Yes, Kids Can Get Covid. But They’re More Likely to Die of Flu
Last week, there was a hysterical story in the New York Times about how hundreds of children had become infected at a summer camp in Georgia. It led to crazy, paranoid “guidance” being written by bedwetting journalists, such as this piece for the NPR website advising parents to “look for” things like “consistent, mandatory mask usage for kids and adults” and “6 feet between desks, small class sizes and cohorts”.
As Gummi Bear said on Twitter: “Nobody said children don’t get COVID-19 so not sure what the breaking news is. A 12 year-old child has a 1 in 55,000 chance of dying IF they get it. That same child is 25x more likely to die from other causes. As a society, we have lost all commonsense in terms of risk assessment.”
The above IFR data from the huge seroprevalence survey in Spain – and which almost certainly overstates the IFR in every age category – says children under the age of 10 have an IFR of 0.0029% and those aged 10-18 0.0018%.
The negligible risk to children is also mentioned in this piece in today’s Telegraph by Science Editor Sarah Knapton entitled “How the danger of coronavirus compares with the risks of everyday life”. She writes:
Children have a greater chance of being hit by lightning than dying from coronavirus with the death rate for five to 14-year-olds in England and Wales currently just one in 3.5 million. For under-fives, it is one in 1.17 million.
Not surprisingly, these data cut no mustard with the teaching unions. The Telegraph has obtained a recording of a Zoom meeting with Mary Bousted, joint head of the National Education Union (NEU), in which she advises her lieutenants that the Government “won’t be able to carry out their threats” against schools that refuse to re-open in September.
She said: “The latest iteration of Government guidance is so unworkable that you can’t trust it. Local authorities and schools should take the confidence to do what they can do and that will mean for many schools that they cannot have all children fully back in September.
“Now, the Government’s making threatening noises about that. But in the end, they won’t be able to carry out their threats.”
She said that it might be “simply impossible” to follow the guidance “and have all children back” and schools “should have the confidence to be looking at what is possible in your area and make those arrangements”.
The Government is in a hole of its own making. If it hadn’t insisted schools comply with a plethora of utterly pointless social distancing measures, the teaching unions wouldn’t be in such a powerful position. In effect, the Department for Education has handed its most ruthless enemies a loaded gun. It can’t really complain if that gun is now being pointed at its head.
Did Dominic Cummings Make Second Trip to Durham?
Two of four people who claim to have seen Dominic Cummings on what would have been a second visit to the north-east of England have complained to the police watchdog, accusing the Durham force of not fully probing their claims, according to the Guardian.
Cummings has consistently denied returning to Durham on April 19th, days after he came back to London from a trip that was subsequently exposed in a joint investigation by the Guardian and the Daily Mirror.
The Prime Minister’s chief adviser has said that phone data and potentially CCTV would prove he was in London – and the Guardian has been told of one sighting of him on Hampstead Heath that afternoon.
However, neither he nor Downing Street has gone public with the evidence they say they have – and which Boris Johnson says he has seen – and pressure is mounting again for full transparency to answer lingering questions about his movements.
Apologies if I can’t get too worked up about this. Who gives a stuff if Dominic Cummings broke the lockdown rules? When will the Guardian and Daily Mirror‘s journalists start doing their jobs and ask why Cummings and co placed the entire country under virtual house arrest on March 23rd without having done any due diligence about the damage it was likely to do?
Lockdown Easing Caused a Fall in Infections
According to new research done by Imperial College and Ipsos Mori, who carried out the largest swab testing survey in the country, infections fell when lockdown restrictions were eased. The Telegraph has more.
Although there are fears that releasing measures too soon has led to localised spikes in some areas, new data suggests that there was no overall rise after primary schools returned and non-essential shops reopened.
According to Imperial College London and Ipsos Mori, community prevalence actually fell after lockdown measures were relaxed, decreasing from 12 infections per 10,000 people in May to eight in 10,000 by mid-June to early July.
Needless to say, Matt Hancock has tried to spin this as proof that the lockdown was effective.
“This research highlights how, thanks to everyone’s efforts and sacrifice, alongside targeted measures to counter the spread of this virus in health and care settings, we were able to keep rates of infection low as some restrictions were lifted.
“However, we must not be complacent. I urge everyone to get a test if you have symptoms, self-isolate and provide your contacts to NHS Test and Trace so we can continue to keep the virus at bay and get back to normal.”
You’ve got to give him points for shamelessness. No matter how conclusive the evidence is that the lockdown was completely ineffective, he’d try and spin it as a vindication of Government policy.
Car Salesman More Trusted Than Prime Minister
Amusing anecdote sent to me by a reader:
Thought I’d share my experience in a car showroom today. I’d already told the saleswoman I wouldn’t be masked and she was absolutely fine with it but there was a steady stream of masked people coming in as they currently have a 0% finance offer on. They all were clearly uncomfortable and took them off as soon as the sales staff told them it was OK. It seems we now live in a country where people trust car salesmen more than they do the Prime Minister!
Breakin’ the Law, Breakin’ the Law – in Melbourne
A spirited resident of Melbourne has got in touch to reveal how often he now finds himself breaking the law in the course of his daily routine.
I’m a 53 year old married father of three, running a small business. In the space of 24 hours my life went from low key, bordering on boring, to law breaking and risky. And I didn’t change a thing I did.
Leaving at 4.20am each morning, I run from my home to the city, about 12-14km (depending on which station I run to), then catch a train to work, getting to work at 6am. This boring routine now violates many new laws in Chairman Dan Andrews’ nightmarish socialist dystopia. By leaving at 4.20am I’m breaking the 8pm-5am curfew, by running for more than an hour I’m breaking the 1 hour exercise a day rule, by running more than 5km from my place of residence, I break the 5km rule, if I forget to carry my mask, that’s another rule broken and if I forget to carry work permit papers, allowing me to travel to work (ludicrously signed by me as a worker & signed again by me as the co-owner of the company), then I’m breaking another edict brought in last Sunday.
I now run at my usual time, but only around my area, still for the same time and distance, with my Garmin switched off, my location services on my phone also switched off, clad entirely in black. The first 40 minutes of my run is spent avoiding main roads (police might find me out before curfew is over), avoiding shopping areas (maybe a camera might catch me), and ducking up peoples driveways, or standing still behind a tree, whenever I see a set of headlights. Maybe it might be the cops?
My formerly law abiding a mild mannered wife and children now also find themselves breaking several laws a day. Maybe we need something at the supermarket, but we’ve already been out once that day for shopping? Go out again and you’re breaking a law. One shopping trip a day is allowed, and only for one hour. Going for a small jog, find yourself out of breath and slow to a walk? Put that mask on! If you’re not actually jogging/running, a mask must be on at all times! There’s suddenly a lot of people going for very slow jogs, looking like it’s the first time they’ve run since school, all for the freedom of not wearing a mask.
Last weekend, I wanted to take my two youngest kids out to get an ice cream. Such frivolity is not a permitted reason to be out. To get around this edict, I asked my 13 year old daughter to write out a fake shopping list, so that if questioned by police on the reason we were out, we could produce the fake shopping list and plead that we were out in order to shop for vital supplies at the supermarket across the road from the ice cream shop. So my daughter is caught up in my law breaking lifestyle too.
I haven’t even mentioned the myriad laws and rules my brother & I must now keep in mind in trying to run a little hardware company with 16 staff. Including who we sell to, when we sell, where we allow goods to be collected from and what the customer is going to do with the goods. I’ll save this saga for another time.
This is life in Melbourne in August 2020.
I had to point out that by taking his two youngest kids out for an ice cream he was almost certainly breaking another law. As I understand it, only two people are allowed out of their house at any one time.
Round-Up
- ‘The Leicester lockdown was not necessary‘ – Good analysis by David Paton in UnHerd
- ‘Travellers from Belgium, Andorra, and the Bahamas must quarantine in UK‘ – Three more countries have been removed from the travel corridor. Grant Shapps announced this on Twitter at 8pm last night. And France could be next, according to the Telegraph
- ‘Universities pay for security teams to check if students are following coronavirus guidelines‘ – One more reason not to start university this year if you can possibly help it. Any uni paying a security team to enforce Covid rules should not be given bail-out money. If they want to put themselves out of business, let them
- ‘Outcry over £150m of worthless facemasks prompts spending inquiry‘ – Labour demands inquiry after 50 million masks bought by Ayanda Capital on behalf of the Government turned out to be useless
- ‘Victoria: State of Despair‘ – Blog post by RJ Smith about the dismal situation in Victoria
Theme Tunes Suggested by Readers
Two today: “Harder to Breathe” by Maroon 5 and “The Bug” by Paul Weatherhead.
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 11th to 22nd). 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.
And the reader who managed to travel all the way to Corfu without wearing a face nappy, thanks to a “Mask Exempt” lanyard, reports he was able to travel back again too.
Just a quick note to say I used the Lanyard again on the way back from Corfu. No questions asked. The Greeks, who are getting strict on face coverings, clearly appreciate the validity of the lanyards too.
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 in Wales doing some walking in the Brecon Beacons.
And Finally…
Discussion
Comments
This week across the site:
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**Saturday Edition available to read**
Been Maskless since the off and not been challenged. Until today. Went into HSBC and after a bit of faffing was beside one of the automatic tellers. Guy in his mid 60’s I reckon (I am 52, so no spring chicken) said ‘where’s your mask mate?’ I responded ‘nowhere’ and he said nothing more. I then spoke to a masked member of staff explaining that the automatic teller had swallowed my card. She said nothing at that stage but when she came back with my retrieved card she said ‘Please make sure you wear a mask next time you come in’ I said ‘I’m exempt’ she said ‘ok’ and the rest of the time I was in there was fine. I then went to a boutique jewellers to buy my Wife’s birthday present. Sign outside about masks. Thought it is standard stuff and easily ignored. I had to ring a bell to gain access. As I entered I saw a youngish ( mid 30’s) woman wearing a mask and she asked me to put a mask on. I said I didn’t have one. She said she couldn’t serve me without one. I said ‘ ok, bye’ and left. This is… Read more »
I find these shopping reports very heartening. Thanks, Chris. I’ve been into 3 shops over the past 3 weeks and not been challenged once, although I was in and out like a rat up a drainpipe as I can’t stand the faceless people in them.
Independent SAGE caught in a lie, or at best misinformation. The paper only shows Ct and viral loads between symptomatic and asymptomics are similar. It does not show they are equally infectious. My emphasis below:
Christina Pagel@chrischirp
This is even more important as new research shows asymptomatic people as likely to be infectious as those with symptoms. Remember that younger people more likely to have no symptoms – FTTIS is best way of stopping asymptomatic people transmitting!
https://twitter.com/chrischirp/status/1291780993309868037
Here’s the study referred to:
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/fullarticle/2769235
Limitations
This study has limitations. First, it is possible that the asymptomatic patients in our cohort were not representative of all asymptomatic patients in the community because false negatives would not have been included in our sample. This may have been in contrast to symptomatic patients, where the false-negative rate was lower. Unfortunately, without widespread testing in the community with different methods, we have no way of knowing if this was the case. Second, we did not determine the role that molecular viral shedding played in transmission from asymptomatic patients. An epidemiologic investigation with this objective was not conducted, and we did not obtain information about the date of exposure and symptom onset prior to… Read more »
Another ‘may be’.
Perhaps we should have more ‘may be not’!- the assertion of the usual null hypothesis in low probability situations..
Where did such people learn their basic science?
I’ve seen you comment on how few deaths were recorded due to Covid in recent days. I think I saw mentioned that there where even days when none were recorded. This doesn’t seem to jive with the https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/coronavirus-death-toll/ stats. What am I missing or not understanding?
Imagine for a moment that there were a National Plumbing Service (NPS) or a National Computer Service (NCS). People would be paid £30k pa on the “front line”, up to £200k as “consultants”, and average £50k as admin managers. Their services would, of course, be free at the point of use.
They would find a lot of work to do. In fact, they would find tremendous levels of inequality in plumbing, or in computers. They would find various public plumbing or computer goals that deserved a national strategy. In fact, we might even find a “crisis” in public plumbing or computing. The government would commit £x million to eradicate various plumbing or computing problems.
It is completely farcical. It would result in a massive misallocation of resources. It would result in armies of plumbers and computer people finding work to do. We could even have lockdowns if the national plumbing or computing infrastructure were at risk. And yet this is what we do with health.
Well I wouldn’t run away with those analogies but they are v illuminating. The general public tend to assume good motives in health service personnel (doctors and nurses) but for some reason don’t make the same assumptions when it comes to estate agents. Why?
Experience 🙂
I found the Tucker Carlson August 6 2020 Fox broadcast. Here is the link:
https://video.foxnews.com/v/6179015911001?playlist_id=5198073478001#sp=show-clips
Just seen the Uber ad “no mask, no ride” on TV. Effing outrageous. They are brazenly stating they discriminate against people with valid exemptions, many of whom will have disabilities protected under equalities legislation. How is that legal? Where is Ofcom…where is the EHRC?
Wondering whether we could get crowd funding to launch a private prosecution of Uber…
What is behind the rise in cases in Aberdeen? The BBC have done some rigorous investigative work and identified reckless and selfish conduct in bars, such as ‘walking the wrong way or going between tables’. Clearly life is cheap in the Granite City…
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/newsbeat-53683473
‘Cases’ = ?????
BBC ‘rigorous investigative work’ = ???? (Another vanishingly rare phenomenon)
None of those three words really apply to the BBC though, do they?
“Rigorous investigative work?” Does that mean that copied and pasted 10 tweets into the news story rather than the standard 5?
Another song suggestion for Mr. Toby Young:
Sky Saxon & The Seeds
You’re pushing too hard …
“In the summertime just do
what you feel..,”. !! Sorreee!!! Off message!!!
This is interesting, a comparison of all cause mortality as a change from previous years:
SecondOpinion@DaFeid
Country comparison: All Cause death. Country by Country. Apples vs. Apples. No Covid glasses needed. All Cause death 2020 compared to an index 2010-2018. Timeframe: Only first half years (Jan-Jun) for each year Week 1-26 or monthly data
https://twitter.com/DaFeid/status/1290991737633112064
Is the data corrected for population growth?
Cross- country comparisons are fraught with problems – but it certainly blows out of the water any justification for civil liberties infringements (note Sweden)
Yes the chart says population adjusted.
I assume that this does mean that this is incorporated in the baseline calculations.
It’s good to have data based on all-cause mortality rather than finger-in-the-wind Covid guesses.
Pity that Italy isn’t there, but it will be interesting to see at some point a proper analysis of the factors that may underlie between-country differences. (i.e. analysis that isn’t simply guesswork peddling preconceptions). The prevalence of western seaboard nations with high mortality is interesting.
I would personally split USA into individual states and I’m fairly sure we’d see non lockdown states faring better relative to the lockdown states.
Would be interesting to see the population adjusted spreads and rankings on the same basis. Ie are these numbers unusual, and if so how unusual.
Another single study was used by WHO in the changed mask guidelines
https://www.pnas.org/content/117/26/14857
“Identifying airborne transmission as the dominant route for the spread of COVID-19”
This article is appalling bad and hasn’t aged well. Quotes:
“Our analysis reveals that the difference with and without mandated face covering represents the determinant in shaping the trends of the pandemic. This protective measure significantly reduces the number of infections.”
“Our analysis reveals that the difference with and without mandated face covering represents the determinant in shaping the pandemic trends in the three epicenters. This protective measure alone significantly reduced the number of infections, that is, by over 78,000 in Italy from April 6 to May 9 and over 66,000 in New York City from April 17 to May 9.”
“Hence, the difference made by implementing face covering significantly shapes the pandemic trends worldwide.”
I think this phrase alone disqualify the article completely seeing now in July/ Aug enormous outbreaks in face covering lockdown countries Argentina, Philippines etc. Even the interpretation of data in NYC and Italy seem suspicious, even to me, that it is a face covering effect.
In every scientific article they should discuss possible bias etc but this article lacks anything… Read more »
Yes, at least people in my crappy province have done something right and are challenging the mask mandate. We’re not all sheeple, though you wouldn’t know it based on the number of maskholes complying and wearing them even when they don’t have to.
In March there was a common line from WHO, CDC and most public health bodies that masks for the general population was not effective to curb transmission.
In the beginning of June WHO changed opinion and facemasks were recommended for general use to curb the spread of the disease.
Had breakthrough randomised control trials (RCT) been produced to give evidence for that changed public health advice for C-19? No. Not a single RCT for the use of masks in community setting has been published. Only one RCT was very recently closed in Denmark to see if facemasks protected for C-19 infection. This study has still not been published but the lead investigator stated that he hoped that the Danish Health Board should not mandate masks (perhaps gives you a hint of the result)
In May 2020 it was published an extensive review of social distancing incl. facemasks for pandemic influenza
https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/26/5/19-0994_article
“Although mechanistic studies support the potential effect of hand hygiene or face masks, evidence from 14 randomized controlled trials of these measures did not support a substantial effect on transmission of laboratory-confirmed influenza”(10 of 14 RCTs were about facemasks)
Obviously in May 2020 RCTs in influenza did not show… Read more »
Proper science is actually very straigh forward, so long as you don’t have bullshitters getting in your way: if multiple RCTs have given you one result, you never waste your time on CCS or other observational studies to prove the contrary unless you can prove errors in RCTs.
What they did was actually worse: in at least one, I actually manually checked numbers and they didn’t add up (they had more cases in results than sick people—wtf?), in another they were giving TamiFlu and didn’t bother to adjust for it. This is just not how one “does” science.
New reproduction estimates for the pandemic, published by the Government on Friday, suggest the ‘R’ number is slightly higher across Britain than last week – now at between 0.8 and 1.0, up from 0.8 to 0.9 last week. The rate for England has remained unchanged at between 0.8 and 1.0.
The figures also estimated a growth rate of between 0 per cent to -5 per cent, meaning the number of new infections is somewhere between remaining stable and shrinking by five per cent every day.
How can these both be true? R number rising (although we all know R is bollox) but growth rate stable or shrinking?
Political interference. R0=bollox
R, or more precisely R_0 or R_t, are red herrings:- there is hardly any virulence, this is what happens when the media watch too many Holywood films!
It is possible for the r-number to rise and for the number of new infections to still be declining (if it is less than 1). I think it just means that the number of new infections is not falling as fast as it was.
This is not a bad thing if new infections are generally mild (which they are) and that people are allowed to leave their homes and have some sort of a life.
Btw I think it is a problem that reporters don’t understand that when you take two small numbers, using a relative percentage difference is very unhelpful. (eg “infections up x% in the North” or “r number up y%).
It is also a problem that we haven’t got any meaningful KPIs. Given our earlier strategy about protecting the NHS, I thought maybe numbers around healthcare capacity, hospitalised cases or other measures would be better than measuring mildly symptomatic cases in the general population.
Very naive if you think reporters don’t know about basic percentages. Also that there aren’t enough meaningful KPIs. There are plenty of measurements to choose from and invariably the most scary option will be chosen. Whether that be deaths in March, R rate in June or “cases” in July….
Good video by Paul Joseph Watson,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AA6_GuZOyAI&t=268s
Just had a look at the furlough numbers:
26th July we had 9.5M jobs furloughed
2nd August we have 9.6M jobs furloughed
I know I should not be surprised but up another 100,000 jobs.
Oh the cost on 2nd August was £33.8bn
Depressing.
Boris pull your finger out and do something to get people back to work.
Difficult whilst people are enjoying the heatwave.
No jobs for a large number to return to.
The entire “Health” budget for 2020/21 was £178bn — https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/budget-2020-documents/budget-2020
Our daughter has been for an MRI scan tonight,they think she might have a cancer or something on her tibia,they made her wear a f**king mask whilst she was in the scanner !!.I was absolutely livid when they told me,this lunacy is utterly out of control.She’d been wearing one of the bloody things all day long on her shift at our local hospital already.She had to travel 30 miles for the scan because even though the hospital she works in has it’s own MRI scanner it can’t be used due to the staff that operate it being transferred to another hospital to operate theirs !.The NHS trust is deliberately running our hospital into the ground under the cover of the Coranavirus regulations,under which they don’t have to consult the staff or public.They started in March by closing everything down and throwing all the patients out so they could make it a centre for Covid treatment,the staff were put on a war footing and were told to expect thousands of infected people,they probably had a couple of dozen in reality,none particularly ill with it either.
She also had to contend with a security goon on the door when she went for… Read more »
Usual media BS, they’re like a stuck record. I hope things turn out OK for your daughter.
Thanks Nick.
I’m so sorry to hear this. I’d have probably taken it off while in the scanner — who the hell is she going to give Covid to in a scanner??? Insanity. I hope your daughter gets a good result. Very scary time for you and your family.
Thankyou Lisa.
All good wishes. This is a disgraceful breach of ethical procedures.
Thankyou Rick.
My dad has been in hospital today, in the South West, to finally have a procedure that has been delayed for 6 months because of covid.
He is a long-term sceptic like me, and saw fit to ask a nurse the following questions:
Q. How many patients are currently in the hospital with Covid?
A. None at all, both in ITS and in the medical wards. In fact it has been none for a month or so.
Q. What was it like at the peak?
A. The peak was about 4 or 5 patients in ICU. A significant number of those were Philippine hospital staff, they seem to be particularly susceptible.
Sounds like it was hellish down there on the front line…
Sanitation tunnels are imminent at all places into which the public enter. I infer this from a YouGov survey I have just done online asking about it. And we all know which way that poll will go. And we all know Boris governs by opinion polls. The questions were loaded too, giving no option to disagree with them entirely, which I pointed out to them in a comment at the end of the survey. The most negative answer you could tick equated to the answer a coward too scared to leave their homes for fear of catching the plague would tick. Basically the options on the subject were good idea, don’t know or not confident they would save me from the plague. Nothing along the lines of “they sound awful- getting treated like a germ, no thanks”.
I don’t get it – surely if you’re infected internally, in your lungs, throat and nose, a sanitation tunnel will make zero difference? Once out the other side, you’ll continue to excrete virus wherever you go.
Of course, no one thinks logically about these things any more. Not sure why I bother.
Yes, it’s all 100% BS.
Their daily poll quite often does this makes loaded assumptions, sometimes you have to ‘don’t know ‘ even though that it totally inadequate.
https://youtu.be/GSuhU0xcOE4
What is the purpose of Independent SAGE?
I see them acting like they’re the ones controlling the pandemic response. Is this because SAGE have been sidelined?
Does anybody really know who is in charge anymore?
I think they set themselves up to challenge the actual sage. They appear to ha e an elimination agenda – that is virus to be eliminated on these islands as like NZ. I don’t pay them much attention or my head would explode!!!!
If only the side of truth and decency were as energetic and organised (and as unconcerned with unwarranted certainty) as the scumbags. We might have had a voluntary organisation of senior experts who actually meaningfully questioned the prevailing orthodoxy, rather than one pushing to go deeper still, and deeper into insanity.
I imagine 10 million healthy humans on funeral pyres would be their chosen tactic to deal with the cold. It worked so well for foot and mouth after all…..
Hobson’s choice
This is a Covid secure cinema
“Please wear your mask when not eating and drinking”
“Please remember to adhere to government guidelines regarding daily calorie intake”
“For your safety large sized popcorn have been removed from the menu”
“Please use the seat cupholders to store your mask safely when not in use”
“If you have not brought a mask please use the vending machine.
“In the interest of everyone’s safety please try not to laugh”
“If you are finding this difficult please put your mask on”
“Please wear a mask that is robust enough to cope with raucous laughter”
” For your peace of mind and safety a 10 minute deep cleaning will take place between viewings”
“Please dispose of masks in the yellow clinical waste bins which are found throughout the cinema complex”
“Finally as you leave the cinema please book your Covid 19 Test.”
“We hope you enjoy your experience and will come again soon”
Is this real? I hope not.
If it is – They are so going out of business. And quite frankly, they deserve it.
Anybody without the balls to at least fudge a few rules then let people break them deserves to go bust.
No not real – Well – I don’t think so!
I can no longer tell.
Lordy.
“Please use the seat cupholders to store your mask safely when not in use”
Damn, you got me there!
The have been fitted with UV Light technology!
Nope. I hardly go to the cinema anyway so these measures will ensure that my visit will go down between zero and never.
Well here is what they have planned for us … WHO is the future . Well have to say they have made a cracking start NOT
https://apps.who.int/gpmb/assets/annual_report/GPMB_annualreport_2019.pdf?fbclid=IwAR0k9JK3o_UqoWyQER_5iCY9n0UjWQQgOIQb4Hk2j_R3MXO0jifBWN5S-94
That xhit started with the Charles Darwin’s book On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life (1859)
Could you elaborate? I don’t follow.
Simples: who is dying now?
Nope, you’ve lost me. Is this something to do with meerkats?
it’s more about The Police song: no time this time…
Is Charles Darwin like Sting? Is that what you’re saying? Or Auto-Sergei?
https://drmalcolmkendrick.org/2020/08/07/how-bad-is-covid-really-a-swedish-doctors-perspective
new from Dr Kendrick’s blog. Worth reading, backs us up.
Yes, definitely worth a read. Particularly by the PM.
Does PM read? Doesn’t he have Dom C for that who is supposed to be so very very intelligent. Mhmm!
I think he’s got as far as the Mr Men books.
Sweden is like Scooby Doo and the Mystery Machine team.
If it wasn’t for those darn kids we’d have got away with it…
So glad we have Sweden or we would have no hope of getting out of this mess.
Sweden is the beacon.
Pesky kids.
DM Headline:
‘Teenager in blue surgical mask rapes woman, 40, walking on seafront’
Leicester, no increase in hospital admissions.
Blackburn, no increase in hospital admissions.
Bradford, no increase in hospital admissions.
That must be wrong…
People were asking about hospital admissions etc.
I found these:
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/national-covid-19-surveillance-reports
The beginning of enforcement?
Coming out of a Onestop this afternoon, I had a rather odd conversation. I had walked a fair way out when a man called ‘Excuse me!’ from behind. I turned and saw a man, probably in his thirties, standing outside a parked car with the engine running.
‘Do you need a mask to go in there?’
Me: You do, unless you’re exempt.
‘Oh, you’re exempt are you? Just checking.’
What was that? Yes, he could be a freelance ‘Karen.’ But a confident, fairly well spoken white man in his thirties doesn’t fit the stereotype. That sounds like a policeman, frankly. And the opening question is too subtle for a ‘Karen,’ unless they are briefing themselves very well on just how far it is permissible to probe under the DDA.
On the other hand, to state the obvious, he wasn’t in uniform. But given how potty things are getting, and Boris the spaffing Johnson’s call for police enforcement of his disgusting infringement of our physical autonomy, might they have set plainclothes officers on facemask enforcement?
I don’t know, but it was a weird conversation. As our opponents say, stay safe.
That sounds very weird.
This is the line that got me:
‘Oh, you’re exempt are you? Just checking.’
Useful way of dealing with unwanted interrogation is to repeat the question being asked using a slightly different infraction creating the impression of a cogent answer. Also, one could say;-‘ Do I look like the type of person that would think that I was the type of person that would answer someone that would ask me whether I was an answerable type of person? Then smile and walk away.
Try not to get infected with a dose of what most maskers are riddled with…. paranoia, anxiety etc
I doubt very much the Five-O will be diverting valuable resources towards this nonsense. They’ve said as much themselves.
Probably someone from HSE. If you had said “Oh, they don’t bother with masks in there” he will be all over the business and try and shut them down……make an example of them….Stasi tactic?
That wouldn’t be the HSE it would be local environmental health and they wouldn’t do it that way. He was just a sarcastic male Karen t**t. I had a professional man in his thirties say to me in Tesco “I see you’re not wearing a mask?” I laughed at him and called him a t**t. It seems to be my reflex action. I just want to ignore them..!
You could have said you were wearing a special see-through mask made from weapons grade polyvinyl chloride (clingfilm) and suggest he might like to wear one himself when he next comes out shopping.
Just sounds like a passive aggressive twat to me.
Maybe so, and I take Tom’s point about paranoia. But nothing like this has ever happened to me before.
If passive aggressive twats are taking it upon themselves to police the wearing of compliance rags, as Matt Handcock and Caressida Dick have encouraged, then our society really has been toxified.
I always try to remember that it is only in SOME shops that these people get to act out. Literally every other domain is ours.
Looking on the optimistic side for a change (I tend to the misanthropic and pessimistic these days), I suppose it could be someone who wanted to go in but didn’t have a mask with him.
I’ve been policed by passive aggressive twats three times now.
Thank you Cressida Twat
Wouldn’t it be ironic if she suffered a horrible end involving electricity? God may play dice, but the Devil has a wry sense of humour.
You’re right it has been toxified, and in more than one way. I decided after the “three week” lockdown entered its fourth week, that I would no longer co-operate with *ANY* State official or procedure. Starting with next year’s census form going straight onto the burner.
Dont talk to strangers!
Maybe he was hoping you’d say he could go in un-nappied.
Yes, maybe. And it’s so difficult to know how to conduct these conversations. So much ends up hanging on tone of voice. Had he given some other answer that sounded less officious at the end, I might have made clear to him that he could be exempt too.
Like many of us, I suspect, I am treading the line of not wearing a compliance rag, and not waving a lanyard, while not wanting to get myself martyred (not that a £50 supplement to the price of a shop is actual martyrdom, when you think about it). I am in fact doubly exempt – both medically and because I claim ownership of my own face and refuse to hide it in deference to a regime that has by its own estimation killed 200,000 people and tanked the economy. But I would rather not be explaining that to a police officer or from the dock. And in an almost uniformly faceless world one begins to feel edgy.
A rather excellent point in the Spectator comments. Our freedom has been lost because of the existence of the NHS.
The reason the healthy have had their future stolen from them is to ‘Save Our NHS’; the reason the elderly cannot voluntarily choose to live their final months and years as they see fit is so they don’t burden the NHS; the reason the over-50s are about to be locked up against their will is so they don’t clog up the beds in the NHS. And this extends to other areas like taxation on ‘unhealthy’ foods and drinks, bans on smoking in pubs, etc. etc. And in the years to come, we will see that the excuse for the actions that killed our economy and resulted in a fascist government was the NHS.
I think it’s a great point. What we see as a benign, traditional, national institution may end being the catalyst for civil war, starvation, riots, fascism.
And ably assisted by the BBC.
Agree.
Don’t agree. The NHS has been a convenient excuse that fitted nicely with the dangerous virus narrative.
i think despite how far we’ve fallen, we should still have been able to cope with this better than European countries, because we do have more of a tradition of limited government interference and of robust scepticism about emotional manipulation and sentimentality (admittedly hugely eroded in recent years). I think the combination of the NHS and a government particularly lacking in moral fibre has resulted in us doing the opposite – it now looks as though we will be among the nations doing the most self-harm over this coronapanic.
More generally, collective healthcare absolutely has been a force for evil in this country, spreading the notion that the state and the mob generally has some kind of right to interfere in our personal choices because the healthcare bills are shared. The disgraceful seatbelt laws are the classic example, but enforced vaccination will only be a next logical step from that.
“collective healthcare absolutely has been a force for evil in this country”
No – that’s been the Tory party since Lady Hatchet took charge 🙂
As we’ve seen revealed in all its ignominy over this coronapanic, the “Conservative” Party hierarchy is as much part of the NHS cult as anybody on the nominal left.
And it’s certainly true that the “Conservative” Party has been fully on board with most of the worst aspects of what has been done to our country over the past few decades, though mostly as a compromise with what the real fanatics of the (further) left wanted to do. Certainly they haven’t meaningfully reduced the massive tax burden and consequent bloated size of government, nor the mass immigration introduced by Labour with the specific intention of destroying political resistance to their agendas, nor have they addressed collectivisation of healthcare, nor have they resisted political correctness and the ongoing introduction of pc related infringements on liberty (freedom of association, freedom of speech), nor have they done anything about the oppressive cult of safetyism,
All of these problems have come home to roost calamitously in enabling and inflaming the coronapanic.
I think our long liberal tradition, coupled with respect for the law, is what is working against us right now. Too many people still believe that the government still rules in the best interests of this country (albeit within their own view of what the “best interests” are) and its people. This has not been the case since at least Maastricht in 1991, when government became a completely different animal.
I agree. A lot of people simply don’t understand the degree to which we are misled by the institutions they still trust, including government.
Agree. ….. To a point. This is happening all over the world. The NHS just lends our dose a very particular….. puritanical vibe.
“And in the years to come, we will see that the excuse for the actions that killed our economy and resulted in a fascist government was the NHS.”
Do seriously think about this…..This is not “a great point”. If this is indeed what the article states or implies then I am not even going to read it….I joined this website today thinking I had found some sort of sanity in all the lockdown madness. This so far is the only post which has shocked me to the core. Do you seriously believe that a system which has provided for the most part excellent health care for the entire population of this country at a cost to the individual within the means of their income, which leaves nobody to suffer through lack of income, is actually responsible for the rise of a ‘fascist government’. What logic are you applying here? Surely logic would suggest that ‘fascist’ in your words tendencies have overtaken this system and are manipulating it for their own purposes. As this is a Lockdown Sceptics site – review the fact that the NHS has been largely ‘shut down’ under government instructions to deal with a grossly… Read more »
Sorry to shock you – that wasn’t my intention. My point is the irony of it. You start with a lovely, cosy, caring service that takes away much of the worry and suffering that used to blight society (I don’t disagree with you!), but the irony is that because it is a shared resource, it becomes a thing that the government uses to blackmail society with.
The BBC is not too dissimilar. Because it (thinks it) represents all of us, it becomes incapable of broadcasting anything but, effectively, government propaganda.
I am not suggesting that the motivation of the people who created the NHS and the BBC was to usher in a fascist government, but they created institutions that have acted as catalysts in propelling us towards one. (As I now see it).
It’s the same in the spectacular failure that is the more expensive money machine that is the US system.
Actually much of America has done pretty darned well compared to us, medically speaking (and liberty-wise as well in some states). Where it has done disastrously is in places like New York City – guess why? (Clue – it’s to do with the kind of politicians running the place).
Really? I am sorely disappointed by this comment and its apparent popularity. I notice there was a link to a Spectator article here earlier which has now disappeared and we just have reference to a comment. I have been reading Toby Young’s blog and the comments for a while and joined up today, hoping to have found some sort of haven in this obvious lockdown madness. Now this! The NHS blamed for the rise, in your words, of a ‘fascist’ government. How does that work I wonder? Here we have a system which has provided the entire population of this country, for many years, with what is for the most part an excellent system of health care, which is affordable according to income, so that no-one is left to suffer due to lack of income. Somehow, ‘God’ knows how, this excellent system is responsible for elderly people being ‘locked up against their will’, for all kinds of taxation and wide-ranging bans. How do you, or anyone, come to this conclusion? As this is a lockdown sceptics website, who is it that has virtually shut down the vast majority of services provided by the NHS giving the reason of a grossly,… Read more »
See my reply to Annie above. I’m not suggesting that the NHS is bad per se. But because it is a shared, national resource, and seems to have taken on a quasi-religious function, it can be exploited by a government keen to exert control over the population. It’s the irony of it (as I see it) that fascinates me.
This over-50 isn’t going to be locked up against his will. I’ll ignore any such instruction.
Paul Joseph Watson on form again
https://youtu.be/AA6_GuZOyAI
Makes me wonder what these tinpot hitlers were like before.
Just the same but with a different issue I suppose ,you know the old saying once a c**t always a c**t
Spent a lot of the time BTL in the Torygraph?
An exceptionally critical article (by Telegraph standards anyway). https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/08/07/lockdown-killed-two-three-died-coronavirus/
So wrong to keep these lockdowns going….
We need more articles like these.
I can’t read it behind the paywall, but my first thought was that two died of medical neglect for every three that died of Covid ASSUMING the Covid deaths were really due to the virus and not something else. Given how all our governments have fudged the cause of death, it may be that more people have died of medical neglect than of Covid.
I think the 10,000 deaths due to chucking the elderly out of hospital is extremely conservative.
However, the public is suddenly being bombarded with figures like this:
Although the medium to long-term deaths from delayed healthcare have not been quantified, an earlier report by the same team suggested they could be as high as 185,000.
Hopefully it will make them think – though I suspect the nudge unit is behind it.