Do Medical Complications and Lingering Effects Make COVID-19 an Unusually Dangerous Diseases?
In the last few weeks, as the evidence mounts that the infection fatality rate of COVID-19 is not much higher than seasonal flu and that most areas that have experienced bad outbreaks are well on their way to achieving herd immunity, the argument for keeping lockdowns in place has shifted away from the lethality of the disease and towards the medical complications and lingering effects associated with it. Advocates of a ‘zero-Covid’ strategy, like Devi Sridhar, Professor of Global Health at Edinburgh University, point to the complications of COVID-19, such as multi-system inflammatory syndrome in children and adolescents (MIS-C) and the persistent symptoms that some people have experienced after recovering from the illness, as a reason to continue with draconian suppression measures until a vaccine becomes available.
But just how many children are at risk of MIS-C and how many recovered Covid patients experience lingering symptoms? We asked an epidemiologist with a PhD from a Russell Group university and a retired Professor of Forensic and Biological Anthropology – both readers of Lockdown Sceptics – to carry out a review of the evidence and we’ve published their findings today.
It’s good news and bad news: good news for lockdown sceptics and bad news for lockdown zealots. For the most part, the risks of complications and lingering symptoms from COVID-19 are no greater than they are from the flu. So not a great argument for maintaining strict lockdowns – unless, that is, you think entire populations should be placed under house arrest every winter.
Here’s the section in their article in which they compare COVID-19 and seasonal influenza.
Distressing though COVID-19 associated MIS-C is, these cases have decreased from an already low population incidence and risk of fatality. While symptoms may persist in COVID-19 and may sometimes be serious, they are not typically so, and appear to measurably diminish with time, even within the short time frame of the COVID-19 pandemic.
In some years, epidemic – let alone pandemic – flu may lead to a broadly similar number of deaths to COVID-19, even given widely available vaccination.
Like COVID-19, influenza poses an elevated risk to the over-65s. However, influenza presents a clearly greater risk to all other ages, including children and adults. While seasonal flu leads to higher mortality rates at the extremes of age, 2009 H1N1 flu, for example, may have posed a particular threat to ‘working age’ adults.
Multi-organ complications, including myocarditis and encephalitis, occur in both flu and COVID-19. In both cases, these complications have the potential to be persistent and serious, but such instances are rare and may be complicated by pre-existing disease. Patients typically recover in a few weeks and where symptoms do persist, they diminish – if sometimes gradually – in frequency with time. The most persistent symptoms are predominately those such as fatigue, aches and pains, and shortness of breath and are not life-threatening.
It is far from evident that COVID-19 presents a greater risk of complications or persistent symptoms than flu and – given the demographic most affected – COVID-19 does not present as great a threat as flu to children and younger adults and the otherwise healthy.
Epidemiologically and clinically, flu may be as bad as COVID-19. In children, juveniles and productive adults flu appears worse.
This scholarly article, by two sceptical scientists, is worth reading in full.
Stop Press: Lungs damaged by coronavirus can repair themselves within three months, according to a study involving 86 patients in the Tyrolean region of Austria. The Telegraph has more.
Lungs can repair themselves after a serious bout of coronavirus in just three months, a new study has revealed, raising hope patients will not be living with debilitating symptoms for years on end.
Doctors said trials showed nearly half of patients in trials showed no evidence of lung damage at 12 weeks.
Although they confirm longstanding fears that Covid patients can suffer serious effects weeks after recovering from the virus, the results are the first to show that these tend to heal over time.
Are the Lockdowns a Vast Left-Wing Conspiracy?
In light of the evidence that you’re no more likely to suffer medical complications and lingering effects from COVID-19 than you are with the flu, why do public health panjandrums like Devi Sridhar seemingly exaggerate the risk to argue for keeping strict lockdowns in place? Cynics would point to the links between those experts and various funding bodies and institutions that are linked to Bill Gates and which all seem to be singing from the same pro-lockdown, pro-vaccination hymn sheet – and in Prof Sridhar’s case, they do seem to be pretty extensive. As one scientist reader of Lockdown Sceptics pointed out:
I learn that Devi has written a book Governing Global Health Who Runs the World and Why? with Chelsea Clinton (both seem to have taken their MPhil at Oxford at about the same time). Devi has served on the World Economic Forum Council on the Health Industry and is a member of Edinburgh’s WHO Collaborating Centre on Population Health Research and Training. Her 2014 paper in NEJM argues that “a renewed attention to lawmaking efforts by the WHO and the human right to health are crucial elements of progress”. In a BMJ Opinion article, Devi and Chelsea offer advice to the new director of WHO – Dr Tedros – who had come from the The Global Fund to fight HIV/AIDS, TB and malaria. Apparently, Chelsea’s doctoral thesis is entitled “The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB and Malaria: a response to global threats, a part of a global future”. HIV/AIDS is a priority of the Clinton Foundation, of which Chelsea is the Vice Chair (and which the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation helps to fund).
This BMJ paper shows how much money is involved: “…in 2017, official development assistance for health reached $23.9bn, and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the largest private funder, gave $2.5bn in health aid…”
Just sayin’, as they say… and I don’t wish to question ‘good works’ at all, but I do wonder why so many countries are doing the same thing and why there is so much conformity and so little resistance within the public health establishment itself.
So is Prof Sridhar promoting a ‘zero-Covid’ strategy for self-interested reasons rather than in good faith? Probably not. In fact, we don’t think that’s a meaningful distinction in her case or in the case of Neil Ferguson, Sir Patrick Vallance, Chris Whitty et al. Rather, we think they are capable of advocating those public health policies that perfectly align with their broader professional interests without experiencing the slightest twinge of discomfort. They’re not being dishonest because they have persuaded themselves of the wisdom of the safety-first, interventionist approach. If they’re engaged in a conspiracy, it’s an unconscious conspiracy. This quote from Robert Musil’s The Man Without Qualities sums it up:
And indeed the most coldly calculating people do not have half the success in life that comes to those rightly blended personalities who are capable of feeling a really deep attachment to such persons and conditions as will advance their own interests.
Influential Lockdown Advocate Benefits Financially From Lockdowns
For fans of conspiracy theories, this one’s a doozy. Thomas Pueyo, who wrote a now famous, pro-lockdown Medium post on March 10th that’s had over 40 million views and been translated into more than two dozen languages is the President for Growth of an online learning platform called Course Hero that’s just raised over $80 million.
Among the claims Pueyo made in his post were:
- The coronavirus is coming to you.
- It’s coming at an exponential speed: gradually, and then suddenly.
- It’s a matter of days. Maybe a week or two.
- When it does, your healthcare system will be overwhelmed.
- Your fellow citizens will be treated in the hallways.
- Exhausted healthcare workers will break down. Some will die.
- They will have to decide which patient gets the oxygen and which one dies.
- The only way to prevent this is social distancing today. Not tomorrow. Today.
- That means keeping as many people home as possible, starting now.
He followed up with another post on March 19th in which he claimed that 10,000,000 Americans would die if strict shut downs weren’t imposed in every US state immediately. “If we do nothing: Everybody gets infected, the healthcare system gets overwhelmed, the mortality explodes, and ~10 million people die,” he wrote.
Not just a run-of-the-mill bedwetter, then, but a kind of super-bedwetter. And a highly influential one at that. The celebrities who shared his post included former presidential candidate Andrew Yang, actor George Takei, Twitter cofounder Ev Williams, author Margaret Atwood, social psychologist Jonathan Haidt and Harvard Professor Steven Pinker. (Et tu, Pinker?)
Well, Course Hero, Pueyo’s company, has just netted $80 million in its latest fundraising round. Tech Crunch is in no doubt about why it’s been so successful – edtech companies offering remote learning tools have all done phenomenally well thanks to school and college closures during the lockdowns.
From a high level, the new raise is not surprising. Other edtech companies have also recently added on more capital to their balance sheets to meet remote learning demand amid the coronavirus pandemic.
But in Course Hero’s case, the new capital comes as a stark contrast to how the business functioned before 2020. After launching, the startup waited eight years to raise a $15 million Series A. Now, after going another nearly six years without raising venture capital, Course Hero has closed two rounds in this year alone.
Should we give Pueyo the benefit of the doubt and accept that he’s just another of Robert Musil’s “rightly blended personalities”? Maybe. But the fact that he hired a PR company to promote his Medium posts suggests he wasn’t just a disinterested blogger.
Philosophy Lecturers at Newcastle University Condemn Masks
We’re publishing an original piece today by Michael Lewis and Sinéad Murphy, two philosophy lecturers at Newcastle, about why they object to the the compulsory masks and draconian social distancing measures being insisted upon by their university.
As academics and as a university as a whole, our role is reasonably to examine and exemplify what is true and what is good, and to help our students to do likewise. This is particularly relevant for those of us in the humanities, allied as we are with the concept which, above all others, ought to have led policy responses to the virus, and which humanities academics should have seized upon immediately and promoted tirelessly: the humanity of the human.
Historically, the deprivation of the face and the refusal of contact with others (frequently in the context of virulent disease) have been the very first and most effective gestures of dehumanisation. And yet, now we are asked to imagine a truly risible classroom in which the teacher, and perhaps eventually everyone, is faceless, masked, and spaced two metres apart, so that all chance of serious interaction, human interaction – between student and teacher, but, perhaps most ruinously of all, among students themselves – is ruled out in favour of the atmosphere of the operating theatre.
Worth reading in full.
Black Lives Matter Window-Smasher is Rich White Liberal
The New York Post has learned that a Black Lives Matter protesters now facing felony rioting and misdemeanour graffiti charges – after a window-smashing spree in Manhattan on Friday night – is a wealthy Upper East Sider whose mother is an architect and whose father is a child psychiatrist.
Clara Kraebber, 20, is one of eight people arrested Friday night after a roiling, three-hour rampage that police say caused at least $100,000 in damage from Foley Square up to 24th Street.
“Every city, every town, burn the precinct to the ground!” the group chanted as it moved up Lafayette Street while busting the plate glass facades of banks, Starbucks and Duane-Reades.
The protest was organized by groups calling themselves the “New Afrikan Black Panther Party” and the “Revolutionary Abolitionist Movement.”
Given her privileged upbringing, Kraebber might seem an unlikely alleged revolutionary in those ranks.
Kraebber’s mother, Virginia Kindred, runs Kindred Arch. Works, a Manhattan architect firm that has designed spaces for Columbia University and NYU, and worked on numerous school and business spaces throughout the city.
Her father is Markus Kraebber, an Upper East Side child and adolescent psychiatrist who teaches at the Columbia University Department of Psychiatry.
In 2016 the family paid $1.8 million for their 16th-floor apartment on East End Avenue. The family also owns a 1730 home — featuring four fireplaces, according to property listings — in tony Litchfield County, Conn.
Turns out, Kraebber was a student at Hunter College High School, a selective school that has been ranked as the top public high school in the United States. So let’s get this straight: a white member of America’s ruling class spent Friday night destroying the workplaces of working class immigrants to advance the cause of racial equality. The Post quotes a New York police officer who is justifiably outraged.
“This is the height of hypocrisy,” one law enforcement source who was at the protest told The Post. “This girl should be the poster child for white privilege, growing up on the Upper East Side and another home in Connecticut.
“I wonder how her rich parents feel about their daughter. How would they feel if they graffitied their townhouse?”
Worth reading in full.
Handy Cock “Concerned” After Cases Spike
Appearing on Sky News yesterday, Health Secretary Matt Hancock said he was “concerned” after 2,988 new COVID-19 infections were reported in the 24-hour period to Sunday.
Mr Hancock said there had been rises across Europe, and that it was “so important that we do all we can to prevent that happening here”.
He added that the new positive tests were predominantly among younger people, but warned that this could lead to a rise across the population as a whole, because it had happened elsewhere.
He said: “It’s so important that people don’t allow this illness to infect grandparents and lead to the sort of problems we saw earlier in the year.”
No need to worry Matt because there’s been no corresponding uptick in hospitalisations or deaths. In fact, there were only two Covid deaths in the whole of the UK yesterday, according to the Government’s coronavirus dashboard.
Nothing to see here folks, move on…
An Australian Nomad Writes…
A regular reader of Lockdown Sceptics has written to tell us about his adventures in Europe as an Australian expat.
We left Australia in September last year on a European adventure. We figured we’d take advantage of my UK dual citizenship status before Brexit and our ability to work from anywhere as digital nomads.
I thought I’d share some perspectives based on our experiences since the plague hit.
We were based in Bulgaria living inside a city apartment with four children when the very restrictive Bulgaria lockdowns started. Contemplating being stuck in an apartment for weeks with four children and with not so much as a balcony, we jumped on a flight to London and got ourselves some farm accommodation in Scotland for a few months. We watched as the mask requirement for shops was coming to Scotland, so bought a car and planned our exit from the UK via the only means possible without a mask requirement on transport, the Eurotunnel. We left Scotland on the same day masks were mandated, spent the next couple of weeks in England and left just before masks were mandated in shops there.
We carefully selected our next “home” after lots of research (including your site) and arrived in Denmark after an overnight airbnb in France followed by Germany. It was like being on a different planet, no masks, no perspex screens, no one-way aisles with stickers on the floor, no social distancing. The first weekend was rainy, so we took the kids to an extremely busy indoor play centre, with everyone packed in like sardines, no indication of a pandemic except for a few extra bottles of hand sanitizer around. We took the kids to the aqua park, Legoland and Lego House over the course of a few days, again no indication of a pandemic except for Legoland we found a couple of families in masks and one of the rides closed due to it being in a small confined space.
On seeing Denmark weaken their position on masks, we planned our next move once again, and shortly after masks were mandated on public transport in Denmark. We are currently in Norway and much like Denmark, life is normal here. We’re considering making a residency application and our children will start school here next week.
We were considering a flight back to Sydney, Australia, however…
In their wisdom, the Australian Government has placed a cap on the number of arrivals into Australia each day so as to not overwhelm the hotel quarantine program (now billed to the traveller). A Facebook group has been set up for hotel quarantine and the stories in there are very depressing. In order to try and get maximum revenue on enforced empty flights, airlines are giving preference to business class passengers and those who are booking economy fares are being continually cancelled and bumped to a later date, i.e. the best chance of getting home is to book a business class flight. Some people have been cancelled more than a dozen times, and are still waiting after months. Media reports have the number of stranded Australian’s trying to get home at over 23,000. In addition to thousands of expats trying to get home, people who have been given special permission to leave Australia for a funeral, medical travel etc. and were only prepared for a week or two away, are now living out of hotels, running out of money, and risk overstaying their visas.
Finally, back in Australia our Government has announced that it may become a requirement for citizens entering Australia to be vaccinated for COVID-19, if a vaccine is available. We are not excited about the prospect of being first in line for a rushed vaccine, so we, like many Australians may have a limited window of opportunity to find a way back into Australia before being forced to make that decision.
Based on the trainwreck that Australia has become, we feel very lucky to be in Norway and that we’re not stuck in the “lucky country”!
Another Heartbreaking Care Home Story
We got an email from a woman whose father is trapped in a care home with a “no visitors” policy.
My father’s care home is still not allowing any visits. I know other care homes have allowed garden visits since June so it is dependent on their management but I am not surprised by their fear.
My poor father is very unwell, but my family will not be allowed to see him unless he is dying. They will hold the phone near to him so he can hear our voices. I am so angry I wish it were possible to sue the Government for causing this misery and despair to so many poor frail and elderly people at the end of their lives. Should he die during this time, and it is looking more likely as I don’t see care homes being less afraid until the spring, I will carry the guilt of not being able to support him during the last months of his life for the rest of my life.
This inhuman cruelty has to stop. The Labour Party and various charities have called on ministers to take urgent action to help care homes in England receive more visitors – more power to their elbow.
Stop Press: The Sunday Times ran a piece about this issue last Sunday and yesterday it published the responses it got from readers, all telling their own heartbreaking stories.
Postcard From Portugal
If you live in England or Northern Ireland, but not Scotland or Wales, you can still go to Portugal without having to quarantine on your return. Clear? We didn’t think so. Nonetheless, if you’re prepared to risk it, a one-week break in the Algarve sounds idyllic. A reader sent us this yesterday.
I have just spent a week in brilliant sunshine in Vale do Lobo near Faro. Great to escape the new panic over so-called case numbers rising.
It has been a delight to be on holiday where almost everything seems normal. Apart from mandatory masks in shops, very few people seem to be wearing the ridiculous things. The minority that do seem somewhat mad and apologetic – like people who go out in full storm gear, sou’westers and wellies only to find that the sun is out.
We have eaten out every night and didn’t notice any crazed social distancing. The restaurants observe a weird dance in which customers put on a mask to walk to their table then take it off and breathe all over everyone around them for the rest of the meal, before putting the mask back on to leave the premises. What purpose this serves is clearly beyond anyone’s understanding, but it is the law.
Meanwhile, the beaches are uncrowded and completely normal, with children playing, families mingling and no social distancing at all.
The bars are open, complete with live music and the mandatory groups of young Brits singing Sweet Caroline at the top of their lungs.
A great place to go and free of usual crowds. Seems like this part of Portugal is over the virus.
Lockdown Madness in Seaford
We got an email from a reader in Seaford. The country really has been driven completely insane by all the bedwetting propaganda being pumped out by the Government and the BBC.
I went down to Rotary’s Car Boot Sale on the seafront at Seaford this morning. As can be seen from the picture, all visitors were expected to wear masks, as were the stallholders. Numbers on site were limited to 150 with a one-way system, hand sanitiser, and no more than six people, including myself, chose not to wear masks. So conditioned are people that nearly everyone donned a piece of cloth to protect themselves from a terrible virus in the fresh sea air on a sunny day, where the risk was zero. Current number of detected cases in town of 28,000 is zero. Last death in our NHS Trust’s area of 525,000 people was on August 2nd. Clearly, there is a lot of fear about, if not Coronavirus.
Round-Up
- ‘Teachers must not be allowed to “put their feet up and watch Netflix” during future lockdowns, ex-head says‘ – Pauline Wood, the headteacher who was suspended for raising the alarm about teachers unwilling to work during school closures, says the danger’s not over in the Telegraph
- ‘Don’t shoot the messenger – it’s the children who will suffer the most‘ – A companion piece by Pauline Wood about why school governors and local authorities shouldn’t punish whistleblowers. She gives a nice plug to the Free Speech Union, which has been supporting her
- ‘Trade expertise and the ability to rile the pious? You’re hired, Tony Abbott‘ – Excellent column by Rod Liddle in the Sunday Times
- ‘Parliament not leading by example in the back-to-work push, say lawmakers‘ – A group of dozens of MPs and peers written a letter to the Telegraph urging Parliamentarians to return to work
- Dr Mike Yeadon’s response to vaccine consultation – Research scientist and biotech entrepreneur Dr Mike Yeadon responds to the DHSC’s consultation about Covid vaccines on Twitter – and it’s VERY critical. If you’re not on Twitter, you can read it here
- ‘The 1% blunder: How a simple but fatal math mistake by US COVID-19 experts caused the world to panic and order lockdowns‘ – Dr Malcolm Kendrick explains how a rudimentary error led governments around the world to exaggerate the risk of COVID-19 by a factor of 10
- ‘A little good news‘ – Sceptical US political blogger George Dance explains why 2.5 million cases worldwide isn’t such bad news
- ‘More than half of Britons think rules on meeting others are unclear‘ – According to polling data gathered by The Health Foundation and Ipsos MORI, 54% of people think the rules around meeting others are confusing. Just 54%?
- ‘I’m certain that Rhodes will fall. This is why‘ – Depressing article by Dan Hannan in the Telegraph
- ‘My run-in with the New York Times‘ – Andrew Sullivan explains how he became the target of a hit job in the New York Times
Theme Tunes Suggested by Readers
Just one today: “You Ruined The Holidays” by Liz Bissonette.
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 attention. We’ve also just introduced a section where people can arrange to meet up for non-romantic purposes. 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.
Small Businesses That Have Re-Opened
A few 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 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! If they’ve made that clear to customers with a sign in the window or similar, so much the better. Don’t worry if your entries don’t show up immediately – we need to approve them once you’ve entered the data.
“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 Oct 7th to Oct 17th). 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 with lanyard for just £3.99 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 31,500).
A reader has started a website that contains some useful guidance about how you can claim legal exemption.
And here’s a round-up of the scientific evidence on the effectiveness of mask (threadbare at best).
Stop Press: The European Commission has issued a health warning about two different types of face nappies on sale in the UK, here and here.
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 (although we have help from lots of people, mainly in the form of readers sending me stories and links). If you feel like donating, please click here. And if you want to flag up any stories or links we should include in future updates, email us here. (If you want me to link to something, don’t forget to include the link).
And Finally…
In case you missed it, I interviewed Douglas Murray for the Quillette podcast last week to mark the publication of the paperback of The Madness of Crowds. We spoke about all that’s happened since the book came out a year ago – a year in which the crowds seem to have become even madder! Douglas’s conclusion? “The silent majority needs to speak up – now.”
You can listen to our conversation here.
Discussion
Comments
This week across the site:
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They couldn’t possibly allow people to see that it’s possible to have some sort of life without the threat of constant lockdowns:
There’s no good reason why Sweden isn’t on our quarantine-free list
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/comment/sweden-quarantine-list/
Let’s hope the ongoing judicial review of the quarantine rules ( see Toby’s update of Friday) exposes the political nature of the irrational quarantine rules. If you haven’t already, please contribute to this. It’s a serious application ( Francis Hoar, S Dolan’s counsel) and will no doubt have cost a lot more than the crowd fund can achieve. But the bigger point here is to support those individuals who are prepared to challenge these incursions on our liberty.
Punters queue to get into a car boot sale in Seaford
What a joke!
“Half a million Covid deaths was ABSURD we are being DUPED, says RICHARD MADELEY”
https://www.express.co.uk/comment/columnists/richard-and-judy/1323175/coronavirus-lockdown-figures-covid-19-death-toll
This prong of attack is vital. Without friendly translators such as Deinse Welch and now Richard Madeley the message won’t reach to important people – that is the great British Public. Well done Richard.
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/sars-cov-2-rna-testing-assurance-of-positive-results-during-periods-of-low-prevalence/assurance-of-sars-cov-2-rna-positive-results-during-periods-of-low-prevalence
New guidelines seems to follow Heneghan’s suggestions.
Positive test results at the limit of detection – Pillar 2 LaboratoriesRequest a repeat sample and advise self isolation pending the results of the second sample.
Contact tracing should only be initiated if there is a positive result from the repeat sample.
A positive result at the limit of detection from the repeat sample is suggestive of the late stage cycle of infection and therefore contact tracing and further self isolation is not advised.
This too is disingenuous because the chart shows a rise and fall of the virus but it does not quantify how many test results are in the two areas encircled in red dotted lines.
Whatever I read, watch and listen to always leads me back to the terrible 3. I’m talking about the UN, the WHO and the Elite. Under cover of covid horrid things are being done to us and planned for us. Do-gooders are not always what they seem and money is a powerful influencer. Some here may benefit from the content of James Corbett, Vernon Coleman, and UK Column to cite but three, when it comes to joining the dots linking the terrible 3 and gaining a deeper perspective of lockdown and beyond.
They’re not ”elite”, though, are they?
Can’t we think of a more appropriate word for them?
Hong Kong police tackled a 12-year old girl to the ground and arrested her on Sunday amid protests against delayed parliamentary elections.
She was later charged for allegedly violating coronavirus social distancing rules.
DT article here:
https://t.co/4BuoAiUHFF?amp=1
Twitter video of it here:
https://twitter.com/Telegraph/status/1302987275060629504?s=20
How must Hancock’s guilt porn message to the young, about not killing grandma, sound in the ears of older people? Surely what they hear must be: ‘If only you were dead, your grandchildren could live normally.’
What a vicious message.
How much more humane to let us all get on with life. It probably won’t kill grandma, and grandma would (probably) rather take the risk.
As an Old Fart : Precisely.
We’re quite capable of assessing risk, and certainly don’t require the intervention of brainless wazzocks like Handycock who can’t even do basic maths.
UK Column today.
https://youtu.be/qgq5NsMqxS8
Deals with the political policing we are now seeing across the west. It also looks into NLP being used in the civil service.
It starts by clearing up a very intetesting renaming exercise by the World Bank. Curious administration.
The UK Column guys make a good point the videos of policing seem to be orchestrated by high-ups in the police. EG. Piers Corbyn arrested in public by overwhelming force – he’s 73 – would it not have been better policing to arrest him at his home next day? If an arrest is what they are intent on. The police actions at Corbyn’s arrests have caused violence. This in only my example, other aressts on social media follow a similar pattern – police causing the scuffle/brutality.
An this same subject are the images from Australia of cuffed men and women having masks forcibly strapped to their faces by police as an integral part of the arrest ‘performance’.
As uK Column show this is unlawful medical intervetion in each case breaking a well documented human right see the UKC today for the wording of those rights.
We must not allow the police to get away with any of this behaviour they are displaying they need bringing to justice.
David Icke said there will be a 2nd massive lock down and it will be almost instant. The msm are now helping set the seeds.
A very interesting article recommended by Heneghan “Waiting for Zero”written by a pathologist Clare Craig
https://logicinthetimeofcovid.com/2020/09/07/waiting-for-zero/
An interesting article.
This article seems to focus on Pillar 1 testing. Am I alone in thinking that it doesn’t sufficiently cover the issue of errors in Pillar 2 testing that is at the root of so much current exaggeration?
The key with this is the threshold of cycles needed to produce ‘positives’, and the resultant confusion involving irrelevant RNA fragments when sampling asymptomatic individuals.
PHE just released new guidelines more sensible for Pillar 2 at least in the right direction
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/sars-cov-2-rna-testing-assurance-of-positive-results-during-periods-of-low-prevalence/assurance-of-sars-cov-2-rna-positive-results-during-periods-of-low-prevalence
Is it just me….seemed rather flimsy and speculative. Rather large links in the chain of argument seemed to be missing. Take one example: she seems (her meaning is not always clear) to be arguing that we can reference the general death rate for hospital patients to make assumptions about false positives in Covid cases. It seems irrelevant either way. Generally in winter I would expect the category of patients admitted with breathing difficulties to have a much higher death rate in hospital than patients admitted for say ingrowing toenails. If the death rate is now much lower that could a statistical artefact because it is those Covid patients who have not died who are “left over” from the peak crisis. I don’t see how you can assume false positives. Maybe I’m missing something.
Because of massive hospitalscreening of all admitted patients she is calculating the amount of false positive and every admission has 1,7 % fatality rate and then she gets the number of constant C-19 deaths(false pos) which would occur each week.
Why would the Covid death rate be constant? There’s no evidence for that that I can see. The virus was picking the low hanging fruit at the beginning and so we have seen a declining death rate.
But she is speaking of false positives.They are not C-19 deaths but lab results show C-19 and could even have low Ct value below 25 and still be false positive.The clinicians must with this false result actively decide that this is not a C-19 death,that is the problem with all masstesting .
Maybe it refers to the likelihood of a false positive / false negative based on the sensitivity & specificity of a test and the prevalence of the thing being tested for. E.g. http://araw.mede.uic.edu/cgi-bin/testcalc.pl
Though she seems to be concluding what many of us already suspect – that there will be enough of an uptick in the stats during the winter for the government to make all our lives (even more) miserable again! She has just explained how it’s going to happen. Forget about Christmas!
An impressive contribution from Devi Sridhar. I really thought Prof Neil Ferguson had the National Bullshitter of the Year award in the bag for his performance earlier in the year, but Sridhar could be a real contender on the basis of this interview, being so full of malodorous bovine faeces as it was. Her fake concern for the child victims of her lunatic lockdown ideology was hard to take.
The biggest bullshit episode I’ve seen was Cuomo in NYC. “We will never lock people down in NYC. We can’t do that to people. Shelter at home is not an option for us”
NYC locked down the next day.
Cuomo certainly wins Covid Bore of the Year with his painfully slow delivery and his little homilies about “I talk to my daughters, they say – Pop you give too much of yourself, you have to rest up…I know they’re right but I say, girls, I’ve got a city to save…” on and on and on…
Police Scotland figures for edinburgh.
Over the weekend of Friday, 4 September 2020 to Sunday, 6 September 2020, officers attended 391 house gatherings in response to reports of alleged breaches of coronavirus regulations, police said – a 23 per cent increase compared to the previous weekend.
Does that mean increased ‘cases’ or increased enforcement?
Does this mean there is an increase in snitches, or an increase in sceptics?
391 snitches must feel so proud of themselves.
Of course they do – they got to exercise power vicariously, or to get a grudge settled with state force, and they can tell themselves it was for the noble cause of saving lives.
That’s one reason why snitches are so hated, and why they are such a dangerous and divisive tool for the state to be permitted to use for mere policy enforcement purposes (as opposed to real crime).
In Ireland the government have enacted laws to limit protest. Tracey O Mahoney has been making some excellent legal advice videos on various aspects of anti lockdown including masks and vaccines.
This is another. She she’s exactly what is happening.
Zero deaths. They enacted their zero covid agenda. Opposition MPs are spineless, journalists are spineless. Its getting very worrying.
https://youtu.be/gPWkgZpYmyg
ITV News featuring child labour being used in face mask manufacture…hope all the Masked Fraternity feel guilty.
They won’t. It’s for the “greater good.”
Perhaps they could combine their no schooling policy with their support for child labour and rediscover the spirit of Victorian enterprise…for the greater good.
Victorian? More like mediaeval.
Arch bedwetter John Edmunds of Sage nearly crying with terror and fear on ITN news. A truly pathetic individual. A Dr saying basically not much to worry about, yet all focus on the fear mongers ‘obvious concerns’ that therefore mean they must be justified. No need to even bother asking basic questions. Truly disgusting. As Peter Hitchens said, the journalists have been utterly abysmal throughout on this.
Just seen it. Absolutely PATHETIC! What an absolute toss pot. I’ve never seen anything like it. Disgusting propaganda. And that misery guts presenter. What a bloody shit show!
I was thinking the same. The daft bugger wants to cancel Christmas.
The way I see it things are going well: cases rising exponentially but deaths and hospitalisations dwindling. Probably exactly what we want to happen. Edmund seems to want to flatten this latest curve so more cases arise in the depths of winter….not a good idea.
But Christmas is in December……how do they know it has been cancelled?
We need the infections now, before winter comes and the virus gets active again. Seems to me that only Sweden has sufficient herd immunity to get through the winter thanks to no lockdown. If the cretins in government lock down here again, there will be societal and economic collapse in 2021, and quite likely mass starvation too.
No, what he wants is to stoke the panic and fear. He wants the public to believe a whopping great lie that they have been telling since the beginning. That this disease is uniquely virulent and community transmission is rife and therefore lockdown is the only answer. To protect them from the truth that their idiotic advice was wrong by mikes and moving frail old folk out if hospitals into care homes was a disaster and most people who died caught it in a Care home or a hospital. Not in the tube, not at Cheltenham, not in schools or shops or churches or any other damned place. The entire nonsense is built in that one massive and outright lie. All of it is done with that grand deception in mind. Goebbels would have tipped his hat to the masters.
We part company on community transmission. I believe it is highly infectious. But agree it’s no more virulent than an averagely bad year’s flu.
As we agree on core principles I am asking in the spirit of genuine enquiry why you believe community transmission is rife in this? I have no medical papers to proffer, but I base my view on the following; the fact that most deaths have been of very ill and old people, they are not prevalent in wider community settings, that about 70% of deaths have occurred as a result of catching it in hospital or care home settings. That means only about 8,000 deaths from ‘Community’ settings and we don’t know how many of those had other serious illnesses. There was no discernible increases in hospitalisations or deaths following Cheltenham, Anfield, BLM, Bournemouth, illegal raves etc. Diamond Princess where only 19% caught it. Much talk of Asymptomatic transmission which just seems bizarre, and finally, the Pillar 2 tests which are picking up people who are simply not ill by any measure. During Feb and March at the height of this, the tubes and trains were still crowded, so were the pubs, offices and factories. There were no SD measures, or masks. If there IS community transmission, it is at such a low level of virulence as to not have… Read more »
Christmas is cancelled, can’t bloody afford it after these morons on their taxpayer funded pensions stuck the rest of us in the s### for a generation.
He reminded me of Simon Pegg in the the spoof film Shaun of the dead – (sorry Simon) that wide eyed look of surprize
Yes – good spot….didn’t that film also have a large cast of zombies?
Exactly……..
I’m sure this was the guy who was explaining how kids are “viral buckets” back in March. Instrumental in stoking fears that led to school closures.
What do we have to do to get a ‘scalp’? SAGE, Hancock, Boris, Van Tam – the list of wrong uns is endless
The whole lot must go. The entire establishment has failed and must be replaced.
Caerphilly in Wales going local lockdown with 55 cases in 100,000?
… and when an ‘epidemic’ is defined as 40 cases per 10,000 ….????
WTF??
No entry or exit from the county borough without reasonable excuse. All over the age must wear face masks indoors, and no visits to other people’s homes. Kim Jong Un is Welsh.
At last I am going to be extremely rich! Thats because I have invented a vaccine for Covid-19 which I guarantee will work and I am going to sell 67 million dosses of it to the UK Government for a hundred quid a pop. Thats 6.7 Billion squid so I have already ordered my megayacht.
I am sure that you have some questions such as;
Is it safe?
Absolutely, it has been approved for injection by every regulatory body worldwide and has been tested for safety over many years.
How do you know it works?
Statistically it must do, but to make sure I am going to organise a trial. We will immunise a test group of 1000 volunteers and encourage them to go to the pub, football matches, beach parties, protests and raves without wearing a face mask for two weeks and then we will test who has caught the virus. Just to be absolutely sure we will not use the standard PCR test but will use the much more accurate viral culture test.
Will it be 100% effective?
No vaccine is 100% effective in fact the influenza vaccines currently in use are shown to be only about 50%… Read more »
Call now!
If lines are busy call later, but do call.
Handsy Hancock is saying Q1 next year. Apparently you and your colleagues have pushed back the roll-out twice now. If you don’t get on with it, every country will have reached herd immunity. Can you not skip the safety trials – nobody will know!!
Brilliant.
Why do the BBC seem so keen on getting Far Left Marxist extremist and SAGE advisor Susan Michie on their programmes? The question contains enough information to explain why! She was on Radio For Them today yet again receiving the equivalent of underarm bowling delivrries from Evan Davis and being given acres of air time to spread fear and despondency among the population. When asked one slightly probing questions – how all four UK nations have ended up pretty much in the same place despite their varying policies – she had no answer and came out with a load of irrelevant guff about better coordination between the four nations.
The ‘Far Left’ and ‘Marxist’ tags are as unnecessary as Handoncock’s ‘Far Right’ and ‘Neoliberal’ credentials.
The main point is that they’re both a.holes.
Hancock’s many things but he’s not Far Right. Michie is Far Left.
Hancock is just nothing.
Your last sentence, exactly the same conversation between R2 Jeremy Vine and his pet Virologist.
Goldman Sachs, saved from going belly up by the Obama Administration in 2009, now advises the W.H.O., according to Dr. Vernon Coleman. Money talks.
Ah yes, but they were doing God’s work you know!
Have any of you come across this absolutely jaw-dropping horrorshow yet?
https://masks4all.co/about-us/
Vojtech Petracek, the lead, is particularly chilling. All their profile pics have masks phtoshopped on their face. Bizarre
I commented before seeing your comment – it IS bizarre!
DavidC
Note they are all white men! No BAME…
So?
They’re the World Economic Forum (Davos) folks. Not a coincidence.
Spot on Lisa, I noticed that as well.
DavidC
From the same site (per their “The Science” page):
“The political science of mask-wearing”
How do you get all or most people to wear masks? Well, you can educate them and try to persuade them, but a more effective approach is to require them to wear a mask, either in specific settings such as public transportation or grocery stores or even at all times outside the home. Research on vaccination (Bradford and Mandich 2015) shows that jurisdictions which set a higher bar for vaccine exemptions have higher vaccination rates. The same approach is now being used to increase mask wearing compliance, and early results (Leffler et al. 2020) suggest that these laws are effective at increasing compliance and slowing or stopping the spread of COVID-19.
😑
“Require them”
I hate the ruling-class, I do.
Me too. If they’re part of the Establishment, I want them all tried.
It’s all about compliance. If education and persuasion don’t convince people and you must compel a behaviour, the evidence is not very persuasive. If this were Ebola, I don’t think the government would need to mandate anything — we’d do the risk assessment and react accordingly. They give away their purpose when they admit the goal is to increase compliance. We all know there isn’t a stitch of evidence that mandatory masks have slowed or stopped the spread (see California, Peru, Spain, France, etc.).
So do they want us all to wear masks all the time for ever? WHY?
Try and communicate with someone when both of you are wearing a mask. It’s not easy. Citizens should be seen and not heard.
Because they want to control you. That’s been obvious for months. They want us on our knees. And because they are such miserable shits they want to take the joy out of it for everyone else. Classic children’s playground stuff. We are being governed by pre pubescent children.
Humiliation, Compliance, Subordination and many many more.
Kind of them to self-incriminate so publicly.
Jeremy Howard,
Distinguished Research Scientist at USF; Founding Researcher at fast.ai; Member of the World Economic Forum’s Global AI Council
Petr Ludwig,
A bestselling author, and an expert on critical thinking and the popularization of science
Cam Woodsum,
Founder of Nomad Impact Ventures; Former Head of Special Projects at DoorDash
David Keating,
President, Institute for Free Speech
Vojtech Petracek, Assoc. Prof., Ph.D.,
Particle Physicist, President of the Czech Technical University in Prague
Vladimir Zdimal, Ph.D.,
Head of the Department of Chemistry and Aerosol Physics, Czech Academy of Sciences
Emil Pavlik, M.D., Ph.D.,
Microbiologist and Virologist
Leos Navratil, Prof., M.D., Ph.D.,
Population Protection Expert, Head of the Department of Health Care and Population Protection, Faculty of Biomedical Engineering, Czech Technical University in Prague
Martin Hausenblass,
Entrepreneur and investor.
Josef Prusa,
Entrepreneur, an expert on 3D printing, founder of Prusa Research
Misha Chellam,
Founder at Council on Technology & Society & Tradecraft
Look at the photos of the team. The ‘masks’ all look photoshopped on to them!
DavidC
Fad Gadget, 1980s, Swallow It:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OdvjAzAmBLU
Video taken down..
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g3S_H8hlyZc
Yoohoo, flatten the curve was five months ago.
Help! Can somebody please save us from this complete twit – latest from Handsy Hancock:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/09/07/covid-pass-lasting-24-hours-could-allow-people-back-theatres/
‘Matt Hancock has suggested introduction of ‘pregnancy-style test’ to reassure those afraid of coming into contact with virus carriers.’
You can only imagine the tone of the comments underneath the article.
His pronouncements now are so obviously insane and the agenda so clear about controlling people, that it may do our cause some good, by waking people up..
Exactly. This idiotic suggestion, if it ever came to pass, would require testing to be linked to some form of photographic identification document, and the associated database, of course.
Great new name for Hancock in the comments.Foot penis
Mr TT went into hysterics with that!
First good laugh I’ve had in ages
Yes, I laughed out loud at that. Good bunch of comments.
Another Cupid Stunt.
Comments are wonderful:
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As this is the Telegraph, I think it’s a fair assumption these comments come from those who voted Conservative, or lean that way.
Can anyone settle a debate between a friend and myself. We are both against providing personal details at restaurants etc. which is now mandatory in Scotland. I give false info courtesy of the numerous phishing texts I get whilst my friend says there’s no point in this as they can trace you from your card details when you pay. I don’t think they are allowed to do this as the data protection / GDPR says that data must be used for the purpose its gathered for. So does anyone know if they can use your card details for track and trace? Thanks.
Under GDPR (or indeed previously existing data privacy legislation) they’re not allowed to. The venue will in fact get almost none of your information from your card, other than a record of the transaction assuming you use chip and pin or contactless. They could take your name as printed on your card, but they’re not supposed to. You can, of course, be traced to your card, but the venue could not do this and I would hope that track and trace could not do this (I haven’t seen any legislation giving them the power). The police could do this, given the right warrants (but would rely on your bank giving them the information)
I’m suspicious that it would only take another SI signed by Hancock and they could get your info under the guise of it being necessary for public health.. Nothing would surprise me now..
We are (until the end of the year) still subject to GDPR and the UK interpretation of the EU GDPR directive is still (unless or until it is repealed or overwritten) in force. New legislation (whether by act of parliament or by SI) could change this, but it hasn’t yet.
You can be forcibly removed from your home and taken to a testing centre… It’s illegal for my neighbour to come into my garden… They have imposed drastic restrictions that would make you likely to protest, but made it illegal for more than 30 of you to gather… No surprises indeed.
Thanks for clarifying that Matt. 👍
Pay cash
I would imagine that using a mobile phone to pay would be more difficult to trace back to you. They use a seperate virtual account number that is only linked to your bank account via Google, Apple or Samsung. But answering the exact question, no they currently can’t trace you this way according to data protection legislation.
I’ve been refusing to give T&T details everywhere, and although I have had to explain it to them quite regularly, this weekend I had my first experience of them refusing my opt-out. Apparently it was the businesses requirement even if not legally required. Told him where to shove his track and trace.
So now I can’t decide which I prefer more. Loudly telling them to shove their track and trace up their rectums or giving them the local MPs details from https://members.parliament.uk/FindYourMP . What a dilema.
Thanks for your reply. 👍 I just quietly rebel by putting down a number from one of the many crank texts I get! They’re happy thinking I’m being a good little sheep and I’m happy knowing I’m not. Win win.
I pay cash when I give false details. OK, never use my card any more when I’ve given my details. Well, someone else’s. RJ Bingham crops up a lot.
Scottish Government to make GP consultations via video the ‘default option’
4 September 2020 Eleanor Philpotts
Scottish GPs will be doing all patient consultations via video link in future, the Goverment has announced, although GPs expressed concern for the future of the
doctor-patient relationship.
Going a lot further than health secretary Matt Hancock, who earlier this summer suggested all GP consultations could be done remotely in the future, the Scottish Government intends to roll out an existing video consultation platform as the ‘default option’ for all patients consultations across general practice and secondary care.
….
RCGP Scotland chair Dr Carey Lunan said: ‘These options can work well for patients who have access to technology and are confident in using it. It may also be a more convenient option for those who live in remote areas and may struggle to access transport. However, for many patients speaking to their GP by phone or video does not work as well because their problems are more complex, more difficult to describe or more personal in nature.
‘Certain groups of patients particularly struggle with this type of consultation, for instance those living with sensory impairment, those who have English as a second language, those… Read more »
Clearly at least some of them are. It’s good to know.
This my recent comment in the Spectator site.
Clinical medicine is indeed dead.
I am a radiologist.
I am being referred patients for image guided biopsies of things that do not exist.
Patient now phones GP practice and maybe speaks to GP or more often a nurse and says i think I have a lump in my neck, groin or wherever . No examination but referred to ENT, haematology or general surgery/medicine clinic under 2 week rule as a suspected cancer. Another telephone consultation with consultant, registrar or specialist Nurse. Again no examination but referred for imaging and biopsy. Booked for urgent biopsy under 2 week rule. Sometimes also booked for ‘urgent’ staging CT or MRI – just in case. Eventually get seen by me who is now able to take a history and actually examine the patient before performing any imaging or procedure. I often find nothing and supposed lump has disappeared or was a normal finding and a complete waste of everyone’s time – especially the patient who has been worrying they might have a serious problem such as cancer. Sometimes they are disappointed when I explain that there is nothing wrong with them and they do not… Read more »
I think there will be a rash of unnecessary antibiotic prescriptions as a result of this as well. My daughter had a tele-health appointment and was given a prescription without be seen or swabbed. She probably needed it, but we know the over-prescribing of antibiotics was a problem when appointments were in person, so I can only imagine the abuse that’s happening now and will continue.
plus quite a lot of anti bacterial hand gels about. Read an article a while back that over use can also be a factor in antibiotic resistance.
True — so between the superbugs predicted by the overuse of antibacterial hand gels and the abuse of antibiotics, we’re in for a world of pain.
If this does come to fruition then I sincerely hope that every patient with a misdiagnosis or whose illness becomes critical due to a lack of proper examination sues the arse off of this pathetic excuse for government. The sooner we get rid of the SNP the better, unfortunately I don’t hold out much hope for this in May’s election.
The potential for hacking of such consultations scares me.. no privacy..
Don’t bother with a proper history or examination – just send them for a ‘scan’ and let the radiologist sort it.
Obvious sense.
NHS management have a lot to answer for in manipulating this panicdemic to push their own agenda.
I see that the U.K. infection rate has risen above the government’s threshold of 20 cases per 100,000. This is the point at which air bridges disappear and travellers compelled to quarantine themselves for two weeks. Following the government’s logic, though to dignify their decision making with such a word is highly questionable, it would follow that the entire nation has to self quarantine for two weeks, with no exceptions.
I read somewhere the other day a piece explaining that “infections” are not the same as “cases”. I’m rather annoyed though as I can’t remember where it was I saw it.
Got it, a piece by Dr Malcolm Kendrick:
https://drmalcolmkendrick.org/category/covid-19/
My understanding is that infection is when you have the disease causing agent and a case is when that infectious agent causes disease symptoms.
So that you can be infected with the SARS-Cov2 virus but it is only if and when that results in disease symptoms that you become a Covid 19 case.
Ramping up for a 2nd lockdown?
Insanity if they go down that route.
So it was confirmed by someone close to me that in aerosol generating procedures in the NHS, they aren’t using PPE anymore.
So if the NHS aren’t doing it why the hell are masks mandated in shops?
That’s not true anywhere in the U.K.
There has been a downgrade in the recommendations for asymptomatic tested negative patients but this has not been adopted widely.
Fear remains high amongst many health care professions (not this one)
It’s for ALL THE AEROSOLS out there
They are all bought and paid buffoons. Send them canned, uncontrollable guffaws and roll on the floor laughter. Laugh them out of their job.
I feel silly saying this, but I’m starting to think that this is all about ousting Trump.
It’s the only way it all makes sense.
And the people behind it must believe the damage of not ousting him is worse that the mass deaths and chaos we are witnessing.
Tell me I’ve gone barmy and to lose the tin foil hat, please!
It’s definitely more about politics than public health in the States now. I suspect that in bygone days civil war would have broken out already there.
Some say it already has….
I don’t think you’ve gone barmy, but your basic error, it seems to me, is to assume the world should make sense….
And it seems unlikely to me it’s “all about Trump”. For sure, an awful lot of the nonsense comes from people absolutely, ruthlessly determined to get rid of Trump, for reasons of ideology, grudge, personal gain and sheer damned obsession. But if they were powerful enough and competent enough to intentionally manufacture all this, then Trump would never have gotten elected in the first place.
He wasn’t supposed to have been elected.
The UK wasn’t supposed to vote for Brexit.
Both were big flies in the ointment.
Don’t forget how world leaders fawned over Obama, and gave him a Nobel prize for being elected.
He stands in the way of of many plans international organizations have for us.
And what far left politician isn’t hiding a totalitarian control freak, eg Dan Andrew, Jacinda Ardern….
“your basic error, it seems to me, is to assume the world should make sense”
Agree with this a thousand times over.
Agree with you and Mark.
Part of me thinks this is all about Trump, part of me thinks there’s even more to it. So IDK. Understand your point, “Trump would never have gotten elected in the first place…” but don’t forget, there was a very serious assault to assume the Presidency in 2016. 1) the recounts in key battleground states, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, Democrat strongholds for years. This failed quite abruptly when it was clear that Trump was gaining votes all over the place; most of the press quickly skipped town when it emerged that Detroit (Democrat stronghold for decades) had accidentally ended up with over 35% of its precincts reporting higher vote totals, than they had actual registered people on the voting rolls. 2) Death threats to electors in the Electoral College attempting to derail a Trump inauguration by having electoral college votes certified for Clinton even when she lost a state – so widespread that even CNN couldn’t avoid reporting on it, 3) ConsortiumNews reported (Nov 2016) that Clinton & the Dem’s would pursue a “Russian-Puppet-Conspiracy” angle in the event Trump was not prevented from taking office in Jan 2017. The Democrat Impeach Leadership PAC was born, early Feb 2017.
2020? I’ve no… Read more »
Don’t think it’s *all* about Trump, but some of it is.. Fauci is on film saying a few years ago, that Trump would face a pandemic during his term..
The rest of the world would disagree with that assertion.
I think it’s become a big part of it. While the PC liberal Left initially downplayed the virus, telling us to hug a Chinese person and continue visiting Chinatown restaurants, it soon became obvious that the Covid crisis could seriously damage Trump and his chances of re-election. So the Democrats and Leftists in the USA got on board and strongly backed the Lockdown Lunacy and the Mask Madness, relishing the damage being done to the economy which they see only as Trump’s economy. The PC Left outside the USA see the importance of destroying Trump, so I think they are deliberately trying to help extend the crisis to the end of November.
Good points – though unfortunately for the PC Left this is technically the Obama economy. as late as Feb this year Obama was telling everybody who would listen, and even those who wouldn’t: it’s the Obama economy 🙂
It’s about many things. But of course the Democrats have jumped on the whole thing, praying for more deaths and virue signalling with their demand for masking, to disastrous effect. Never mind their poor response to the recent mob looting.
Trump to win. He’s won me over during this CV-19 period
The masks nonsense certainly gained momentum when Trump initially declared himself anti.
“I’m starting to think that this is all about ousting Trump.”
I should think again.
I don’t know but think some believe if Trump loses (or accepts he has lost) he goes in November when he actually stays until January 20th 2021. I didn’t think we could get to September so certainly don’t think we can get away with another 4 more months of this.
It makes more sense to me & is partially reated to Trump that there are a large number of very powerful Marxists & those associated who can see the imminent end of capitalism as a great positive to work towards. The reality of these people making Pol Pot appear a humanitarian will be lost on them & their and our destruction will see them struggling through the indexes of the standard works before they’re lynched or worse.
No great surprise to see the fear narrative being perpetuated.
They think there will be a second wave. I think that’s why they are doing it.
I agree. I think this madness will continue until the spring and they realise the second wave isn’t going to materialise.