France’s Rise in Infections Due to Increased Testing
Yesterday the Government removed France from the “Green List” of countries you can travel to without having to quarantine on return, along with the Netherlands, Monaco, Malta, Turks & Caicos and Aruba. From 4am on Saturday, anyone returning from France will have to self-isolate for 14 days. The reason? Rising case numbers. There have been an additional 11,633 positive test results in France in the past week, with approximately 600,000 tests being done, the highest number of tests to date. (On July 25th, the French Government introduced free PCR testing without the need to get a prescription from a doctor.) But in every department the percentage of infected people is still below the 50/100,000 threshold that in France would trigger a local lockdown. In addition, there’s been no corresponding rise in hospitalisations or deaths (see above). That suggests the rise in cases is an artefact of increased testing and not due to an increase in the percentage of the population that’s infected.
Also worth bearing in mind that, according to Carl Heneghan and Tom Jefferson, the standard PCR test is an unreliable diagnostic tool because of false positives. When the number of tests climbs above a certain threshold, the data becomes very noisy. (See this article by the Bulgarian Pathology Association for a robust denunciation of the PCR test.)
And, to add to the overall picture of incoherence, the Government hasn’t removed Gibraltar from the “Green List” even though the number of infected people per 100,000 is higher in Gib than in France.
I wonder what the Government would do if holidaymakers returning from France just refused to self-isolate en masse? There are approximately half a million Britons currently in France. How many random spot checks can the Government realistically do?
Meanwhile, just to make it crystal clear that Boris doesn’t have a clue what he’s doing, he also announced yesterday that the easing of lockdown restrictions that were delayed 10 days ago will now go ahead, with weddings, sporting events and indoor performances being permitted from tomorrow. Although he also announced that the maximum fine for those breaking the rules would increase to £3,200. No but, yeah but…
As I said about Boris in the Telegraph 10 days ago:
When I think of his handling of the coronavirus crisis I picture a child behind the wheel of a racing car. He’s overwhelmed by the data constantly popping up on his dashboard, has no idea what any of it means, so just randomly presses different levers and pedals, spins the wheel as fast as he can, and hopes for the best.
Government Finally Removes Wrong Data From Dashboard
Yesterday I pointed out that the Government’s coronavirus dashboard was still using the old, flawed method of calculating the daily Covid death count. Today it has finally stopped doing that – some 29 days after Carl Heneghan and Yoon Loke pointed out the statistical flaw in the way that PHE compiles the data and 28 days after Matt Hancock announced an “urgent review” of the anomaly. Instead of the wrong data, the dashboard now says the deaths page is being “redeveloped”.
World Leaders “Copied Each Others’ Lockdown Measures” – New Paper
This will come as no surprise to lockdown sceptics, but a new paper for the Organisation of Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) has found that world leaders simply copied each other’s lockdown policies back in March, without giving any thought to whether those policies were necessary or whether they’d do more harm than good. Yahoo! Finance has more.
Decisions on implementing lockdown during the coronavirus pandemic were based on what neighbouring countries were doing at the time, a new study has suggested.
In research of 36 countries in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) – including the UK, US and New Zealand – Swedish researchers examined when world leaders made decisions on issues like school closures and restrictions on internal travel.
They found that despite differences in the spread of the virus, countries mimicked each other in a short space of time, with around 80% of OECD nations implementing multiple measures within a two-week period in March.
The researchers said this was “striking” given the differences in the scale of the pandemic in each country, the preparedness of their healthcare systems and the makeup of their populations.
Author Professor Karl Wennberg, from the Institute for Analytical Sociology at Linkoping University, said: “We found that the decisions were not based on, or had a very weak correlation to, standard epidemiological indicators such as number of infections, number of deaths, intensive care capacity etc.
“A much stronger determinant was whether many neighbouring countries had already implemented measures.”
Worth reading in full.
Annoying Lockdown Experience
A reader in Bradford has been in touch to describe one of the daily annoyances they’re having to put up with.
We’d heard good things about a sweet shop in our village so we took our grandchildren (illegally, as we are part of Bradford District) to choose a milk shake. They each chose a £3 milk shake from the menu. A young lady then appeared at the hatch to inform us that they were only taking online orders for home delivery during the pandemic and gave me a leaflet with the web site. We went home and found the desired milk shakes on the web site. I had to register… that’s bloody annoying in itself. Then I find that the online price was £3.50 each, with a 50p service charge. £7.50 for two £3 milk shakes. But it got worse. On checkout I was informed that the minimum spend for home delivery is £8. So I added a bag of Chilli Chips that I didn’t want for £1. Total £8.50. And finally I discovered a £2 delivery charge. So I paid £10.50 for two £3 milk shakes.
Anyone fancy a bag of Chilli Chips?
Postcard From Thornbury
A reader has sent a short missive from Thornbury, a beautiful village in South Gloucestershire that the local council is doing its best to ruin with pointless and incomprehensible Covid signage.
I live in South Gloucestershire. Thornbury is a nearby market town about 12 miles north of Bristol, a regular Britain in Bloom winner, home town of the inventor of Ribena and it has a castle which was once visited by Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn.
Thornbury had a reasonably thriving High Street before Covid. Now the council is at loggerheads with local businesses over its agenda to pedestrianise the High Street on the back of the virus and it has been accused of not listening and not consulting before introducing changes.
During a mid-morning visit to Thornbury I found that the High Street looked pretty desolate, spoiled by unsightly barriers, patronising signs and a couple of discarded face masks.
New council signs have been erected which demand that people wear face coverings in shops, yet omit to mention the existence of permitted exemptions. My husband and I went into a shop without facemasks and were treated normally. It’s clear from talking to a couple of locals that people don’t realise that there are exemptions. It’s also apparent that the council would rather people continue to remain unaware of them.
The survival of Thornbury High Street depends on how well shops can attract people whom the Government and council have made irrationally scared of Covid, while not putting off people like me, who want to support them, but find a visit to High Street a pretty dismal experience, thanks to the council.
Round-Up
- ‘The Treatment That Could Crush Covid‘ – Interesting piece in the Wall St Journal about a promising new method of treating COVID-19
- ‘Oldham on brink of full lockdown as coronavirus cases surge‘ – More madness from Hancock and pals
- ‘Fewer hospital patients in COVID-19 hotspots‘ – No, really? Could it be that the UK’s epidemic is essentially over?
- ‘We are massively overreacting to new Covid “outbreaks”‘ – Ross Clark tells it as it is in the Telegraph
- ‘Is there a politician ‘with the spine to tell the truth’ on COVID-19: Alan Jones‘ – More common sense from our favourite broadcaster on Sky News Australia
- ‘Creeping mask tyranny is far more concerning than the rules themselves‘ – Excellent piece by Francis Hoar, Simon Dolan’s barrister, in the Telegraph
- ‘NY lockdown may have spread coronavirus, Cuomo admits‘ – Interesting piece from sceptical American website
- ‘The great contact-tracing apps mystery‘ – Just spotted this. The BBC’s round-up of ineffective contact-tracing apps around the world
- ‘A positive test does not make you a COVID-19 case‘ – Interesting post from Sean Walsh for Conservatives Global
- ‘Week 31 graphs from Christopher Bowyer‘ – Great set of graphs in Hector Drummond Magazine
Theme Tunes Suggested by Readers
Two today: “Giving Up” by the Holiday Plan and “Prelude to the Afternoon of a Sexually Aroused Gas Mask” by Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention
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.
Love in the Time of Covid
We have created some Lockdown Sceptics Forums that are now open, including a dating forum called “Love in a Covid Climate” that has attracted a bit of publicity. We have a team of moderators in place to remove spam and deal with the trolls, but sometimes it takes a little while so please bear with us. You have to register to use the Forums, but that should just be a one-time thing. Any problems, email the Lockdown Sceptics webmaster Ian Rons here.
“Mask Exempt” Lanyards
I’ve created a 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 30th to Oct 9th). 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 or 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 (now over 28,500).
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. Doing these daily updates is a lot of work. If you feel like donating, however small the sum, please click here. And if you want to flag up any stories or links I should include in future updates, email me here.
And Finally…
Is it time to cancel Tony Benn? An eagle-eyed reader was flicking through Benn’s diary from 1968 yesterday and found the above incriminating entry: “I went home, collected Melissa, and took her to the Victoria Palace with Kirillin and most of his delegation to see The Black and White Minstrel Show.”
Time to assemble that pitchfork mob, Owen Jones.
Discussion
Comments
This week across the site:
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I don’t have a telly but might get a licence just to put them to the trouble of refunding me, ta for the idea.
SATURDAY has arrived … welcome and enjoy.
https://dailysceptic.org/2020/08/15/latest-news-104/#respond
and remember .. dont be cynical.. 🙂
They really don’t care who gets hurt do they?!
Grant Shapps sowed confusion on Thursday night by apparently giving out the wrong information, suggesting the quarantine measures would be coming into force on Sunday when, in fact, they are doing so 20 hours earlier.Shapps said during a TV interview that people arriving in the UK from France would have to isolate for 14 days from Sunday, but the move is actually coming into force at 4am on Saturday.
Meanwhile, in a swiftly deleted tweet referencing the imposition of the measures, Shapps declared at 10.45pm on Thursday: “It’s Saturday at 4am, meaning that anyone returning on Sunday onwards will need to quarantine.”
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/aug/14/grant-shapps-slight-slip-sows-confusion-over-france-quarantine-rules-covid-19
Bastards!!
Says convicted internet fraudster Grant Shapps
”First do no harm”
Is it fair to say that the purveyors of the fraud known as ”the science” along with ‘public health experts’ in the UK have done a great deal of harm and achieved next to no good with their interference in our lives?
Would we have faired better without them?
A great deal of harm, that’s an understatement
Visit to local Waitrose this morning. After confirming to the Door Director that I do not have a mask he said that the police could issue me with a fine. Senior Manager was requested and he was most apologetic and said that Door Directors will receive additional training to understand that people are exempt that that is that. (Felt so sorry for the manager – when he arrived one of his lenses were fogged up, eventually he had to remove his glasses as both were fogged up)
Door Director? WTF!!
Don’t know what else to call them
Ingress supervisor
A very short postcard from Hay on Wye, town of a hundred second-hand bookshops. My son and I went there two days ago (Thursday 13th August). The main car park was almost full – a couple of hundred cars, I think – and the town was packed with people shopping and eating at tables outside cafés. Quite encouraging at first. I started to go into a bookshop but paused when I saw a table with hand sanitiser and the usual roll of blue paper and a sign telling me I had to sanitise before coming in. I was going to go in and ignore the sanitiser when my son said, “No, Dad, we can’t go in there” and pointed to a Black Lives Matter poster by the door. My son isn’t white (I am white and my wife is black) but hates BLM for the poison it is, as does my wife.
We walked on to another bookshop and were told by the lady at the door to put face masks on. I refused, said I was exempt, and a discussion ensued of which I couldn’t hear much of the other side because of her mask and the perspex screen.… Read more »
It’s Booth’s bookshop that insists on facemasks (the one with the red front and green glazed tiles), or did a couple of weeks ago. A shame because, as you say, it’s an excellent bookshop. But it has lost my custom after my visit a couple of weeks ago.
Independent shops will have been given no advice about the madk regs ie not their job to enforce it and illegal to question your Disability.
https://bmjopen.bmj.com/content/5/4/e006577.full
“A cluster randomised trial of cloth masks compared with medical masks in healthcare workers”
Then the letter of the authors 2020 in light of the C-19 epidemic published 30th March
https://bmjopen.bmj.com/content/5/4/e006577.responses#covid-19-shortages-of-masks-and-the-use-of-cloth-masks-as-a-last-resort
This is important as a RCT which showed 2015 that cloth masks was dangerous and not effective for HCW. The authors response 5 years later clearly warn HCW to use cloth masks. If this was not good for HCW how can it be useful for the general public?
The blue surgical masks are no good either unless changed every 20 minutes (As per an article in the Sidney Times from 2003 when Sars was around) Now do you suppose the people wearing those blue face masks change them every 20 minutes or when they become damp?
They roll them up, stick them in their pockets and the incubate, they put them on again, and revitalise culture, like making bread….Mummmmm
Then they strap it to their stupid zombie faces and suck up the heady brew of viral particles and bacteria.
Liberally spiced with fungus.
Humungis Fungis
Nope they put them in their pocket till tomorrow as I did with snot rags after school unless mum sorted it out.
Well done, you’ll feel better for it (14 years TV free).
I bought a Firestick for £35 and I was already a Prime member, so there’s plenty for me to watch for £80 per year, plus a lot of other perks. There are some excellent serials.
There’s a lot of rubbish of course, bad taste is popular as Pevsner said – but that applies to normal tv in spades anyway. Best thing, my viewing isn’t hacked to pieces with adverts.
Best decision my wife and I made when moving into our new house after getting married was not to bother with a TV licence. Don’t miss if at all.
Link to paper on OECD countries adoption of lockdown:
https://www.pnas.org/content/pnas/early/2020/08/10/2010625117.full.pdf
YouGov poll – my title ‘little Scotlanders’
Four in ten Scots don’t think English travellers should be allowed in without quarantining
Politics likely plays a role. The majority of 2019 SNP voters (54%) want English travellers to stay away, while just 19% of Scottish Tory voters say the same. Likewise, ‘Yes’ voters from 2014 would block English tourists by 52% to 36%, while these figures are largely reversed among ‘No’ voters, who support allowing English tourists to cross the border by 55% to 30%.
Welsh and Northern Ireland figures are lower.
https://yougov.co.uk/topics/travel/articles-reports/2020/08/13/four-ten-scots-dont-think-english-travellers-shoul
Visitors from further afield are less welcome, the survey suggests, with more opposition than support for allowing unrestricted travel for Danish, Swedish, German, Spanish, Italian, Chinese and American tourists.
Over 1000 people took part – I don’t know who payed for the survey.
They should keep Boris up there in quarantine for a few weeks/months – apparently he’s on holiday in Scotland.
Everyone turning inwards and pathetic, no no don’t let those strange foreign folk from the next town along in…this is a local village for local people.
Is this a spoof, or are the modern Mengele’s really riding this high on the wave of Covid?
“‘Morality pills’ may be the US’s best shot at ending the coronavirus pandemic, according to one ethicist”
https://theconversation.com/morality-pills-may-be-the-uss-best-shot-at-ending-the-coronavirus-pandemic-according-to-one-ethicist-142601
Saw this too on Off-Guardian.
https://off-guardian.org/2020/08/14/the-new-normal-covert-moral-enhancement-for-coronavirus-defectors/
Not a spoof.
Horrific.
Here’s the author:
Parker Crutchfield Associate Professor of Medical Ethics, Humanities and Law, Western Michigan University
“My research in bioethics focuses on questions like how to induce those who are noncooperative to get on board with doing what’s best for the public good. To me, it seems the problem of coronavirus defectors could be solved by moral enhancement: like receiving a vaccine to beef up your immune system, people could take a substance to boost their cooperative, pro-social behavior. Could a psychoactive pill be the solution to the pandemic?”
“Moral enhancement is the use of substances to make you more moral. The psychoactive substances act on your ability to reason about what the right thing to do is, or your ability to be empathetic or altruistic or cooperative.”
“Another challenge is that the defectors who need moral enhancement are also the least likely to sign up for it. As some have argued, a solution would be to make moral enhancement compulsory or administer it secretly, perhaps via the water supply. “
No words, awful, awful, awful.
Boil the water before drinking it. Or buy bottled water. Looking to me that university scientists must be struggling with their students if they regard this as moral.
I do hope the sentencing at the Corona trials will involve lots of rope.
Lovely,who’s version of morality would that be then ?.
I guess they have specially-brewed woke pills that enforce woke ideas, but suppress other (non-woke) popular ideas?
The prof’s ideas about ethics and humanities are along way from mine!
And the military has been forcing enhancements like vaccines or “uppers” upon soldiers for a long time.
That’s all right then!
What if researchers developed and delivered a moral enhancer rather than an immunity enhancer?Moral enhancement is the use of substances to make you more moral. The psychoactive substances act on your ability to reason about what the right thing to do is, or your ability to be empathetic or altruistic or cooperative.
Wow – lobotomy in a pill!
https://thespinoff.co.nz/covid-19/14-08-2020/the-capitals-covid-scare-that-wasnt/
St Jacinda’s difficult world. Travellers from NZ testing positive after returning to their home countries. How to handle or not handle this embarrassing question. This in Wellington with no C-19 cases yet. From a ramen shop.
“He said the person was asymptomatic when they visited, but have later tested positive. The Ministry of Health later confirmed what Boote had been told was correct – a Japanese traveller, who left New Zealand on August 8, had visited the restaurant in Wellington. They tested positive after leaving the country.”
Here it is
https://twitter.com/simondolan/status/1294533300430798849?s=19
Yes, you are also paying for every A level appeal going. Williamson has decreed that his problem is to be paid for by you.
If I were in a Public Health position I would be worried of the rapidly increasing C-19 numbers in several European countries. Although many are false positives and the clinical cases are mild, younger and mostly not hospitalized, I would be worried of spread that might trickle into vulnerable segments of the population. I would think if one of our public health actions recently could have been a grave mistake. Face masks. Can they spread the disease directly or indirectly by changing the behaviour?
In the rush for face masks nobody considered many aspects. People constantly fiddling with the fingers on their mask. Badly fitted masks. Different quality of masks. Change of behaviour and reduced handwashing. Face masks giving you false sense of protection and more risky behaviour.
Any serious study on the use of face masks would include multiple variables to be tested like quality of face masks, how to put on properly, change of mask on a daily basis, influence on handwashing, influencing of going into crowds. In short, all these factors would be factored in. And a control group not wearing mask and both cohorts exposed during the same stage of the pandemic. That would be a… Read more »
“rapidly increasing C-19 numbers”
“Numbers”? What numbers?
= “Cases”? – i.e mainly not illness.
That’s the trouble with incontinently distorting the numbers game in so many ways and stoking up hysteria. If I was a public health official, I would be beating myself up about my susceptibility to panic and hyperbole.
I would also be logically more concerned about seasonal ‘flu.
As to the ‘vulnerabe population’ – that population is simply and normally vulnerable : the age-related deaths attributed to Covid – even where accurate – were part of the life-end mortality that would have occurred this year through many agents, after a preceding dip in mortality. Note the mean age.
Face masks don’t need another false alarm to invalidate their general use.
I agree with you that the public health response has been hysterical, inconsistent and counterproductive. Agree that most of the figures are distorted and true cases are far lower. But I would not deny that there are some genuine cases occurring with hospitalizations and even ICU. This is occurring in Aragon, a province in Spain not hit much in the April pandemic. I stated just a hypothetical situation where the public health official very easily could dismiss the use of masks as a meaningless or even dangerous advice and get rid of it.
Perhaps – but, as to numbers – all within what would be considered normal variability given the mild on-going circulation of an infection.
The problem is the consistent use of ceteris parebus (all things being equal) – the Theorists wet dream as to the systematic impacts of a localised effect. Problem is the Nature doesn’t work that way. It never has. We have the madness of crowds precisely because of persistence effects and minimisation of energy.
Another great example is the Travelling Salesman problem (also called Hamiltonian Circuits). The idea is to work out at a system level what is the minimum distance a salesman will travel so that he visits each city in a network. There is no unique solution in general unless you force restrictions on the system. What you find is that at a local level there are inefficiencies – salesman needs to travel a few times to a town to reach others.
But the system is optimised. What this means is that often you have to make certain things inefficient at a local level, or just leave them be and figure out what local things you can tweak to get the result.
And it’s been known now for quite some time, the most effective things are to wash your hands more, don’t overcrowd if you can (and by that… Read more »
“… we have a bunch of people acting like kids with guns.” – or any new toys.
At root is simple statistical innumeracy and lack of understanding.
and sociopathy!
I’ve just posted this on the Telegraph:
The apparently frightening spike in confirmed new cases in France is largely owing to a statistical anomaly. In week 33, France recorded 11633 new cases. But in the previous week, it recorded a negative total of 8384. The apparent spike is simply a statistical correction (‘données consolidées’, according to the weekly summary dated 13 August)
33 13 11633
My cynical eye looks and wonders, are they special numerals. Something like the da vinci code or a statistical anomaly. https://youtu.be/tNL0XODSMwU
My cynical eye looks and wonders, 8384. Very nearly 4242/2…
Absolutely – any half-competent statistician knows the uselessness of looking at short intervals to extract a signal from noise.
I don’t have a Times subsciption so I can’t read https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/comment/oi-anti-maskers-stop-ruining-my-rom-com-0w5jj8jgh in full (and not asking for it to be copied) but the gist seems to be “Your virus can’t get through a face rag but it can get through mine-so put yours on”. Can’t they design masks that aren’t one way? Then the worried can wear them .and the non worried don’t have to.
Having to have more contact with S-I-L than is good for me at the moment because M-I-L needs a lot of help.
She just loves medical issues and is the sort of person who “enjoys” illness. When I told her that OH and I both had mask exemptions but told her I wouldn’t discuss why,
she nearly had a dickie fit.
“They’re not for you but to protect others if you cough or sneeze”. Excuse me, but I’ve never made it a habit of mine to cough and sneeze over anyone and anyway those paper masks are useless, it says so on the tin.
” Oh I’ve made my own and it’s got three filters”
Need a few suggestions to combat her take on masks. Any offers?
I’m afraid, for family reasons F.O is out of the question!
I don’t think it is worth the bother Margaret,she seems too far gone to me,
” Oh I’ve made my own and it’s got three filters”,give me strength !,you’re right she’s another one enjoying all of this.
Does that mean she’s getting three times less oxygen in and three times more CO2 retained ?,or is the mathematical formula more complicated than that ? !,or is she just completely crackers ?.
Just don’t sneeze, whatever you do, or she’ll have a total meltdown.
A nurse told me of being volunteered into a “survived the Covid immunity test”.
This means two visits to another hospital 40 miles away in her own time and they won’t even pay the train fare.
Some early morning arithmetic:
This lot, from KCL: https://covid.joinzoe.com/ have an app that they claim 4m+ people use daily to report symptoms.
They combine this with data I think from ONS/PHE/etc (actual tests, other data) to estimate UK wide figures
Let’s assume it is vaguely accurate
Their current estimate (revised weekly) of new daily SYMPTOMATIC infections is 1,434, and their current estimate of numbers of people who have it now who are SYMPTOMATIC is 22,198.
So if we take the daily figure and create a ratio from it using the current UK population (67,886,011) we get 1 in about 34,400. If we then apply that ratio to the number of tests done yesterday (169,857) we get about 3.5 people who would likely have been symptomatic. The headline figure reported from testing of “cases” was 1,400. Granted you could say SOME of the testing was more targeted as some of those will have been people feeling ill enough to want to be tested (or admitted to hospital with symptoms).
At any rate, most of thse 1,400 cases are not feeling unwell at all. Very different from the “cases” reported at the start of this, almost all of whom were feeling ill… Read more »
We know that ‘spikes’ in Leicester & Aberdeen led to no increase in hospitalisations, the same was announced about Oldham yesterday. It’s an odd illness that’s defining characteristic is that no one’s I’ll!
I am pretty sure I had EBOLA for the last few weeks. It’s hard to say if that was what it was.
I’ve got bubonic plague. I’m unaware of any symptoms, but I just identify as suffering from it.
That’s very funny.
I’ve got everything. Teeth, skin, viruses …..
Get tested and let’s get back to what we love…
I’m no mathematician, but I think you’ve got your sums wrong. I get 67,886,011 divided by 22198 to be 3,058. So infection rate is 1 in 3,058. However, Zoe Covid’s stats are only for people aged 20 to 69, so you’ve got to reduce your population size considerably. I can only go by ONS stats re the numbers of people in the UK in each age group, but the ONS has age groups which don’t correspond to Zoe Covid’s cohort. There are about 10m children and about 5m over 75. Roughly another 3m over 69. Let’s call it 50m. 50m divided by 22198 gives an infection rate of 1 in 2252… roughly.
Thanks, but my 1 in 34,000 was for the DAILY figure (so 67M / 1434) and I was comparing this with the daily figures from the govt. But I take your point about age groups.
Ok. Yes. Point taken re daily rate.
30 odd years ago Prince Philip said: “In the event that I am reincarnated, I would like to return as a deadly virus, to contribute something to solving overpopulation.”
Remarks when speaking to when speaking to German news agency Deutsche Press Agentur.
What a vicious bastard. Just something to keep in mind as his ‘face’ is being spread about today to virtue signal VJ day. Here’s more of his face they don’t spread about so much (red circle).
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3167585/amp/Philip-Nazi-funeral-day-sister-lunch-Hitler-TV-documentary-reopens-painful-chapter-duke-s-family-past.html
I believe that the royals live for 800 years. They’re some kind human hybrid from ancient times. They then take their DNA when they’re near the end and make themselves again in a nice young fit girl. Not a lot of people know this but when William becomes King he’ll be know as King Arthur that’s why his mother is buried in a lake, she’ the lady (Diana) in the lake. William was Lord Mountbatten. Mountbatten who no doubt was Henry the 8th or someone like that who was King Arthur in the beginning. It was around the 6th century that the whole total destruction of society last occurred. There seems to be some kind of reset that happens every now and then. Maybe this is it now.
Plausible.
An ONS survey? oh. I know people in there; wonder if I can find out anything.
A month or so ago there was a local announcement about a series of drive live music gigs would happen at the show ground. Shortly after this was cancelled apparently due to social distancing issues the press recorded. At the time it felt social distancing was an excuse for poor ticket sales, these were international bands. Today the poor ticket sales appear to have been confirmed.
Today the press are reporting Edinburgh Zoo are now showing drive in movies with the unque usp that you can get fast food delivered to your car. All socially distanced of course. The thing that jumps out at me is how very very small the Zoo’s tv set is, perched on a fence along way away.
https://www.edinburghlive.co.uk/news/edinburgh-news/gallery/sneak-peek-new-drive-cinema-18769722
bring your own binoculars!
Friday Night Live on Nevsky in St Petersburg, Russia
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OwylhQdvM80
The government of this country gives every appearance of having been taken over in a bloodless coup.
The Prime Minister wanders around, irrelevant, shell shocked, contradicting himself with every second utterance, as though someone is controlling him, feeding him the party line after he makes a series of feeble little rebellions.
Government policies bear no resemblance to the manifesto that the electorate voted for, far more resemblance to the manifesto of the defeated far left party.
The absurd domestic covid by numbers game must emanate from the joint biosecurity centre (JBC) led by a statistician and epidemiologist…..with a PhD on Bayesian methods for identifying outliers.
But the JBC is controlled by Baroness Harding, granddaughter of Field Marshal Sir John Harding, who, you will all recall, together with Field Marshal Sir Gerald Templer, brilliantly won a war in Malaya (P.M. Churchill).
Overseas, the key foreign policy matter, Brexit, is being managed by the individual recently promoted to head up the National Security Council.
Three powerful characters in the three key positions responsible for this country’s covid 19 policy, orchestrated in the interests of our ongoing ‘cold’ war with Europe; ‘realpolitik’
No wonder the PM looks shell shocked. Hopelessly outgunned, he has… Read more »
Looks like Sage is a Cabal, re the vaccine and the other is sustainability, Agenda 21/30. Also the level playing field of the world currencies.
We got hounded by scam callers after that, for quite some time. The call screening thing they finally brought in stopped it dead, but it shouldn’t have happened at all, of course. Call screening might be especially useful just now, though 🙂
Oh yes, promoted out of harm’s way, the old story. As I said, the Talk Talk call screening has stopped ’em dead, comes with the landline package. I think BT have the same system, too. Maybe worth a look?
“Government policies bear no resemblance to the manifesto that the electorate voted for, far more resemblance to the manifesto of the defeated far left party.”
I love the way that this coup by the egregious far right is excused by casting the Tory Party’s elected lying narcissus as a helpless victim of an imagined communist plot.
You’ve got to laugh.
LOL! It’s that fantasy “far right” again.
The knee taking, NHS worshipping, communist employing, big government, union kowtowing, immigration loving, political correctness enforcing “far right”. The wokest fascisti in history.
Here’s the thing, Rick.
I couldn’t disagree with you that the party in power in this country is at least nominally “of the right” as they are the Conservative Party. I agree with you that the electorate ought to have seen through Johnson for the weak-willed narcissist that he is (I absolve myself of no blame here. I didn’t vote for him, but only through happenstance because I was on the other side of the Atlantic on Election Day and the trip couldn’t be delayed and was organised at too short notice to arrange a postal ballot).
But
For your point to hold that this is a far right coup, you would need to show that anything that the government have done can be characterized as “far right” and preferably that the responses of the other, leftist governments of the world have been better. Preferably also that Corbyn would have handled the situation differently, but I acknowledge that a counter factual is impossible to prove.
That totalitarianism and the dictatorial impulse are completely neutral in terms of the left/right political spectrum ought to be a given. Yes, there have been totalitarian fascist/far right governments in our recent history… Read more »
Apologies – momentary brain fart. Venezuela, not Argentina.
One of the reasons I divorced myself from the ‘left’ recently was because of that very clear tendency towards authoritarianism and totalitarianism. I divorced myself before in the Blair years and re-married in the Corbyn regrouping. I have witnessed Corbyn in action at a constituency level and I don’t believe in the slightest that he has those authoritarian instincts, unfortunately a lot of his lieutenants do/did and there are/were still enough Blairites drinking from the trough who have that authoritarianism tendency. Burnham in Manchester being a prime example. If the ‘left’ doesn’t stand for liberty then it can take a hike as far as I’m concerned.
Here’s interesting, had to tell (other than by Piers C apparent involvement) if it’s The Left or The Right behind it…which in itself is fascinating to Ethelred, who has long considered that Left and Right form a circle and finally meet somewhere around the back…
https://www.rt.com/uk/498075-standupx-anti-mask-covid/
Figured out that circle thing when looking at facism v communism, History teacher went with it, General Studies not so (think he was from a polytechnic).
My old GS teacher used to say that Fascists shot you from hate and the Communists shot you for love, but the end result is still a dead body.
This is why Camus talks of needing an “endless watch on ourselves” lest we turn into monsters. You only have to look at your old mates advocating for the army on the streets and enforced vaccinations to see how normal people can turn. Think he called it revolution with limits (or similar)
The only thing positive coming out if this is, that more people in the countries who sofar felt that their folk would always be immune to falling for totalitarianism are now recognizing that they are just as susceptible.
In turn, the average people who did fall for this in the past, from Italy/Germany&co via Iraq/Iran&co to Russia/China&co, must and will from now on be seen in a different, more neutral, light by the, more enlightened people and less biased historians, in those
countries.
Totalitarianism is like any form of extremism. It doesn’t matter at that point which way your ideals lean because the end result is pretty much the same, especially for the man on the street.
Two cheeks of the same backside
New Zealand thought police interrogating social media users about their posts.
A short 2 minute video of NZ police going to the address of a man who’s social media comments are critical of the government. Free speech?
He was very wise to say he doesn’t ‘understand’.
https://mobile.twitter.com/FinallyFreeUSA/status/1229442440110780420
Rozzer was on the back foot though. He felt far from comfortable.
I felt the cops life had not turned out so well as he had hoped – all that struggle and career to take him to that doorstep to carry on like that. The cop needs to take a look at his life and work out where it went so wrong. Good news is he can take choices to turn his life around.
That happens here, people have lost their jobs for stating facts.
And the flock was shepherded safely home from France by the faithful Collie, ‘Wee Nippy’
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q1nHNtZ148I
Bad lad.
One tactic that seems to work in getting the brainwashed to open their minds is just casually chatting one on one. But don’t appear too earnest or go down the conspiracy theory route or they will switch off. Point out how terrible it is that cancer patients had treatment delayed, how heart attack deaths increased due to people fearing overwhelming the NHS. If you you have a mobile phone handy show a basic graph of how French deaths have not increased at all, as I did yesterday to someone who told me they had shot up. I acted dumb, instead of saying “they really haven’t you know!”, and found the graph showing they were negligible. ” oh look, they were high in April but look now, hardly registering as a line”. Calmly does it, act a bit dumb, then conveniently find supporting evidence, of which there is an abundance.
Excellent advice.
This. The sceptical R rate seems to increase far more effectively in the real world, face to face, than it does online, especially social media. I’ve also noticed how quickly some people are folding in the face of peer pressure. Once they see friends acting normally, they very quickly forget the Rona rules.
I tell them that we’re being taken over by unknown forces and we’re all gonna be starved to death because that is gonna be better than the coming climate change disaster. I then say all these years you’ve been telling me about climate change and not realised that while you say you believe it you’ve ignored it but since you believe it it must mean shit’s gonna get bad real soon. How soon is now for you? It’s gonna be Biblical. Nothing but the complete destruction of society. So wearing the mask to me is about as much use as them signs outside churches these days that say “Try Praying”. Can’t wait really.
A true humdinger of an article here.
Parliament Appears To Have Deposed QEII of Sovereignty
https://www.thebernician.net/parliament-appears-to-have-deposed-qeii-of-sovereignty/amp/?__twitter_impression=true
“[…] more facts would have to come to light before I could even broach the subject of a treasonous Parliament, I decided to carry on researching the matter, until the events of COVID-1984 revealed that Parliament was acting with what the constitution deems to be prohibited royal powers.
“From which juncture is has become increasingly obvious that the UK government has ever since purported to exercise national sovereignty in the interests of Bill Gates, GAVI and the WHO, as per the sustainable development agendas 21 and 30.
“This was enough to convince me that I’d seen enough to reasonably conclude that Parliament had created unaccountable government, upon its assumption that such an act could be deemed lawful, on the ground that it has declared itself sovereign in a statute.
[…]
“It is therefore simply not arguable that changing the nation state of Britain from a Parliamentary democracy, with a monarch bound to uphold the Common Law, to a totalitarian, unaccountable dictatorship, does not comprise the most serious constitutional changes imaginable.”
Said the same in my letter of last week – she’s been usurped.
No surprise, not one reply the than auto-replies from anyone about it.
It has been recognised for what it is. By yourself and others. This is at least something to start.
The vast majority, myself included, could not begin to see the breaches of constitution – too complex without lessons or a lifetime of experience. As mhcp writes, none of this is taught to us The People – to my mind a purposeful omission. The core of our freedoms undiscussed by all under 18 at least.
There appears lawful ground to overthrow the government. Interesting point about all those services that swore an oath to the Queen.
It’s funny. From the side of the fence (Catholic) were I’m from in Northern Ireland, schools don’t really teach the ins and outs of William of Orange’s reign. They don’t do the Battle of the Boyne, which is odd as there are nuances. One of which is the Bill of Rights.
It was only later when at university that you start to read up on these things.
The statement about “parliament being sovereign” I suspect was added because of the EU definition. But as he points out it can’t be without overturning centuries of Common Law.
Which is also why the rule by diktat (SI) is so worrying.
With a nod to Northern Ireland again, the whole place was ruled by Emergency Powers for many years, powers that ignore parts of the Constitution including Habeus Corpus.
I never thought I’d see them nationwide
Eight fifteen on a Saturday morning and already a number of us have posted or ‘liked’ posts. You are obviously just like me-Lockdown Sceptics is the first thing I reach for when having my morning cuppa.
Its the clarity of thought I am impressed with!
It’s an addiction…
No seriously, the world is going full-on clown planet on us (I love that phrase – thank you Carl Vernon), and so everyone here is keeping everyone else here sane.
I an addicted to this blog and the comments. The only show in town. I just keep hanging in here for ANY good news.
I wish a law could be passed that prevented the worldwide media from reporting increased positive tests in anything other than % increase terms. Of course there will be an increase in positive results if the number of people being tested is also increased. 6 months ago I’d never have guessed I’d be explaining basic mathematics to people in my life I assumed were intelligent. Propaganda is detrimental to intelligence, clearly.
I had to explain to a senior BT technician the significance of the 2 FT charts (cases v deaths) on Toby’s main page yesterday.
I have numlexia and even I can do the maths