesting piece in the WSJ. Suggests we don’t need to worry about the NHS being overwhelmed this Winter
- ‘Never has a virus been so oversold‘ – Lionel Shriver on top form in the Spectator
- ‘Voters will turn on Boris Johnson if there is a second lockdown‘ – Sherelle Jacobs’ column in the Telegraph is always worth reading
- ‘Checkpoints in New York to keep all visitors out‘ – A taste of things to come?
- ‘Covid Incoherence‘ – Another Medium post by Lockdown Sceptics contributor Omar Khan
- ‘British workers lag behind Europeans in returning to the office‘ – Shock!
- ‘Bank of England: UK economy to have biggest annual decline in 100 years‘ – The Bank of England says it expects the UK’s gross domestic product (GDP) to shrink by 9.5% this year, the worst contraction in a century
- ‘Yorkshire Nightingale Hospital “extended for two weeks”‘ – Harrogate Convention Centre was converted into a Nightingale Hospital and, needless to say, has never been used. The local council faces a £9m deficit as a result of the pandemic, most of which is lost income from the convention centre
Theme Tunes Suggested by Readers
Just one today: “Last Night (I Dreamt I Had a Job)” by Blancmange.
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 9th to 18th). 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.
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. I may not be able to manage an update every day over the next few days as I’m off to Wales today to do some walking in the Brecon Beacons.
And Finally…
In my Spectator column today, I weigh in on the Policy Exchange report laying bear the extent of the Free Speech Crisis in Britain’s universities.
About 18 months ago, I attended a debate at Policy Exchange, the think tank founded by Nick Boles, Francis Maude and Archie Norman, on whether there was a free speech crisis at British universities. One panellist, Professor Jon Wilson of King’s College London, vigorously denied that any such problem existed. Various people pointed to examples of right-of-centre academics being no-platformed — Charles Murray, Amy Wax, Linda Gottfredson — but that was scarcely conclusive. It was anecdotal evidence, not hard data.
The same cannot be said any more. This week, Policy Exchange published a paper by three academics — Remi Adekoya, Eric Kaufmann and Tom Simpson — which proves beyond reasonable doubt that free speech is in trouble in the higher-education sector. They commissioned a YouGov survey involving a randomly-collected sample of more than 800 professors and lecturers, some working, some retired, who represented the 217,000 academic staff in British universities in 2018-9. Surveys of academics have been done before, some involving larger sample sizes, but none as rigorous as this.
Their findings won’t surprise anyone familiar with the sector. For instance, 75 per cent of UK academics voted for left-of-centre parties in the 2017 and 2019 elections, compared with less than 20 per cent who voted right-of-centre. Just over half said they would feel comfortable sitting next to a Leave supporter at lunch, while only 37 per cent said they would risk sharing a table with a dissenter from trans orthodoxy. Among the small minority of academics who identify as ‘right’ or ‘fairly right’, 32 per cent have refrained from airing their views in front of colleagues.
Worth reading in full.
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A pint of ‘Critical Thinking’ is needed for the nation.
First round on Tobes!
From a comment in the Guardian Live. Nice to at least have proof against one pig in the trough:
The background story:
‘50m masks bound for NHS workers deemed unusable’
The government has admitted that 50m masks bought as part of a £252m medical supplies contract awarded to an investment firm have been deemed unsuitable for use by NHS workers.
Two organisations are seeking judicial review of the decision to award the contract to Ayanda Capital, which describes itself as specialising in “currency trading, offshore property, private equity and trade financing”.
And the comment:
By now it shouldn’t surprise you to learn that someone in government made a lot of money on this deal.
Thread here: https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1291244082145177600.html
Is that not part of the case Jolyon Maugham has started? About the government not putting contracts out to tender but instead just awarding them to their mates?
Anyone heard how that case is going?
Reminiscent of the Brexit ferry contract with the company without ships.and no visible method of getting any.
Re. the comments on PCR testing, the following point is made :
“…. public health officials can’t even control for increased testing when analysing trends in the testing data, what hope is there of them factoring in something more complicated?”
But things are far worse than that. PH officials can’t even use basic time-served mortality data to distinguish an exceptional disease from a pretty normal up-turn in one
year’s mortality – such as we’ve just had.
Nor can they identify and distinguish the factors involved with any analytical accuracy.
On such poor evidence is the pharmacological industry funded by massive amounts to produce a poorly tested vaccine, whilst having no responsibility for its safety.
Last Thursday, Wankock locked down the whole of Kirklees (pop ca 450,000) for 13 positive test results. Leicester is already going door-to-door for testing. So this bit chilled me to the bone:
The harm afforded by false positive results should not be ignored and the potential for adverse consequences during periods of low prevalence needs to be taken into account when deciding on testing strategies.
There is much more literature on the flaws of the PCR test in German, as
the test was invented there.
The Drosten PCR test was officialy established by INSTAD to have a specificity of 98.6%, meaning a false positive AND false negative rate of 1.4%, or 1400 cases per 100.000 tests.
If the virus had completely disappeared, those 1400 would obviously all be false positives, the false negatives would be impossible and as such irrelevant then.
The more the virus is still in circulation, the more do the false negatives become an issue, the less, as currently, the less, and the false positives become the main issue, up to the point of absurdity as stated above.
There are many other things that are wrong with it and the lab procedures: the inventor of PCR itself stated that it was designed for production, not testing; it might well identify other coronaviruses but give
a (false) pisitive for SARS Cov2 then, labs are have and are often skipping
the confirmation part of the test,
etc..
Drosten himself inadvertently signalled yesterday that the test was useless for determining infection, but claimed it could detect the intensity
of infection or infectiousness (?!), as that is the strategy he is now proposing to switch to for the fall, plus keeping a diary…
Got a link on that last para pertaining to Drosten? Very interesting.
https://multipolar-magazin.de/
Is that the test in use here in the UK? If so, then the false positive rate is significantly higher than the case rate coming from testing at present (https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/)
https://www.tichyseinblick.de/daili-es-sentials/maskenpflicht-hoechste-zustimmung-bei-den-waehlern-der-gruenen/
New poll in Germany.
Vast majority still in favour of mandatory muzzling.
Particularly the woke/supporters of the Green Party.
Unison comments: no wonder, they are not into science, only into faith.
And above all into patronizing others.
Just had a good laugh in B+M.
At the tills is a product recall notice for the KN95 masks they’ve beens selling. Turns out that although they are CE marked they were being sold as PPE and did not have the relevant safety standard/EN certification so they’ve all been recalled. These masks have gone from their website as well.
Didn’t have my mobile with me to take a picture of it but it made me laugh.
Wonder if they are part of this:
https://www.factorydirectmedical.com/pub/media/wysiwyg/pdf/MDEL-Bulletin-2020-05-11.pdf
My family’s business is PPE (we’ve nearly gone broke as you cannot get it) but the racketeering going on, and the sub par stuff being shifted is just shocking.
100 years ago there was a black market for alcohol, today it’s for PPEs.
Pssssst, HEY! Buddy, wanna buy a face nappy?
It’s got flowers on it…..
On my Mum’s kitchen workshop is a Mail On Sunday offer for a Free* Laura Ashley “scarf mask”. Unbelieveable!
I am going to iron a patch of Saturn on mine. A cartoonish version. I asked for Beethoven but they haven’t ordered any yet.
Chatting unmasked in the local Morrisons to the lady telling you what till is becoming available next we got talking among other things about the old man in his 80s that I had already spoken to about his breathing and he really needed to remove his mask.
As I’m nearly deaf I asked to her to remove her mask so I could hear her properly which she had no problems doing. Neither did the butcher who looked quite relieved not to have it on for a while as we had a good gossip about things in general while he sorted out the order.
The lady and just told him (and a few others) exactly the same.
Turns out they are wearing them as they are vulnerable. I explained that they are in more danger wearing the masks due to bacterial build-up and that they will most likely end up with a nasty bacterial lung infection which is not good at there age.
Anyway the lady then says along the lines of “that’s strange. We’ve had no staff off sick for months and in the past 2 weeks we’ve had a couple come down with lung infections and are now off sick. Is it the mask wearing do you think?”
Guess my answer.
I’m getting ready to order an exemption card for myself on eBay. I’ve got asthma although I’ve had no problems with it for decades. I wear a snood on the bus since I cannot deal with confrontations with the drivers (I’ve seen two other women thrown off the bus for not wearing masks). But my asthma is starting to play up again. It’s definitely tied to the face covering. Hopefully I’m not opening myself to verbal abuse on the bus since I use it to go to my allotment which is the only source of sanity left in my life.
You get verbal abuse, you cite the Disability Discrimination Act.
And/ or they get verbal abuse back. Let your inner abuser loose.
Thanks, I am capable of verbally defending myself. But as someone with complex PTSD, the emotional cost of doing so is very high, and can leave me in a state of high anxiety and paranoia for days. Of course, I understand that people with mental health issues matter as little as people with non-covid physical health issues these days. I’m already at the point where I have cut off almost all contact with other people. I don’t need anything making me more even more unwilling to talk to people.
Sorry to hear that, PTSD (it’s not really a D, more an I for injury) is really badly misunderstood, particularly complex, and particularly how it manifests physically.
Correct, release your inner Anti-muzzle asshole! Giver them both barrels
My wife “had” asthma which was getting steadily worse so GP put her on 2nd nebuliser and told her to up how many times a day she used it.
She got worse.
Repeat above.
Read the enclosed leaflet with said nebulisers – side effects include breathing difficulties and asthma – and research don the interweb..
She stopped them that day. never an asthma attack since.
Hi, Try not to panic. It’s not as bad as you think. Try to enjoy the bare-faced cheek of yourself. It’s been OK for me so far. Just do it. You are exempt. So is everybody else.
Perhaps print out a few copies of this document:
http://laworfiction.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/Face-Covering-Exemption-Notice-with-Law-Explained-24-July-2020.pdf
It’s a notice of court action if anybody give you any kind of shit about not wearing a mask. They can be liable for a fine of up to £5000 which will shut up any mask zelot pretty quickly.
I have been on some travels and I can say that in a few towns we through maskatistas were outnumbered heavily, 85% bare-faced. At least in the streets anyway but also in shops that I got a chance to see into. I went into few shops and garages, no problem. Social distancing is on the up….Idiots.
That will get the solicitors back to work.
OOOhhhh yeeeerrr….A tsunami of bacterial mouth/throat/lung infections…here we go.
I heard a GP on the radio say this, they’re seeing a big spike in pleurisy cases which they think was masks, but I’ve been unable to verify the story anywhere else.
If GPs are saying this, hopefully people will take them seriously! If you get ill as a result of wearing a mask, can you sue the government for making you wear it?
Desperately need this story on Jeremy Vine or something…
Ahahahahahahahahahahahaha
Hahahahahahahahaha
Sorry.
Wouldn’t be surprised – people with pre-existing lung disease wearing masks whenever out of the house…never airing their lungs. Could easily lead to worsening of their condition. These masks are not like the loose cloth coveriings of old.
Good work!
I know at least two people who have developed runny nose and bad headaches as well as sinuses acting up. They’re thinking its all down to the muzzles.
As I told them, get thee an exemption lanyard posthaste!
I’m really having problems with this £10B figure for the track and trace app. There is absolutely no way that they could flush this much cash away on the app apone. It is simply not correct but it keeps being repeated.
This figure is for the entire track and trace costs. Equally disgusting, especially as they have recruited a small army or compliant idiots with no work to do.
The app cost is in the low £10s of millions. Even this cost is mind-blowing as they need little to no licensing or IP. And using pretty much out of the box APIs should result in minimal development and a tiny development team. Some scumbags have trousered an amount of money from this that makes the millennium bug panic look frugal.
I also couldn’t believe it when I heard (a while ago) the app had cost that much. I suspect that figure includes training + payment for people employed in the track + trace scheme, not just the cost of developing the app, but all the same this suggests either incompetence, corruption or a mixture of both on a massive scale. Which also seems to be a good description of the government’s overall policy over the last few months!
This is correct.
Germany spent around €30 million on its useless and flawed app.
In contrast to the UK, it already had an army of civil servants in its Gesundheitsaemter to perform the t&t tasks.
But those civil servants cost it many more tens of billions per year though, up until their and their spouses death.
I recall in an article or it’s mentioned in a parliamentary committee a month or so ago the cost was in the range of £10-15 million which is believable, a few zeroes been added on somewhere along the line.
Johnson’s public sector job creation scheme?
I heard the name Marc Ferguson in relation to test and trace. Obviously he is a relation of “the modeller”.
A while ago I saw a list of companies that the government had used for procuring PPE – none of them had delivered and the total cost amounted to £830m. I wouldn’t know how to verify the info but it wouldn’t surprise me. The government and civil service are highly skilled at wasting taxpayers money.
We desperately need people with business sense and experience in government, the civil service and our institutions.
Agree with all comments £10bn is a stupid number for an app.
The previously slightly professional bmj has this recent story: https://www.bmj.com/content/370/bmj.m3037
Since it is no longer reasonable or sensible to trust anything that comes out of gobshite organisations that have mission statements about high standards and care blah – treat with the right kind of scepticism.
One consequence if the lockdown and abhorrent lack of discourse is that every single institution is complicit and as such untrustworthy and discredited. Charalatans or criminals.
Obviously a bunch of scamming, thieving, lying, dishonest, conniving, sneaky, dirty rotten tricksters.
£10b – slightly more than building a nulcear attack submarine./ ( 4 for £30b. Vickers buy three get one free scheme)
It probably would have cost less if the contract had been put out to tender, but instead it was given to a friend of the government…who probably got to name their price…
B -> M = typo?
It’s all a load of BMs whatever.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/08/05/analysis-italy-worlds-coronavirus-pariah-avoided-second-wave/
The figures in this article on Italy seems to me to suggest the opposite of what the article’s claiming. It looks like the really hard-hit areas like Lombardy must be close to herd immunity now, but (due to the strict lockdown earlier on) many areas like Sicily and the southern mainland have a much lower antibody count, and hence are surely vulnerable to a so-called “second wave” (really a resurgence of the first) like some US states and parts of Spain have experienced. I suspect this is only a matter of time!
The criticism on the efficiency and effectiveness of the Covid-19 response seems to be emanating from experienced experts, e.g. Dr John Lee and the retired Professor of Forensic and Biological Anthropology et al contributing to this bulletin. In many cases they are pointing out lamentable basic errors in both science and statistics accepted by current government ‘experts’. Does this indicate that the academic and intellectual rigour traditionally associated with UK universities is not what it was?
Yes.
Possibly, and possibly combined with an increased willingness to compromise principles to gain and retain power and funding.
With some notable exceptions (Heneghan) the thing that those seem to have in common is that they’re either retired or otherwise untouchable (e.g. Nobel Laureates). I think this says some interesting things about 1) the dangers of a largely government-driven research funding model and 2) the dangers of having a single monolith employer for healthcare professionals (the NHS). But I’m conscious I’m guessing.
In the absence of transparency guessing is all we have.
does government driven equate to big pharma driven?
always always follow the money
Depends on what’s being researched, partly. But just as importantly, pharma now spends an absolutely eye watering fortune on in-house research, leaving less for funding research in academic institutions. This probably means that they’re attracting some of the better brains to work for them direct (higher pay, cooler equipment, more interesting projects) but also that more academic funding has to be found through governments, meaning that politics become more important.
The agenda problem with big pharma doesn’t come at the research funding end, it comes at the end where they’re involving themselves in political lobbying to create bigger markets for products that have already been researched.
Published June.
The article states on average 2.5% false positives.
Uk is testing about 200k test per day.
“This means that under laboratory conditions, these RT-PCR tests should never show more than 5% false positives or 5% false negatives.”
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/895843/S0519_Impact_of_false_positives_and_negatives.pdf
Good find! It must be better than that or Pillar 2 would be finding 2.5% positives instead of about 0.5% or so.
The most likely conclusion is that it is around 99.5% specific and therefore completely useless now the prevalence is 1/10 of its false positive rate (based on the ONS test which must be more reliable).
Consternation in The Guardian today that contact tracers are only tracking contacts of 72% of positive “cases” down from about 76%! Oh my gosh!
To put things in perspective, Pillar 2 are finding about 600 positives per day. Assuming (generously) that their test is 70% sensitive and 99.5% specific that means 6.55% of those are true positives. So they’re finding about 40 real infections per day.
The actual number of new infections per day estimated much more accurately and transparently by the ONS, using a much better randomized sample, is about 3000.
So T&T is finding about 1.3% of the actual cases… And then we’re fussing over a drop of 4% of 1.3%? And this world-beating program is the reason bodies aren’t piling up in the streets?
Can you provide definitive proof that there are actually any infections in the UK? These figures are so tiny, and dribbling on for so long, that surely the test has to come under suspicion. I’m not even criticising the tests; merely observing that in the real world, you have to have some cut-off point where you realise you can no longer find what you’re looking for. We are (literally) amplifying background noise and occasionally ‘finding’ a spurious pattern.
i know, it’s hard, look at Bono he’s still not found what he’s looking for
You’re right, there is no definitive proof. All the ONS tests could easily be false positives as there are so few.
But it would be extremely unlikely for the virus to have completely disappeared, and we still have hospitalizations for it (about 50 a day or so I think).
So the most reasonable conclusion is that there is somewhere between zero and about 30,000 cases in the UK.
The ONS reckon that because the asymptomatic ratio hasn’t been changing in their testing as prevalence has gone down that the false positive ratio hasn’t been going up. In other words that their test is very good. This seems like a reasonable claim.
If it had completely disappeared then I would be worried because then there would less evidence that we have herd immunity. If it stopped because we ran out of viruses rather than out of hosts (as Australia did after their first lockdown) then it implies it can come back in a big way when it’s reintroduced as it inevitably will be.
Many thanks.
we still have hospitalizations for it
What does that entail? Do we know that ‘it’ is Covid and not some other respiratory disease? If the fragments of RNA can last 83 days (thanks Swedenborg) after symptoms start and still give a positive test, how do we know that this tiny number of cases is not just the statistical inevitability of a few people out of the entire UK population who (a) have succumbed to flu (b) following a bout of mild Covid two months ago (c) with persistent fragments up their nose?
It could be and you’d need to look at individual patients to decide. These days you could also PCR test them for other viruses but I don’t know if anyone does that. Usually not.
I have the sense (can’t prove it, have no evidence) that there is a proportion of people going for tests who have no symptoms. I suspect this will end once people realise “have a test, get a lockdown” but for now it seems to be true.
Which will be playing merry buggeration with the ONS asymptomatic estimations.
The ONS survey is random and they ask people if they have symptoms. Good quality data.
Pillar 2 is voluntary so you would expect more people with symptoms to turn up. I would really like to know how many symptomatic and asymptomatic positives and negatives they are finding.
I cannot fathom how it is possible to spend £10 billion on developing any app. Even with an enormous software development team of 1,000 people involved on one project, that’s £10 million each for 3 months work. Very nice work if you can get on that gravy train.
Honestly, for an app development project – however significant – I also can’t see how you could engage a team of 1,000 on it. Even if you went for the most expensive option possible and gave it to IBM (for example) to design and execute, they would typically be charging in the high 10s of millions for a years-long enterprise wide software development and deployment programme. An app – any app – should cost a fraction of that.
As others have said, the £10Bn can only possibly include the costs of the whole T&T programme – even then, it’s staggeringly wasteful.
Government program, staggeringly wasteful!? Surely not…?
Yes, but I mean jaw-dropping as opposed to your average run-of-the-mill appalling
Fair point.
Best of it is, it’ll be a couple of 15 year old computer geeks sat in their bedrooms shitting themselves because they’ve accidentally took on a government contract..”just tell them £10 squillion….!”
I have just sent a FOI for the breakdown of expenditure. Probably be refusing but got to be worth a go.
I recommend the What Do They Know.com FOI website. It means all questions and answers are in the public domain so everybody gets to see them. You can search on authorities, key words etc.
Interestingly that old NHS IT upgrade project from the 2010s also cost £10 billion, which was describe at the time as
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2013/sep/18/nhs-records-system-10bn
History repeats itself. Except this time they managed to spend the same in three months on just an app (vs an entire Health IT system).
Well, not a total whitewash, I guess.
Thousands of Covid deaths ‘to be removed after counting blunder’ https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8599213/Thousands-Covid-19-deaths-wiped-governments-official-toll-counting-fiasco.html?ito=native_share_channel-home-preview
I like the way the DM describes it as “a glitch”. No, it’s deliberate falsification of data.
Ahh but they have now clarified the following: if you die within 28 days from having had a positive Covid test, you will be a Covid death statistic . Previously there was no limit.
That’s Krankie’s policy, ie the 28 day limit. It was highlighted this week, because she keeps saying there have been no deaths in Scotland for the past whatever, but the figures do show deaths & it is because of thus 28 day limit. Something like that. I’m afraid the statistic side of things is now noise, as it is not possible to trust any figures published.
Now noise. Spot on. Deliberately so.
This is on top of the rebasing of the cumulative number of those testing positive in the first week of July in the order of 10%. I think I am correct in saying they have rebased aspects of the dataset several times now. This should always set off alarm bells. Hancock cannot be allowed to get a free pass on this. As the SoS, and someone who is supposed to have a Masters degree in Economics, he ought to be able to interrogate data and statistics. This is before we even consider some of the other things that have happened, including the latest revelations that various ‘mates’ have been gifted contracts to supply PPE.
Read the comments in the Daily Mail article. I haven’t read them all, but, from a few minutes’ perusal, I’d say a big majority are saying the things we’ve been saying for weeks. A glimmer of hope that the tide is turning?
I was going to comment today along the same lines, not only the DM, but Telegraph too – see the ones after the Sherelle article. Apart from the debacle we are currently in, judging by the Telegraph comments, who would think are ‘safe’ Conservative supporters, Nanny Doris doesn’t stand a chance.
There are at least a couple of serial commenters on the Telegraph who have a vested interest in keeping the panic going. My suspicions were aroused by the fact that some people seem to be posting day and night, hundreds of times, always attacking anyone showing indepdendent thought. Googling the names of these people revealed one who works for Imperial College (Adam Hill) and another who is the CSO of a company working on a vaccine (Mark Bodmer). The first few pages of search results on both names were all links to said involvements, so I think it’s unlikely to be coincidence. I challenged one of them at one point and he tried to duck the question. What do we do about these people? We can hardly spend all day replying to their every comment with a “please note this arsehole has a financial interest in keeping the panic going.”
I switched to DM a few weeks ago. I’m normally a Guardian reader, but it was too depressing. The majority of articles I see have lots of comments from those opposed to lockdown, including many talking about the side effects that are well known here. It’s a good place to work on getting critical mass, so I try to post a few comments every day. I’ve even gone back to the Guardian on occasion and I’ve noticed a few anti-lockdown folks there as well. Even posted a couple of comments myself, although they’re usually met with crickets.
It was thanks to a Grad BTLer that I found my way here. So even though you have to grit your teeth and hold your nose, you’re performing a valuable public service when you post in there.
I do hope so as I don’t know how much more of this I can take. Mrs Fiat is getting a bit concerned.
Buy her a Ferrari.
Speaking to a committee of MPs, Mr Hancock was pressed on whether he was reforming PHE.
He said: ‘There will be a time for that. My priority now is on controlling the virus and preparing for winter… we need a public health agency that isn’t only brilliant at science but also able to go to scale quickly.’
Brilliant at science? What a great sense of humour the man must have!
Another Cock & Bull story.
Just had a survey sent to me by a survey app I am signed up to that was clearly the Irish health service paying for it as it was all about COVID19 and the State’s response to it.
Most questions had a free form box to explain your Yes/No answer and I took the opportunity to let rip against the State and its policies in this regard.
Nice one.
I do studies on Prolific. Right after lockdown, there were loads on the virus. Not so many now, but I’ve enjoyed giving them a different take on the situation than they were expecting. Also the studies pay, some more than others, so if you’re looking for a source of casual money, it’s a good place to go. I leave the window open whenever I’m home during the day and earn £30-40 a month from it.
Well di r,yes, rip ’em.
Donald Trump has had a message removed by Facebook and Twitter because it contains Covid-19 misinformation. He says that small children are almost immune to Covid-19. Which we know is true. But whenever Trump says something it immediately becomes an anti-fact. Which means that he is actively encouraging people to believe that young children are extremely vulnerable to Covid-19. Which is misinformation.
Well done Twitter and Facebook!
“But whenever Trump says something it immediately becomes an anti-fact.” Indeed. There’s a way of thinking about the world emerging, seems to be very prevalent right not, and a big part of the problem, where people base their positions on WHO is saying something rather than WHAT they are saying. “Bad” people (Trump) are always wrong, about everything, and “Good” people are always right. That’s fine if you really want to see the world like that and base, say, your political decisions on it. But when you use that kind of thinking to rule on matters of science, where the decisions are life-changing and you need evidence, you run into trouble. Eventually these idiots will blow themselves up by basing things on emotion and groupthink rather than evidence and logic. Trouble is, they’ll take sane people with them.
“Eventually these idiots will blow themselves up by basing things on emotion and groupthink rather than evidence and logic. “
Some would say (and I think you and I’d be among them), that’s exactly what just happened.
Indeed it has in many ways, though of course those in power and with secure, well-paid jobs are still relatively unscathed by this, and many sadly will continue to be. I was more thinking that the longer this trend continues, and the more extreme they get, the bigger hole they will dig themselves and eventually they’ll start to select brain surgeons, bridge engineers, airline pilots etc on the basis of their political views rather than their competence, and stuff will start malfunctioning more and more. Maybe they’ll be so far gone then that they won’t notice. I suspect though that, like middle class SJWs, they’ll want their cake and eat it and will at some point realise that what underpins their comfortable, pleasant lives is not emotion and groupthink but logic and reason. Give them their own country and some AI robots and let them get on with it.
What about Mars ?
“…. eventually they’ll start to select brain surgeons, bridge engineers, airline pilots etc on the basis of their political views rather than their competence ….”
Like this?
https://www.theguardian.com/education/2020/aug/06/sharp-drop-in-bame-leaders-in-englands-fe-colleges-spurs-call-for-action
Children aren’t immune, they get infected, but they don’t get very sick from it, and possibly don’t transmit it as effectively as adults. Sure, Trump should have been clearer, but shame on Facebook for pulling the statement on what amounts to a technicality.
For numbskulls like me, could you define ‘immune’? Seems to be used loosely by some.
I don’t think you are a numbskull, but immune would imply that someone cannot become infected, or at least does not despite exposure that you would expect to cause infection.
I don’t know of any data showing that children are less likely to get infected than adults.* Once they do get infected, children do seem in general to have a far milder disease course than adults. This is backed up by the extremely low number of deaths among children compared to the high-risk elderly groups.
*: We also won’t be able to know that unless and until widespread population-based testing gets implemented.
Thank you.
Remember how Pantsdown claimed he could safely ignore lockdown in order to screw another man’s wife, because he ‘considered himself immune’?
Nice for him.
Telegraph at it too.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2020/08/06/voters-will-turn-boris-johnson-second-lockdown/
Closing of bars in Aberdeen seems to me to be a good idea. Here is the procedure if you wanted to get a drink in Siberia Bar on Belmont Street.
Believe me, Aberdeen is a cold place to be standing in the street, trousers at your ankles and a thermometer jammed up your 4rse.
And, according to their website, they closed early and for an extra week because their staff didn’t feel safe……
Clearly they want to go out of business.
Who the fuck can be bothered.
And why aren’t they asking themselves this question?
Is this pub part of a chain? Was reading about a pub in Edinburgh with similar rules. I think it was somebody – maybe Basics – that was reporting on it.
If it’s a chain it’s an adamantine one.
any rules on what to do when you’ve drunk too much, hit on some bird, she’s rejected you and now you’ve thrown up and pissed yourself?
normal rules of engagement apply in these circumstances. Go in a massive huff and or cry uncontrollably in a corner.
Don’t worry Biker, she was a lesbian. Move onto the drunk hippocrocodonkey that’s pissed herself and passed out in the corner
I’ll be your wingman, and take her friend that’s outside having an argument with a postbox home
So this is all panning out like a standard night out in ABZ for me then. Home alone, reeking of shame and desperation for an angry wank and another cry.
This is what happens when you carry out a detailed Health & Safety Risk Assessment but forget the bit about mitigating risk in the most reasonable manner. That is.in a considering where the measures necessary for averting the risk (money, time or trouble) are grossly disproportionate, that is the risk is insignificant in relation to the sacrifice.(Edwards vs. NCB, 1949, Court of Appeal)
But maybe they are happy with the loss of business???
Sounds brilliant. Loads of fun. Just f off
Well, some of these businesses deserve to go bust. That sounds like a barrel of laughs.
Silly thing is you can have a few bottles of wine between you at home for a fraction of the cost of putting yourself through this nightmare.
Absolutely. Its not advertising a good social atmosphere nor a relaxed night out. I think to experience it knowing what is going to happen and then to accept it as your night out and enjoy it is …perverse?
Wow!!! I think they have a death wish with those nonsensical rules!!!
The death of you as an individual.
Given how widespread the censorship is now, we ask you to please share this video on your social media feeds.
Devastating Lockdown Consequences – Can we afford another one?
“Interestingly, in the UK there has been no coverage by the mainstream media on the protests in London or Berlin on Saturday that we can find. Instead, we include footage from personal Facebook pages in the video below.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZRSsVMN0xaA&feature=youtu.be
The German media steadfastedly sticks with its bogus number of 17000 participants.
The police stays quiet.
The bus companies alone transported well over 150.000 people to Berlin that day.
Never get a Covid Test
Hi Victoria, was over your way this morning. Waitrose very quiet, we thought. Bought fruit and veg at market.
Hope you had fun. I also thought Waitrose was very quiet.
Serve ’em right. Mrs Bugle refuses to darken their door.
Agree 100%! There’s a sign up ‘somewhere in Derbyshire’ which says:
Want a Lockdown?
GET A TEST!
(and of course that’s not the only reason not to.)
The local PO yesterday was staffed by Ms Terrified in a visor, behind a screen. ‘Hard to hear what she was saying. Then we went in a local small shop for the first time since muzzles came in. I had our exemption cards in my hand as we like the shopkeeper and didn’t want to give her hassle. Her reaction: A puzzled stare and ‘No need for a mask in here, lots of people don’t wear them.’ But two very young women came in (separately) while we were browsing – no need to tell you what they were wearing…..
On the way home, we bumped into a woman we know a bit. She had a mask in her hand and pulled a face at it. We told her we don’t wear them and she looked intrigued. She then proceeded to tell us she thinks the whole thing is very dodgy and agrees it’s about money, power and vaccines. And, guess what, that’s despite her niece with COPD apparently having CV19 quite badly at the beginning of the outbreak. A bit of hope!
Great ‘slogan’ for Lockdown Truth
I was thinking about getting cards printed to start leaving in public places. Of course, people would be terrified to pick them up since they might be “infected”.
Stickers!
Glad you like it – feel free to use.
How about: Want a Punishment Beating?
Slogan on a T-shirt at London demo a few weeks ago:
“I tested positive for common bloody sense.”
I suffer from Sapere Aude.
Latin has lots of great quotes that could be used. Any experts here?
Marcus Aurelius too.
Lot of false positives from that test though
Unfortunately commons sense is no longer common. You elitist!
Sound advice. Listening to local guff up here in Abergloom, there seems to be an appetite for naming and shaming the scamps that don’t adhere to the rules if they test positive…..
The discussion around PCR tests is essential to getting us out of this mess.
Now, I don’t have a biochemistry background, but I’ve been on a heavy diet of published studies since this fiasco began.
From what I can tell, the problem with reliance on the PCR test is the lack of a “gold standard”. That is, the lack of a purified virus culture that fulfills Koch’s postulates. In other words, we need to see that the purified and isolated Sars-Cov2 is the causative agent in producing Covid-19. Sars-Cov2 needs to be isolated and visualised using electron microscopy and then needs to be animal tested to ensure that symptoms of Covid-19 develop. Because this is a coronavirus, of which there are many types, we need to be absolutely certain that we’ve isolated this and not another variant. That means that we don’t get viral RNA or any other culture with potential contaminants.
This is essential to prime the PCR test. As far as I can tell, some of these PCR tests are primed with assays that are so non-specific that they are much worse than useless. Engelbrecht and Demeter have done some work on this for OffGuardian, in which they note:
This is compounded by the number of cycles used, which is different between the tests, with some going up to 45, where the biochemist above stated that anything above 10 becomes unusable in some cases. At a high number of cycles the signal becomes noisy and the noise may confuse the test into going positive.
All of the fuss over false negatives actually demonstrates how worthless the tests are, because what is a false negative? Well, without a valid “gold standard” to compare the result to, the PCR test IS the gold standard. So how do you determine a false negative? It’s when someone tests negative but then tests positive again. And because we can’t admit the possibility of a false positive, because the PCR is the gold standard, we record that as a false negative and our numbers continue to climb. This isn’t science at this point.
So what do we do? I suggest we need to demand autopsies on every Covid death from this point and for a certified pathologist to determine that Covid was the cause of death (not that the person died while testing positive). The number of deaths has reached such a level that the temporary death certification procedures in force during the pandemic must be lifted. We cannot accept any more that the country is locked down or there are any infringements on civil liberties based on what may well be a phantom due to appalling testing standards.
As guy153 has been saying, the PCR test when there is a lot of virus going round, is actually quite good in recognising that those strands are present. Yes a gold standard for characterisation and calibration would be better but I agree we shouldn’t throw the baby out with the bathwater. Trouble was we didn’t have a lot of testing at the start, nevermind an idea of just how many people had it, which would put a kibosh on the whole lockdown idea.
But the problem is dealing with what having SARS-Cov-2 really means? And like the bullet holes in the WW2 bombers, you have to look for the gaps and what they mean in context. If SARS-Cov-2 and hence Covid-19 is a passenger virus with only mild symptoms but leads to other ailments maybe you should know that to recognise the pathology.
And considering the systematic effects (humans and healthcare) the response to attributing Covid-19 has much higher devastating consequences, not just in immediate patient death but in society as a whole and how it functions. That is massive risk to take when you don’t really know
Here the UK HSE KN95 mask official recall from June 2020:
https://www.hse.gov.uk/safetybulletins/use-of-face-masks-designated-kn95.htm
Part of ti says:
“A substantial number of face masks, claiming to be of KN95 standards, provide an inadequate level of protection and are likely to be poor quality products accompanied by fake or fraudulent paperwork. These face masks may also be known as filtering facepiece respirators.
KN95 face mask
KN95 is a performance rating under the Chinese standard GB2626:2006, the requirements of which are broadly the same as the European standard BSEN149:2001+A1:2009 for FFP2 facemasks. However, there is no independent certification or assurance of their quality and products manufactured to KN95 rating are declared as compliant by the manufacturer. ”
Hoisted by their own petard.
I’m sorry, but how could anyone believe that a flimsy-looking thing like that could offer protection against anything, let alone a virus?
No idea, looks like a dust mask to me but millions of people believe it.
They’ve got magic powers.
Yes, it’s a lucky charm.
Charm??
Against dust!
Idiots.
looks like a coffee filter to me!
Yup, upcycling at its finest.
N95 mask must be fit tested using sweet/bitter spray to test for leaks. Anyone wearing an N95 mask that wasn’t fit tested might as well be wearing a scarf. That’s the end of it.
Yes, but the government says that a scarf is an acceptable face covering. I wear a snood which is hardly any kind of protection at all. In fact, it’s only one layer thick but still has allowed me to be minimally compliant with the stupid rule.
I don’t know if these masks were intended for the public, but they could be said to actually meet the non-standard that’s been set.
Well, the government is concerned with people “feeling” safe vs being safe so whatever works (despite the fact that you can get skin erosion, dry patches, acne, hyperpigmentation, perioral dermatitis, contact dermatitis, candida infection, rosacea flare, or potentially other side effects, but hey who cares about their own health so long as the right message is being telegraphed to others, right?
)
If the government is to be believed (?) wearing a scarf to cover nose and face is fine as an alternative to a mask
The point I was trying to make was that it’s pointless spending money on N95 masks if you can’t use it properly
I laugh in the face of your N95 and tweak the nose of your BSEN149:2001+A1:2009!
20.3.20 A concerned GP has criticised the NHS in Scotland for providing
doctors with out-of-date surgical face masks and “inadequate equipment” to see patients who are potentially infected with coronavirus.
https://www.scotsman.com/regions/coronavirus-out-date-masks-offer-no-protection-says-concerned-gp-2502770
26.3.20 Action has been taken to bring an additional 1.5 million protective respirators into use from NHS Scotland’s central stockpile.
The tightly-fitting facemasks, which provide a high level of protection for staff working with coronavirus patients, were not previously used because they had recently passed their expiry date.
However, scientific evidence from stringent independent tests has shown the FFP respirators continue to be safe to use.
https://www.gov.scot/news/keeping-healthcare-workers-safe/
4.5.20 Nurse finds 2016 expiry date under new 2021 label on NHS-issued face mask
Glasgow health chiefs insist the equipment has been tested and is perfectly safe to use.
https://www.glasgowlive.co.uk/news/glasgow-news/nurse-finds-2016-expiry-date-18194038
Standards schmandards. Piffle, get a rag on your face and go.
An N95 – a proper one – is a respirator. That looks like the filter from a hoover repurposed.
I’ve been seeing loads of people with alleged N95 masks like the one you posted. I may not be a medical professional but they didn’t look like N95 to me. They were poorly fitting, no better than dust masks or those cloth muzzles. Not helped by the usual issues – constant touching and fiddling and difficulty in breathing.
Child and adult traumas you didn’t know could wreck your life
“The draconian restrictions imposed upon citizens in the wake of the covid-19 pandemic has plunged vast numbers of adults and children into an emotional crisis that isn’t of their making. The physiological effects arising from the social, economic, medical and moral impacts are likely to be long-lasting, even permanent if specific actions aren’t undertaken to recognise and restore health resilience.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_5980StrUvE&feature=youtu.be
More grist to the mill regarding PCR tests:
https://principia-scientific.com/covid-tests-scientifically-fraudulent-epidemic-of-false-positives/
Without doubt excess mortality rates are caused by the therapy and by the lockdown measures, while the “COVID-19” death statistics comprise also patients who died of a variety of diseases, redefined as COVID-19 only because of a “positive” test result whose value could not be more doubtful.
What is interesting would be during this period how many respiratory deaths were put down explicity as not having Covid as a contributing factor?
i.e. where is Popperian falsification?
Using PCR tests to detect covid infection scientifically unsound
“A recent op-ed published by Off Guardian questions the veracity of PCR tests and the conventional claims that they can identify the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus deemed responsible for covid-19 infections. Off Guardian state that having questioned the authors of scientific papers claiming to have isolated the virus, not one was able to say for certain that they had ever actually achieved this. Meaning that there may be no scientific certainty – or consensus – that the RNA sequence that PCR tests are used to detect, is actually that of SARS-CoV-2. Whilst scientifically controversial, it’s worth noting that to date no experiments have satisfied all four Koch’s postulates, which is held up as the gold standard for demonstrating a causal relationship between a microbe and a disease.
The article also damningly reveals that virologists at Charité Berlin assumedthe RNA they found was viral. Yet, there is no gold standard as yet with which to assess the tests against. In short, it would appear that there is no evidence that PCR tests can measure viral load, bringing their use into serious doubt. In fact, the scientist who developed the PCR method, and won the Nobel prize for doing so, Dr Kary Mullis, stated that the method was unsuitable for diagnosing viral and bacterial infections. Leaving the question as to whether or not the draconian measures brought in by governments around the world are, in actuality, justified.”
https://www.anhinternational.org/news/news-alerts-week-32-2020/
That off-guardian article is full of distortion and misinformation.
SARS2 does cause Covid-19 with almost complete certainty. The PCR test can detect a current (or recently recovered) SARS2 infection with probably about 70% sensitivity and 95% specificity.
There are huge problems with the way the UK government is using PCR tests right now, which does indeed make them essentially meaningless. But it has nothing to do with any of the bluster in that article.
We just take your word for it? ‘SARS2 does cause Covid-19 with almost complete certainty’. Some sort of proof please.
SARS2 has been sequenced dozens if not hundreds of times. Electron microscope photographs have been taken of it. We know that it is a coronavirus, closely related to SARS1.
I’ll post these pictures again because they’re pretty:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/niaid/49645120251/in/album-72157712914621487
You can see the virus with your own eyes, including the famous corona. You can even see from these pictures that some of the heavily infected cells have reacted by apoptosing.
There is a very strong correlation between hundreds of thousands of positive tests for this virus and symptoms ranging from a mild cold to a nasty viral pneumonia, sometimes even fatal.
Autopsies have been done in some of those fatal cases and SARS2 virus was extracted from their lungs.
During vaccine trials, mice and also monkeys have been infected with cultured SARS2 viruses and developed temperatures and pneumonia.
“SARS-CoV-2 strain nCoV-WA1-2020 (MN985325.1) was provided by CDC, Atlanta, USA. Virus propagation was performed in VeroE6 cells”
(https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.05.13.093195). In figure 4, the top row, you can see pictures of one of the control monkey’s lungs, showing both signs of pneumonia and detection of SARS2 antigen.
We know of several other related human coronaviruses, including SARS1, that cause similar disease in humans and other animals. Why should we be surprised that a novel coronavirus should cause this kind of disease? What other explanations are there? (Don’t say 5G…)
Interesting thanks, ruined it with the cheap slur though. I’ve spent 45 years designing building structures that don’t fall down and working out why old buildings are still standing. I have a reasonable grasp of science and how the world is put together.
Sorry didn’t mean it personally. It’s just no other explanation has been offered by anyone that I know of apart from the (hopefully obviously) ridiculous 5G theory.
Bhakti, Wodarg, are they 5G lunatics?
Electromagnetic wave fields can harm bodily tissue, penetrate the skin and invade the insides of your body.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bioelectromagnetics
Yup, keep clear of operating radar. I designed the space frame structure that supports the radar on Gibbs Hill Lighthouse, Bermuda. Survived ‘Fabian’ I’m happy to say. I also inspect historic church towers to make sure they can supprt mobile phone equipment installations.
How do we know they’re not exosomes?
An exosome that leaves the body and starts replicating inside someone else’s (which this, whatever it is, does) _is_ a virus. There’s no difference that I can see.
And what is Covid-19? What are the symptoms? It seems there are so vague that they could be The Devil.
And if you don’t know the symptoms you can then misdiagnose and mistreat.
The difference between “unknown respiratory ailment’ and “It’s Covid-19” causes an order of magnitude reaction in how it is addressed, including affects on statistics and hence society.
So I’m coming round to the idea that PCR will tell you SARS-Cov-2 is present, when there’s a lot going round. But still there is a lot of uncertainty in what the symptoms are and how they have been attributed
My point is that even if you knew 100% SARS-Cov-2 is present that’s only half the battle and the costs are very high for many people for being wrong
The disease is less clear cut. Basically Covid-19 is whatever disease a SARS2 infection might cause by definition.
We can define what the virus is very precisely by means of genetic sequencing (it mutates a bit but that’s OK, we can keep track of that).
But what disease does it cause? Usually a cold, a fever, sometimes pneumonia, perhaps blood clotting problems, ageusia and anosmia seem to be common. All of these things can be caused by other pathogens (or even toxins– you can get flu like symptoms from inhaling chemical fumes).
But this is the kind of thing doctors have to deal with all the time with a combination of tests and other detective work. If you just got off a plane from NY in the middle of April, Covid-19 is likely. If you’re a rabbit hunter from Arkansas it might be tularemia. If you’ve just been welding on a lot of galvanised metal perhaps zinc poisoning. Your doctor will ask questions and do tests. Well you hope so anyway.
Just remember, it’s never lupus.
Dr House in the house?
As I commented on further up, it’s actually academic. Even if we didn’t know what it was and even with the measures put in place for Covid that are looking very likely to had led to more deaths it still isn’t any different than the flu. There just aren’t enough people dying of respiratory ailments.
Of course this is now more obvious because lockdowns have little to no effect on how the disease propagates.
It’s the belief that it could have been way worse, which is based on a hypothetical model shown to be poorly designed and certainly would have me in jail if I released this to customers.
So at many stages we could have been back to work. At most a 2 week lockdown and then “let’s not do that again please”
Yes agree. If we hadn’t sequenced it and didn’t have PCR people in hospitals would have noticed something was going around and treated it like any flu season. Perhaps worse than an average year but not that unusual. The overall outcome would have been much much better without the overreaction. In fact this was probably already happening in a few places last winter.
I think the blood coagulation factor would have meant that people would have noticed that something was different.
“Recently recovered” is the biggest problem we have here.
I’m starting to think most positive tests now the virus is low level/endemic level are basically people who have had a recent minor infection and are now recovered. If this is possible months after the infection, this means testing actually *inflates case numbers massively (even beyond the seek, and ye shall find factor).
That’s very likely I think too. Have you seen the latest CEBM post about this:
https://www.cebm.net/covid-19/infectious-positive-pcr-test-result-covid-19/
And then of course having found it, there’s more risk of contamination. If it had died out completely people would stop finding it (but that isn’t going to happen).
Forbes issues strong call to stop own research and accept ‘expert’ view
“A frankly tyrannical article in Forbes aims to shut down critical thinking and discussion and debate around science. We are told that we shouldn’t engage in our own research, even if we are a scientist by profession, because we lack the “…relevant scientific expertise to critique the science” and are likely to reach the “wrong conclusions”. We should instead rely on ‘the experts’ in a particular field to tell us what we need to know and believe. The authors choose particularly contentious areas for the mainstream that include the fluoridation of water, vaccinations and covid-19 to illustrate their point. As the authors point out, “…if you go by the evidence and by the data you’re speaking the truth”. It all depends what evidence and data you’re considering and which lens you’re looking through at the time.”
https://www.anhinternational.org/news/news-alerts-week-32-2020/
“The experts” (using ‘The Science’ of BMI) would tell Jessica Ennis Hill that she’s obese.
And Andy Farrell morbidly obese.
And Boris that he’s a lissom willow wand?
TBH it wouldn’t surprise me if Boris’s BMI wasn’t much worse than JEH’s – given her comparative small stature and his tallness.
Except of course with him weight is all fat and with her it’s all muscle
This is Lysenkoism.
Ethan Siegel – astrophysicist – think Sheldon Cooper !
Sheldon Cooper would be appalled. Sheldon Cooper is a theoretical physicist, not an astrophysicist.
You’re right, my bad – Raj Kootripali, then, the guy with the sexual thing going on with his dog.
RIP Enlightenment.
We are in a New Dark Age
FFS!
“We are told that we shouldn’t engage in our own research, even if we are a scientist by profession, because we lack the “…relevant scientific expertise to critique the science” and are likely to reach the “wrong conclusions”. We should instead rely on ‘the experts’ in a particular field to tell us what we need to know and believe.”
LOL! Right on cue for one of the points made in a comment here by Barney McGrew on yesterday’s LS, discussing an article on “the rise of the midwits”:
“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 cannot comment on fields they are not formally qualified in; their arguments are not admissible.”
Though I’m pretty confident that if a specialist scientist were saying something the Forbes editors regarded as unacceptable, they’d pretty quickly decide it would be ok to critique it, after all.
Otherwise known by the logical fallacy of “appeal to authority.” Can’t remember its fancy Latin name.
With an added convenient dismissal of the other side’s authority.But the problem is, any significant problem is inevitably multidisciplinary. When coronapanickers dismissed Levitt’s (since proven accurate by events) criticisms of the consensus modelling-based views of establishment approved epidemiologists (which turned out to be nonsense), he was dismissed on this basis. “He’s not an epidemiologist, Who is he to question the experts?”
But his criticisms were based on analysis of the numbers, which is precisely what he is an expert in.
And he was right and they were wrong, as we now know, though we are only slowly coming to understand exactly the mechanisms involved.
Forbes: “It means that you need to be brave enough to turn to the consensus of scientific experts….If we listen to the science, we can attempt to take the best path possible forward”
Accepting the consensus of experts as “The Science”, uncontestably authoritative. What could possibly go wrong?
(We’ve just seen what could go wrong, in all its mendacious, disastrous ingloriousness.)
If you can get a multi-disciplinary group of scientists together in a room and get them to come to a consensus, you know that there’s something fishy going on.
It’s a bit like when all the press agrees on something.
We have both on this,
Anyone who listens to “The Science” is as credible as someone who gets all their covid facts from watching the BBC.
argumentum ad verecundiam
Ah, that’s how you spell it!
Ad vericundium?
One of the comments under Karol Sikora’s latest column in the Sun:
Asking a cancer specialist about a pandemic is not too far removed from asking the guy behind the bar.
These Sun readers have pretty high standards.
True sceptics. Tell them the sun will rise in the morning and they’ll ask who the hell you think you are to make such a prediction, an astronomer?
Speaking of Cancer a dinosaur was just discovered that supposedly died of Cancer millions of years ago.
You don’t have to be an expert in bullshit to be able to tell if something is bullshit.
Preach.
Exactly and well said.
And how is that working out for us so far?
Hydroxychloroquine hit job
“…… a hard-hitting piece from the Children’s Health Defense team asking why a ‘contract’ has been put out to discredit a treatment that works for patients in the early stages of the disease.”
https://www.anhinternational.org/news/news-alerts-week-32-2020/
Good find. Also this big metastudy has just hit the press – early use of HCQ results in 79% lower fatality rate measured across many countries with over 2bn population involved.
https://c19study.com/
Send the link to Cock o’ the Walk.
The video of the Australian police man is quite disturbing. It’s unacceptable to go to McDonalds! Come on Aussies, you’re a tough lot, don’t stand for this. What I found interesting was he kept referring to the medical officer and not to an appointed minister or even the law!
Turns out, like a lot of “tough guys”, your typical Australian is a flat track bully (to use their own slang), and is a total pussy when faced with authority.
Not that Brits have any room to talk on that score any more, either…
This report from a month ago:
https://www.lboro.ac.uk/departments/sbe/news/2020/research-from-loughborough-and-sheffield-universities-suggests-new-approach-to-r.html
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3635548
Few snippets:
“Currently COVID-associated deaths or excess deaths are used to track the impact of the virus. However these figures may be distorted as to record a COVID-associated death you require only weak evidence that COVID ‘may’ have contributed to the death”
“Actual deaths due to COVID are some 54% or 63% lower than implied by the standard excess deaths measure, and reported excess deaths likely include a significant number of non-COVID deaths.”
“Over the lockdown period as a whole Government policy has increased mortality rather than reduced it.”
“They also assert that the overall increase in mortality is a result of significant unintended consequences of the lockdown, for example, reduced A and E attendances and reduced cancer and cardiac treatments.”
Sounds like sense to me.
The Government of Death. Death to the body, and worse, death to the rational mind and the immortal soul.
WHO Admits: No Direct Evidence Masks Prevent Viral Infection
https://www.greenmedinfo.com/blog/who-admits-no-direct-evidence-masks-prevent-viral-infection
Masks are a compliance test and a psychological transformation ritual. The end.
Surely the main argument against universal mask wearing is the climate of fear it creates and the debilitating effects that produces – they’ve missed that one out..
My neighbour runs a small chain of gift shops. We are in the south west. He told me three or four days ago that many of his elderly regular customers have now said they will no longer be going to his or any other shops because they see the masks as a sign that the danger for them has increased. They are asking “why masks now if things are supposed to be getting better?”. Presumably, the government’s about-turn on masks (initially accepting advice that masks were useless but now compelling ing them) was designed to get people back to the shops, because masks will supposedly keep them “safe” (when they were safe anyway, of course).
It’s almost as if the govt hasn’t got a clue what it’s doing!
That’s what World Fascism wants.
In other words, it’s pure virtue signalling.
Anyone go in for existentialism? C’est un geste, ce n’est pas un acte.
serving as a reminder to be compliant with other measures
I think the evidence shows that masks have the opposite effect – people think if they’re wearing them they don’t need to socially distance (which does have an effect on the spread of the virus, whether it’s necessary for the UK at this stage is another matter)
I suggest we need to demand autopsies on every Covid death from this point and for a certified pathologist to determine that Covid was the cause of death (not that the person died while testing positive). The number of deaths has reached such a level that the temporary death certification procedures in force during the pandemic must be lifted. We cannot accept any more that the country is locked down or there are any infringements on civil liberties based on what may well be a phantom due to appalling testing standards.
I may well be wrong, so I would value others’ perspectives on what I’m going to say: my understanding is that the need for a second doctor’s signature if the deceased is to be cremated (for which the doctor, of course, gets paid: so-called “ash cash”) was suspended if there were grounds to suspect the death was due to covid. I believe this requirement was brought in years ago to avoid another Harold Shipman scandal, since foul play cannot be investigated once the deceased is a pile of ash.
Presumably the logic offered for this suspension would have been, if true, that with 500,000 bodies piling up, as per Prof Ferguson’s crystal ball, we couldn’t afford to mess about with getting two signatures. Your call for autopsies, sadly, would thus be futile. I was told that care home managers and funeral directors were given powers to certify death if covid was suspected (!), but a GP acquaintance told me that that was not true. Fake news? Anyone know?
i understood the same about death certification Aremen but it is possible I read it here some weeks ago and it may not have been the totally accurate? I gathered that at the height of the coronopanic in April nursing home managers were able to phone a Dr and their description of the death was enough for the death certificate to be signed even if the Dr had not seen the patient recently which was necessary. But someone here this week directed us all to the new regs on the gov site about this – and although I read it, I didn’t think it was terribly clear (but I’m not the Dr here!) and thought there might have been room for ambiguity? It would be great if there was someone here who could explain?
Thanks.
You are correct. A guy called Ronan Maher did an in-depth article on Hector Drummond’s website about the changes to certification of death legislation – he also posted a shorter version of it on his Twitter account. A very interesting read!
https://hectordrummond.com/2020/05/08/ronan-maher-clauses-in-the-coronavirus-act-changed-how-we-record-deaths-its-time-to-change-them-back/
Carrie: thanks for that link. Very useful.
https://drmalcolmkendrick.org/2020/05/31/covid-deaths-how-accurate-are-the-statistics/
…. What advice was given? It varied throughout the country, and from coroner to coroner – and from day to day. Was every person in a care home now to be diagnosed as dying of COVID? Well, that was certainly the advice given in several parts of the UK.
Where I work, things were left more open. I discussed things with colleagues and there was very little consensus. I put COVID on a couple of certificates, and not on a couple of others. Based on how the person seemed to die.
I do know that other doctors put down COVID on anyone who died from early March onwards. I didn’t. What can be made of the statistics created from data like these? And does it matter? ….
So what with lockdowns having no significant effect and deaths being over reported we have still not breached a bad flu season.
Of which we at most take some extra care and wash your hands.
Next will they warn us not to say Biggie Smalls three times while looking in a mirror?
From a JEZ UK on Twitter: 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
https://t.co/SfIVoqUThE?amp=1
Can this be true?
Strasbourg here I come!
Switching channels last night I happened to drop in on BBC Newsnight – not something I would normally watch these days. However there was an excellent report with Kirsty Wark on concerns of the accuracy of tests being carried out for Covid 19. Dr Daniels in particular was excellent in his presentation. Worth a watch.
We in Britain (and I see other countries) have a tendency to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. And none more by engaging in the Sunken Cost Fallacy.
We could have pulled out at Easter but no we were invested to save the NHS (based of a criminally poor model)
We could have pulled out by June 1st (1st day of summer) but no
We could not have mandated idiotic masks but no.
So we are going to burn all the way to the bottom with the only glimmer of hope being what looks like the Ouroboros of the BBC starting to turn on the government, completely ignoring its own part in the mess
Boris demonstrated very early on – in his response to the kids on Sky (the annoying ‘stage children’ who have a Saturday morning show) – that he does not understand Economics 101. I think, from memory, that might have been in response to a question on HS2, and his response being that ‘we have to keep spending because we have spent so much already’. Clearly, we will have to keep killing people who cannot access treatment for cancer and heart attacks, in the name of those we have killed from our deliberate policies to send people back to care homes etc!
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”
But unfortunately this is a local court and I think has not anything to do with Europen Court which might have the seat in Strasbourgh(this is my reading but French speaking might clarify that better)
Great! A start in the right direction
I posted the same just after you – mine still waiting approval! It may only be local but let’s hope it sets a trend.
and doesn’t get over turned on appeal
As I have just posted: The lockdown is unraveling fast. Yesterday the European Court of Justice ruled that wearing of face masks in public places was contrary to the Human Rights Act. Why is this not being reported in the MSM? Does not bode well for Govt with the forthcoming Judicial Review proceedings on September 28th. Will they backtrack before then?
“ 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”.
For more details go to Francis Hoar’s twitter account.
Is it the ECJ or is it a local court in Strasbourg? I don’t have Twitter.
You don’t ha e to have Twitter account to look. I don’t.
Thankfully it is ECJ. Got something right for once.
I’m afraid it’s a French administrative court that happens to be in Strasbourg. But nevertherless an important precedent.
We have left Europe now, so wear the bastard mask in fascist prison island UK.
I think that it would become difficult to maintain the facade if the ECJ had ruled against, regardless. But the haven’t, so it’s moot.
Re Sky Australia piece by Alan Jones. He did the following, even better expose
https://www.facebook.com/57886636727/videos/742066159699894?extid=312Bt8rZ1qR1GdHo
It’s the weirdest thing, isn’t it? I watch that video and I agree with every word: it seems so self-evident. But play that to 85% of the population and, apparently, it would have zero effect on them – or would make them angry. People seemingly want to have their life and liberty taken away from them. I just don’t understand it.
More on the PCR testing. Here is an interesting video that lasted less than 24 hours on YouTube. Thankfully, it can now be found on Bitchute. Although it may not be 100% scientifically accurate, it probably is in the ball park. What is also very interesting is the second half were the reason for this worldwide scamdemic is speculated upon. I believe there is sound logic in the reasons postulated.
https://www.bitchute.com/video/Q9dKhxEAudL1/
Sturgeon – aren’t you sick of that name – Sturgeon today announced no Covid19 attached deaths for three weeks in Scotland. 20 hours ago I posted on the LS thread the National Records of Scotland had surprisingly listed seven deaths for the week ending 2 August.
6.8.20 26 mintues ago the Scottish Sun reporting the Holyrood Press briefing announced:
No Covid-19 deaths confirmed overnight for 20 days amid 67 new cases
Nicola Sturgeon confirmed no lives had been lost to the killer bug in the past 24 hours.
How can anyone believe anything official any longer? Things get worse is if you question this with any so called official, they simply don’t reply to explain. That is if you can get past scot gov reception who tell you the entire government is working from home so cannot take a phone call.
Sorry for reposting myself below but 20 hours ago I posted this-
NRS figures do not match Scottish Government daily figures.
For nearly three weeks Scottish Government had been reporting zero ‘covid19 deaths’ those dying with Covid19. Now we learn there have been deaths during the time we previously were led to believe their hadn’t.
From guardian live feed:
Seven more people die in Scotland
According to the National Records of Scotland (NRS), seven deaths were registered that mentioned Covid-19 on the death certificate between Monday 27 July and Sunday 2 August; a decrease of one from the previous week.
The NRS said that was the second lowest weekly total for deaths since the first death was recorded in early March.
A total of 4,208 deaths have been registered in Scotland, as of 2 August, of which 46% were related to deaths in care homes, 46% in hospitals and 7% at home or in non-institutional settings, the NRS said.
To place these figures in context, the latest yearly totals show that, in 2018 24% of all deaths occurred in care homes, 49% in hospitals and 27% in home or non-institutional settings.
Pete Whitehouse, the NRS’s director of statistical services, said:
Loss of life from this virus is tragic and every death represents loss and heartbreak for families throughout the country.
Today’s figures show seven more deaths due to Covid-19, showing a similar level for three consecutive weeks. These figures are significantly lower than the peak week in mid-April when 661 Covid-19 related deaths were registered.
Monitoring the progress of this virus is important and National Records of Scotland will continue to work with Scottish government and Health Protection Scotland (HPS) to understand its impact in Scotland.
The scottish government daily figures are here:
https://www.gov.scot/publications/coronavirus-covid-19-daily-data-for-scotland/
The scot gov figures now show 5 Aug:
Deaths: week ending 2 August: 7 COVID-19 deaths were registered, of which 2 were in care homes and 4 in hospital.
When Sturgeon says something to the nation simply expect that it is wrong and do not trust.
I think everyone in here already agrees with you, its the Scotish population you need to convince
I appreciate that MP. I hope this catches the eyes of some who don’t contribute but read. No harm in them doing that either. Its a public space, apologies if I sound as though I’m angry towards the thread. I certainly am not.
Local press is broken and the national papers clearly have better stories to fry.
Foi requests have been an absolute waste of time for me. Before covids were a thing. Deliberate run about. During covids I’m 7 odd weeks into a wait for sturgeon cmo police scotland to reply on one simple question. Foi is broken.
I did get a reply out of GMC about calderwood – she won’t be struck off but I can take her to court if I like informed a nameless GMC team entity.
If Mad Nic is talking the figures down instead of up isn’t that a good thing overall?
Simple question, you’d have thought: what is the false positive rate for the SARS-CoV-2 RT-qPCR test? Answer: no-one knows! An assumed rate of 0% appears to inform diagnosis and policy. False negative rate? Two sides of same coin. False negatives are defined by retests, it’s all self-reflexive. There is no external validation gold standard test as a reference. So more tests, more FPs, not normalised, more panic, crisis never ends. I remain surprised by our continuing lack of independent virus specificity, visualisation and sequencing. Not saying there isn’t some disorder here but where’s the virus please? What are the PCRs using as a reference? It doesn’t quite add up.
Non co-morbid deaths.
To explain why probably most people that were seen as otherwise healthy died of covid-19.
To be at serious risk of dying it is suggested that fat people are at risk and thin people are not.
One can have a lot of subcutaneous fat and still be very healthy, Even visceral fat, which is my problem, isn’t necessarily a major issue. Liver fat is a clear and causative reason behind metabolic syndrome (diabetes, heart damage, etc etc). Genuine obesity is a big indicator that your liver is also fat, nothing more.
About 80% of obese people have fat livers which is why a lot of obese people have diabetes etc. however, 40% of diabetes cases come from non-obese people – and those people all have fat livers. My guess is that almost everyone that died without co-morbid conditions had fat livers and were prediabetic at least – they just didn’t know it.
Fat healthy people with low liver fat may well outlive me!
For the science proving the causative link look up Robert Lustig – a YouTube link to a talk below.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zx-QrilOoSM&t=1928s
You are so right about liver fat (fatty liver disease). High intake of sugar and carbs are the major causes of FLD.
Possibly a bit off topic but hearing that Boris wants to revise the laws on treason I had a look at them.
On legislation.gov.uk they have all the legislation going back to 1351.
https://www.legislation.gov.uk/primary+secondary?title=treason
I think Boris et al are perfidious, treasonous, treacherous traitors under the various legislation because it states:
“Declaration what Offences shall be adjudged Treason.” “if a Man do levy War against our Lord the King in his Realm, be adherent to the King’s Enemies in his Realm, giving to them Aid and Comfort in the Realm, or elsewhere”
Definition of adherent: A supporter, as of a cause or individual – they are definitely adherents to persons currently trying to overthrow our system of and the monarch
Definition of traitor:
one who betrays another’s trust or is false to an obligation or duty, a person who is treacherous or disloyal – definite yes on this one
Definition of treachery:
violation of allegiance or of faith and confidence – definite yes on this one
Definition of treachery:
an act or an instance of disloyalty, violation of faith or trust – definite yes on this one
Definition of perfidy
the quality or state of being faithless or disloyal; breach of faith, treachery
From 1848 bold an italics my highlighting:
“in order, by Force or Constraint, to compel Him (this is the monarch and heirs) or Them to change His or Their Measures or Counsels, or in order to put any Force or Constraint upon or to intimidate or overawe both Houses or either House of Parliament, or to move or stir any Foreigner or Stranger with Force to invade this Realm or any other of His said Majesty’s Dominions or Countries under the Obeisance of His said Majesty, His Heirs and Successors, and such Compassings, Imaginations, Inventions, Devices, or Intentions, or any of them, should express, utter, or declare, by publishing any Printing or Writing, or by any overt Act or Deed, being legally convicted thereof, upon the Oaths of Two lawful and credible Witnesses, upon Trial, or otherwise convicted or attainted by due Course of Law, then every such Person or Persons so as aforesaid offending should be deemed, declared, and adjudged to be a Traitor and Traitors, and should suffer Pains of Death, and also lose and forfeit as in Cases of High Treason”
No wonder he wants it changed as I think they’ve fall into the “intimidate or overawe both houses or either house of parliament” bit.
I think I remember I certain Mr Blair playing around with the treason laws too.
I want him hung, drawn and quartered, and I’d pay to watch it live!
his head on a spike at the Tower and the 4 quarters sent the four corners of the realm.
I almost agree with you.
How awful.
Sorry Annie, that’s how I’m feeling
I think I want them drawn first. It’s a nasty way to go.
Iirc it was traditional to only hang them briefly with no drop, so they would be alive to appreciate the drawing, if not the quartering.
Vindictive buggers, back in those days.
Sounds fine at the moment.
Ditto for Matt Hancock.
Without even looking them up, I’d automatically assume that if Boris is wanting to tweak the treason laws it must be because he knows he’s broken them!
Have you seen this? £38,000,000!!
BBC spends £38 million on call centres and staff to chase over-75s for licence fee. Corporation begins sending letters to 4.5 million pensioners across the country, a process expected to take at least two months
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/08/05/bbc-spends-38-million-call-centres-staff-chase-over-75s-licence/
It’s the resistance movement that got my attention. Here’s a group of people who can teach us a thing or two!
Silver Voices, a group that lobbies for the rights of the over-60s, said it had gained 500 new members in the past week after launching its Gum Up The Works campaign.
It is asking people to come up with “creative” ways of complicating the system for the BBC. They include stopping direct debit payments and only settling licence fee matters by cheque or postal order, and sending 12 post-dated cheques rather than paying the £157.50 charge up front.
Dennis Reed, the director of Silver Voices, said: “We have been getting a fantastic response. People have been coming up with interesting new ideas.
“At the moment, paying by monthly cheque is not an acceptable method – you are only allowed to pay by monthly direct debit – so TV Licensing would have to write back and tell you this is not an appropriate way of paying.
…. The objective of the campaign is to make implementation of the over-75s scheme so laborious that the BBC goes back to the Government and asks for another way through.
maybe a few over 60’s from in here should join silver voices and make lockdown sceptisism one of its campaigns – members of silver voices will children who are losing their jobs, and grand kids that arn’t getting educated as well as menbers who arn’t getting screened for cancer or treeted for heart probs and the rest….
My Mum & Dad are doing the post-dated cheques. I had nearly persuaded them not to renew at all, but they’ve decided they can cope with the cheques better!
Nice bit of passive aggression there. I like it!
It would be good to introduce Silver Voices to LS and LS to SV
We could start an Ungum Up The Lockdown campaign.
I still want to see the bodies. Being so alarmed by forecasts of what % of GDP has been lost and how much this whole exercise has cost, I’d like evidence of how many lives it has actually saved – and I am not talking here of those who were within a year or two from death anyway.
Perhaps I am being callous, but for north of £500 billion I want to see the stiffs.
Bring out your dead ….!
Not callous. Worldwide 711,909 have died of/with covid so far, out of 35,212,000 all causes. That’s a little over 2%. And a lot of those 2% would have probably died this year anyway. And this is a threat to the human race?
Genghis Khan is pissing himself in the afterlife.
you are right, and part of the problem is people find mention of our motality callous
Well, even assuming that Imperial College model is correct (which isn’t, not even nearly) and that ~40,000 have died from Covid 19 (allegedly), then we’re spending ~£1.1million in GDP per life saved (which superficially may not seem too bad). However, if we consider that the NHS is generally preparad to pay £30,000 per quality of life year (I got that figure from Dr Malcolm Kendrick’s plog on this subject) and the average age of death of a Covid-19 victim is 80, then it’s starting to look not so good.
I’ll give the 1.1 million figure this though: the NHS deals with it’s proportion of tax receipts (which would be ~ 33% of GDP to tax and ~25% of tax to the NHS), so £30,000 per QoL/years would work out (extremely lazily) £360,000 of GDP. Still one third of the cost to GDP incurred. And that is the best case scenario for the shutdown.
Of course we haven’t pushed the output back into the system whereby the shutdown causes its own loss of life and quality of life, which the NHS must pay for later. In addition to this the sustained loss of GDP and economic impact to the welfare state (considering currency debasement, inflation, deflation) the overall cost will likely run into trillions over a decade. So maybe the policy did in fact “save just one life” at the price tag of something like £3,000,0000,000,000. Or roughly the entire GDP of the UK for a whole year.
Just saw this, simply, yikes!
https://www.cbsnews.com/amp/news/los-angeles-shut-off-water-power-houses-hosting-large-parties-gatherings/?__twitter_impression=true
Random and very short field report of an event which annoyed me today!
I went to an Essex branch of Santander today to pay in a cheque.
There was a “guard” at the door.
As I approached, he said “You’ll need a mask to come in.”
I said “I’m exempt”
He said “Well, we still like you to wear a mask.”
I said “Yes, but I’m exempt.”
He said “Are you just using the machine?”
I said “yes” and he reluctantly allowed me in.
As I was leaving, and after paying in the cheque, he said “Next time, bring your mask.”
I said “I won’t because I’m exempt.”
I then bought a bottle of wine in Sainsburys and no one said a thing the whole time!
Not a very exciting story, but thought I’d share.
Keep it going everyone, and again, thank you Toby for this amazing site. Hopefully this site will form part of history for the sheep to look back on, and wish they weren’t duped!
If you have the time and the inclination to give these collaborators some stick, check out Awkward Git’s posts (and a few others’) on how to put the fear of Disability God into them, corporate-wise. I was prepped and ready to go this morning when I went into Lloyds Bank city centre branch but they just let me swan in and out maskless. Only coronabollocks on display was making people queue outside above certain numbers in the branch (didn’t apply when I turned up) and silly markings on the floor (which were ignored mostly), together with one way entrance/exit doors. Daft buggers!
You stuck to your guns, bravo!
A friend called in briefly today to bring me a plant. As she left, I touched her arm with a friendly pat, at which point she shrank back, exclaiming-‘no Wendy, we must observe social distancing!’.
This is so depressing, when even a friend of many years reacts as if one is a plague carrier.
What a thoroughly dismal state of affairs, and still the madness continues.
Briefly, on shops, compared to yesterday’s decidedly depressing experience in Sainsbury’s, today’s visit to the local Morrison’s was far, far better; I wore my badge and no one challenged me or glared in my direction.
Several check out ladies were not gagged and I greeted a couple, as usual.
Secondly, Gregg’s is one of the best for sceptics; our local branch is staffed by cheerful folk who enjoy their work; everyone is welcome-gags or no gags-and they have taken on a young trainee.
Menu has something for all tastes; so ,well done Gregg’s and Morrison’s.
good to know. I don
t usually go to greggs, but Id like to support anywhere friendly.What happened in Sainsbury’s?
It was very depressing: I wasn’t questioned, but all the staff and the other customers were either helmeted or gagged, and the general ambience was one of low level gloom.
One large bloke in a space helmet glared at me, but thought better of issuing a challenge.
The ambience in Sainsburys became gloomy when they started replacing all their nice checkout staff wth robots. That was long before lockdown.
I wasn’t going to bother with a shop report today, but might as well put it in here. First visit to Aldi since compulsory masks, wore my exemption card. No door monitor (good), all customers masked (bad) including a pair of under-fives (disgusting). I got a disapproving look from an old lady (don’t care). Shop staff on the floor masked, but not at the check-outs (with their perspex screens). 7 out of 10 for a reasonable shopping experience.
I wonder how big a dent all this silliness will make in supermarkets’ profits?
Extra costs; fewer customers.
Will be interesting to find out, if the figures are ever released.
Yes, I presume they have to pay door monitors and other busybodies whether they are direct employees or contract workers, and obviously these people are contributing absolutely nothing to improve sales. Aldi may be taking this view, hence the absence of a door monitor, though I don’t know if the same applies at all their branches.
My Aldi has an official guy who hangs around inside the shop, near the entrance but he’s fairly invisible as he’s very unobtrusive.
The ones who do online food ordering are probably ok but those who don’t – like Aldi and Lidl will have to be careful not to alienate their customers.
Another field report piece of trivia – in the local Waitrose the other day, I spotted this 50-something geezer in a pair of elbow-length yellow marigolds. Even amidst the other maskees, he looked a right charlie.
Ha, ha! The closet rubber fetishists are ‘coming out’ as it were.
A Charlie, LOL.
What the hell has keeping pubs and restaurants open got to do with reopening schools?
Please; no “knocking ” the teaching unions; my ex daughter in law went to work nearly every day during the schools shutdown looking after (not teaching) kids from 5 to 12 years of age of essential workers.
The “yummy mummies/daddies” have and will always be with us along with “namby pambies”,”scaredy cats”, and those who are scared of their own shadows,anyway only 23% of parents (yummy mummies/daddies) are worried about sending their”Tarquins” and “Autumns” back.
Reopen the universities, colleges and schools and prove there will be no “second wave” dispite how much our politicians and so called experts want it to happen for reasons best known to themselves.
It’s models again. Basically, according to the model different things have different impacts on the R number (all praise the R number). Therefore, if one decision raises the R number (all praise the R number) to an unsafe level you have to take another decision to lower it. It’s all nonsense, of course, but if you’re expecting common sense from the current shower you’re probably more optimistic than I am.
Common sense is remarkably uncommon.
Good pocket cartoon in the Telegraph: “Sorry, this pub has to close, you’ll have to go back to school, Headmaster”.
31st July. Only 2 deaths in hospitals with covid-19 of the death certificate. Do you think that the NHS could risk restarting some services again?
No. Far too dangerous. There might be a Second Wave lurking somewhere out there….
And should it go missing, our government is equipped and ready to manufacture one. In fact, tests are under way…
At an upfront cost of £billions.
I was due to have a hospital test back in April that was cancelled due to Covid. A couple of days ago I received a letter from the hospital scheduling a telephone consultation, at which a date will be set for the test. So maybe things are starting to get up and running again.
Horrifying. Strange how that’s matching what I’m seeing. Women are harassed for not wearing a mask; men “get away with it”. A guy sat near me on the bus yesterday, holding his mask over his face with his hand. I assume that’s how he boarded the bus. I didn’t see since I sit at the very back of the bus. I had my snood pulled up when he sat down. I pulled it down again when he sat facing away from me. He turned and looked at me, saw my face was uncovered and put his mask down with a little grin on his face. Honestly, that grin made me as mad as the mask fanatics.
Funny I just had the conversation with my mum. She was like “oooh the other day in co-op I saw TWO MEN without masks!” (when I said blokes were less likely to get picked on and old vulnerable people more likely). I was like “mental note: -going to that particular coop”
if you need backup farinances – let me know!!
My son, an even bigger sceptic than me (“It’s all complete bollocks” would be his polite opinion) went into his local Co-op on his way to work. “Sorry, we are only allowing key workers into the shop just now”. My son pointed out that there were no customers whatsoever in the shop (it was early) and told the shop assistant he would shop elsewhere in future. The irony is that the notion of a “key worker” is so stupidly, and soppily, defined. I’m not going to say on the public worldwide web what my son’s occupation is, but suffice to say that without the skills of his trade, the western world would grind to a halt in minutes and hospitals and banks could not function at all. As he pointed out at the start of this nonsense, if the projected 8 million were going to be affected, then civilisation as we know it would have broken down, examples being sewage workers and water treatment workers. Or maybe mechanics who service the lorries which carry our essential supplies around. We are all key workers.
The idea of “key workers” is anti-democratic and anti-capitalist. It is a direct reflection of a Stalinist view of the workforce. There to be disposed of as required by the State. The humble hairdresser is paying the tax that makes the life of the most virtuous public servant possible. Otherwise they would have to work for a living.
Anyone in the private sector – who’s effectively keeping the economy afloat and all public secTor workers on furlough paid at the moment – are surely ‘key workers’
Key worker far more important than the drones pretending to work for the NHS are the invisibles like the blokes at the water plant who give us clean water, the sewage works, the generating plant who keep the lights on, the peoe at.the feed mill who make animal feed etc etc etc.
It’s all bollocks, everybody in private sector is key worker as someone else values them enough to part with their own money for what they do.
Just feel smug that he is being self righteous about an act that just shows how pig ignorant he is – in believing a mask is effective and touching it all the time which means it’s covered in germs. Most unhygienic
https://thecritic.co.uk/scullionbait/
This is a good digest of wokeishness.
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/never-has-a-virus-been-so-oversold
And here is Lionel Shriver, a free article and well worth reading.
Speccie not allowing comments, though. They must be worried about something!
True! They’re all terrified of the lockdown sceptics!
They are. But I’m a subscriber. Maybe you cannot comment unless you subscribe?
I am. But still commenting not available.
She’s right. I’m having a down day today, and would welcome a nuclear blast.
She’s been a sceptic from the word go. Great article.
Headline in DM (I only ever read headlines)
France’s covid testing teams down tools – for summer holidays: Laboratory staff head off on vacation just as signs of a second wave strike leaving country struggling with demands for tests.
This is brilliant!!!
See if this was Bubonic level, wouldn’t they have emergency replacement staff? Or force them not to take holiday?
(
Macron’s chance to get case numbers down? )
It is France. They saw “second wave strike” and they were off.
Ditto UK parliament, “during the emergency”?
Hardly any of the wankers have turned up through out
sounds like they’ve solved their covid problem, simples
Didn’t The Donald say some months ago, stop testing the disease goes away?
I think he did yes lol
Covid is making his gut instincts look very good
There’s France for you. Nothing stops l’Exode.
And don’t expect any testing to be done between midday and 2p.m., not ever.
Ono, just typically French in August.
I worked for a company based by CDG for 5 years and nothing, absolutely nothing, happened during August.
That will be the second wave averted then…
When I worked in industry we had regular contact with French companies, but we knew there was no point in attempting any communication during August.
I feel I have let the side down a bit today. I had a little speech planned if anyone confronted me about my not wearing a mask. It was short, polite and fact-filled.
I am so used to going in Sainsbury’s unmolested it came as a shock when a man of about 60 blocked my path gesticulating at his own black neoprene clad mandibles, eyes flashing with fury. So startled was I that what came out of my mouth was not the wise, diplomatic and educational piece I had intended but a furious “I’m exempt, you nosey old git!!!”
“what came out of my mouth was … a furious “I’m exempt, you nosey old git!!!”
Can’t see anything wrong with that. A little over-polite perhaps, but you’re just being civilised.
I think you were rather polite.
Good for you! Now stand by for a chorus of ‘I never get challenged because I look like something out of Game of Thrones’.
(Joke!)
Prob applies to me. The only creatures who dare mess with a dragon are Khaleesi Karens
Can I just clarify (since I may be guilty of this). My point is not that I look like John Snow, my point is that the cowards go after the easy to go after and as they’re cowards, everyone should feel free to ignore them.
I’m 5ft 10”, ride a black horse and look not unlike Brienne of Tarth. The old twat must have had his brave pants on but probably had to go home and change them!
In that case, I think you went with the correct response.
Love it! My OH says he would have inserted the word ignorant between “you” and “nosey”
The problem for all these muzzlots is that they are understandably JEALOUS of our freedom to walk unmasked into any shop.
They are IGNORANT because they don’t know that they could be exempt themselves. It is our job to guide them in the direction of the government webpage from which they can print out their ticket to freedom.
They are STUPID because no one in the U.K. should be wearing a mask unless through personal choice. There are far too many get out clauses which are being handed to them on a plate by this government.
They are DANGEROUS because their masks constitute a biohazard to them and us.
I converted two more helpless souls this morning. There are still far too many out there who have no concept of how to escape this tyranny.
Margaret deserves an LS gong, in glorious heraldic colours: gules +or+ bare face rampant!
Yes, I think you’ve hit the nail on the head with these reasons. I particularly agree with the idea that some of the mask Nazis are resentful of our freedom because they don’t realise there’s any alternative.
Well said. They’re also angry because they’re realising they’ve been had but dare not admit it.
Sounds good to me.
You’re a better person than me, the one time I was (rudely) challenged my rational and calm planned spiel quickly turned into a few 4 letter words! Must do better next time…
You can let fly with expletives but still maintain courtesy and civility and that is by using the third person technique. This is something I have in my arsenal but have never had occasion to use it yet—-but it’s primed and ready to go.
Something along the lines of:
‘My parents brought me up to be courteous, polite and respectful to others—-which is just as well otherwise I would tell you to piss off!
Stronger expletives can be substituted for ‘piss’ but I’m sure you get my drift.
Deaths to date in hospitals and pre-existing conditions:
As per my comment lower down. Bet most non pre-existing condition people had fatty livers and were pre-diabetic at least
And daily deaths as of 6th Aug by age band:
I’m so worried about catching Covid from you, I’m going to walk from the other end of the platform and get right up in your face …
Exactly. But that is a standard intimidation tactic unfortunately. Accuse someone else of doing wrong while simultaneously abusing them and doing wrong yourself. Par for the course.
Some good news. Just been for a walk round the park. It was busy but there wasn’t a muzzle to be seen.
There was just one woman whose face was covered but she was in full black gear including niqab. She caught my eye and said hello. Probably smiled too.
Nobody leaped into a bush, everybody was behaving perfectly normally.
Encouraging after seeing all the cowed sheep in Aldi last night!
Let’s hope this better weather continues and we can all exchange more doses of sanity.
Just wanted to add my own report of going mask-free, as reading so many on these comments is what gave me the courage to do it.
Tube was surprisingly easy, although I am lucky enough to commute without using main stations. Didn’t even feel like anyone was looking at me and saw a handful of others maskless or using them as chin straps. I even noticed a few who saw me and decided to at least poke their nose out. The hardest bit was walking in, as soon as I was on the escalator it was surprisingly easy, and liberating.
Later on I ventured to my local cornershop, had a peak in the door first to see if anyone else was unmuzzled. The only guy I could see was, so that was enough for me to go for it. Once inside it felt like a parallel universe. There were 5-6 other customers in there and not a single one masked! Mind you this is a cornershop in London serving a very different demographic to your standard covid bedwetter but it was fortifying nonetheless. I’ll tackle the big supermarkets next on the back of this.
Keep it up everyone, I reckon there will be a tipping point soon as there already has been to some extent on buses and in smaller shops. We will be free!
The lockdown is unraveling fast. Yesterday the European Court of Justice ruled that wearing of face masks in public places was contrary to the Human Rights Act. Does not bode well for Govt with the forthcoming Judicial Review proceedings on September 28th. Will they backtrack before then?
“ 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”.
Sure that was the ECJ and not a local court as suggested elsewhere here?
Funny how this isn’t being covered in the MSM nor can I find anything on a Google search.
Nowt via Duckduckgo either …
Medical WARNING: Doctor says the untested COVID-19 vaccine will alter your DNA (see Video)
https://www.naturalhealth365.com/dna-damage-covid-vaccine-3505.html
There are variables – eye colour etc that are hardwired and very similar among all humans. Then there is the 90%? that is the instruction book – to make proteins, These change all the time, a good example is creating random antibodies until one does the job required to fight a particular pathogen..
Very readable book about how our genes aren’t fixed.
Also makes some very interesting points about how the body is a actually community of organisms:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Spontaneous-Evolution-Positive-Future-There/dp/1848503059/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=bruce+lipton+spontaneous+evolution&qid=1596724080&s=books&sr=1-1
I like to think of what it (RNA vaccine) as hacking rather than changing the DNA so to speak…..especially if these vaccines are to be given semi-regularly form different strains like flu jabs.
HOWEVER- that’s if it works as intended.
I don’t trust that it will work as intended.
None of the Covid vaccines I’m aware of modify your DNA in any way. Some contain RNA but there is no integrase and they don’t reprogram your own DNA.
Lots of things in them will affect gene expression but this is OK and also what happens with a regular infection. That’s mostly how cytokines work.
I am sure the vaccine will be perfectly safe. It has spent many weeks in development.
This is just supposition but perhaps the WHO are pushing the “test, test, test” mantra on behalf of Big Pharma not only to continue the fear campaign but also to facilitate the creation of a global DNA database to baseline everyone’s DNA before the DNA altering vaccine is forced upon us.
I can see how this could be useful in tracking the changes wrought by the initial and undoubtedly ongoing vaccination campaigns as they use the human population as unwitting guinea pigs in their nefarious research into population control.
This may be tin foil hat stuff but nothing surprises me anymore because they are evil bastards.
I won’t be taking it. Even assuming the motivations behind developing the vaccine are entirely benevolent (lol), for the overwhelming majority of the population Covid-19 is not dangerous enough to warrant a vaccine at all!
From the Lionel Shriver article:
‘In trade for this valiant vigilance on our behalf, we merely have to sacrifice: our friends. Any new friends. All live performance — music, plays. Restaurants. All occasions, like proper weddings, funerals, birthdays and extended–family celebrations. Travel. Colleagues. Any search for love. Any moving communal experience, like festivals. Dentistry. A functional National Health Service. Oh, and the economy — and in case you need translation, that means the country, full stop.’
I’m going to print that out and stick it in my back car window.
It’s a good article. I’ve shared it on Facebook, not that it’ll do much good!
Actually, a work colleague who I’ve long thought to be a closet sceptic has liked it, I’ll call that a success!
How do you share on Facebook if it’s behind a paywall? Just copy and paste the text?
I just shared the link. It’s one of three free articles for non subscribers. I cancelled my subscription to the Spectator a while ago and was able to read it, although I’m not sure if you need to have an account to see it.
I think that is the problem – I’ve tried to share Speccie articles on FB in the past and people say they can’t read it.
Thaks. The article is behind a paywall so I couldn’t read it. Powerful stuff!
Her and Sumption’s Spec articles properly began my scepticism.
She’s been a sceptic from the beginning. Her interview with Brendan O’Neill back in around April-May was fantastic. This is another well written and well argued article from her.
I’m beginning to see that this has all been a nothing-burger for society healthwise in relation to respiratory conditions. Not obviously for those that have passed. I’ll explain.
Say that you don’t know about Covid-19 and you treat it like a flu/cold. There will be a small subset of people with very acute respiratory problems but a lot won’t. You don’t force care homes to retake patients, you treat them like any respiratory issue. You don’t force a change to society and so you should see the rise in cases, but in this scenario you are attributing respiratory ailments like before.
Now let’s assume that there is no gathering movement where this new ailment gets a name and goes public.
If you misdiagnose you’ll still try and treat the patient. It will just be an “unknown ailment”. The blast radius of the effect is locally and tightly confined.
Would the mortality have risen? Most likely no as we are seeing just that for different countries.
Now what happens when you intentionally disrupt the system like we have, convoluting the data and causing secondary effects? We still have only had 50000 deaths and over some months. As has been demonstrated locking down does little but damage your economy.
So in terms of actions to treat the virus, knowing or not knowing on average has no signficantly different effects.
But there is an antisymmetric effect on society as a whole. For one we are now all £500 billion more in debt. Not to mention the knock on effects of delayed treatment, unemployment, societal fracture.
So for risk reward we should have done nothing but let the system absorb it locally. We are seeing the same magnitude effects for respiratory issues as before.
The main reason why the measures were taken is because of Ferguson’s model and the propaganda surrounding it
The main reason why the measures were taken is because of Ferguson’s model and the propaganda surrounding it
I would argue that the main reason Ferguson was chosen was so his model could be the excuse for all the propaganda.
That’s a good point. Always have an out
It’s hard to come up with any other convincing reason, given the track record!
To further add there may now be more deaths from respiratory diseases caused by the reduction in living standards because of the lockdown than died in the lockdown.
As me and my sceptic friend keep saying, without the bloody media circus we’d have never noticed anything. Maybe a “blimey, the flu’s bad and late this year!” episode in March/April but long since forgtten by now. As per Belarus, no swamped hosptials or bodies in the streets, nothing for most people.
I mean how many sheeple even remember the 2017/2018 Aussie flu? No fuss over ~50,000 deaths then! Oh my mistake, there were/are vaccines for that.
Even when you break the normal chain of medical care, pushing infected people back into care homes, in effect exacebating the effect, the death toll is still within normal flu.
So it appears we are quite heavily invariate to respiratory deaths as a society now. I think that’s what Professor Gupta was saying. Our interconnectivity has become an advantage
Mr Bart has always blamed 24/7/365 rolling news and antisocial media for the hysteria. He believes that if news reporting was like it was in the old days, people would simply shrug their shoulders and carry on with life.
I received the welcome news from my osteopath that I could resume appointments with her. However, she is now sharing a practice with a colleague as she was formerly working from home but unable to comply with the ludicrous restrictions/guidelines/made up crap, in her home.
Anyway, in order to have an appointment I had to consent to wearing a face mask for the whole appointment. And not just any face mask, it has to be ‘tightly fitted to the face covering your nose and mouth’. I replied with a ‘that’s fine, but I’m exempt and there’s no way I’d agree to spend an hour in a mask even if I wasn’t’. I explained that I was disappointed that they hadn’t even mentioned the exemptions clearly set out by the Government. I received a note back to say their policy was being amended – they clearly had a quick look at the regs and changed their protocol. I can go mask free, hooray. But I can’t take my handbag… random!
It’s a small win, but right now I’ll take anything! Push back people, it’s the only way.
Well done!
Do any of these people actually read the regulations?
People who are in a position to apply them? Not usually, no.
One thing that I think is happening is that professional bodies have gone totally overboard and suggested, or even required, all sorts of things over and above the regs/guidelines. Mine even suggested they wouldn’t support me over any claim a client might make if I didn’t follow their guidance to the letter. They rowed back a bit on it, but I took the view that I was able to judge my re-opening based on the gov guidelines and my own common sense. Insurance companies doing the same.
You can’t take your handbag. Suggest you find yourself another osteopath.
Nuts isn’t it? If it wasn’t for the fact that she’s a friend, I would’ve… Tempted to take one anyway.
Friend or not she should be challenged. You can take your handbag everywhere else. Sounds lime your friend needs a reality check.
Oh well if you can’t take your handbag then you won’t be able to pay them!
Good Job!
Nice work …
https://hcqtrial.com/
Early treatment with hydroxychloroquine: a country-randomized controlled trial
“Many countries either adopted or declined early treatment with HCQ, forming a large country-randomized controlled trial. 2.0 billion people were assigned to the treatment group, and 663 million to the control group. As of August 6, 2020, an average of 38.5/million in the treatment group have died, and 440.2/million in the control group, relative risk 0.087. After adjustments, treatment and control deaths become 79.6/million and 630.0/million, relative risk 0.13. Confounding factors affect this estimate, including varying degrees of spread between countries. Accounting for predicted changes in spread, we estimate a relative risk of 0.21. The treatment group has 79.1% lower chance of death.”
Some caveats with this article. It is not published in a scientific journal but on a web site and the authors are HCQ zealots. Difficult to publish for them in ordinary papers. You could criticize the criteria for selecting countries. What is the definition of limited use in the group with no HCQ treatment as there was some, at least regionally spread HCQ use in earlier part of the pandemic in France. Mexico also had intermittent use of HCQ.
But intuitively just seeing the striking low deaths in Russia, Turkey, North Africa and Indian Sub Continent with almost nothing in common but the extensive use of HCQ.
The highest death rates are in high income Western countries, then a group of countries with half functioning health system like Mexico, Peru and Brazil eagerly copying the US with deaths in the middle range, and then this above group of countries with lower death rates.
But perhaps the most astonishing general observation. Dirt poor countries in Africa, Haiti and Afghanistan with almost no functioning health system and no treatment at all just letting Covid-19 washing through without doing anything and coming out with very low death figures.
This a very crude unsophisticated observation but there is something very topsy-turvy with this world. This pandemic seems to inflict most harm in the rich countries rather than poor countries. That has not happened in earlier pandemics as far as I know.
And a particular subset of rich countries, too.
I watched much of the America’s Frontline Doctors seminar and what they said may explain why poor countries are doing better. HCQ is available over-the-counter in countries where malaria is an issue and those populations have used it for decades and know how to take it properly (i.e., with zinc, not in the stupid high doses the bad studies used).
I posited early on that richer nations are better at keeping their old alive and therefore have more “fuel for the fire”. I’ve not looked into the exact figures but I would expect to see some correlation in this.
Or to quote the Final Destination movie “Death doesn’t take no for an answer.”
There is growing evidence that the size of the elderly population is a major factor in differences between countries.
Yes they’re older and fatter. There may also be differences in how deaths are counted. Would need to do lots of statistics to try to disentangle all the different effects. But certainly lockdowns do not help at all. Because as was obvious from the start you can’t stay in them forever.
Interesting, especially since I read that Gates intends to start the Covid vaccination programme in Africa…a continent that has been using HCQ..
https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/1318966/mcdonalds-chicken-nuggets-coronavirus-face-mask-aldershot-hants. Chicken nuggets are so small with barely any meat. Girl must have swallowed mother’s face nappy.
Quite – I wondered about that. I haven’t read the article (I find attempting to look at Express articles is even more irritating {dropdowns etc etc} than Mail articles, but I do wonder if dollar signs were flashing up!
It was, at least twice.
Call my a cynic. While it may not have been planned, the World Economic Forum folks (including the Masks4All maskhole), and Bill Gates in particular, have seized the opportunity and run with it. Calling for “the great reset” or the 4th industrial revolution, Green New Deal…doesn’t matter. I’m particularly cynical since I watched Davie Icke on London Real https://freedomplatform.tv/rose-icke-v-the-answer/
and Who is Bill Gates? on the Corbett Report.
https://www.corbettreport.com/gates/
Sad but very good summary of where we’re at …
Just one correction – there was a rise in mortality, and it wasn’t a result of lock-up : it affected already vulnerable adults – as rises in mortality do periodically. But how much was “Covid” will never be known -and the overall rise wasn’t exceptional when seen in context.
But as has been pointed out elsewhere, for the majority of those included in the early increase in mortality, it just brought forward the inevitable by several months. The mortality rate since then has fallen below average.
If it was not as a result of the lockdown measures, what was the cause(s)?
Sadly, policemen smashing windscreens is becoming the new normal in the police state that is Victoria. Along with soldiers on the street, paper checks and $5,000 on the spot fines. This news article shows nfootage of a Melbourne mum being pinned to the ground by three police officers after she allegedly broke lockdown
https://www.news.com.au/world/coronavirus/australia/victoria-police-hand-out-176-fines-for-breaching-coronavirus-directions/news-story/dd97030f26d564c055d956bebf482cc5.
This is the response to an escalation of infections that are a cause in the death of 170 Victorians. Not the daily death toll. From the start.
I am delighted to see the wonderful rant of Sky News Australia commentator Alan Jones included in the news round up, it’s going viral. It may give the impression Australia has a robust community of covid dissenters but that is not the case. The last time I heard such an impassioned rant by an Australian was from Peter Finch in Network. The relentless onslaught of propaganda spewing from the mainstream media and official health authorities has hypnotised (almost) the entire population into a docile state of psychotic paralysis. But there are fledgling signs of hope.
I often post skeptical remarks in the comments section of Australian newspapers and usually get mauled. But this week I was surprised to receive supportive responses from the readers of the Australian version of the Daily Mail, they are really getting fed up and angry. I posted a question which Toby posed recently – could the infection increase be due to a corresponding increase in testing ? The readers of the Australian version of the Guardian were not moved. I was called a troll and a Trump supporter, and those were the more polite comments. To spend a moment in the echo chamber of the Guardian readers’ comments section crikey. Forensic analysis of every obscure covid snippet- charts, pseudoscience, the croakings of politicians – spin cycles of postmodern nonsense.
I managed to find a Facebook group called End the Lockdown Australia, and there encouraging signs of a burgeoning movement of dissent; protests and petitions being passed around, and some witty memes amongst the grim news stories. There are quite a lot of us after all, mad as hell, and I hope we not going to take it anymore. I recommend the group to any Aussies feeling alone among the madness, and would love to hear of any others that have been discovered.
“I am delighted to see the wonderful rant of Sky News Australia commentator Alan Jones included in the news round up, it’s going viral. “
Good to hear it’s getting high profile visibility, at least. Would be very interesting to hear what kind of response it gets over the next few days. In general, when a mainstream media figure goes off the reservation the first line of response is to ignore him and hope nobody noticed. If that fails, the pushback is usually quick and heavy, involving gross character assassination and corporate and if necessary regulatory pressure to try to get the dissenter silenced or sacked.
Australians seem to be enthusiastically behind this:
“Sick and tired of people who are above the law. Don’t whinge when you have done the wrong thing. Actions = consequences. Happy that the police are doing their job protecting us from people like you.”
Without context I’d be wondering if this woman was caught in the act of planting an explosive or had just whipped an AK out or something.
It’s true. The media are really pitting the converted against the dissenters, and are conspiring with the police by publicising brutality as an example to us all
And the baying mobs are all too ready to shout “burn the witch”
How can this be happening in a democratic country?
How can walking be dangerous to anyone?
Unbelievable and sad.
It is so disproportionate.
Can the Queen intervene perhaps? (I’m Serious)
Her hired goon replaced a PM previously – precedent is there.
I read the comments below the article you linked to, and couldn’t believe them. They were all along the lines of “Shut up, do as you’re told.” and “this isn’t America. Obey the law or else.”
Do none of them see the parallels such as with the East German Stasi, or the Nazis in occupied countries, and how totalitarian this is? For a virus that has a mortality rate in Australia of around 0.0012%? If you round up to the nearest whole number it’s zero.
I’m gobsmacked. I really am.
I’m gobsmacked too. But I am not convinced all those comments are real, just there to shape public opinion.
Does Australia have a 77th brigade or are ours operating on Australian MSM and social media?
I don’t know for sure but I think Australia must have an equivalent of the 77th brigade. In fact when I see a comments section choc full of these sort of sentiments , I post a comment like I see the 77th brigade has been busy and they seem to realise they have overdone it because the comments calm down straight away.
I’ve noticed this on youtube especially. Seems like they populate the comments sections of sceptical vids and troll the most popular comments. If you say “hi there 77!” to them it shuts them up. My mind is blown by this but I dunno why, I had muchos run-ins with Correct The Record during the 2016 presidential election- an outfit set up by Hillary to do similar shenanigans
Pathetic, aren’t they ?
There’s also the Twitter page https://mobile.twitter.com/riseupmelbourne
Thank you ! It looks good.
2020 is the 100th Anniversary of the beginning of the 20th Century’s Prohibition Era.
I propose that cloning was already secretly in full force one hundred years ago and that we are now being bossed around by the great grandchildren of those 20th C Puritans.
I posted on yesterday’s page about the ‘creeping’ Temperance in the US from around 1874, that culminated in the US Volstead Act (Prohibition). Parallels in the ‘creeping’ restrictions on us meeting in pubs, and other infringements of civil liberties. It is starting to inflict the student population, even assuming they are allowed to ever go back to ‘proper’ study (lectures, tutorials), It is certainly the case that any old excuse is being made to stop them socialising:
https://order-order.com/2020/08/06/kings-college-london-socials-with-alcohol-are-institutional-barriers-for-muslim-students/#comments
Not sure where this will end, but I don’t like where it is already!
The parallels are interesting. You could also wonder whether it’s in effect a puritanical backlash to the relatively libertine period we’ve been through over the past 6 decades. We’ve seen the pattern through history in which case, the pendulum will eventually swing back the other way, but none of us will be alive to see it.
Regardless, I don’t like it either.
There was a very well-organised lobbying group behind Prohibition – the Women’s Christian Temperance Union. By 1900 there were 7 dry states in the US, so well on the way to ‘lockdown’ before Prohibition. Consumption of alcohol, though, during Prohibition was essentially unaffected – extensive bootlegging and locally-produced moonshine. The level of crime and deaths from contaminated moonshine (slow and painful!) led to the repeal in 1933, albeit restrictions remained in many states (and still do in quite a few).
The point to make, and where there are socio-political parallels, is the involvement of women, and the association with religion. In the former, the indoctrination of young girls, in particular, into the school of ‘green’ and ‘climate change’, with their heroine, St Greta, is of concern. It is the mothers of many of these girls, and the extended network of like-minded teachers, who have driven the lockdown religion, in my opinion. Of course, as it is always money and power that drives many processes and movements, there is usually the hand of some pretty unsavoury characters behind the scene, most of whom are men. It upsets me when the women in this consider themselves ‘liberated’ or ’empowered’ – they are not, they are merely pawns and useful idiots!
Melbourne Police: Thugs R US.
I just took a quick look through the Guardian and DM. Strangely, no mention of the violent nature of the new lockdown in Melbourne. It’s like nothing’s happened there.
Like the Gilets Jaunes in Paris that the MSM ignored…
According to a DT article today, new data from the King’s College London symptom tracker app reveals that up to 500,000 people in the UK are suffering with the long-term effects of Covid-19. So that implies to me that they are ‘self certifying’ as having post Covid effects.
It then goes on to say that GPs are ‘misdiagnosing’ them as having ME or stress, possibly even Munchausen’s syndrome. Or to be harsh, a serious case of work-phobia. The cynic in me says that this is probably not far from the truth.
Doubtless the tracker app findings will be used in the next round of fear-mongering and implementation of further restrictions – I mean why would you trust GPs when you have a public opinion app to tell you what’s really going on….
Article is here: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2020/08/05/mps-hear-aftereffects-coronavirus-can-linger-months-cause-lasting/?utm_medium=email&utm_source=CampaignMonitor_Editorial&utm_campaign=LNCH%20%2020200806%20%20House%20Ads%20%20SM+CID_926a44b68fdefc78b3dff4204f219a1f (paywall)
Isn’t 500,000 way more than the total number of cases?!?
Psychosomatic bollocks.
That’s what I thought too.
Yes, the total confirmed cases is around 300,000. So (another) made-up number.
Most people are nutrient deficient and as a result their bodies can’t recover properly in a good time. Virus infections burns through our Vitamin A and vitamin C levels in our bodies.
And magnesium stores. My trigger point was three winters of flu in a row (I was soooo ill) and then a root canal, then all the wheels fell off, autoimmune issues, and now mast cell over activation. Not fun, and doctors don’t care, but nobody ground society to a halt on my behalf and neither would I expect them to.
Take a look on here, this stuff does work (wife has electro-magnetic hypersensitivity so spent years trying to find stuff that worked as normal medical route didn’t care) unlike some of the cheap pyramid shaped things you can buy on eBay and amazon:
https://www.memon.eu/en/
I have a full-house harmoniser, one on the solar panel invertor and the wife wears the memoriserbody bracelet and I’ve just ordered me one
https://www.memon.eu/shop/en/memonizerbody-silver?number=SW10081&c=91
She also has one of these for the bad days plus a silver weave sheet she wraps herself in at times:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/LVFEIER-EMF-Radiation-Protection-blocking/dp/B07FYBHKJ5/ref=sr_1_7?dchild=1&keywords=emf+lvfeier+hats&qid=1596737904&s=electronics&sr=1-7
To be fair, it is quite often the case that people have all kinds of weird and whacky on going debility, or a nasty viral respiratory virus triggers some kind of on going health problem (I’m one of those people, after flu, and GPs will fob you off, as you don’t fit neatly onto one of their pathways) so people probably are having on going issues after a nasty infection.
That said, it’s not new, and it’s not unique to this virus. For most people, they suffer with fatigue, weakness, naggy problems that go away at worst after a few months.
For those of us who happen to be unlucky enough in the old genetic roll of the dice, it can trigger something catastrophic like ME (that is a real thing, much maligned in healthcare, with patients treated like lead swinging shit, or nutters, they are neither, it’s a real travesty).
However, quite why these people are acting like they’ve just split the atom, no idea. It’s not ‘long covid’ it’s ‘long post viral debility’.
Life happens, and life is not fair. That’s all it is.
I’ve been pointing this out for some time now: that ME was dismissed for many years as a kind of mad persons’ delusion, mainly presenting in ‘neurotic women’,whereas now the same cluster of symptoms is being described in various ways, including post viral fatigue.
My younger sister caught viral pneumonia in the winter of 1018-19, and was laid low for weeks with post viral fatigue.
Needless to say, she didn’t hide under the bed or lock her home down and managed eventually, to do limited wfh.
A friend suffered severe ME for 11 years, which led to her early retirement from primary school teaching.
She had the usual difficulties in getting medics to believe her, but won through in the end.
Interestingly, she has been warned never to have the flu vaccine, which poses an interesting conundrum for the future, since we’re now being encouraged to hope that vaccines will be the magic bullet in the Coronadrama.
Yep, entirely agree. I had three winters of flu (my susceptibility was probably something to do with whatever underlying thing eventually triggered my health catastrophe) and was never the same again, and I too have a dustbin diagnosis of ‘CFS’. That doesn’t mean anything really other than ‘we don’t know so we’ll pretend you are mad instead, then we can safely ignore you and pretend its your own fault’.
I have very good care now (privately) and am pretty much back to normal provided I’m a stickler for pacing myself, good nutrition, and I keep my immune stuff under control. Mine’s all endocrine related, which makes sense looking back, and I think the years and years parked on the pill (when I was too naive to ask questions) for “your hormones” probably had something to do with it.
Yeah I’ve heard all sorts about the flu vaccine. My wonderful german professor (that man saved me) said the problem is doctors ignore patients, paitents get angry and frustrated, get on the internet, get ‘radicalised’ and then start reinforcing doctors belief they are a bunch of nutters that can be safely ignored. Ditto Wakefield, there are legitimate concerns about the safety of some vaccines, but because the fringe lobby are the loudest, no sane doctor would touch that area of research with a bargepole.
I can also attest that medicine is deeply, deeply sexist and still has vast issues to work out around women, bodily autonomy and consent. Nowhere more than in medicine is the old saw ‘women are mad, bad or sad’ taken as gospel.
Apparently they dole anti depressants out to women like sweeties (and not to men with similar symptoms) – whilst often ignoring a simpler, probably physical diagnosis.
They do, it’s a scandal. That’s basically what’s happened with M.E.
My recent gynae adventures, minor op, they went on and on and feckin’ on about the Mirena IUD. I don’t want one, done my homework, no thanks. Endlessly. Day of the op, must have tried again fifty times that morning. Said no repeatedly. Lying on the trolley in pre op, given sedative, ask me AGAIN! ‘We can just pop one in while you’re under’. I’d already done the paperwork, consent form said no. Honestly, if you are a woman, no means yes. I was going under saying, ‘No!!!’. The amount of stories I’ve heard women with massive issues, finally go for an ultrasound, and they’ve put them in anyway (women missing their chance to have kids).
It got so bad with my GP not bloody doing his job, I asked for my notes. First entry on my SCR? ‘patient wants review of notes due to psychiatric history’ – I DO NOT HAVE a psychiatric history!!! Right battle to get that off, and once anything like that is on your notes say bye bye to ever being taken seriously ever again.
Rape victims, most are diagnosed as ‘borderline personality disorder’ within six months of the attack. The stories, just forget being treated with any dignity in healthcare ever again.
Friend of mine, gynae procedure, discussed and refused, was done without her consent under anesthesia. When she complained, and asked for her notes, they said ‘hysterical amnesia’. ie she did consent, she was just so mad, she forgot.
They are like the mafia. Which is why I didn’t clap.
I would never, ever recommend anyone to have a Mirena IUD. Evil things. I experienced profound depression and weight gain on the bloody thing. I was a slender, happy size 8 when it went in. A suicidal 12/14 when it came out. Worst thing I ever did. Best thing I did was getting it out again. I hear time and again friends being recommended them and under pressure from GPs to accept them. I tell them to do their research and just say no!
So sorry, heard that story a million times. And no medic would push any treatment with that many side effects (a contraceptive that kills libido, makes you suicidal, amazing selling point!) on men, one ‘no’ would be the end of it. I read all those kinds of stories, which is why I said no. My cousin had one, had the same experience. I really don’t understand the romanticising people do about the NHS.
Sounds as bad as the contraceptive skin implant Depo Provera, that Gates (who else?) was also involved in…
My mother was on diazepam (Valium is the trade name in the States) for over 20 years. Obviously addicted to it, but doctors kept writing her prescriptions. Got it legally for decades. But she did actually have mental health issues stemming from childhood abuse.
Professor Peter Goetzsche has written a very interesting book about that! https://www.deadlymedicines.dk/deadly-psychiatry-and-organised-denial/
Spot on! I fell ill following a mental and physical breakdown brought on by family denial of male members’ incestuous behaviour: enough on that.
Depression and severe anxiety were compounded by a mysterious endocrine disorder which manifested as severe vomiting, palpitations, muscle and bone pain, panic, a strong sense that my body was producing a toxin, and debility so bad that I could barely stand up.
These episodes lasted for over 20 years and were brought on by perceived stress, exertion, coffee, alcohol ,hot weather and lack of sleep.
Needless to say, tests produced no definitive results, so the cause was ascribed to mental illness.
So sorry to hear that wendy, that sounds like PTSD (it’s not a D, it’s an I for injury to the brain and nervous system, creates body havoc) and yes women are just fobbed off (well anyone with unexplained symptoms is fobbed off, women particularly). I find it astonishing they do this as well, they say we have no clinical signs you are ill, so you are mad, but we have no clinical signs for that either, but that’s different because we’re doctors.
My husband had weeks of fatigue after catching glandular fever in his 40th. But still went to work. 6 months later he was fine.
Similar to my sister’s experience.
I had this in my 20’s, much the same experience
Probably also low vitamin D levels. Malcolm Kendrick has articles about that on his blog.
A lot of plants can be toxic. A very severe restriction diet (start with just meat) and add items one at a time to find out what triggers problems
But half a million people have *not*had severe infections. That’s just bollocks.
True. But some people have been very ill. I wouldn’t be surprised if those people are having issues, and are not imagining it. Just not for the reasons they think.
Yup, had the ME thing. At the time it was also called Post Viral Fatigue Syndrome. Never found what caused it, but it was dreadful – fevers, delerium, exhaustion, constant pain in legs, neck & shoulders, brain fog, headaches, stomach problems, depression, grief without cause, light sensitivity, all sorts – on and off for 18 months. Took me more than 20 years to recover (plenty relapses). So when I hear this stuff about post-CV19 proving how bad it is I just feel like smashing something (or someone, preferably a health minister or newspaper editor of some sort).
Wasn’t there an article a week or two ago linking supposed local ‘outbreaks’ to mass hysteria?
Honestly I think all these people are just exhausted from.psychological assault and physically degraded from months stuck at home, and downright right depressed because fun has been effectively banned. It’s making them ill. But not with corona
My girlfriend went back on anti-depressants after 15 years not needing them.
My sister is a strong person. A month ago she said she just started sobbing. If it got to her then a lot of people are in a very dark place.
Ugh no, I’m sorry man. It really is grinding people down. Hey its getting to me and I’m pretty hard.
It’s not a case of being ‘hard’ or not. This has been a period of induced mass psychosis using psychological manipulation via Fear. That is unforgivable and is bound to have consequences. Millions of people have been *made*ill to a greater or lesser degree.
Did I not just make the OP? Jeez
I am a strong person but feel permanently stressed.
I stopped watching BBC months ago,then stopped direct debit.
I also stopped listening to LBC as they have become biased.
It is the uncertainty that it stressful.
They want us to feel stressed all the time: will they do lockdown or not, will they open schools or not, will they cancel flights or not.
I really hate this government.
I avoid BBC news, I go on to the Daily Telegraph site but I’m not a subscriber so I only see the start of the stories before going to the comments which give an idea of what the story was. My first thought of the day before going online is “What latest outrage are the bastards proposing to inflict on us now?”
It’s the feeling of walls closing in, isn’t it? Freedoms that we took for granted in January have been stripped away in a global social experiment.
We’re being conditioned to view everyone else as dangerously infectious.
We have to wear masks to go shopping.
We have to go through ridiculous measures to get a hair cut or see the dentist.
We can’t go on holiday abroad without risking being quarantined when we come home, and expected to be muzzled in high temperatures whilst on holiday.
It’s no wonder that people are feeling the strain. It would be more surprising if they didn’t.
I’m not a depressive person, but I feel a constant seething resentment over all this.
Me too. I also feel, constantly, is it me? It’s hard to stay resolved when people you know are fully signed up. So I find myself checking stuff a lot to check that I’m right. I also hate the uneasy feeling that I’m surrounded by hypnotised people, it’s really unnerving.
I had this really odd feeling the other day. I’m on holiday in the countryside and we were out and about doing holiday stuff.
Looking at all of the people walking around wearing masks, in and out of shops with them, following all of the stupid signs, doing the sanitiser thing at every gunk station like some kind of religious ritual. I suddenly felt completely disassociated. It was like I was just watching this other world, filled with people who had absolutely nothing to do with me. Like I was observing some kind of curious experiment. It passed, but it was very strange while it lasted.
Happened to me today in Brid. Imagine everything you felt but you’re at a seaside resort with a arcades and all that stuff. Populated by mask wearing happy clappers. surreal.
Pretty much every client I am seeing for therapy is literally exhausted. The mental toll this is taking is extraordinary.
I really think that’s true.
I’ve suffered from mental health issues for decades. Happily, I’ve been able to take care of myself despite that. Finally resolved a lot of it in the past four years (I’m in my 60s). But after four months of this, I’ve had to work incredibly hard to just stay afloat and am self-isolating to maintain my emotional stability. Can’t take any stress. At least I know how to take care of myself. I worry about all those with mental health issues who aren’t as resilient as I am or who have less choice about their living situation than I do.
GPs are diagnosing on the phone without seeing people.
People can tell them anything who can check their symptoms?
Maybe they just want to sit at home and not go to work?
Nothing I’ve learned about this virus seems particularly unique yet it’s reported as if everything is brand new and never been seen before.
It reminds me of Who’s Line is it Anyway when comedians would be tasked with selling a plastic cup and they managed to make it sound like drinking from a cup was a totally new discovery.
I’ve just seen a herd of flying pigs with SAGE stamped on them.
The mythology is getting wilder and wilder.
What wouldn’t surprise me is that mass psychosis is the kick-back from the Fear and Panic Psy-Ops.
Two questions for the more science minded here.
Is there such a thing as a disease where you have no symptoms, aren’t infectious, don’t get sick and die? I mean we’re are expending massive resources measuring something, ascribing meaning to it, making policy decisions on it. What exactly is it? Or is it about as sane as counting cases of head lice?
Secondly, the PCR stuff, I’ve grasped the layman’s basics. So if it’s measuring RNA fragments, because you’ve had it, never got sick, your immune system zapped it, or you had it and recovered, then rather than measuring ‘infections’, isn’t in effect measuring (those two dirty words) Herd Immunity?
Great question.
No, my view is that is is because the test is not reliable. They love to use this to scare the population and add more limitations.
You’re right. There have been respiratory tract infections – and they have affected a larger than normal vulnerable population, many of whom escaped last year, which was a notably mild season. Over the two years, mortality has not been exceptional. Thus the epidemic has been largely a political phenomenon, not a medical one. As we know, there is now no epidemic in any rational terms.
As to the inappropriate PRC tests, measuring odd bits of RNA – ‘SEEK AND YE SHALL FIND’!
Thanks, relieved to hear I wasn’t just being thick! ‘largely a political phenomenon’ is a good phrase!
Ordered some computer periphery last night. Deliveries more expensive with less slots available than when the shops were closed! Clearly large pocket-voting here, the muzzling is not going well for physical retail.
It REALLY isn’t considering how stacked all the delivery warehouses seems to be! The only job you’ll be able to get next year is a delivery driver or order packer
I saw this video on care home murders yesterday and hope the poster and her story finds more support and publicity. Horrifying.
Why does this country seem to hate old people so much? Always seen as a burden when many of them (especially the current generation) have contributed for the bulk of their lives. It is shameful the way they are treated.
https://www.bitchute.com/video/KfqJvRhKqH8e/
Someone today told me she has a little chuckle every time someone says ‘PPE’ because she associates it with politicians immediately – PPE at Oxford.
Aaaah. Coincidences.
https://twitter.com/Shorebound1336/status/1291373485302796288/photo/1
Italy. So the whole misery began like this? The lockdown was supposed to be very regional in the North but government just extended it to the whole country not following scientific advice a few days later. And every ignorant leader in Europe went for a national lockdown even not considering local ones.
Sounds a very familiar tale.
Public health bodies making recommendations and bring ignored by governments.
If you remember, the papers were full of accounts of Italians from the north fleeing to the south when the northern lockdown was announced. Hence they shut down the whole country, I assume, as they knew they could not trust their fellow citizens to behave.
Something similar happened in Spain when they wanted to shut down Madrid. Everyone headed off to their summer property. Loads of complaints from the regions as hoards of Madrid people poured in.
There was a leak inside the government leading to that effect.Still a grave mistake as large areas of Southern Italy Sardina Sicilia was unaffected.It would make more sense to localize the lokdowns and mobilize health care resources to be used in the worst areas.A national lockdown just paralysed the whole country with no gain for the worst affected areas in form of extra resources etc.
The problem with interventions such as lockdowns or face masks is the belief that they work (regardless of whether they do or not).
If they do not work the automatic assumption is that they’re not being implemented properly therefore stricter measures must be imposed. Something we are seeing nearly everywhere. There is no real consideration that maybe they don’t work at all, just keep flogging the dead horse.
Socialism seems to work that way too,
Funny you should say that. I’ve been thinking lately that with furlough payments we seem to have got socialism by the back door. Some people working their socks off, others sat at home, both being paid.
Personally, my self-respect disappears when work has no purpose. The novelty of free money wears off as well. No such thing as a free lunch etc. I feel bad for those that will be skint soon and no job to go back to.
Heads they win, tails we lose. This game is most definitely rigged.
Well if the mandating of masks on public transport didn’t get people out and having a spend up, why would it work in shops? They don’t work, medically ( at least in public ) and they don’t make sense commercially. I can see a second wave coming, of blaming the public for the mess we’re in.
https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/1319559/coronavirus-unemployment-update-robert-jenrick-eat-out-help-out-latest-jobs
It hasn’t been working in the shops and I seriously doubt it would work with museums, heritage sites and visitor attractions.
This gives an idea of tge extent of changes being made to our transport infrastructure under the guise of Covid19 measures. The corona virus has led the nation to this –
“There’s currently a substantial UK-wide shortage of semi-permanent traffic management materials such as rubber kerbing and safety ‘wands’.”
From: https://www.edinburghlive.co.uk/news/edinburgh-news/george-iv-bridge-outrage-drivers-18727456
Thoughtless drivers – who might have wanted to use the shops – or might even live in flats above them?
How much is all this silly lane-blocking going to cost?
Considering how keen they were to axe disability benefits last year, and how mean sickness pay is, this is a disgraceful waste of public money.
I agree. We have seen the throttling of local businesses often in comments. It is indeed part of the plan and the lack of street funiture at the wholesalers gives an indication of the scale and speed of this national operation implemented by unconnected local councils.
A nearby street to the photo has been closed to cars with ‘planters’. This adds a tortuous circuit to a journey for little gain. The street is essentially a tourist street and so empty of pedestrians. Locals have been moving the planters and driving up the street.
These measures are not by consent. The council will claim consultation exercises were carried out. Dephi crap and not representative of the people.
Public toilets are not opening in the city until October. Council reason given – they cannot afford the £150,000 it will cost to open the 12 locations now. Not a mention of covids it their answer.
the universal virus
The stats are in and the map has been updated. It’s clear to see that locked-down Kirklees has fewer cases than many unlocked areas.
https://www.arcgis.com/apps/webappviewer/index.html?id=47574f7a6e454dc6a42c5f6912ed7076
I had a look at my MPs facebook page to see if he’s been squeaking up on behalf of his constituents. He says the govt is going to review our situation TODAY. FIngers crossed.
However, I spotted this comment (which I assume from the typos was dashed off with fat thumbs on a mobile).
Very interesting!
Thankyou, all the rises in Kirklees are WF and LS postcodes, nurses at Hri Hospital were told not to wear PPI because there were no Cov 19 symtens there.
Shit no I have a WF postcode
Postcode lottery!
My wife took our 1 year old son for his routine jabs today. She was ordered to mask up at the door of the doctor’s surgery and had her temperature taken. Apparently some people in the queue to get in commented that the whole thing was ridiculous, which is positive.
Anyway, fast forward to the jabs. My son became quite distressed (as kids do) at being jabbed with needles. He then became even more distressed when he looked up at my wife for some comfort and couldn’t see her face. My wife said to the nurse, ‘I’m taking this off, it’s upsetting my son that he can’t see my face’, and proceeded to remove the mask. Apparently there was a sort of stunned silence from the nurse, but she said nothing and carried on with the procedure. Why are the public incapable of seeing the obvious downsides to masks?
Routine treatments starting to look more and more like some weird scene out of the X-Files.
Yes they are. I was sitting in the car at some traffic lights the other day across the road from a local physiotherapist practice. Someone was going in and when the door opened I saw the receptionist in what looked like a full bio hazard suit, I was actually stunned for a few seconds!
This is really sad. A friend of mine had a baby recently and as they handed her her newborn immediately for “kangaroo care” she had to keep a mask on her face so she couldn’t even kiss her new baby. Depresses me that the first sensory experience this baby had was with a mask.
Not to mention she then had to spend two days all on her own in the postnatal ward as there were no visitors allowed at all, not even the fathers!
https://twitter.com/lovethevee/status/1291229392245596160/photo/1
Is the virus becoming seasonal? Very interesting picture (Btw Argentina have had both lockdown and strict face masks)
“Three countries with rising cases on three different continents that were all praised for lockdowns in April. What do they have in common?
Latitudinal seasonality is the signal. Politics, lockdowns, moral blame games are all noise.”
Or they locked down too early before the virus had spread enough through the population so when they opened up no one had any immunity. The same as has been seen in Israel, Australia, South Africa etc etc and, exactly as Professor Geisecke warned would happen.
Same with America’s “second wave” [sic].
Would be interesting if it all unravelled in New Zealand.
Some friends of ours:
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=lse+vog&t=opera&ia=web
The governor said he has ordered the church to follow instructions on COVID-19 prevention or be arrested.
‘We have already closed down this church for anti-government policies,” Bea said. “You can imagine, some of our youths have refused vaccinations. Some of them are now refusing barrier measures (against COVID-19). Some of them refuse even to go to the hospitals, (saying) that if you die, they can pray and you come back to life.”
Even with the closure of the church, members have continued organizing their daily prayers and meetings in front of the sealed building. The church says it also sends out fifteen groups of seven on a daily basis, to preach its erroneous message about COVID-19.
Correct link:
https://www.observer.ug/news/headlines/65999-cameroon-closes-church-that-claims-covid-19-is-a-hoax
If you want a giggle scroll down the the bottom of this page to see how they answer the question “Q: Will a mask make me look weak?” hilarious. I suspect they must think their readers are morons
https://masks4all.co/facts/
Emphasis mine:
So do these non-medical masks we’re all meant to be wearing actually do anything?
Well yes, yes they almost certainly do. Here’s a thread about the current science.
The picture above shows speech droplets, which are believed to be the key transmission vector for COVID-19, with vs without a paper towel face cover.
So if masks look so good on paper, do they work in practice? They sure seem to!
Another paper looked at mask mandates in the US, finding that the data “suggest as many as 230,000–450,000 COVID-19 cases possibly averted By May 22, 2020 by these mandates.”
Q: I heard a doctor claim masks don’t work. Shouldn’t we listen to experts like him?
A: For any scientific issue, there will always be folks outside the scientific consensus, like climate change and vaccines. But most top experts say: wear a mask. https://masks4all.co/letter-over-100-prominent-health-experts-call-for-cloth-mask-requirements/
They are a f’ing joke, bet they are fun at parties.
Why is it written like a kids’ tv show?
Even their profile pics have photo-shopped masks! https://masks4all.co/about-us/
https://dailysceptic.org/2020/08/06/latest-news-95/#ambulances-reluctant-to-take-people-to-ae
It is not a case of ambulance crews reluctant to take people to A&E. It is the easiest thing in the World to transport to an acute hospital. The hospital then carries out investigations on the presenting complaint and in less than 4 hours tells the patient that they are clear to leave and see their GP. The patient is then no further forward in the treatment for their minor or chronic condition. The general idea is to refer the patient to the most appropriate facility the first time. If that happens to be hospital for urgent tests or treatments then ED it is. If the GP is appropriate then great. Occasionally, self care is the solution. The problems are caused by patients having difficulty in accessing the GP and 111 being over conservative in sending ambulances. Generally, the system is safe and of course the patient is at liberty to self present if they feel that is really the only solution.
The head of Police in Australia!! The black shirt I wonder if he sees the irony? 11 people have Dies in the entire state, and this guy and his police forceits the Nazi party Australia for Gods sake and they criticise China? What is going on the world has gone mad
He looks like Mussolini in that get up. It’s bizarre.
PetitionPrevent any restrictions on those who refuse a Covid-19 vaccinationI want the Government to prevent any restrictions being placed on those who refuse to have any potential Covid-19 vaccine. This includes restrictions on travel, social events, such as concerts or sports. No restrictions whatsoever.
https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/323442
26,757 so far, going up quite quickly
Jeez – somebody posted a link to a video saying that this was the ultimate goal, get the vaccine or be forced to wear a mask, not be allowed to shop, travel etc etc. Guess it was only a matter of time before the idea took off. This is just too frightening that people in a supposed democracy really think like this.
I’m not ruling this out now
However, I do think this would be the point at which people wold start burning things – me included
You really think so given the production of scared, obedient sheeple masses?
The question has to be: what exactly do they want to inject us with?
It was a horrifying video and really stressed me out – still feel worried about it..
My worst nightmare. While I don’t think any legislation has been proposed here yet, I know the surveys of Canadians are suggestive of a pretty large majority being in favour of mandatory vaccination or restrictions on those who refuse. This is all part of the plan and it makes me hope that the vaccine trials are a disaster and lots of people become sick or die. Normally I’d feel like a horrible person for saying such a thing, but this is war and I’m in a take no prisoners frame of mind. Sad to be taking solace in the probability that these vaccines will do a lot of damage.
I wrote to my MP asking for her assurance that she would not vote for any measure to make vaccinations for the virus mandatory. She refused to give me any such assurance. I expect some MPs would push back on it, but not enough.
Worrying… and my MP is a doctor so I’m guessing he will go along with it being mandatory..
Good grief, how on earth does he manage to juggle two such incredibly demanding jobs.
If you live in Toronto, like I do, I’d say the odds of an MP giving that kind of assurance are zero. I joined Vaccine Choice Canada about a month ago and they’re asking all of the party leadership candidates their position and, so far, only one has been unequivocal in coming out against mandatory vaccination (one of the PC candidates). VCC is the organization that is suing all levels of government over the suspension of civil rights, so they’re an organization worth joining and supporting. The constitutional lawyer fighting this has a vaccine injured child and he’s quite the firebrand.
UK or Canada?
https://www.cdc.gov/vaccinesafety/concerns/history/narcolepsy-flu.html
Narcolepsy Following Pandemrix Influenza Vaccination in Europe
I’m not having a vaccine until and unless I know it’s completely safe, and that could take years.
UK.
Sweden had a lot of cases of narcolepsy caused by Pandemrix – possibly because 60% of the population chose to take the vaccine.
Don’t know if that many will decide to take the Covid vaccine?
Not a chance. The Scandis are known for respecting authority etc. And being civic minded so their uptake would always be high. Still though our gvts here in the west have done such a good job with project terror that it might not be far off. I’ve seen some polls though that say only 20+% would refuse it here.
Hello Julian – did Toby get back to you concerning this?
Just signed. Interestingly after I confirmed my signature, this came up on the screen:
Contact your MPYour constituency is Runnymede and Weybridge
Your local MP is Dr Ben Spencer MP
Contact your MP to let them know you have signed this petition
Not had that happen before – is it a new feature added to all petitions now?
I didn’t see anything like that, but I quickly closed down the two web pages I had open.
32,614
Interesting hour at the GPs this afternoon.
Wife had had enough with her bad shoulder so said she WILL see the GP come hell or high water, girded her loins and prepared for the fray.
What happened:
All in all not that and an experience, better than we were expecting..
Ah so I need to send my attack ferrets after the PHE, I’ve written to everyone else – my CCG, NHS England, RCGP, the BMA, the CQC, Matt Hancock and my MP. The buck must stop somewhere on this lunacy with doctors.
Making it up?
I an shocked.
Shocked.
How can you make it up? The guidelines are so vague it’s impossible not to be legitimately exempt.
Saw a comment from someone on another site saying that Prof Pantsdown predicted 500k deaths if we do nothing, 250k deaths if we did ‘social distancing’ and 50k deaths if we did full lockdown. I think that was about right if my memory serves me correctly. We are pretty much at 50k deaths now, which gives the lockdown fanatics cause to believe lockdown really was the right answer. Putting aside for a moment whether the deaths really were of Covid or with Covid, this is a tricky point to argue against – not helped that my brain has turned to mush with all of this. Can anyone help please with the counter to this?
Are these figures from before or after he downgraded them?
Not sure TBH, I think it was the original numbers…
Cause if it was after, you could say he simply made a good guess given he was seeing it was gonna be no where near 500k
maybe the lockdown figure was revised later.
Otherwise it’s just irritatingly convenient for him. Thing that busts his gut of course is the fact that the figures have been fiddled and 50k is nowhere near correct anyway. You could mention the recent revisions that have chopped off a few thousand deaths (or have they? I haven’t seen the total go down! !!) due to the admission that nobody recovers from covid and if you die later on of something else, you went on the total.
Actually now I’ve said that.
The figures have been fiddled. Conveniently they currently stand at 40+k and are being allowed to plateau.
Could this be…. purposeful to legitimise lockdown?!
Ha, yes quite probably! Though I suppose either way the lockdown fanatics hold the cards – if more deaths than predicted then it would have been a lot worse without lockdown and if less, well hey, lockdown reduced the death toll below that predicted.
Ask them over what timescale they are thinking about. I’m pretty sure the ICL model was based over 18 months of on and off lockdowns.
Also when Whitty gave his 20k would be a good outcome I think he was probably going off the modelling.
They said 20,000 (??) of which I think 12k were due to snuff it anyway. And I don’t think they ever said lockdown, that came after, I think they said more stringent social distancing measures? Lockdown is not in Sage’s minutes at all, until after the fact.
Deaths peaked around April 8th, only 2 weeks after lockdown – arguably too early for lockdown to be the thing that made the difference (though the voluntary distancing was probably already making a difference)
Lots of countries that didn’t lock down had fewer or similar deaths per capita than we did (Japan, Sweden, Belarus).
They never actually said they’d save all those lives, just spread them over a longer period (and they said there’d probably need to be a continuing cycle of lockdowns) and also said I think two thirds would have died anyway within the year
Notwithstanding the above, the cost in financial, human heath and happiness terms of lockdown is unjustifiable on any rational basis that has ever been employed regarding the sacrifices countries make to save lives and preserve public health
Yes and whitty said recently, although CEBM said it sooner, that R0 was below one before lockdown, when we all started washing our hands.
On 21st July 2020 on record at the parliamentary Committee hearing he stated:
“If you look at the R, and the behaviours, quite a lot of the change that led to the R going below one occurred well before, or to some extent before, the 23rd, when the full lockdown started.”
“ Deaths peaked around April 8th, only 2 weeks after lockdown – arguably too early for lockdown to be the thing that made the difference ”
Unarguably
If his model is applied to Sweden they were expected to get 50,000 deaths (even with the measures they took), they’ve had about 5500.
He was out by a factor of about 10.
Nobel prize winning Professor Michael Levitt of Stanford University wrote to him in March and suggested that, having analysed the numbers emerging from Wuhan he thought that Ferguson’s mortality estimate was…
…out by a factor of 10 to 12.
Ferguson estimated 500,000 deaths, but we got 50,000
He was out by a factor of 10
Lockdown made no difference.
Worth having a read of this article by Iain Davis of UK Column – https://www.ukcolumn.org/article/lockdown-deaths-not-covid-deaths. Deaths only started increasing after the lockdown was put in place, but there seems evidence that the virus was circulating well before that, without any noticeable increase in deaths.
This is what I have thought since the evidence that it had been found back in November or even earlier around the world, why had it suddenly chosen 4 months after when surely people would have been getting infected (and being asymptomatic of course!) at some steady rate? Oh how I wish that if only China had not told the world there was a novel virus, we might not have even noticed. Or, if we had it would have been because we had a few more than usual later “flu” deaths but nothing to be concerned about.
j.b. handley’s most recent blog gives the lock-up efficacy terminal hammer blows with a good collection of evidence :
https://jbhandleyblog.com/home/2020/7/27/lockdownlunacythree
Among many other emerging pieces of evidence, the Death of the ‘Lockdown Theory’ has been pretty well established, with only a few pseudo-scientists and terminal fabricators trying to persist mouth-to mouth resuscitation on a cold, rotting corpse.
Piece of piss when you keep changing your figures when you know the results. I just hope some serious harm comes to this cunt.
We-ell, he had predicted 96k deaths in Sweden with no measures, and predicted c.20,000 deaths with a full lockdown.
To date, Sweden has suffered 5,766 deaths, with few mitigations.
We know that old people were delivered to the slaughter, and are still being tortured to death in ‘care’ homes.
I prefer the word cocks actually, seeing as they almost all men.
Sweden
Schools? I was just digging out some statistics.
According to the latest report (August 4th 2020) from the Office for National Statistics (ONS), there have been five deaths involving COVID-19 in children aged one to 14 this year in England and Wales.
Meanwhile there were 68 victims of homicide aged under 16 years in the year ending March 2019 (ONS)
Offences of child abduction recorded by police in England and Wales increased by 7 percent to 1,268 (in 2018/19) (ONS)
In the year ending March 2019, the police in England and Wales recorded 73,260 sexual offences where the victim was a child. (ONS)
But it’s dangerous to open schools.
Did any of the 5 children who died with Covid have any pre-existing health conditions?
One had leukemia.
I posted on this yesterday, but it appears I was wrong and there have actually been some better calculations. The chance of being killed by a meteor strike are 1/700,000, which puts it under the odds of Covid for under 14’s.
https://www.discovermagazine.com/the-sciences/death-by-meteorite
That’s it. Not like they were killed or abducted from schools now is it? The places are the safest of all for children.
Oh I forgot- today i was in Bridlington visiting my great uncle. Is that what you call your mum’s uncle?
He is 80-odd, as fit as a fiddle and sharp as a rapier. Sadly also too good natured to fuck with The Man.
He has, however, been going everywhere without a mask! Simply because he doesn’t get it, he just doesn’t understand what the point is and doesn’t want to buy one. Apparently nobody has messed with him so far. Made me feel like camping out there and going shopping with him just to make sure. You never know. Apparently someone got stabbed in Bridlington the other day due to a “mask dispute”
LOL – good for him. I also have refused to buy one, why would I waste good money on something I violently disagree with and believe to be utterly pointless?
Amen.
Hear hear. Want me to wear PPE in your shop/bank/indoor shopping centre/church/wherever? Then it’s up to you to provide it and up to me to refuse it.
“doesn’t want to buy one“
LOL! Cost about £1-£1.50. A true Yorkshireman….
Look after the pennies …..
Common sense rules in more ways than one!
Damn right.
I say it with respect.
I wear a seatbelt in my car to protect other people and not myself in the event I have an accident.
I wear a seatbelt only if I’m going through a drive thru but not while I’m eating the food on the motorway. If I’m doing over 70mph I’ll put it on but I’ll take it off if I’m passing a school.
Hmm good idea. I only wear mine if it’s Wednesday or when I go into a pub – because I get £10 off my meal.
I take mine off if I go over 60mph but will immediately put it back on if I get within 2 metres of another car. I want the driver in the other car to feel safe. So that he knows that if he crashes my seatbelt will stop him going through his windscreen.
Do you think people should continue to have sex over 70? Or should they pull over?
Sex over 70 is fine without a seatbelt providing you are in the middle lane and both parties are wearing masks and gloves for the duration of the encounter and also practising social distancing.
Good for you.
Oh dear…
Statisticians found that 421 fewer drivers and 235 fewer front-seat passengers were killed than during the preceding 20-month period. However, the number of pedestrians killed by automobiles rose by 77, and the number of bicyclists by 63.
…The rate had declined steadily during the 10 years prior to the seat-belt law of 1983, at which point the trend was reversed.
https://www.nytimes.com/1985/06/18/science/science-watch-seat-belts-and-pedestrians.html
An interesting piece in its own right. It would be inconceivable today for a major newspaper to carry such a story. But in another twist:
The New Scientist also reported that a 1981 paper, suppressed by the Department of Transportation, had predicted just such a development.
The “safer” people feel, the greater the level of risk they’re prepared to take.
No zombie feels very safe just now, then?
The Isles Report concluded that also.
http://john-adams.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2007/01/isles%20report.pdf
It’s called risk compensation
Stopped using the stuff after the first few weeks of this nightmare and won’t use any at shops, restaurants, etc. Notice the last two symptoms — respiratory system irritation and headaches — which conveniently are Covid symptoms. Now all the sanitizer freaks are going to run and get tested!
Health Canada is recalling more than 50 hand sanitizers that contain ingredients “not acceptable for use” that may pose health risks. The organization says hand sanitizers with “unacceptable types” of ethanol or denaturants have not been approved for use in sanitizers in Canada, and their safety and efficacy have not been established. Denaturants are ingredients added to ethanol to make it unfit for human consumption. Health Canada says possible reactions to the ingredients include skin irritation, eye irritation, upper respiratory system irritation and headaches.
I like the unacceptable types of ethanol ref. C2H5OH – only one ethanol known to most of us!
Are they just permitting the less alcoholic ones because people were drinking the stuff?
Isn’t that what it’s for??
Nah, that’s just Lysol!
The mention of the absolute shambles of track & trace app above has reminded me I f a conversation I had with a neighbour about 6 weeks ago….
She is a County Councillor, has been forever, and seems to have a lot of influence. She said that one of the colleagues she trained up has since moved up in the world and is involved in the t&t app. My neighbour said to me that she had asked her former colleague how compliant the offices were in terms of social distancing and observing the various hoops that every other workplaces has had to jump through to be allowed to survive. Her answer? “I couldn’t possibly comment”
They are joke from the inside out.
Whoever thought they could create an app to trace the spread of aerosol-trasmitted disease is gravely delusional—current track and trace capabilities just about max out when STI is involved (read: you don’t always end up tracing 100% contacts)!
I think it was just as much as exercise in making the population believe they *could* be tracked and traced (for our own good) so that when they eventually are able to do it, it’s no big deal.
I think it’s a gateway to mission-creep because the current cell location data is too coarse…
If the hysterical consensus is crumbling (even the BBC mentioning the problems with PCR), wouldn’t you expect the government to create some juicy ‘optics’ to help re-assert the fear: horrific scenes from a hospital in Bradford or somewhere; people on ventilators; hazmat suits; army trucks taking the bodies away for secure incineration. They might also like to hire a famous person currently looking for work to get a bad dose of ‘Covid’. Or maybe an MP without principles like Steve Baker.
This might be wishful thinking but they don’t make very convincing totalitarians to me
They don’t make very convincing statesmen and leaders either.
They simply aren’t convincing humanoids.
I’d say ‘Neanderthals’, but we are now told that Neanderthals were quite intelligent, so the comparison would be a gross insult to them.
Well, yes, but I’m not sure why you highlight Steve Baker: not perfect (of course: he IS an MP!) but surely one of the better ones [unless you are a Remainer?].
Sorry. I was a big fan until he tweeted this excrement…
https://twitter.com/hwbidco/status/1283348939002044416
Awesome comments!
I too was a fan – and fell for his ‘crocodile tears’ speech he gave late March – where he spoke about his concerns about the coronavirus act. He is certainly a deceitful liar.
Ugh. Man down.
Still mourning the loss of David Davis’s sense of proportion.
Well … let’s face it, Brexit takes on a whole new complexion when you consider that the current team who brought you this debacle were all in favour!
Chilling comment below Sherelles’ article:
You know about the report in the Telegraph a couple of days ago that the law allows for councils to demolish houses, under the Public Health (Control of Disease) Act 1984:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2020/08/04/councilscan-demolish-contaminated-buildings-new-powers-stop/
Well, it seems the legally allowed measures that the Los Angeles Mayor is threatening to take goes further than demolishing houses:
‘Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti on Wednesday announced the city was taking action against those who throw large parties…
‘…“We can actually do the power or water shutoff after a first violation,” said the mayor, “but we like to educate, not enforce,”
‘“We will not act lightly,” Garcetti said, “But we will act.”’
https://deadline.com/2020/08/los-angeles-coronavirus-garcetti-shut-off-water-large-parties-1203005621/
Water!? But it couldn’t happen here, could it?
Hmm, water off or house demolition – let me think!
Doubt they could do it here anyway – human rights act, innit?!
Human rights?
Lockdown??
Covid Act and amendments to 1984 Health Act???
Forgive my understanding of PCR testing etc but I have a question…
Is the false positive rate similar to the rate of actual positive results/new cases?
In other words. Is it possible that nobody has Covid-19 and the cases are all false positives?
Also, for Leicester, Manchester et al and Aberdeen was there routine re-testing done to double check new cases prior to introducing local “lockdowns”?
Thanks
There have been discussions yesterday and today further up. The current rate of positive tests is something like 50 in 100000 (0.05%) yet the false positive rate could be higher than that (a study published by the government found it to be a median of 2.3% at one point). So it does look as though there isn’t any definite proof that there is actually any infection in the UK at the moment.
This is a good article, it seems to me:
https://blog.plan99.net/pseudo-epidemics-7603b2da839
That’s why I asked. I just worked out the daily case rates as a percentage of tests done. I know it’s been done many times but I wanted to do it myself with the raw data for fun (!) For the last two months it hasn’t been above 1.4%. So if that’s well within false positive range then the virus is essentially completely gone and I’d like to know exactly what the current Covid deaths are exactly including ages and full comorbidities.
Were any retests done on the local lockdown areas? If it’s just random 0.5% false positives then statistically just 0.5% of them will test positive again.
None of this is in the least bit scientific.
There is no way of knowing what the false positive rate is. It could be 100% Retests have the same unknown FP as the original . You can’t validate a test by doing the same test. It’s a weighted coin toss. It needs an external gold standard validation test but strangely the virus hasn’t been sequenced independently and pinned to the disease. It always relies at some point in the chain on what the Chinese issued. Coronaviruses are tricksy things and are closely related. It is hard to be definite and yet the Govt is taking massively disruptive decisions on an unvaludatable test. All the rhetoric is test, test, test but the PCR test cannot give you a definitive result. So where are we? In a panpanic.
It’s statistically possible that the virus has completely disappeared, but it’s logically unlikely, because viruses almost never completely disappear. At least some of the positives are almost certainly true positives.
Not something to base draconian public health policy on though.
Yes. I don’t mean “zero”. I mean gone away for now and it’s not a problem. If they want “zero Covid” it’ll never happen if they take this testing approach. But that’s what they want I suppose.
Well – the Norwegian Health authorities have abandoned the PCR test as an inaccurate tool when infection rates are as as low as they are now.
Beyond that, there are a lot of doubts about the validity of a test that was never designed for diagnostic purposes and is dependent on assumptions about scraps of RNA transmuted into DNA and amplified by replication. It’s a f.ing hell of a chain of events for which to claim accuracy in diagnosis!
Meanwhile the Oxford CEBM group has published one of their invaluable scientific ‘quiet hand grenade’ papers on the subject, opening thus :
“PCR detection of viruses is helpful so long as its accuracy can be understood: it offers the capacity to detect RNA in minute quantities, but whether that RNA represents infectious virus may not be clear.”
See :
https://www.cebm.net/covid-19/infectious-positive-pcr-test-result-covid-19/
So basically worse than useless! Thanks
Don’t quote me! but from what I have been reading the PCR tests are extremely accurate at detecting the bit of genetic material which is unique to SARS-Cov2 and that false positive results are mostly from cross contamination of the sample either at source or in the lab which would suggest that there is still some virus around to cross contaminate with.
Could it be that the present lockdown decisions based on small localised percieved outbreaks are due to cross contamination occurring at the particular local testing facility or even at the lab where a particular batch from this location was processed? I sincerely hope the testing system checks for this before these drastic lockdown measures, with all their associated damage to society, are put in place.
But apparently the RNA fragments can hang around in your nose for many weeks after symptoms disappear, so whether the positive result is due to cross-contamination or an earlier infection is a moot point, it seems to me. It’s still ‘false’.
They’ve focused on testing because it allows them to continue their story. There are so many holes it the whole testing thing that to anyone who knows or think so about it it’s blatant like everything else.
My understanding is that SARS-Cov2 has not fulfilled ANY of Koch’s 4 postulates, so we don’t even know if ant residual genomic material which is amplified by the PCR is actually unique to SARS-Cov2. Another problem with the PCR is we don’t know how many amplifications are being used. Is it the same for all testing being performed?
DavidC
If coronavirus is such a dangerous disease which produces severe and unique symptoms why would they need to test people and rely on tests where it is uncertain how reliable they are.
Indeed
But what is the protocol when you get a positive test? Given that you’re about to shut down 4M people’s lives wouldn’t you go to those 54 people or whatever and test them again? Twice?! Then you’ll be sure you know what’s going on.
I’ve written sampling procedures during my career. It always involves retesting to double check. A positive result often means you and maybe the person you tested then send off a specimen for further analysis.
So what is the procedure in these cases – local lockdowns, curtailing freedoms, etc?
Why is Sweden still on the FCO red list?
spite?
One suspects so. Probably the official explanation would be they are not doing enough testing.
Jealousy.
Am enjoying wearing my Sweden t-shirt
Because they must never be acknowledged, nor forgiven.
Sticking up for yourself works! Just spotted this on fb. How to re-educate an entire workforce:
I promised to let members of this group know of the response I received from the Cotswold Outdoor centre after they tried to intimidate me and refused me entry to their store. I have copied it below.
Please remember that not wearing a mask is your choice: you can ‘self-exempt’ on the basis that you would find mask-wearing ‘distressing’ (Govt guidelines 5.3). Distressing includes any feeling of anger, dismay, abhorrence or outrage: most members of this group will feel most of these things.
Always challenge anyone who bars your way. They have no right. I am not looking for money from the Cotswold Outdoor centre: if they have learned their lesson, and as they have apologised and admitted they were in the wrong, I am satisfied.
Anyone is welcome to copy this and use it to demonstrate that companies cannot discriminate in this (or any other) way.
“Thank you for taking the time to speak to me on the telephone yesterday regarding the incident at Cotswold Outdoor in South Cerney on Sunday 2nd August 2020.
As I said on the phone, I am very sorry that you were made to feel unwelcome and that you were being discriminated against because of your disability. Clearly this is something that neither I nor the Company want to be happening in our stores and to our customers.
To make sure that there is no repeat of this incident I have put the following course of action in place, and am already in the process of carrying it out.
I have re-briefed every member of my team in person (and will continue to do at the first opportunity with each person) about their responsibilities while they are in store. I have particularly focused on exemption from Covid-19 face coverings, and what they are expected to do if someone declares that they are exempt from the mandatory face coverings in shops. I have also highlighted the importance of the private nature of reasons for that exemption, and our duty not to discriminate against anyone (or make someone feel like they have been discriminated against) because they have declared that they are exempt from the rules.
I have identified and arranged a meeting with the member of staff who was directly engaged with you during this incident. We will be discussing what happened, why it happened, why it was unacceptable and inappropriate to behave as she did, and then I will take appropriate action as per our internal procedures.
I have implemented a policy within the store that will prevent a recurrence and mean that anyone who declares themselves exempt from these rules will be allowed into store without any further question.
I have reported this incident to the appropriate department at our Head Office so that we can collectively learn from this, and so that there are records of what happened.
I have also raised this with my Area Manager so that he is aware of what has happened, and he is going to include it within our weekly Manager’s briefing call so that all the other Store Managers in the area are directly aware of what happened here, and how to avoid similar problems occurring in their stores.
I have also been made aware that a change of Company policy around entry to stores is being proposed at board level this week.
I hope you can see that I have taken your experience and complaint very seriously, and have taken extensive action to ensure that there are no similar incidents in future, either in this store or in our other stores. I would like to apologise again for the way that you were treated at our store on Sunday and to assure you that I will do everything in my power to stop this sort of thing happening again.
Please do let me know if you would like to raise anything else, or suggest something more that I could do, or if you would like to discuss things in person. I would be glad to hear from you.
Kind Regards
Phil Brazier
Store Manager
Cotswold Outdoor
Gateway Visitors Centre”
This is a great result for us non-mask wearers.
Wow! Well done! Courage and persistence win out!
Wow! An actual intelligent person at the other end of the correspondence. Good for them!
Yes I thought the store manager was really on the ball.
Great response and the right response from them.
This is why nobody has to wear a mask unless they choose to. Everybody is exempt. You either don’t get asked at all (I haven’t been asked once yet why I haven’t got one on) or if you do say you’re exempt, if they ask you anything else after you say you’re exempt tell them they are breaking the law and make a complaint.
Well done to both sides. Tell me, Cheez, in your original encounter, did you perchance mention DDA or EA or, more to the point ‘Big Fine’.?
Not my encounter – an acquaintance of mine, so I don’t know what the original conversation went like. Found it in her fb feed.
NICE ONE!
Great stuff and great response from the company as well!!!
Companies don’t want this any more than we do, anyone with half a grip on business knows it. So we’re doing them a favour as well by doing this.
The hate crime and public order bill in Scotland is so unpopular with everyone except the Scottish government that it has even managed to bring the Catholic Church and the Orange Order together in opposition to it. Which is quite a feat.
Ha f-ing ha, all those hypochondriacs are making themselves ill, this time with hand sanitisers: https://www.healthycanadians.gc.ca/recall-alert-rappel-avis/hc-sc/2020/73385a-eng.php
https://www.highlandradio.com/2020/08/06/ni-pubs-to-stay-closed-until-at-least-september-1st/ Pubs closed and muzzles in shops. What is it about Foster and Sturgeon that mkae them do this? Are they on a power kick, are they puritanical or what ?
If the objective is zero covid and you’re not getting the results you want/need then you have to keep doing more and more and more and more.
That’s the only way it can work but they seem ignorant to this.
False positives mean you can never reach zero.
I would say they are
They are both lawyers!
We seem to be attempting a rational argument with the people who are advocating lockdown. I think this is a mistake.
I’m not sure the case for lockdown is even rational. I don’t think the health professionals are engaged in a real-world risk assessment. I think somehow they have flown off into a risk-free and cost-free world and are engaged in a £300 billion hunt for a unicorn – zero death. The whole lockdown would be impossible without magic money.
We have vast swathes of the population that have insulated themselves from work (known as “the economy”). Work means being of value to other people. Being of value means they pay you. Paying you means you can eat. For large numbers of people this is not the case. They don’t have to work. Public sector, pensioners, and now people on furlough do not have to work to eat. Probably a majority do not have to work (as long as we can keep borrowing).
Of course this is a utopian fantasy. If it were true that we could just borrow £300 billion with no consequences, then Albania would be a rich country.
The other conclusion that I can’t avoid is that this lockdown is fundamentally anti-capitalist. It is inherently a rejection of normal economics. It is an expression of civic virtue regardless of cost.
Conclusion? This is a catastrophic attack on the basis of western economies.
Yep, you called it!
fascist coup
“… this lockdown is fundamentally anti-capitalist.”
Nothing like a crisis for peddling wishful fantasies, is there?
At the root of this crisis is global capital. ‘Twas ever thus : Big Pharma/Big Data/Big Finance.
As I said above= Testing = Kerrching! Vaccines = Kerrching! – then – Contact Tracing = Kerrching! and Data Harvesting = Kerrching! …. add your own nice little earner.
I’d say it’s more corporatist than capitalist.
Only people making money are big pharma and Amazon.
I work for a pharma company, and though most people don’t realise it yet, it’s not going to help us make money. Who buys our drugs? Governments mostly. Who’s going to be struggling for tax receipts in the next few years as all the businesses are going bust? Governments. And they’ll be looking to make savings and negotiating harder than ever on prices. Pharma companies are as much a part of the economy as anyone else.
Two possibilities. 1) The teachers and GP’s don’t want to work because they are in collusion with a cartel of pharma and finance. 2) They don’t want to work because they are being paid anyway.
Isaac Newton: the simplest explanation that fits the evidence will suffice.
After posting a link to the America’s Frontline Doctors video last week (now taken down of course) Facebook added this notification to my post –
https://healthfeedback.org/claimreview/still-no-evidence-that-hydroxychloroquine-can-cure-or-prevent-covid-19/?fbclid=IwAR2S_xWNJG2j_jy307EU3rVVOiFpezAeHMhe6SmZ7hLinyatO3Z6H28Afe4
At least you can still watch this one –
https://www.breitbart.com/tech/2020/07/27/facebook-censors-viral-video-of-doctors-capitol-hill-coronavirus-press-conference/?fbclid=IwAR3ieZLgy4NtW8rZgy_o4R2LhIjNq_iaE4zK8rg_iAh1B7z2_Lw84rN0eR0
Yes, there actually is: it’s been on the approved protocol in Russia for all but ventilated cases, and there’s this one too with HRR of 66% for HCQ alone or 71% for HCQ+AZM: https://www.ijidonline.com/article/S1201-9712(20)30534-8/fulltext
Science doesn’t exist in Russia.
Sarcasm, right?
You’re starting to get me.
I’m not witty enough for real wit
It does, but in Russia it’s just “Science” not “THE SCIENCE” there is no definitive article in Russian, I don’t think.
Those vile Ruskies deniers of The Science
https://c19study.com/
Our mole in a local shop told us that he met with some medic friends from Rotherham (ramped-up testing, threatened with naughty step) at the weekend. They told him that the CV19 ward at the local hospital has closed. So much for all those ‘cases’ with the ‘deadly pathogen’ (local newspaper).
Has anyone tried to get figures for suicides recently? The same person has it on excellent authority, as secretary of an ex-serviceman’s organisation, that suicides, already high in this group, have risen markedly since the lockdown. The same Rotherham people told him that a young relative had committed suicide recently. Aged 33 and with no physical illness, no CV19 test but guess what was on the death certificate? I wonder how many more there are like this. Nothing surprises me about this nightmare any more but it is still shocking!
We also went in a small Coop and another small shop.. Not many people about but the few other customers in shops were all muzzled. Nobody asked us anything, no problems with other customers, and we were greeted with friendliness by shopkeepers. We’re off for a curry now having realised our local curry house has opened. The manager is scepticalish so we’ll continue working on him.
I can’t find them anywhere. Suicide figures. I kinda think they are a smoking gun that needs to be suppressed.
How the hell did they get away with putting covid on the death cert?!
As people may know I first came to this site after someone I went to school with killed herself about a month into lockdown (we think due to the extension, she was grieving for her mum and was single, couldn’t take being alone) – I no longer know her well enough to chase other members of her family for further info, but I would be very interested to see what happened there re: death cert. There was noone except extended family, miles away, to advocate for her. I keep thinking about her.
That’s terrible. I seem to remember a number of suicide related articles, early on in lockdown, but they all seemed to have subsided. I can’t see that suicides have
I was talking to a guy who’s son was in a local search and rescue team. They were on alert during peak lockdown for people “going missing” apparently this didn’t really happen, no noticible surge in people who “went missing” BUT they have apparently been briefed to be on alert for when the furlough schemes ends.
Suicide stats: this was one of my areas of expertise, but I’m retired now. Typically, ONS would publish suicide rates once a year, around March if I remember rightly. They used the same age groupings as they do for CV, which is not helpful, especially with the 15-44 age group, as there are very different reasons typically why 15 year olds kill themselves compared to those for 44 year olds.
Only once a year huh?
Convenient if they wanna covidise a few suicides…..
Our local curry house owner is very sceptic, and has been hosting a secret sceptic meeting above the restaurant since the beginning. Complete with password at the back door and selected person invite.
Granted, there are a few conspiracy barkers in attendance, but we also get curry snacks provided.
Sanity + Subversion + Curry.
It’s a winning combination.
It’s a speakeasy.
Early Christians also used to meet secretly.
Unless they want to be nappified and lobotomised by bedwetting clergy, they probably still do.
Bloody hell ……what was the password again?
I heard that they were generally reluctant to put “suicide” on the death certificate, to spare the family’s feelings.
No experience (fortunately) as to whether this is right or not.
– Harriet Beecher Stowe
The Tide is Turning!
Government-funded radio advert on Classic FM, something like this: “Let’s get back to having fun! To cinemas, gigs, and galleries! Get tested! If you have symptoms of coronavirus, get a test! That way, we can get back to doing the things we enjoy!”
In reality the opposite is happening: Do tests, oh dear, some positives, new “cases”! Better close things down again.
Exactly. Had to turn off this morning; the ‘ad’ break was just a series of ‘let’s get tested’, ‘do you wanna buy ppe’, ‘stay safe’, blah blah, about five in a row, I kid you not.
That and the awful government TV ad with masked people. Has a young woman near the start ordering in a cafe in a mask. Makes me sick I turn over as soon as it comes on.
Listened a lot to Classic FM in the early days. But have now found Talk Radio a rather safer home and after a few very anti-lockdown interviews I think I am converted. The ads on CFM had me in tears at times.
When I looked after my son’s parrotlet, I left CFM on for him. He loves piano music but used to get really cross when the ads were on!
Out of the mouths of parrots cometh truth.
Out of the mouths if babes and sucklings cometh we know not what, for behold, they are gagged.
I love classical music (Beethoven reminds me of all that is civilised and beautiful), but rush to turn off the radio whenever the adverts come on. And the news.
Should say. Feeling healthy? Got no symptoms of coronavirus at all. Go and get tested anyway. Chances are you might have it. If positive you will ensure you have to self isolate and could contribute to a local lockdown. This will help you get to see your favourite band again live soon. Soon as in 2028
On live stream, from an empty theatre of course, playing only instrumentals as singing could kill us all. Hey, is this the moment for The Shadows to come back?
All guitarists must wear thick gloves in order to control the virus
Ditto concert pianists.
That Uber masks advert gets right on my tits, Jill saves Jenny, Peter saves Ahmed, blah, blah, blah.
Never saw any adverts from them trying to save women from being raped by their drivers!
And no old or sick people, who are actually the ones who need to be saved. Why? Because they are not photogenic. How sick is that, to avoid showing the old or sick people because they are not photogenic?
“Get tested!”
… Kerrrching!
“Have a vaccine!”
… Kerrrching!
“Follow the money!” and “Cui bono?” still hold good for explaining the inexplicable.
Classic FM should really be ashamed of themselves by sprouting this government propaganda.
I boycotted them early on due to their incessant Covid 19 adverts and BLM, it was meant to be temporary but after reading this, my boycott will be permanent. Never Again.
UKC deconstructed the BBC one last Friday. They warned that you’d need “a container” before viewing but it’s a good analysis of some blatant propaganda:
https://www.ukcolumn.org/ukcolumn-news/uk-column-news-31st-july-2020
Didn’t they say it deserved an award for “Best Propaganda” of 2020?
Yes. That’s the one.
The infrastructure they’re building up isn’t just going to be scrapped. They’ll find more and more use for it in future.
Ask people if they would put up with all this for flu, then ask them what they think is going to happen to T&T etc if we ever get rid of this virus.
Towards the end of Zamyatin’s dystopian novel “We” (written a century ago), the ruling powers are concerned that the people are developing imagination and independent thinking – which would ruin the perfect robotic society they are trying to create. So they embark on an upbeat campaign, encouraging the public to come and get lobotomised – and be happy forever. Naturally, this procedure starts out as “voluntary”…
So after the Sturgeon Aberdeen Lockdown, which she was ‘really reluctant to do’ – so reluctant she’s threatening to do the whole County, (thus screwing with my daughter’s Uni field trip flying out this weekend from Dyce Aberdeen), I decided on a road trip.
(The rationale being that as keeping us in our domestic hutches like f*ing hamsters is the Governmental desire, I’ll do the opposite- and go to Pitlochry on a Thursday. Not something I would ever have contemplated in The Before).
And what a morale boost it is!
The place is heaving – socially distanced my ar*e! Folk from all over – lots of Central Belt Scots, Northern English of all hues, and nobody (at all) bothering with face sieves, except bar/hotel staff – clearly for any visitor sensitivities rather than enthusiasm for the diktat.
The locals seem pleased to see us, the weather is lovely, and for the first time in months I see a spark of optimism.
Go, man, GO!
Looks like the novel is getting old…
Nice to hear, I probably should be getting out more.
Th hermitage at Dunkeld is worth a visit on your way back.
Perthshire – within 20 miles of Pitlochry you have Europes oldest tree, the UKs tallest tree(disputed) and the worlds tallest hedge.
OMG I actually would pay to see Europe’s oldest tree.
Can you just walk right up to it?
Yes, it’s in a Churchyard.
https://ati.woodlandtrust.org.uk/what-we-record-and-why/what-we-record/oldest-trees-in-uk/
Worlds tallest hedge:
https://www.visitscotland.com/info/towns-villages/meikleour-beech-hedge-p249401
The hermitage has a load of douglas firs brought back to UK by douglas and planted in the area
https://www.nts.org.uk/visit/places/the-hermitage/highlights/big-tree-country?lang=
All makes for a nice day out if you are into trees and pick the weather.
Personally I prefer that area when autumn frosts have started and you get the vibrant colours.
Battle of Killiecrankie site and the “Soldier’s Leap” – especially interesting if you are interested in swordfighting because the soldier who leaped to escape the Jacobites was one Donald McBane, an all round veteran soldier, ruffian, pimp and swordmaster, one of the most prolific duellists on record and a man who fought in battles across Europe and in duels from the military camps of Europe to the gladiatorial stages in London.
His book is one of the most remarkable autobiographies in history, imo:
The Expert Sword-man’s Companion; or the True Art of Self-Defence. With all Account of the Author’s Life and his Transactions during the Wars with France. To which is annexed, The Arts of Gunnerie. Illustrated with 22 etched copper plates. By Donald McBane. Published Glasgow, 1728.
Three cheers for you and for Pitlochry!
Encouraging
https://twitter.com/talkRADIO/status/1291398037651283974?s=20
Just how I’m feeling.
Predicted COVID-19 fatality rates based on age, sex, comorbidities, and health system capacity – Stockholm University June 2020:
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.06.05.20123489v1.full.pdf
The table below is key. HIC – High Income Country, LMIC – Lower-middle income countries, UMIC – Upper-middle income countries, LIC -Lower income country.
Rather difficult to understand.They have high predictive mortality for Eastern Eurpe with an older population and high co morbidities but in practice lower IFR in Eastern Europe than Western Europe.There is no rea discussion of these surprising results.
This debacle has its origins within WHO Europe, headquartered in Denmark
‘As the nature of threats to health and the environment becomes more complex, uncertain and global in nature, the precautionary principle is increasingly being debated. The principle states that in the case of serious or irreversible threats to the health of humans or the ecosystem, acknowledged scientific uncertainty should not be used as a reason to postpone preventive measures.’
https://www.euro.who.int/__data/assets/pdf_file/0003/91173/E83079.pdf?ua=1
In other words, even if it looks like a duck, swims like a duck and quacks like a duck, it might be an alligator so run for your lives…….
This is government by ‘voodoo’ posing as responsible policy making
And within the eu itself:
‘The precautionary principle was formulated to provide a basis for political action to protect the environment from potentially severe or irreversible harm in circumstances of scientific uncertainty that prevent a full risk or cost‐benefit analysis. It underpins environmental law in the European Union and has been extended to include public health and consumer safety.’
The cases reviewed suggest that the Commission’s guidance was not followed consistently in forming legislation, although judicial decisions tended to be more consistent and to follow the guidance by requiring plausible evidence of potential hazard in order to invoke precaution…..’ (Re The Dolan case, not so far. For the appeal? We shall see, but too late, the damage is done.)
‘The cases reviewed revealed a trend toward requiring less evidence of harm where there was a severe threat to human health.’
Here’s the Catch 22 moment:
‘Although it is not made explicit in all the legislation, it appears that there is an understanding that measures based on the precautionary principle can, and often should, be reviewed when new evidence is available…..In the cases reviewed, however, there was no guidance on what conditions justify a reexamination of the potential risk, and who would be responsible for producing the evidence required for risk assessment.’
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/risa.12633
So, guilty until proven innocent, but innocent won’t happen because there is no process in place for review of ‘precautionary principle’ based policies.
Complete and total lunacy…
The precautionary principle: a self licking lollipop…..while tens of thousands of lives (and counting) are lost before their time.
An inquiry, immediately, with teeth. Nothing less will do!
The fundamental flaw in the precautionary principle is that it assumes that any precautionary action has no downside. Descartes deployed it to defend belief in God, saying that you should believe in God because if you didn’t you’d be in trouble when you died. Which is fine if you believe in the right god and follow him/her/it in the right way, because you really might piss Odin off by loving your neighbour rather than killing him in battle.
That’s a great first sentence, I’ve written it down and will quote it to people when needed.
Listen to Talk Radio now!! Think it’s a businessman / very articulate and passionate against lockdown and the economic catastrophe. He’s is giving it both barrels – pleading – ‘why are people not out on streets protesting the restrictions’ Absolutely brilliant. Toby must mention this in tomorrow’s update. Don’t know how to alert him. He’s on the economic’frontline’
When asked what can the government do – his answer is again spot on – ‘wrong question – government should walk away now and let economy sort itself out – short term pain but the right strategy medium and long term.’ Government meddling in the economy leads to extreme lacklustre growth
Good title for this just published article.But they take for granted that it protect from spread to others .
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.01918/full#ref3
Why Do Japanese People Use Masks Against COVID-19, Even Though Masks Are Unlikely to Offer Protection From Infection?
“The results of our nationwide survey revealed that people conformed to societal norms in wearing masks and felt relief from anxiety when wearing masks. However, risk reduction expectations did not affect mask usage. The social psychological motivations successfully explained much about mask usage. Our findings suggest that policymakers responsible for public health should consider social motivations when implementing public strategies to combat the COVID-19 pandemic.”
Good for them…, I’m Portuguese not Japanese.
Exactly right. Do not confuse one culture’s reaction for that of another.
https://thecritic.co.uk/face-masks-make-you-stupid/
Should be re-posted every day.
I have an antisocial antimotivation.
Quote: “‘New cancer diagnoses fell sharply as the coronavirus pandemic first hit‘ – Cancer diagnoses in the US fell dramatically between March 1st and April 18th”
I assume that’s not implying that Covid cures cancer?
I remember reading back in April/May that cancer diagnoses were about half the norm throughout Europe. Something like 5M diagnoses in a typical month (can’t remember the exact number but it was high) so it’s not as if it’s something that wasn’t known.
As a PS, 10 years ago I had cancer, fortunately resolved through an operation alone. Also fortunately I got a fast-track to the op. Which is just as well as I remember registering that 4 weeks after the diagnosis I was already losing my appetite and starting to have to force food down – normally I’m the sort of hearty eater Boris now disapproves of. Without that diagnosis and fast-track I would have been dead within 3 months. That’s an example of how the lockdown can and no doubt has affected people.
This happened to my dad, about ten years ago too. Prostate cancer – he was 5….8, so relatively young. They got it *just in time, but he had to have his prostate removed as any other treatment would have been too risky as it had grown right up to the edge of the prostate. He was *extremely* lucky (mainly due to my mum moaning at him to go to the doctor’s).
So yeah. Another month or so, they said, and it would have quite possibly been spread and curtains. But not an uncommon cancer obv in men, most of you end up with it at some point. Anyone in a similar position in April would now be fucked.
SAVE THE NHS!
Approx 1 in 9 men develop prostate cancer. You looking for a job with Ferguson ?
Apparently, and this is per my Dad’s consultant not me, most old men develop prostate cancer at some point, but they die of something else. So er….. bit like covid ;)They don’t need to treat it in the majority of cases as it’s never detected. Hence your 1 in 9 will be *detected* cases of prostate cancer.
You’re going to die of some kind of cancer if something else doesn’t get you first. And yes, prostate cancer is almost inevitable in any man who lives long enough to get it.
Speaking as the son of an oncologist.
Heart disease or cancer.
“That’s a certain text”
Gimme a heart attack whilst clutching a roulade of cheese any day.
I was in exactly that position. My operation scheduled for the end of March was postponed to July. No visitors allowed. I was the ONLY patient on the ward for most of my stay.
Had a post op infection. Calling 111 resulted in recommendation to have a Coronavirus test, “as you have just been in hospital.” This delayed the treatment of my infection which was instigated by GP phone consultation. My operation follow up consultation will be by telephone.
Ugh no. This is so disgusting!!
I’m sorry for you. And everybody really. I feel like you could turn up in A&E with a limb hanging off and they’d corona test you before stabilising the bleeding
Well. These new 90 minute tests will give them similar opportunities. It’s horrible.
No. They stopped performing any diagnoses.
Sorry correction to my post below – the speaker was Jonathan Davies economist, author of Boom and Bust podcast
Thanks for the heads up. Just listened to him. He’s a jeffing LS legend. Starts about 25mins or so in https://youtu.be/o_BLNne3R-M
I was almost elated when I started listening. Clear and totally uncompromising. Also cheered me up as had my usual weekly visit to the hospital ( for necessary blood tests) and was thoroughly depressed by the increasingly hostile environment it’s become. Can’t get in without being accosted by security wanting to know why I’m there and demanding an appointment letter ( I don’t have one as it’s a standing blood test every week). Then a temperature check in corridor, a lecture about the one way system ( which I always get wrong) before further hassle to get the test done (have you booked a time on line, where’s your dr referral etc) I’ve been having these weekly tests throughout lockdown and only in the last couple of weeks have they started being really heavy handed. I absolutely hate going but I have no choice.
You obviously didn’t clap these heroes enough.
Thankyoooooouu
On the long one he comes about 1:10:00
they’ve just put a shorter video up
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vSXWOVJMc68
I.E. merging schools and pubs. A suggestion: Shirley Temple for the children and hot toddies for the teachers.
Sadly I have to agree with your pessimism Steven,I could see this,whatever ‘this’ is really all about,still ongoing next summer and I’m quite worried that we haven’t seen even half of the madness yet.
Probably over the top…
But I can’t resist…
Added benefit — it’ll be harder for people to fiddle with their mask if they’re diddling!
( OMG)
and the rectum has less germs than the mouth…..
In a similar vein …
Brutal!
Zombies would take it absolutely seriously.
Are doing.
Definetely NOT OTT….
*giggedy*
You naughty, naughty person.
Change ‘lubricant’ to ‘lubricate.’
Write it out one hundred times.
Can anyone point me towards figures for covid linked hospitalisations linked to any of the recent new lockdowns?
Nope.
Because they don’t exist. The so-called ‘spikes’ had no validity .
I recall that on this site, there was an anonymous report from an anonymous doctor in Leicester pointing out that the ‘rise’ in cases there were unrelated to the more consistent monitoring that had gone on in the hospitals.
Was at work today and during our briefing, the mandatory muzzling was mentioned and this is what my workplace will be doing:
Visitor without a muzzle will be offered one on the entrance unless they say they’re exempt. We are not supposed to question why they are exempt.
Staff dotted around the museum – if visitor is walking around without a muzzle assume they are exempt and do not approach them.
Exemptions will be in the new signage that will be installed on 8 August.
It looks as if some sort of equilibrium has been reached. Organisations are becoming aware that demanding medical details for non-mask-wearing is in breach of disability discrimination laws. But a high enough proportion of people are wearing them that the authorities may not think it worth pushing harder by demanding doctor’s lines or whatever. However that equilibrium doesn’t offer a path away from mass masking. We need to keep emphasising the harms caused by masks to the wearer’s health, to human interaction, to children’s social development, and to the environment by their disposal.
Exactly. Given the demographic of people who visit, I will be definitely keeping a close eye because of the possibility of accidents and first aid incidents associated with wearing masks.
Plus my workplace is very, very afraid of the courts and especially the media. It only takes one angry visitor to take to Twitter to complain about how they were treated, discriminated upon and when its picked up by the media, all hell will break loose.
This is why it’s ‘better’ in my mind to not claim exemption unless you are genuinely exempt for a legitimate medical reason. Keep pushing ahead with just walking in those shops regardless and if challenged, leave.
However the face is what’s important. And being genuinely disturbed by wearing a mask- as most of us are- is also reasonable grounds for exemption. So do what you have to.
To be honest I would rather that we do not offer a muzzle in the first place but we were told that we have to be seen to be doing something and implementing government guidelines.
But as I mentioned earlier, given our visitor demographic, the possibility of a major accident or first aid incident taking place on our site is high. Maybe a few of those and even management would quietly ditch the muzzles and basically go back to the way we were.
After a few days, when the initial zeal is fading, you might just be able to have the box of masks there but not draw attention to it. Like the handgel and trolley sanitiser by Aldi’s entrance that everyone now walks straight past ……
That’s true with the hand sanitiser, many people just walk past it now but there are some that do it at every stop.
Not sure about the muzzles though, I fear that many of my colleagues will be fairly zealous about drawing attention to it.
Not everybody, earlier this week at Morrisons most people walked past the table with the gel, apart from one guy, who look like a serious bodybuilder he was keen as mustard to get those hands protected and that trolley wiped down.
I can only think he has something like OCD.
To me he look like the least likely sort of person to fear, fear.
I do have a reason to be exempt but I just walk muzzle-free into the shops and act normally. I haven’t been challenged.
Even better
Ditto Cheezilla. I’m a bit diappointed I haven’t been challenged yet, they’ll be subjected to a tirade of facts and data!
DavidC
Childrens’ social development is, as a result of this FARCE, I think, being MASSIVELY underrestimated.
DavidC
Just read CEBM twitter post from Carl Henegan pointing out that the mask-pushers claimed that masks could reduce Cov transmission by 40% yet ‘cases’ rose over 20% since mask day.
We now know the PCR test accuracy and false positives are starting to have a light shone on them.
But could it also be possible that mask wearing is preventing people exhaling the debris from a dead Cov virus, as it is being partly trapped in the mask then re-inhaled.
These fragments are then being detected by the PCR thus leading to a positive result. The masking means it is taking much long for the body to be rid of the virus debris hence a rise in ‘cases’
I’m no biologist (but was a physicist in my past) but some things are seeming to link up and poor decisions and lack of MSM challenge to the Govt/PHE science are having severe consequences.
Sounds reasonable to me, but I am in no way qualified to say either way. The list of poor decisions with severe consequences gets longer by the day!
The problem is that they’ll simply put in harsher restrictions because what they’re doing isn’t getting the desired result.
I’m not sure of the connection – I think Carl Heneghan was just underling the stupidity of masks.
It’s not a good idea to counter the establishment propaganda with similar speculative non-science.
I just think it is something that needs looking into. Masks are stupid, I agree. But we must find a way to fully prove this. This could be a scientific route.
Speculation yes, but does not every scientific discovery come from proving or disproving a speculation?
Some people reckon that this is one of the reasons masks were mandated, so coronavirus cells (common cold cells) wouldn’t be expelled properly.
Lili,
I think you may mean coronavirus virion or particle. Viruses are VERY much smaller than cells (it’s cells, or bacteria, that viruses invade). If the virions are contained in droplets then masks may have an effect on exhalation, but for aerosols or inhalation the effect would be very much less if at all. Surgical masks are worn to prevent droplets affecting the patient, not to stop the wearer from inhaling anything from the patient (I have an school friend who is a retired dentist who used to wear them for patient interraction).
DavidC
Another lonely maskless supermarket shop. With the exception of myself, every single customer and every single member of staff wearing them. I’m very glad for this place!
same here. it’s good not to feel alone.
Thoughts for today.
If a person can self exempt on the grounds of “severe distress” – doesn’t this make the law a “dead letter”?
Can one claim exemption on the grounds one is a “conscientious objector”? – one’s conscience will not allow one to support laws one believes to be totalitarian?
Welcome to post-modernism Ned… ( law arts arquitecture music etc etc )
The important thing is, you don’t have to say what the grounds are, except possibly to a police officer in the unlikely event that they got involved.
They’re not allowed to ask you either – would be contravening the Equalities Act, like everyone else.
The equality act is great. I’d never read it before March. People have a lot more rights than they think.
Any health problems are between you and your doctor. I think this is one of the reasons why doctors won’t issue exemption letters.
DavidC
Yep. Everybody is exempt if they want to be. Most people either aren’t aware of this or are happy to wear a face nappy anyway.
Yes, such fun to obliterate your mouth, your nose, your smile, your expression, your humanity.
I honestly can’t believe people are wearing them. I look at them when I’m in a shop and think “what in the fuck are you doing wearing that around your face for no reason whatsoever”
I know right? It’s like walking around and seeing everybody wearing tin foil hats lol!
They’d make more sense!
It would be a fun experiment. We introduced mandatory masking at the tail end of the pandemic in most places. Numbers continued to fall, and our idiot governors are claiming victory. We should have done some test cases – one city where everyone wore tin-foil hats instead. And of course the numbers would do the same thing. Whenever anyone points to declining numbers and says “masks work!” I say “yes, so do rain dances and virgin sacrifices. See? The sun came up! It rained this spring! Hooray for science!”
I think most don’t know – which is why it helps if we get chance to tell them!
Yeah that is what I’m doing. Sometimes it takes a while to sink in when I say to somebody that everybody is exempt. People don’t think it’s true otherwise why is it a law is the response I get. I send them the legislation and let them decide what to do
Severe distress, yes.
Conscientious objection, no. Sadly. I mean I conscientiously object to men wearing crocs but the police aren’t out to nab them.
— We need a legit fashion police.
Lol with masks we kinda already do.
Going against your conscience causes severe distress ……
Only in people of principle.
Does the law assume we all have them?
Maybe it does.
I think the government knew that when they made the guidelines so holey. You really can choose whether to wear one or not.
The good aliens lent on the bad aliens, and insisted upon get-out clauses.
I’ve said it before Ned, but the fact that the exempt categories are so broad that anybody could be included and the fact that it’s self-certification only together mean that the government knows it’s a farce and couldn’t be less interested in compliance
Spot on Matt.
DavidC
I went into a comic book shop today to grab some comics for my kids. Well, I sort of went in. At the door, the guy – who was wearing a cloth mask over a full beard – jumped back when he saw my bandanna under my nose. He said “I have health problems, I need you to lift it,” which I did… I kind of wanted to point out that I am healthy, and that regardless of what health problems he thinks he has, his risk of getting covid at all is extremely low, his risk of dying even lower, and none of those risks are in any way changed by the stupid cloth mask he has on… but instead I thumbed through the comics and gave him some business. The whole thing is extremely depressing. People you expect to be capable of critical thinking turn out to be complacent as their rights are stripped away on a pretext that is so shaky as to be laughable – but you can’t laugh, because that only reminds you of how many people don’t even ask the questions that would lead to the conclusions that you’re wanting to laugh at… depressing.
Did you tell him that if has health problems (well, OK, specifically breathing problems, distress at wearing a mask problems or mental health problems) he doesn’t need to wear a mask?
DavidC
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=sprqh5054o0
A powerful message from Bodo Schiffmann, in English, to all journalists and parents.
Spread it with them, and see you in Berlin on 29.8.!
I wish we had a proper event over here. But the Germans are actually waking up, most of us British are still happily asleep.
No they are awake but are too stupid and lazy to see/find out what is actually going on.
I think a lot are quickly waking up but we’re not joined up.
Keep Britain Free is full of Rainbow Warriors and New
Agers.
StandupX is better organised but are not one-pointed in their approach – 5G, paedophilia in the BBC and masks, all in one rally is not a good look.
I got an email from a friend, from another freedom group but their main focus is the rollout of 5G – of which they say the lockdown is a big part – and I can believe it.
Anyway, their site is here, if you’re interested:
https://www.saveusnow.org.uk/
I don’t think that’s quite a fair assessment of Keep Britain Free. The ‘Rainbow Warrior’ rubbish is limited to one thread and a couple of loony posters, it’s hardly characteristic of the whole site.
I attended one of the first KBF regional social meetings earlier this week and found it very helpful and productive. There were 13 people there including a sociology teacher, microbiologist and mathematician/statistician, all very rational and considered in their opinions.
I think activism on a smaller, local scale is much more likely to have the desired effect than StandUpX’s enormous, slightly dogmatic marches. I’m trying to kick-start another group for my area.
Cool. I think both are good
but local is def the way to go until we get a million out like Berlin!
There was a sweary irrational ill-considered dude there too, Ben, I believe …
Looks like Comrade Nicola’s idea to shut the border to the English has some unexpected traction … an acquaintance of mine and his wife were refused tickets by the train company to travel to Edinburgh for a long weekend, because they had a M33 postcode !
I find the efforts of the masked to express their individuality through their “face coverings” particularly sad. Your face is the most unique physical thing about you and the masked have acquiesced in its obliteration from the public sphere for no material gain in terms of public health. Trying to reassert your individuality through your choice of muzzle really ain’t going to cut it!
I find that bizarre as well. Especially taking selfies or having their photos taken while muzzled. I mean, what’s the point? Even if the muzzle is made out of “cute” fabrics or has your favourite cartoon characters in it, it still obliterates your personality and makes you a nonperson.
The make up tutorials as well are weird especially with focusing on eye make up. I’ve found those women muzzled up have gone OTT over eye shadow, eye liner and mascara which makes them look even more fake and unnatural which is accentuated further by their muzzle of choice.
Every idiot needs something to remind them just how idiotic they are capable of being (they just might not consciously realise that yet, but the lizard brain is whispering “go on, take it, you’ll thank me later”)!
All the fashion labels making them is spew-worthy. Even Liberty is selling useless “face coverings” made from their famous Tana lawn:
https://www.libertylondon.com/uk/assorted-upcycled-tana-lawn™-cotton-face-coverings-set-of-five-000709208.html
They’ve never had any individuality if they are wearing a mask. They are a follower.
Actually, I did see one that really made me laugh. A guy had a mask that had his own face printed on it, and it looked really funny. We had traveled from the people’s republic of WA state to free Idaho and went to Silverwood (theme park), where virtually nobody was wearing masks and people interacted normally. It was absolutely lovely, and my family got to enjoy the water park/roller coasters as if covid had never happened.
It’s all about virtue signalling. Many of these home made masks are as effective as a chocolate teapot anyway. I am ‘wearing’ a mask on public transport as some of the Champaign socialists would at my workplace would clock my true beliefs, a few of them already suspect – and cause me trouble. But I am in passive aggressive resistance -today on the District line I rubbed and fidgeted my mask repeatedly in front of someone with a True Corona zealot NHS rainbow mask. The dismay was something to behold.
That’s very reassuring Ryan
How opinion polls work and weak governments are controlled….
https://youtu.be/G0ZZJXw4MTA
Penn and Teller did a “hit job” on polls over a decade ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=If9EWDB_zK4
Speaking to a friend of mine last Saturday … manager for M&S, reckons this muzzling is going to kill them. A store in NW England, footfall 7000/wk, staff don’t wear masks – not one has been off work with even a sniffle since this nonsense began in March.
Has anyone else noticed an decrease in mask compliance? I’ve noticed this on the tube, and on my foray into Kent today, which seems very mask resistant…
On another note, have any other Telegraph readers noticed how much this ‘Fraisy Lou’ or whatever they’re called are spamming the comments with lockdown and mask zealotary? Is this another CCHQ plant to compliment the legend that is Adam Hill?
I reckon boredom about ‘mask compliance’ is mixed with a lot of ‘Ah well … best do what we’re told when someone’s looking’.
That’s quite a way from active resistance and anger at the erosion of normal liberties. There’s a lot of docility about the fundamentals.
As to ‘Telegraph readers’ – I’m surprised at anyone of a critical bent still reading (other than out of curiosity) that, or any other bum fodder from Fleet Street.
I’d agree there’s a bit of when no when is looking going on – but it’s a start…..
Farinances – I hope things are better up North..!
I think you may be right you know.
Well…. I dunno maybe I’m not a good measure unless I’ve been out and about in Leeds…. or somewhere that’s not my local, my parents local, or…. the Yorkshire coast. Lots of muzzled freaks there sadly. Outside.
I’ve noticed far fewer staff being masked in Waitrose than there were from 24th onwards
If you Google Adam Hill most of the results turn up someone connected with Imperial College. It seems awfully coincidental that someone who seems to spend ridiculous amounts of time spreading propaganda would just happen to have the same name as someone at an institute strongly connected to this deceit – in fact, I challenged him at one point on whether he was that Adam Hill and he ducked the question. I think we can assume that Imperial are paying him to spend his time pushing the agenda. What we can do about it, however, I don’t know.
On trains but not restaurants.
There’s a whole bunch of them nowadays. Once we get to know their names, they’ll no doubt invent new ones.
They post stuff that’s blatantly rubbish, it’s so puerile.
I think people are learning not to feed them, though the considered responses are probably helping to educate some of the sheep.
Qu: how robust is ‘the Science’ surrounding asymptomatic transmission. As this is part of mask-lore, would be interested to know.
I saw two reports. Both reports had a sample of… wait of it… ONE patient “asymptomatically” “infecting.” Both reports are, quite frankly, so abysmal that they won’t pass for “science” in the first year of a degree, but we now have “the science,” and I didn’t get “the memo” what the latter involves…
Here’s the first one: https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMc2001468 (read the transcript of questions!)
Here’s the second one: https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/26/9/20-1798_article (look up under what circumstances you’d get IgG (you might have to dig around))
Employees of the national blood service seem to think The Science is settled. We’re all disease spreaders!
It’s likely to be rare but possible. Only worth worrying about if you’re somewhere like NZ who are trying to eradicate the virus locally. Completely irrelevant hysteria anywhere else.
This would be sensible answer.I’d suggest it’s only possible if the asympto virus-bomb literally licked their victim. All over.
Where do I sign up to be the victim?!
DavidC
Dirty Farinances!
This is the mere exposure effect that’s used in advertising, there’s no good verifiable evidence of asymptomatic transmission; at least I’ve not seen any, and I know what Fauci saw when he proclaimed asymptomatic transmission.
The WHO disagrees. (Briefly. Then rows back when it realises it wants more money from Billy Gates)
National blood service still don’t care.
I have wondered if asymptomatic spread is a myth. When you think about it asymptomatic spreaders is a perfect bogeyman for the lockdown zealots because without this idea lockdowns would be much harder to justify and it would be harder to frighten people. The idea of asymptomatic spreaders is useful for the following reasons –
Quarantining healthy symptom free people and putting the entire population into lockdown can be justified on the basis asymptomatic people can spread the disease. If the idea of asymptomatic spreaders didn’t exist lockdowns of the entire population would be much harder to justify.
Asymptomatic spreaders creates fear in that people think they will spread the disease without symptoms or anyone can pass the disease. This will not be possible without the idea of asymptomatic spreaders.
It can be used to control people’s behaviour. For instance if people don’t social distance or meet in large groups, the idea of asymptomatic spread is used to give the message this behaviour is wrong.
I am suspicious about asymptomatic spread because the idea is too convenient for the lockdown zealots.
Exactly. It causes 99% of the harm, paranoia and hysteria for 1% of the benefit.
Simple proof : Let it run, and we’ll see. Interventions up to press have done nothing – so why bother?
I (as an old fart with some vulnerabilities) will risk it.
Agreed. Debunk this myth and face nappies, go back to sneeze into a tissue, wash your hands and stay at home if you feel unwell. Isn’t that what we used to do?
Excellent summation!
The Guardian: NHS shutdown risks thousands of deaths in Covid-19 second wave.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/aug/06/nhs-shutdown-risks-thousands-of-deaths-in-covid-19-second-wave
Well f. me – that’s a late dawning of light from one of the establishment’s house journals.
… even if it’s balanced by more crap about the mythical monster of a ‘second wave’.
Lockdown in March ‘to help cope with the huge influx of patients’. Did we miss something?
Yup the huge influx of patients which crippled The NHS.
Blimey it’s a fairly good article. It’s is the first time for 3 weeks I’ve opened the guardian website because it’s been so fear laden but perhaps something is turning?
Here is a bit of upbeat music to entertain on this Thursday evening:
https://youtu.be/iNU3zxuZOp0
I do not know if the title is referring to The British Isles:
Blondie; Island of lost souls
What chance have we got if even the ‘fact checkers’ are corrupt?
https://off-guardian.org/2020/08/06/fact-checking-a-fact-checker-a-response-to-healthfeedback-org/
quis custodiet ipsos
custodes?
I’m guessing that translates as “Who will put the Guardian into custody?”
… or custard.
… but perhaps Viner’s done that – yellow and less than flavoursome.
Hey all,
Can anyone recommend a European holiday destination that is free of masks and Covid zealotry? I’d like somewhere sunny, with a beach.
Thanks
Sweden, obviously! I’m sure it is lovely at this time of year, though I haven’t actually checked the weather. But I went to Legoland in Denmark one summer as a child and had a lovely time in pleasant weather as I remember.
Personally I am hoping for somewhere in Britain in September for a holiday. I might try my Eurosceptic b ‘n’ b owners where I usually go in Wales if they’re up and running again by then. Failing that, perhaps I should try a first excursion to Northern Ireland, they sound relatively sensible about all this.
Though when all’s said and done, the UK is European geographically, regardless of membership of the Brussels (and Strasbourg, and Luxembourg) regime. But I digress…
Sweden is lovely but on the FCO red list currently so you would currently have to quarantine on return. I don’t think there is anywhere else that ticks all the boxes at the moment and as we have seen overnight, things can change very quickly with France now also likely to be added to the no go.
Iceland is pretty much mask free and an incredible country but of course not hot. I went last year and was blown away by the place, truly stunning.
sweden
Croatia.
Another thread on possible downsides of mask wearing. Anecdotally, I’ve worn a mask a couple of times and definitely find it hard breathing in one. The main argument I would use about mask wearing is that their utility presupposes that you are infected/infectious. If you’re fit and healthy there is zero benefit, yes absolutely zero, and definitely potential downsides to your health. In a population where the prevalance is low, the vast majority of people wearing masks are making zero contribution to slowing the spread of the virus:
https://threader.app/thread/1291018047386460163
Correct. But the ‘law’ (diktat would be a better word) is predicated on us all being ‘lepers’.
It’s when you work out the probability of even coming across a single Corona virus that the absurdity becomes obvious.
This poem which I thought was by Lear but isn’t (it’s American and called Antigonish) seems rather appropriate as to where we (or rather the Lockdown lunatics) are with Covid:
Yesterday upon the stair
I met a man who wasn’t there
He wasn’t there again today,
Oh how I wish he’d go away.
When I came home last night at three
The man was waiting there for me.
But when I looked around the hall
I couldn’t see him there at all!
Go away, go away, don’t you come back any more!
Go away, go away and don’t you slam the door!
Glaswegians rejoice! Soap dodging has been given a thumbs up.
Might seem slightly off topic but it raises some points on our balance with nature. At a basic level the more we mess around with nature the more we have to do it. For example, let’s say we were able to wipe out COVID19. At some point in the future the immunity we might have obtained from this current virus would not exist, therefore human intervention would be required to mitigate the effects of similar new viruses, and any future ones after that.
Soap dodger: meet the doctor who says we have been showering wrong
https://bit.ly/2XAHToR
Even if you have not yet read up on our microbiomes – the trillions of microbes that lead symbiotic lives with humans, colonising our skin and our guts – you may have spotted vague statements such as “microbiome-gentle” printed on bottles of shower gel. This because microbiologists – and brands – are learning more and more about the complex relationship we have with our germs. These include their starring roles in developing our immune systems, protecting us from pathogens (by creating antimicrobial substances and competing with them for space and resources) and lessening the likelihood of autoimmune conditions such as eczema. So, there is a growing awareness that scrubbing them off, along with the natural oils on which they feed, or dousing them with antibacterial products may not be the best idea after all.
Yes exactly this. We evolved with the world not separate from it but it seems we have forgotten currently.
The Eugenics movement
“Eugenics is the self-direction of human evolution”
This was part of the logo of the Second International Congress of Eugenics, held in 1921
Mhmm – remove humans from the natural world, elevate and select the best ones!!!
Wow, there are 863 comments here in just one day, there is no way I can read them all and so my apologies if I am repeating something. I am thinking about writing to my MP, probably a futile gesture but I thought I would give it a go. I have kept it simple straightforward and to the point in the hope of at least getting a considered reply, my first draft is as below, I would be interested if you have any thoughts on this before I send it off?
Dear Mr Cox,
I am a resident in your constituency of Torridge and West Devon.
When the Covid 19 outbreak started in the UK measures were introduced aimed at flattening the curve, saving lives and protecting the NHS. Well Covid 19 certainly hit hard in the UK but we are now at the position where weekly total registered deaths are running below average, hospitals have a relatively low number of Covid cases and are doing fine and all the graphs have been flattened. Consequently, by the criteria outlined by the Prime Minister in March we should by now be breathing a sigh of relief and getting back to normal. But that is not happening, why is that?
Unlike previous flu outbreaks we are now testing for Covid 19 and any positive test results are designated as cases and outbreaks without any medical assessment of symptoms. Consequently huge, costly and important measures such as lockdowns and the re-opening of schools are now dependent solely on these test results. However, test results are not the same as the hard evidence of deaths and serious hospital cases that drove our early response to the virus and we need to ask ourselves, are these tests sufficiently robust to be the sole determinant of such huge issues of public policy?
The Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) test used to detect Covid 19 is extremely powerful and useful but not infallible and there are concerns over the collection of samples, the analysis of samples and the statistical analysis of the testing results. The Centre for Evidence Based Medicine (CEBM) at Oxford University lead by Professor Carl Heneghan has put together some excellent compilations of evidence with regard to the Covid 19 PCR test e.g. https://www.cebm.net/covid-19/infectious-positive-pcr-test-result-covid-19/
Having regard to the pivotal role of the Covid 19 PCR test and the huge public decisions that are being made based on test results; I am writing to ask you to press the Government to urgently instigate a review of the science and statistics of the Covid 19 PCR test to ensure it is being properly used in deciding official action to control Covid 19.
Yours Sincerely
An extremely good letter.
Thankyou, letter now sent. I doubt it will achieve much but I guess you have to try.
Very well done, an excellent letter.
“Well Covid 19 certainly hit hard in the UK”
… but did it in the great (historical) scheme of things? How hard? How much mortality was solely due to Covid? How much mortality was the result of political choices? How much was pretty inevitable?… etc.
Here are the exemptions in the Auld Sod as set out on the Irish government’s website.
Who should not wear one
Cloth face coverings are not suitable for children under the age of 13 and anyone who:
Good to know they are letting anyone off who is unconscious. Has the British government thought of that?
I am so angry that Prince William and Kate and team, photographs security etc., have been allowed into a care home and been photographed chatting to residents and staff. Families in that care home and many others, including my Dad’s have not been able to support their family since March. People don’t need Kate and William they need the familiarity of their families. Seems royals aren’t vectors of disease whilst we commoners mean instant death to residents. So, so angry!!!!!
7th Aug Edition is available now. Please gather your belongings and move over.