“I will be voting to curtail the Government’s powers in this area” – MP backlash begins
Sir Charles Walker, the Vice Chairman of the influential Conservative 1922 committee of MPs, slammed the new restrictions on social gatherings saying he would vote to “curtail” the Government’s powers. The Telegraph has the story.
The changes will impose a legal limit on gatherings in private homes, parks, pubs and restaurants and will come into force in England on Monday.
Sir Charles argued that ministers needed to come to the Commons and “win the argument” on policies, admitting he was “increasingly uncomfortable” about the way the Government was running.
He said: “I am incredibly exercised about the continued use by the Government of powers that we granted it six months ago admittedly, to basically restrict people’s civil liberties without any recourse back to Parliament.
“Now these powers are due to be reviewed at the end of September, or the beginning of October, and hopefully there will be another vote on them.
“And I will be voting – if given the chance to vote in this rather strange Parliament – to curtail the Government’s powers in his area.”
Commons Speaker Sir Lindsay Hoyle was visibly livid that Matt Hancock had failed to make the announcement in the chamber first:
It is really not good enough for the Government to make decisions of this kind in the way which show insufficient regard to the importance of major policy announcements being made first in this House. I’ve already sent a letter to the Secretary of State. I think the total disregard for this Chamber is not acceptable. I know the Prime Minister is a Member of Parliament as well and he will ensure that statements should be made here first.
The Government has clarified that – for now – the restrictions apply specifically to private gatherings in homes, restaurants, parks and so on (see here and here). They do not affect workplaces, schools, churches, etc. But for how long? The Prime Minister seems to be abandoning his earlier hope of getting back to normal by Christmas, with chief medical officer Chris Whitty warning that “people shouldn’t see this as a very short term thing” and it is “very unlikely to be just over in two or three weeks”.
The reason? Because “cases” (actually positive PCR tests – almost none of these people are unwell) have been approaching 3,000 in recent days. But even the BBC has pointed out that this spike is a result of the massive increase in testing (Toby wrote about this in the Telegraph here). There is no corresponding rise in hospital admissions and deaths. Here’s today’s graph:
As the three eminent scientists, Paul Kirkham, Mike Yeadon and Barry Thomas wrote on Lockdown Sceptics yesterday: “Daily deaths from and with COVID-19 have almost ceased, having fallen over 99% from peak. All the numbers monitored carefully fall like this, too: the numbers being hospitalised, numbers in hospital, number in intensive care – all are falling in synchrony from the April peak… The evidence we’ve presented leads us to believe there is unlikely to be a second wave.”
The COVID-19 epidemic is over in the UK. Any further local outbreaks are very likely to be well within health service capacity. COVID-19 was never a peculiarly deadly disease and we have anyway become much better at treating its more serious forms. Now is not the time to increase restrictions. It is time to declare the epidemic at an end and return to normality. Happily, more and more MPs appear to agree.
That Damned Elusive RNA
We’ve published an original piece today by Dr Clare Craig about the guidance issued by the Government on September 7th that introduced a new PCR testing paradigm designed to reduce the number of false positives. Understanding the change requires some mastery of cutting edge molecular genetics, but the short version is that the more amplification cycles a lab runs when searching for Covid RNA in a swab sample, the more likely the virus is to be detected, regardless of whether it’s present in a sufficiently concentrated form to indicate the person is infectious or even, in some cases, if they’ve had the disease at all. So the more cycles a lab runs, the greater the risk of false positives – and if the number climbs as high as 34 cycles, the result will always be positive, irrespective of whether the sample contains microscopic fragments of Covid RNA or none at all. The Government hasn’t ordered its testing labs to keep the cycles below a certain number, but it has said that if the virus is only detected after 30 amplification cycles the lab has to retest to confirm that the subject in question is actually positive.
This guidance was almost certainly issued in response to this paper by Carl Heneghan and his colleagues at Oxford’s Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine that was published on Friday drawing attention to the over-sensitivity of the test, whereby someone who’s had COVID-19 and recovered could still have fragments of the virus in their system, causing them to test positive. Heneghan et al also point to the wide variation in the number of cycles the labs typically run, meaning the same subject could test positive in one location but negative in another. (It’s also possible the change was partly prompted by the paper that Lockdown Sceptics published on September 7th by three eminent scientists, highlighting the same problem).
Clare is a Consultant Pathologist who’s been writing about the pandemic on her blog called “Logic in the Time of Covid“. She’s written some excellent pieces, including this one in which she makes the point that a ‘zero-Covid’ strategy is fatally flawed because the PCR test will always throw up some false positives. Carl Heneghan linked to that post on Twitter on Monday, saying it was “worth a read”.
Clare thinks the new guidance is a step in the right direction, but doesn’t completely solve the problem.
The causes of false positives are myriad. From other viruses, to contaminant human DNA as well as cross contamination between cases and residual RNA fragments in patients who have cleared the virus. The risk of these can never be completely mitigated. Changing the cycle threshold does not fully address the potential for contamination or sub-optimal test performance in general. So more work needs to be done than just setting an albeit sensible number of amplification cycles.
By addressing the cycle threshold, PHE will eliminate some false positives. The cases that needed more than 30 cycles will be examined further to decide which are real. This ought to include input from the doctors caring for those patients and a repeat PCR test is likely to be carried out too. The numbers will rise again once this additional data is available. We will have to wait and see how low the new baseline is.
That is not the end of the problem with false positives. Other false positive test results look like true positive test results. If this were not the case we would not mistake them for true positive results. And for some false positives the cause will still be there when a second confirmatory PCR is attempted. We desperately need a robust definition of a ‘COVID-19 case’ with criteria beyond a single positive PCR result.
This is an excellent post by a top scientist. Clare worked for Imperial College Healthcare Trust as a cytopathologist and then became the day-to-day pathology lead for the cancer arm of the 100,000 Genomes Project.
Worth reading in full.
Neil Ferguson Defends his Model, Sue Denim Responds
A couple of days ago, Neil Ferguson posted a comment on the GitHub thread that started when someone asked Imperial College to publish the original source code used to power the epidemiological model in Report 9. (Ooh, the cheek!) As readers will recall, this was Imperial’s March 16th paper warning the Government that if it didn’t replace its mitigation strategy with a suppression strategy, 250,000 people would die. Many people have raised doubts about that code, including the ex-Google software engineer known as “Sue Denim” who has posted several critiques on Lockdown Sceptics. (See the first six posts under “How Reliable is Imperial College’s Modelling?” on the right-hand menu). Rather unexpectedly, Ferguson jumped into the thread on Tuesday to defend his work.
Another academic group has independently exactly replicated the Report 9 results using the original code and input files as part of the Royal Society RAMP initiative. They are preparing a paper on their analysis which should be out in the next month or two.
For those who believe that discovering a fatal flaw in this code might bring the the scientific support for lockdown tumbling down, I’m sorry break it to you to that other (notably LSHTM) academic groups informing SAGE in March used completely different models to reach nearly identical conclusions to our Report 9 in March. The relevant documents are online in the SAGE archive. The key conclusion that severe social distancing measures were required to prevent health systems being overwhelmed hinged only on estimates of R0/doubling time, hospitalisation rates and IFR (mortality risk). Given those estimates, any epidemic model would give basically the same conclusions we reached.
We asked Sue Denim to respond.
Well. This comment by Ferguson demonstrates how epidemiology has become so corrupted.
As we’ve seen before in this paper, at some point epidemiologists started to define success for their predictions as “matches what other epidemiologists predict” instead of “matches reality”. This probably occurred because their theories are incomplete and produce predictions that deviate significantly from what really happens (see: BSE, Foot and Mouth Disease, Zika and COVID). But it seems nobody knows how to improve them. Dangerous virus outbreaks are rare and experiments can’t be conducted, so there are few opportunities to refine the theories. Rather than admit defeat and switch to doing something else until new ideas emerge, epidemiologists have developed a series of highly evolved (but wrong) arguments as to why they are doing useful work.
Ferguson states: “For those who believe that discovering a fatal flaw in this code might bring the the scientific support for lockdown tumbling down, I’m sorry break it to you to that other (notably LSHTM) academic groups informing SAGE in March used completely different models to reach nearly identical conclusions to our Report 9 in March.”
He’s probably referring to this paper. It says: “Interpretation: The characteristics of SARS-CoV-2 mean that extreme measures are likely required to bring the epidemic under control and to prevent very large numbers of deaths and an excess of demand on hospital beds, especially those in ICUs.”
That is indeed a nearly identical conclusion. Yet we know from counter-examples where “extreme measures” weren’t used that ICU capacity was never exceeded at all, and there was no “very large number of deaths”. So this paper is just as scientifically invalid as Ferguson’s was. It actually reinforces the point that there is no scientific support for lockdown, only pseudo-scientific support using non-validated models and theories – theories that were disproven over the summer. Actual scientists compare their predictions against the real world, and if the predictions are wrong they refine their theories. (As Richard Feynman said: “If it disagrees with experiment, it’s wrong. In that simple statement is the key to science.”) This last step is missing in epidemiology, where for decades academics have been declaring success regardless of observed outcomes, even though their theories/models are general and hardly altered for new viruses.
What of his claim that the LSHTM model is “completely different”? The code is different, and of somewhat higher quality. The assumptions it makes are not really different. It’s another minor elaboration of an age-stratified SEIR model. For example, it assumes a totally susceptible population, which appears not to be true. Indeed the idea that SARS-CoV-2 is “novel” seems to be at the root of many of the incorrect decisions to lockdown.
He finishes by saying, “The key conclusion… hinged only on estimates of R0/doubling time, hospitalisation rates and IFR (mortality risk). Given those estimates, any epidemic model would give basically the same conclusions we reached.”
This is a surprising assertion. Rephrased, his conclusions could have been worked out on the back of a napkin, as “any” model would give the same conclusions given just three variables. Therefore it didn’t require 15,000 lines of code or any particular expertise to do his job. Literally “any” model would agree. He also seems to be disclaiming responsibility for the correctness of the data he uses.
Still, the core point he’s trying to make is correct – replicability bugs in his code don’t change the overall conclusion he reached. But who claimed they did? Certainly not the analyses I’ve written for this site. The point here is a different one: computational epidemiologists pose as scientists. That means they are meant to follow the scientific method, which means making testable predictions that follow from their theories. If predictions don’t reliably follow from theories in a reproducible way, or if they never update theories in response to failed predictions, the work they are doing is not scientific and should not be treated by governments as such.
While it seems unlikely that governments will hold academics to account this year, by blowing off basic methodological failures in such a visible way the scientific community are setting themselves up for a major reckoning in future. Trust in scientists has fallen significantly over the summer. Future generations of politicians will start to ignore the claims of academics across an ever-wider set of fields, as has already occurred for economics and – in the USA – climatology (another field that relies heavily on modelling).
“I’ve Seen Enough Failure in Corporate Life Through Groupthink to Understand What’s Happened to Our Politicos.”
We got a message yesterday (and a donation) from an exasperated consultant. Many people will feel the same way.
Since the start of this, the interpretation of the data has been clear to me. It’s the job I’ve done for 30 years, albeit in consumer behavioural insight not virology. And I’ve seen enough massive failure in corporate life through groupthink to understand what’s happened to our politicos. I’ve spent most of my career trying to get well educated corporate executives to practice fact-based decision making, rather than the other way around. We’ve had months of evidence now (not bloody models) about the asymmetrical nature of the pathogen’s effects, veracity of data, metadata & testing regimes, scientists and medical experts brave enough to speak out. Like many others, I thought that the propaganda wouldn’t survive contact with the bright daylight of facts (and the v obvious shifting of Govt ‘strategy’). But here we still are, in Sept, threats of lockdowns, maskism, MSM still pumping out fear, claiming asymptomatic (poss. false) positive tests ‘cases’, no context etc etc. With the democratic process shut down (and/or locked in orthodoxy) and Govt ruling by capricious diktat, backed by the Police and prosecutors, our judiciary silent and anyone who asks reasonable questions about the proportionality of NPIs (let alone wants to protest) closed down, the big question I’d like answered (or at least discussed) by the assembled brains of the Sceptics is: “What can we actually do to stop/change the narrative and pressure the Handy Cocks of this world to switch their critical reasoning back on?” Despite all the evidence and growing numbers, ‘we’ Sceptics seem to just to be a flea bite on the elephant. I’m tired of feeling angry, frustrated and impotent. I’d love to hear some creative options for those without power or voice! (sorry; tried to avoid the rant but failed).
We’re All Corbynistas Now
No, not an email from a supporter of Piers Corbyn – I think we’re all Corbynistas in that respect at least as far as lockdown is concerned – but from a supporter of his brother, Jeremy. Heartening as always to know that there are some on the Left who share our concerns about the collateral damage being done by the lockdowns.
My background is a postdoctoral molecular neuroscientist with 15 years experience looking and recording trends in scientific data. I have experience working with bacteria and viruses in the lab environment (I’d be more than happy for you to review my latest publications). I am a staunch socialist and fervent supporter of Jeremy Corbyn so would normally not share your ideas and values. Many of my colleagues in academia sit on the left and almost all have fallen for this utter nonsense and most all support condemning the Government for not locking down earlier. The very idea we had protocols for dealing with epidemic/pandemics is lost on them. I believe Bari Weiss and Melanie Phillips to be the worst of the worst, both in the cancel culture of anyone outspoken on Israeli apartheid and the continuation of the neoliberal agenda. I’m adamant that global society collapse is inevitable in the next few years (regardless of Covid) due to the Energy Cost of Energy conundrum, and there is no way GDP figures are anything more than a continual debt accumulation (essentially it’s impossible to have continued growth in a planet with finite resources, no amount of renewables is able to counter this). All this is aside from SARS-CoV-2.
I started reading your posts in late April, and, like you, I thought this over-reaction would soon self-correct. By summer this will die down as mother nature will have flattened the curve. I agreed lockdown would be catastrophic, but accepted that the Government wanted to be seen to be doing something and would go on to explain that the virus wasn’t as dangerous as first feared. Sanity would soon return, maybe with increased alertness about things like personal hygiene and a commitment to look after the vulnerable population, etc. How wrong I was. I too was expecting the Left to have a voice, a message challenging every step the Government had taken. Even my political hero Corbyn has been flagrantly useless. And yet here we are, months later, about to witness the collapse of many Western economies and plunge millions in this country alone into relative poverty and allow hundreds of millions to succumb to starvation and medical abandonment in the developing world. I do wonder why the Left has just allowed this nonsense to grip when this was known to be the inevitable outcome back in April. One didn’t have to be a socialist soothsayer to see that. Of course, I had a strong feeling collapse was inevitable very soon, but under the guise of this virus? Never in a million years.
My fear now is the impending authoritarian future and biosecurity state – to ‘stay safe’ – and I might just take up base jumping. However this plays out, I don’t see any answer but a closely monitored population. I’m not sure if my values are outdated and I’m not seeing something obvious? I do hope I’m wrong.
Stop Press: Left-wing advocacy group Liberty are also opposing the lockdown as a violation of human rights and unwarranted stripping away of civil liberties. About bloody time!
Protect the NHS, Go Private?
A reader writes to say that his annual private health premium is up “by an eye-watering 53% this year”. Why? Because, he is informed by his insurance provider, “so many people are using private services due to the inaccessibility of the amazing NHS”. (Er, why’s it so “amazing” then?) Maybe this could inspire a new Government slogan: Protect the NHS, go private.
Did a South Dakota Bike Rally Really Cause 260,000 Cases?
Toby asked yesterday for a riposte to the story going round that a motorcycle rally in Sturgis, South Dakota was responsible for 260,000 cases of COVID-19. A reader in America has looked into it and explains why it’s fake news. In short: dodgy modelling again.
A new study estimates that the bike rally increased the case rate in South Dakota by between 3.6 and 3.9 per 1,000 people – or a total of more than 3,000 cases across the state as a whole.
In a press briefing, the South Dakota Department of Health cast doubt on these numbers, noting that just 124 state residents who tested positive for COVID-19 had reported attending the rally. “The results do not align with what we know of the impacts of the rally among attendees in the state of South Dakota,” state epidemiologist Joshua Clayton said when asked about the new study.
Friedson said that self-reports like those used by the state’s Health Department are unreliable because people may not report accurately. Such reports also don’t account for other people attendees may have infected. “You cannot rely on these types of reports to tell you the number of cases,” he told BuzzFeed News…
Instead of looking at contact tracing and trying to identify specific people who had the disease and passed it on to others, the San Diego researchers behind the 260,000 figure looked at the areas that sent the most people to the rally and how case trends changed after the event. In other words, one big guesstimate.
The researchers looked at county-level data on new confirmed COVID-19 cases, as well as anonymised cellphone tracking data released by the company SafeGraph. This included the recorded home location for each phone, allowing the researchers to determine how many attendees came from each county across the nation. They then compared the trajectory of cases in counties with many Sturgis attendees, such as Clark County, Nevada, and Maricopa County, Arizona, to those with previously similar case trajectories that had few residents who travelled to Sturgis. This allowed the researchers to estimate the number of new cases resulting from exposure to the coronavirus during the rally – including cases caused by secondary transmission after attendees returned home. Extrapolating to rallygoers nationwide gives the figure of more than 260,000 new coronavirus cases caused by the Sturgis gathering.
460,000 people gathered without masks and without social distancing and they linked it to one death from Covid. Meanwhile, the Trump rally is also being painted as a virus-spreading event in the entire US media, yet all the rioting has yet to produce a single case of infection.
Stop Press: A solid rebuttal has also appeared in Reason. Well worth a read.
What Sort of Person Will Become a Covid Marshal?
The Government has announced that it will recruit an army of snoopers Covid Secure Marshals to enforce the draconian new lockdown rules. The Mail has collected some of the best memes mocking the ludicrous idea that are well worth a perusal.
Postcard From LA
A reader in Los Angeles has written to tell us about the unexpected success he had in introducing friends to lockdown scepticism. Might embolden some of us in bringing the subject up with our own brainwashed pals.
I am a conservative in what is, of course, a liberal city in a very liberal state. Even more of an anomaly for being a gay conservative. Needless to say, I generally keep my opinions to myself when politics come up, even among close friends (90% of whom are liberal and think President Trump is akin to Hitler).
Monday we had friends over for a Labour Day lunch. Three families with whom we have grown close through our son’s school. When they arrived, all of them were sporting masks. I wear a mask under mostly-quiet protest, and only when absolutely necessary to go shopping or get on a plane. I immediately told them that they only needed to wear a mask if they felt it necessary for their own safety, and that I would not be wearing one. In an instant masks were off, with a visible sigh of relief from all. We had a lovely lunch, crammed elbow to elbow around the table. For nearly all of them it was their first real social event since the madness began in March.
The subject of the virus reared its head throughout the afternoon and evening, as it will. At a point in the conversation I saw my opening and, perhaps emboldened by a couple glasses of wine, decided to stay silent no more and politely challenge their views of the virus, the use of masks, and the lockdowns. Given the authority of what I do for a living (I’m an attorney at a large healthcare organisation), they began to listen. I walked them through everything – the ineffectiveness of masks, the lack of science behind social distancing, the survival statistics even among the elderly, the falling CFR, etc. At first I got a lot of “yeah, but what about,” but I kept going. And to a one, it was the first time any of them had heard anything other than the left-party line (it’s sad that it seems mostly a left-right debate, but it is). By the time I was finished there were jaws on the floor and they were asking me to email links so they could read for themselves. As one of them said, “It’s hard to change your own mind.” But I think I may have begun to change a few. When they arrived, my friends who normally greet each other with hugs stood at arms-length. When they left there were hugs all around. I went to bed happy that night. I feel that if I can help my friends out of Plato’s cave – and it appears possible – perhaps there is hope for the madness to end.
Round-Up
- ‘Viral Issue Crucial Update Sept 8th: the Science, Logic and Data Explained!‘ – Ivor Cummings with a lucid, data-driven explanation of why the pandemic is essentially over
- “AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine study put on hold due to suspected adverse reaction in participant in the UK” – The female participant began to suffer with a rare and serious spinal inflammatory disorder. Pausing was a “routine action” apparently, but who knows – this is the second time the trial has been paused due to a participant suffering with neurological symptoms
- “If Covid doesn’t kill granny, loneliness will” – In a heart-wrenching column Alice Thompson in the Times writes that only 15,415 of the 99,560 care home residents who have died this year have died with COVID-19, yet so many care home residents are being treated like prisoners and dying of loneliness
- “The Oscars’ woke McCarthyism is a step too far” – Brendan O’Neill in the Spectator takes the Oscars to task for letting identity politics interfere with art and entertainment
- “Police in northern Spain arrest surfer who refused to quarantine after positive test” – Have the Spanish been getting tips from Kim-Jong Dan?
- “Should countries aim for elimination in the COVID-19 pandemic?” – Head-to-head piece in the BMJ with the UK’s Independent SAGE lockdown fanatics arguing for zero Covid against the New Zealand Covid Plan B group who provide the sanity
- “Has the world gone mad? More bizarre Covid rules (all in the name of science)” – Oliver Smith’s latest in the Telegraph with a rundown of Covid craziness around the world. Costa Rican drivers are banned on different days of the weeks depending on their number plate. Seriously
- “COVID-19 could reverse decades of progress toward eliminating preventable child deaths, agencies warn” – As lockdowns and economic collapse severely curtail children’s health services around the world, the WHO issues a grim warning
- “The UK can’t stave off the second wave without a zero-covid strategy” – Diane Abbott comes out for the zero Covid team. A brilliant plan, if only a vaccine wasn’t months away if it ever arrives, it had a realistic chance of giving full immunity, we weren’t imposing ruinous lockdowns every time we find a bunch of false positives…
- “Enough! The Government has gone too far – people want to make their own decisions” – Michael Deacon calls time on lockdown lunacy in the Telegraph and thinks people have reached the limits of their willing compliance. I hope so – but according to YouGov 62% of Brits would support a new curfew. Project Fear on steroids has worked
- “Britain’s second lockdown will be even more terrible than the first” – With the Government today only warning of worse to come over the winter, Allister Heath sees troubled days ahead
- “Government’s ‘Moonshot’ programme aims to increase coronavirus testing to 10 million a day” – Everyone tested every day, with the 0.5% or more who get false positives each day being required to quarantine for weeks – welcome to Boris’s idea of new normal
Theme Tunes Suggested by Readers
Today, themes for the successive phases of the Government’s Covid strategy: “Panic” by The Smiths, “Panic In The Streets” by Praying Mantis, “Panic In Detroit” by David Bowie, “Panic In The World” by Be Bop Deluxe and “Panic, Sheer Bloody Panic” by Hans Zimmer.
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 will have to close again on September 14th. 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
We’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 12th to Oct 22nd). The Government has instructions on how to download an official “Mask Exempt” notice to put on your phone here. You can get a “Hidden Disability” tag from ebay here and an “exempt” card with lanyard for just £1.99 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: A video from Spain shows citizens preventing police arresting a woman for not wearing a face mask. The clip shows officers attempting to pull the older woman away from the crowd, but they manage to wrestle her away from the cops, while also removing their own masks in solidarity.
Shameless Begging Bit
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And Finally…
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I feel mildly cheered by this news. I’m sure I will end up being disappointed. However, optimists – like Toby – are the ones who keep good causes going, so thanks.
What’s the point of having members of Parliament if they don’t protect their constituents form an overbearing Government.
By now the Government must know that lockdowns don’t work.
Peru went into lockdown 16th March – 911 deaths per million (the highest death rate in the world after San Marino)
Brazil – no lockdown – 602 deaths per million
Only 8 reported Covid death in the UK the day Boris Johnson decides to become Oliver Cromwell and threatens to ban Christmas.
No doubt we should call his Covid Marshal social distancing clowns Oliver’s Army
Oliver’s Army, I like that, comes complete with it’s own tune but I doubt if our ill-educated population would get the point.
I know. It sounds to friendly.
Who do you think you are kidding, Mr Johnson?
I suggest Blockwarts
“Blockleiter from 1933 was the title of a lower Nazi Party political rank responsible for the political supervision of a neighborhood. Referred to in common parlance as Blockwart, the officials were in charge to form the link between the Nazi authorities and the general population.”
The Soviets had the same similarly translating as Block Warden.
I prefer Blockleiter.
Blockwarts reminds me of Harry Potter.
Or Boris Brownshirts
His very own Sturmabteilung.
Brown shirts, yes. Polished leather belt and boots, yes. The Luger pistol may be unwise, however.
A cattle prod will suffice.
Or a mutton muzzle.
Droogs.
How about Tools
Plain old wankers works for me.
My first and only piece of political agitation was tracing in the snow with my welly boot
‘parkie is a wanker’
(That’s Park Keeper to our younger readers, generally retired N.C.O.s who could be very fierce. I’ve long thought that the country started going downhill when they got cancelled in the 1980s).
Nah. Call them what they are: The Stasi
treat them as the Stasi, make them Pariahs, spurn them and shame them, these people will be on a pittance but will behave like they run the place, if they were to be given cattle prods they would no doubt use them on some old lady.These people will undoubtedly be local so as a community blank them, they are there to monitor your behaviour on behalf of this Government and to correct errant behaviour for that they must accept that they cannot be seen as part of the community and must expect to be reviled by the community.
Retired EHOs. Says it all. Maybe paid a pittance but wil be drawing a nice pension too.
They are practicing independence of thought training en masse
Kapos who were the jews used by gestapo to do the dirty work in the camps.
Along with Ferguson’s New Model Army?
Hello,
I believe the reason why everyone is abiding by the lockdown rules. Is common sense, but as Einstein said “common sense is the accumulation of prejudices by the age of 18. What he meant was that common sense will get you so far but science will get you further. As you point out lockdown Peru as a much higher death rate than non lockdown Brazil.This can be reflected every where from lockdown Scotland to non lockdown Sweden lockdown as failed to save lives. Like everyone else I’ve had no colds sore throat,flu even headaches which I suffered at least once a week of all gone away. As lockdown suppressed my immunity due to less bugs being around?
I don’t know, all I do know is that using common sense it’s been easier for governments to lockdown than take the brave decision to not lockdown.
Viral Issue Crucial Update Sept 8th: the Science, Logic and Data Explained!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8UvFhIFzaac
Ivor Cummins
97.7K subscribers
All the facts you need to know on why the Covid has performed the same as flu regarding the rise and fall in infections.
This is brilliant. Watch. His lovely Irish accent makes him all the more plausible
The fact that he’s a good solid scientist makes him plausible!
Everything Ivor produces is worth looking at. Strongly recommended.
So, in other words, the initial assumptions were knowingly chosen to produce the desired result. Confirmation bias at its finest.
Not much, i don’t think. The public has been trained for decades to forget all about disobedience towards the government. Seems to me that people these days will still obey authorities even if they know it’s wrong to do so. That is, those that bother thinking about it. A lot of people simply don’t care. “This is what the BBC says, that must be the truth. Because, after all, the BBC is a truly unbiased news source. Why would the government do me harm?”
Loads of people tell me they have stopped watching the news and stress the BBC in particular. Reasons vary from it’s boring, it’s depressing but some do say it’s full of lies and propaganda.
I stopped watching years ago and now have completely stopped looking at the MSM – it was clear that they weren’t reporting facts but rather what they wanted you to see and think.
I stopped watching TV in general for good about 15 years ago, just watching a bit here and there, CH4 news at 7:00pm most days. I stopped with MSM totally in April. I will NEVER go back to any of it. It’s total poison.
CH4 news at 7 is worse than BBC – and that is saying something!! You cannot say you have stopped with MSM if you watch this.
CH4 news was getting to be more and more intolerable for a long time. It was my only concession to MSM. However I found it slightly less egregious than the BBC. I used to listen to radio 4 quite a bit too just to see what the state’s talking point was for the day.
The only subscription I’ve kept is the Spectator. I’m glad to be rid of the Times, have not read the Guardian for years now and ditto the BBC websites.
I’ve retreated to YouTube and podcasts such as Triggernometry and New Culture Forum as well as reading.
CH4 is a public-owned – i.e. government – broadcaster.
basically BBC without the licence feea s it must be self-financing:
https://www.channel4.com/corporate/about-4/who-we-are/what-is-channel-4
I stopped watching/listening to the BBC and Channel 4 News in April as I could no longer stomach the over-hyped message they were pushing.
I did the same, no regrets.
I am hearing from LOADS of “normies” that they have stopped watching particularly the BBC but also stopped listening to the radio, all the channels really, since about April. It’s very noticeable.
I would do the same, but what keeps me sane (I hope!) is the old films on Talking Pictures TV and a few other channels. Basically, the TV licence helps me to live in the non-PC past for part of the time.
And I do watch University Challenge (now with wok-i-fied questions – which are the only ones the teams generally pass on!) and the old TOTP re-runs.
Me too. I ditched my TV licence and feel so much better for it. I only really watch YouTube and other streaming platforms. I don’t subscribe to anything because I’m really not that interested but it is amazing how many good films and programmes, as well as excellent individual content is available free on sites such as YouTube, compared to most of the dross on mainstream tv. And I’ve discovered talkRADIO too, this year.
I would love to ditch my TV licence but I do like to watch county cricket – which I do via live streams direct from the grounds, not via Sky. And any live stream I believe needs a TV licence, even though it’s coming over the internet. Ridiculous.
The Yesterday channel and Talking Pictures are my main ones now. I think they both have links with the hated BBC but I’ll live with that compromise. As for radio, I listen to some BBC music programmes but dive for the off button when a news bulletin is approaching.
Insufferable ‘Today’ in particular. Michal Hussein, Nick Robinson etc all with their questions loaded with piousness about the right way to behave : face nappies, social distancing and all that shit….
Let’s commission an independent poll that shows that a majority of the population are against more measures and want to return to normal life.
I don’t trust the poll showing 62% of Brits in favour of curfew. I don’t believe it for a minute.
I’ll happily contribute to an independent survey that asks the questions in the right way.
e.g. are you tired of lockdown measures, do you enjoy wearing a masks, would you like to see an immediate return to normality, should the government have the power to ruin one life to try (and possibly fail) to save another.
Proper questions.
Someone referred to the yougov polling site here yesterday, so I went to have a look and vote in some polls. The questions were in fact pretty neutral (although there were a couple of instances where there wasn’t an option that reflected exactly what I think). After you vote, you get to see the current results. They were depressing, to say the least. In every case, the current balance was _overwhelmingly_ the opposite of my answer.
Do you have a link?
https://yougov.co.uk/
If you can just pop up to their site and vote then that rather invalidates the result. Experts like ukpollingreport has always been scathing of polls based on self-selecting respondents. Proper polls work by inviting specific respondents and weighting according to socio-economic groupings, although even that can be suspect in instances where the groupings don’t really make sense to the question (why would, say, your political leanings shape your views on asparagus?). But I imagine what’s happening here is that knowledge of the poll is being spread through particular channels (say, through Twitter) and that is massively biasing the sample.
i completed it .. no log ins or anything. simple for the authorities 77th brigade or whatever they are called to complete manually or use a bot to make positive votes.
I always refer to the 77th as the SS and I presume the initial letters are the reason the moniker was chosen.
I was send a survey by YouGov asking questions like did I approve of the new measures, curfews and so on and my view of the Government.I answered no and that the Government was doing a very bad job to each question.
I answered similar questions yesterday. As I say, depressingly the results I was then shown were along the lines of 72% strongly in favour and similar proportions who wanted more and stricter regulations.
If the government really pays attention to these things, we’re doomed, forever.
https://www.trustpilot.com/review/www.bbc.co.uk
7000+ reviews, 93% negative. Pile on, folks!
Thanks for link, just left a one star review
Over 8,500 people are with us and oppose the Government’s measures enough to support this Judicial Review of the lockdown and related regulations:
https://www.crowdjustice.com/case/lockdownlegalchallenge/
The Appeal hearing is due in less than 2 weeks. At the very least, the Government will have to start answering some difficult questions. So – to answer the question – this is something we can do.
I donated the 41 quid needed to get them to 300k yesterday.
Dinner was very awkward last night as for some reason my family had the Ministry of Truth on over dinner! Thankfully they switched off after 10 mins but even that left me queasy for a few hours. Disgusting promotion of the Clown Show sermon in that uniquely condescending “do not question this plebs” BBC tone I’d forgotten about.
There needs to be a website to “fact-check” the BBC but you’d never be able keep up with it.
This used to do exactly that, but as you say, there was almost too much to keep up with.
https://biasedbbc.org/
https://brandnewtube.com/watch/dr-vernon-coleman-latest-september-9th-2020-this-fraud-is-now-blindingly-obvious_R7CB3DDGxFK4eHC.html
Good stuff from the Old Man In A Chair but he won’t get much reach from that site, sadly.
More so than YouTube who banned his videos though.
He’s probably done enough to have a good base of followers who can grow from any platform.
https://brandnewtube.com/watch/this-fraud-is-now-blindingly-obvious_17uG1jJdsRcitiZ.html . Link to video published by Dr Coleman. Link posted above is a copy of video.
We can only go back to normal when we have Zero Government.
we could achieve zero government if we changed the law to say if a party can’t get more than 50% of the people to vote for them they can’t govern. If no party achieves this then we have no government for five years until the next vote and so on.
Belgium had no government for years, a coalition was formed in March and things have not worked out at all well for the citizens since.
We’ve had a few Tory/Lib coalitions and they’ve not worked out well either!
Wot Strange Days said
I’ve been saying the same for a long time. Our system hasn’t been fit for purpose for nearly 30 years now.
We in Northern Ireland had no government for 2 years until recently.
All because civil servants and their friends filled their boots on an open ended energy scheme which cost taxpayers tens of millions more than it should have. Oh, and the enquiry, which absolved everyone of nay wrong doing or responsibility, cost £13m too.
Now we have the same clowns threatening further lockdowns today. So keep an eye on the announcement here at around 2pm. They are talking tough again. We’ve a worse case per 100,000 rate than the UK as a whole.
My NHS ward here (servicing some 250,000) or there abouts, has had zero deaths since end of May if I remember correctly. Maybe less than 5 hospital admissions over that time also. 20 people approx have died in total.
Speaking to my friend last night brought it all home to me. He has a sister with a rare physiological condition, another diabetic, a brother diabetic and epileptic, a father with bowel cancer in remission. They’ve all been scared to death by this and he hasn’t seen them, except at a distance from the garden, in 6 months. His siblings barely leave the house, his sister hardly leaves her room.
He is on my side and he is fully on board with the kind of analysis Ivor Cummings had in his latest video. Yet, he is struggling to have the courage to simply change the family mindset right now, understandably so. I am so angry they’ve done this to people.
A man in a white coat would need to accompany him to deliver the message that’s its OK to live your life. They are simply so far gone into isolation.
Love it!
From ONS:
In Week 35, the number of deaths registered was 9.6% above the five-year average (791 deaths higher); this is the third consecutive week that weekly deaths have been above the five-year average, however, the rise was not driven by the coronavirus (COVID-19).
The number of deaths in hospitals was below the five-year average in Week 35, while the number of deaths in private homes, care homes and other locations was above the five-year average.
Hey maybe ask those next logical follow-up questions intrepid reporters.
The entirety of the fiction is unraveling in the eyes of the public hence the even more stringent measures. Right now there is a low simmer.
No such “novel virus” exists. There were novel policies put into place that killed tens of thousands of people, and are killing tens of thousands more.
We need calls for investigations into what actually happened in March-April as well as arrests and trials for subsequent policies enacted by government officials.
All of the academics and scientists who perpetuated this pandemonium to the benefit of their professional lives need to be on the stand testifying. These careerist cowards will turn on one another in a heartbeat and through this process more details of these crimes will emerge.
Follow the money.
Ferguson first in the dock, obviously.
Pretty hard for deaths in hospitals to be higher than the 5 year average if the NHS is partially shut down.
They’ve removed care pathways to such an extent they simply die in their care homes. Rather than an attempt being made to offer treatment at hospital.
A Nuremberg Trial for the early 21st Century.
Talking to a Middle England neighbour yesterday as she waited to go for a family get together at a nearby gastropub. We sniggered about it already being against current advice but that next week 10 people out together would be Illegal and cost them £1,000 rising to £32,000 if they challenged the fine.
She told me of a similar event oop north some weeks ago. All of the party had signed into Track’n’Trace, later her host told her that the restaurant had been shut down because some staff had the Covid at the time.
She is still awaiting contact from Track’n’Trace three weeks later.
The definition of theatre
I am always looking for numbers based facts to try and de-program the Converted.
One of my favourites;
ME: How many people do you think died in UK yesterday?
Erm..dunno.
ME: It was about 1600
That sounds about right.
ME: Yes, that was the total amount of deaths from all causes. How many people do you think died from Covid in UK yesterday?
Erm….dunno, about athousand?
ME: 5
Oh….but…but, what about Granny.
I can talk to them about annual deaths being similar to previous years but that does not sink in. Talking about the likely large number of false positive (infectious) people along with defining what a Case is raises no eyebrows either. Therefore I have been trying to find evidence based simple statistics which I can quote which members of the Cult may understand. King Carl has suggested that the most reliable statistic amongst the whole gamut of, died with or of, unknown actual number of real cases, IFR, CFR, modelling results etcetera is the NHS admissions data. So today, because my business is destroyed and I have nothing else to do, I took a look at the NHS data. (Spreadsheets are my go to cure for boredom so I think I must be a nerd!)
The NHS definition of a Covid patient seems to be accurate;
https://www.england.nhs.uk/statistics/statistical-work-areas/covid-19-hospital-activity/
(This data is from 9-8-2020 and I await their update, but I think its still relevant now)
From the their spreadsheet I found some interesting numbers to attack the Cultists with;
1/ There are 2,223 in ventilator equipped beds of which 56 are occupied by the Covid confirmed, or 2.5%. So there are 2,167 poor buggers in hospital who cannot breathe for other reasons.
2/ There are 94,840 beds occupied of which 599 are Covid patients, or 0.6%. So there are 94,241 people who are well sick from other things and they do not even have the honour of having Covid.
3/ 60 patients with confirmed Covid were admitted on that day and 66 were discharged? Seems like the survival rate is pretty good.
4/ 60,367 staff were absent from work due to sickness or self isolation (or, not mentioned, laziness).
If I am still bored tomorrow, I could look at the rest of the data and make some really funky charts but then I will probably not bother because the Cultist’s beliefs are much stronger than any stupid meaningless graphs.
I just keep it to your second question when they start off a chat with >
“Isn’t the Covid terrible…?”
‘How man people do you think died of the Covid yesterday?’
“Dunno 20 ? 50 maybe ?”
‘5’
(Pregnant pause while this sinks in).
“Where d’you get that from ?”
‘The governments own figures, how many people do you think got run over by a truck yesterday ?’.
And away you go in whatever direction they want to take the conversation.
Hopefully it will get as far as ‘apart from wrecking the economy and millions of lives do you think lockdown is is worth having Democracy suspended and your ancient freedom of Free Assembly made illegal ?’
Great Work – I will print that off!
Look forward to the funky charts – Keep going!
The trouble is Covid belief has become the new world religion, you must fear the Covid devil and obey the big Government that is our only hope. Then just like boys being whipped having been caught paying football on a Sunday in Oliver Cromwell’s time, any Covid doubters must be whipped into line.
Statistics, logic and rational thought are all just tricks of the Covid devil and must be shunned, just bow down and accept Covid belief. I am afraid it looks more and more to me like Covid belief has become a cult religion like the Branch Davidian sect.
One day it will be seen as a shiboleth.
And where is that sect now?
There was some newspaper article where the underline thread suggests this is almost becoming a belief system. The idea was sceptics were stepping out of a shared reality, and it was better for society not to seek the truth but to participate in a shared truth even if it is wrong.
Obviously, not aware of the meaning of truth.
That phrase “shared reality” is graunspeak I think.
A group of people who all take LSD can have a shared reality that is different from everybody else’s shared reality. MSM propaganda is LSD for everybody, bending their old reality into a mind-bending new one.
We can share a sunset, or a piece of music – but what constitutes ‘sharing’. For me it is relational and has an intimacy that targets, checkboxes and correctness cane NEVER equate to or represent.
Reality as experience is unique to each – and yet we are communicating now – and largely share agreements on the core nature of our model of reality – else we could not communicate – or hardly.
Most of us live in a model of reality that is a mental realm with emotional reactive reinforcement.
Therefore not surprising that some of us think they can control reality by narrative control, or are transhumanly seeking to replace the living context of our experience with systemic controls.
LSD strips away much of the filtering of the mind so as in effect to regress consciousness – which is at the same time the popping of the bubble of what had seemed solid, normal and adapted to.
However, when the effects wear off, the filtering of the mind restores the habits of perception-response.
Group bubbles can be positive, but the nature real relationships is bringing our presence to them, not sacrificing who we are so as to fit what we think or fear the group or other demands or expects us to be.
Masking is not new!
Well If it cant be shared its a private reality. Lockstepping can reinforce private agenda as a groupthink bubble but no matter how many invest in it, it only has the reality given it.
Not a few of our problems are the result of weaponising and marketing insights such that what could have served a human benefit are MASKED in as new forms of virtue that become corporate bollockspeak because there is no relational honesty – and so something that belongs to us – such as shared human values – are ‘cancelled’ by presuming to speak for and from ‘shared reality’ – when groupthink is NOTHING of the sort – but is centrally controlled joining in fear, seeking false unity in identifying against the feared.
The use of words can be extremely clever in weaving and framing truth into lies and lies into truths.
I posted this link once but I’ll do so again as it begins to address the ‘framing’ of emotional reaction that is underneath the manipulations that are operating.
https://off-guardian.org/2020/09/08/covid-19-scamdemic-part-2/
Jonestown-Johnsontown.
Thank you. I will keep those stats for my next letter to my sluggish MP.
Thanks BobT, and sorry to hear about your business
It amazes me that they still make this data publicly available.
It amazes me even more that there is not one MSM journalist using it.
…… what’s more, of the 60 people admitted to hospital 75% of them were already in hospital when they tested positive! These hospital admissions are not people walking down the street who caught the thing, they’re mainly hospital inpatients or people transferred from care homes.
Why are they still using ventilators?
They aren’t very much. Don’t forget most of these people who are very ill are not often very ill with Covid, it’s a complicating factor to their primary illness, heart disease, kidney/liver failure, run down by a bus failure, so they may be on a ventilator for reasons completely divorced from their coronavirus positive test.
What can we do? Something has to happen that can change the minds of more people. I would suspect public opinion in the UK is the same as it is in all of the Anglophone world. There is overall among the English language world very widespread support for more and stricter lockdowns. As an example, here is the loony land of California where every fortnight the governor scraps one reopening plan only to issue and even more inane plan than before, nearly 70% of the public supports the imposition of stricter shelter in place rules. And this as the epidemic has been coming down since the end of July. That is an incredibly high number. Politicians read this polling and it absolutely gives them cover to enact every brain fart that comes into their heads over the weekend. Unfortunately, critical thinking is not a capability of the huge percentages of the masses, as we now know. They will only change their views when celebrities of various kinds tell them it is ok to do so. So, I suggest figuring out a way to pressure Tom Hanks or Beyonce into adopting the skeptical position. One idea is to start a go fund me campaign to raise a few million and hire them to be the official spokespeople for this website.
Perhaps a few episodes of Eastenders in the Time of Covid might put a few people off the whole idea.
There will be no covid in East Enders, they need to keep their flagship televised SOMA nice and comforting for the sheeple. Casualty on the other hand will be their vehicle for more COVID fear porn on steroids and they will use it to re-enforce their insane evil narrative.
So what to do about it ?
As a young man in London I had numerous and varied social circles some of which overlapped. While not particularly bolshie, I and many of my friends would routinely ignore rules, regulations or even laws that we considered inconvenient.
Nothing serious, bunking into the open air lido for a bit of skinny dipping after the pub on a summer evening, taking part in pub lockins (oh the irony), attending “Gentlemens Evenings” which were sometimes busted by the fuzz, that sort of thing.
We would all have taken a very dim view of the governments actions over the past six months and would certainly have circumvented their rules whenever necessary.
This ‘Rule of 6’ would have been the last straw that might very well have turned us into outright rebels.
Those among us who were good at that sort of thing could very easily arrange for five groups of six each to enter the local park by different entrances before coalescing (sp?) at the Bandstand to challenge The Covid Marshall
“What you going to do about it ?”
Outside Woolworths at a busy road interchange would have been more visible to the public as would the Town Hall and Library.
On leaving London I chose to be more solitary so no longer have the social resources to do such things, but hey, maybe someone else will and I could tag along.
Boris’s mass COVID testing moonshot ‘to cost £100BILLION’: PM’s plan to get life back to normal is forecast to cost almost as much as entire NHS budget, and experts warn it may not even be possible
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8715817/PM-plans-spend-entire-NHS-budget-bid-test-Briton-week.html
I always divide these big numbers by the population and 100Billion is about GBP1,500 per man woman and child. Or, about 6,000 per average family. These people really are in cloud cukoo land.
Getting a good kicking from the commenters. I like spotting the fakes in the worst voted comments ever since I met a perfectly sound chap who told me he liked to put lefty comments just to see how many red ticks he could get.
Favourite today from Dr Poopenscheister
“All non Covid NHS services should be shut down, we live in extraordinary times, Covid should have priority”.
Shyster. Great word.
Not my word, his !
See comments below it
Who would want to be a Covid Safety Enforcement Marshall ?
I nominate disgruntled Traffic Wardens
I nominate Dawn Butler.
I am afraid our country is full of ‘little hitlers’ who will be queuing up to take on this role, there are some who will be keen to go back to a puritan, Calvinistic, Oliver Cromwell world of austerity misery, no pleasure and witch hunts.
No one likes a dobber.
I suggest we all apply and then go round in covid marshal uniforms informing people of the actual truth 😁
Brilliant idea! Trouble is we wouldn’t pass the qualifying psychopath test.
I can see now how this will play out in the MSM in order to achieve compliance. A Marshall will be physically assaulted somewhere, sympathetic articles ensue from all quarters, the angle taken is that a nasty selfish denier is the perpetrator. The BBC have probably written a template article already.
maybe they’ll slip up again and broadcast it before it happens
nice
Very good.
The traffic wardens will be out of work, once all the cars are banned. So makes sense to give them a useless job, where we can all mock them.
Herr Hancock inspecting the latest batch Covid Safety Enforcement Marshalls
Obviously I disagree with the marshalls. But there are huge numbers of unemployed people, many of them blue collar workers for whom Universal Credit means a life of poverty for them and their families.
I’m not even going to engage with them but I do not criticise their choice on this basis.
Horrific, family thrown off a plane in Canada over their toddlers not wearing masks. Surely it is child abuse to put a mask on a little child?
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-54096061
It’s just madness. What has happened to common sense? How is it worldwide people like us can see the blatant stupidity of these measures and yet parliamentarians and law makers have got their fingers in their ears not listening but conjuring up their next bloody stunt to make people’s lives even more miserable. And how can businesses not question these stupid, stupid rules and use their own judgement in matters such as in this story.
So these fiends require masks on three-year-olds. And on screaming babies.
And the other passengers supported this.
How many other little tots were being choked and terrorised on this devils’ flight from hell to hell?
No Annie, not the screaming baby, just the three year old.
Quote:
He [the passenger] says the three-year-old did put on a mask, after some fussing.
“But my younger one had a very difficult time, she was basically hysterical.”
Mr Choudhry says she was so upset she vomited.
He says WestJet was aggressive, and told them that because his youngest daughter was not wearing a mask, and was too upset to wear a mask, the whole family would have to leave.
He says they told them that if they did not leave, they could be arrested, charged and receive prison time.
Counter quote “the airline said the issue was not with the infant who is below the age required to wear a mask”
This is going to get messy !♤
Screeming Babies and collaborators and shaved women. I know a song about that, I know you won’t like it. It’s a horrible tune.
And Then airline industry is worried about falling passenger numbers, surely by now the airline industry as a whole should have come up with a policy so the position is clear to all. It is as though facemasks have become a symbol that you conform, like the costumes in A Handmaids Tale.
That’s exactly what they are, except for the voodoo fanatics who believe that they confer personal immunity on the wearer.
I don’t know why they don’t let passengers use the emergency masks if they want to be muzzled to feel ‘safe’ and let every body else who doesn’t give a crap fly face naked. Surely it couldn’t be that difficult to modify a plane.
Sadly I think you are right Steve. And if they were told to wear undies on their head I fear they would do it. And tell me why your Hancock and our Dan Andrews are the most gormless looking pair of blokes I have seen.
Because they probably both got bullied at school for being knobs/saps/dorks.
And then decided to punish THE WORLD. Will I ever see beautiful England again. Can’t even fly to another state at the moment.
Sorry to break it too you but in the last thirty years, since the last true PM of this country Mrs Thatcher they’ve done everything to destroy England and Britain. We’re at the point now where to even say you’re English or British is deemed racist. In every town across this once green and pleasant land they’ve they’ve destroyed everything they can and this Virus bullshit is the Last Night of the Proms as far as Britain and England go. Hey ho Rule Britannia.
Such a shame, Biker. My parents were £10 poms and went through WW2. They only managed to go back once in 2010. I think it was a very strange experience for them. I am so proud of them and my English heritage. What they went through in the war, half starved as kids, but it made them resilient and tough, and we were brought up with a great work ethic and honest values. They don’t understand any of what is going on at the moment, addicted to the crap that masquerades as news and terrified out of their wits. All our lovely old darlings who suffered so much even after the war with rationing continuing etc and they are left bewildered and many alone to die. It’s a damn disgrace.
My Aus relatives also started as £10 Poms, they never did make it back but their eldest daughter stayed with us in London for 6 months 1970, followed one by one by 4 younger siblings.
One of their offspring caught up with me a few years ago. That young man made the mistake of asking me “do all whiskies taste the same, like Bourbon ?”
Don’t suppose any of us will be visiting for a while to come yet, but at least they are in NSW and not Victoria that heart of lockdown darkness.
Yes, kareno lots of young Aussies like their bourbon😆 (was) so much easier and cheaper to travel in the 2000’s as well. Don’t think it will be once this is over somehow. The media seem to be getting a lot more critical of the lockdowns even in the last 24 hours. The PM rang the Qld premier to request compassion for some poor lass who was too late to see her dying dad (because of all the red tape). Not allowed to go to funeral only to see his body on her own all rugged up in PPE. The premier accused the PM of bullying her.
Attila the Hen.
I posted last week that WestJet were mandating masks for children over 2 – it is nothing short of child abuse.
It really is child abuse. I cannot imagine strapping a mask on a 3 year old who is screaming and trying to tear it off. Just thinking about doing that makes me feel sick.
Boycott them. Put them out of business. I hope their employees sue them.
This is actually a good news story.
Reading the piece to the end, the flight was abandoned because the attitude of the passengers, supportive of the family and hostile to the crew and police, made the crew feel that it was unsafe to continue.
Phew. at least the sheeple didn’t clap and cheers like they did on the easy jet flight full of Brainwashed psychotic Britts.
This isn’t the first of these. There was another similar incident in the US a month or so ago. Can’t find the link, but it may have the same airline.
so what happens when everyone on the plane is wearing a mask and then there is an emergency and the oxygen masks are deployed. Are you allowed to remove your useless covid mask.? is that an offence? do you have to wear both masks? or will they not deploy the oxygen masks on the basis that the covid masks are obviously so brilliant they will save you from everything
It’s getting driven and pushed through by this bunch:
https://wttc.org/COVID-19/Safe-Travels-Global-Protocols-Stamp
They are WEF and UN compromised when your dad the bios of their CEO, and ambassadors.
On their letter to Governments they list some companies who supposedly signed it.
I’m currently writing to some of the signatories asking them if they are willing participants in this suicide note of the travel and tourism industry or ignorant dupes.
https://wttc.org/COVID-19/Government-Hub/Global-coordination-to-save-the-sector
Look at the list.
Yikes! All those “New Normals” .
Oh Canada!
Government Policy remains completely wrong, the bold thing to do would be take every measure to increase Herd Immunity among fit and healthy young people by encouraging them to mix and mingle as much possible, bring back live music, raves, mosh pits.
Promote promiscuous hedonistic lifestyle choices. Open all sporting activity asap especially those with close body contact.
Not much chance of the vulnerable getting involved in any of the above but that behaviour will bring them (me) protection in the future.
Instead the Boris’n’Dom show persist in what can only be called Appeasement in the face of this rapidly declining threat.
https://www.rt.com/op-ed/500295-covid-rules-new-uk-six-people/
RT-shock,horror,reds-under-the-beds -provides some welcome sanity.
And , despite not being a religious person, I suspect that St John The Divine nailed it:
“This calls for wisdom: Let the one who has understanding calculate the number of the beast, because it is the number of a person. Its number is 666.”
He had a terrifying vision and saw Hancock.
Out of interest anyone aware of what’s going on in Russia re:Corona now?? We obviously got a rush of patronising news when they announced their (probably placebo) vaccine but nothing since as far as I have seen… Are they, as a nation presumably more used to restrictions and surveillance (tho fuck knows what to believe anymore) bothering with restrictions on life still or has their vaccine freed them as we’re all promised one will?
From the little I’ve read, they seem to be more relaxed about the terror, being ,as you rightly say, accustomed to purges, surveillance ,propaganda and gulags etc. (The latter might be on Hancock’s To-Do list)
https://www.rt.com/russia/500285-covid19-vaccine-third-phase-trial/
https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2020/09/08/leading-scientists-question-highly-improbable-russian-vaccine-results-published-in-lancet-a71384
Links from either side of the ideological divide about Russia’s vaccine trials; all I could find.
I don’t know about Russia but cases where people are hospitalised are rising in Hungary. I believe they’ve had a pretty strict lockdown and masks.
A young Saudi woman (no mask, no veil) was telling me that most of her family at home had caught the Covid (harsh lockdown, intergenerational family in an apartment) but were all fully recovered.
I described the mistreatment of Piers Corbyn by the stasi.
‘But that is the way of the police…’
“It might be in your country not it’s not what we’re used to”.
‘Yes it is a shame for you’.
Great article Wendyk. I feel the need to bombard all the news services with these stories. I bet they would never make it through the censorship boffins.
And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name.
” As I looked, there was a pale horse, and its rider’s name was Death. Hades followed along behind him. They were given authority over a quarter of the earth, to kill with the sword, and with famine, and with death”
The Hancock /Ferguson handbook in biblical writ.
The people quarantined on the Diamond Princess cruise ship in Japan were picked up from an airport by coaches from a company called “Horseman” coaches. I think they were having little in joke back then with us…There were four coaches.
Regarding this link: https://www.who.int/news-room/detail/09-09-2020-covid-19-could-reverse-decades-of-progress-toward-eliminating-preventable-child-deaths-agencies-warn
Let’s just make absolutely clear for the cheap seats at the back: THIS IS DUE TO LOCKDOWNS NOT COVID-19
Jesus wept.
Indeed, it is the policies that have caused the problems worldwide, not a virus. And yet mainstream media constantly refer to ‘covid’s caused this, or covid’s done that’ etc. Drives me insane. As silly as saying a car caused a speeding accident. So why then isn’t the car sent to gaol for killing people. I do jest, sorry. I do feel so much better when I have had my daily news from LS and reading all your comments.
I have been trying to find the graph Whitty used which apparently showed the percentage of age groups testing positive had increased. No luck so far, any help would be appreciated.
Try the weekly report from the PHE, always on a thursday evening. https://www.gov.uk/government/news/weekly-covid-19-surveillance-report-published
Posted this yesterday, but the guy they had on LBC around teatime yesterday said that the PCR testing was targeted towards known contacts of the already infected. That means that to add to the fallibility of the tests themselves we are seeing the results of a highly biased sample each day.
Does anyone else have anything on this?
The ONS statistics tomorrow will be interesting.
Creates a self perpetuating cycle of cases.
It’s a key point to make. Because the overall blanket policy approach is based on cases per 100,000. Which includes you.
So because a small related group have infected each other, they then use this to justify locking the full local population down.
It’s like a bar not observing opening hours leading to all bars in the city being closed to prevent it happening again.
Never mind these people are being screened using unfit PCR tests anyway, and that they are almost exclusively not going to be ill enough for hospital
Gosh, it must be a blue moon tonight, GMB (without Piers Morgan today) saying that the rules are so complicated people “will” (not going as far as “should”) just do what they think is right to protect themselves and others. Yes, GMB, it’s called exercising individual discretion, what we adults should be doing all the time.
By the way, UK Column news has been saying for a while, repeated yesterday, that the rules are deliberately complicated to confuse people. Mass confusion increases mass fear. It’s part of the psych-op. If true, surely such deliberate action is the crime of treason.
Solzhenitsyn described the technique, gulag prisoners forced to move piles of rocks with their bare hands across the parade ground for no apparent reason.
Then made to carry them back again.
Morgan was predictably cheering the latest draconian news in a tweet last night but surprisingly his followers were in disagreement with him. I’d say 9 in 10 of the 100 or so replies I read gave him a kicking.
Morgan has backed the wrong horse in all this. He’s an idiot.
I really hoping that others at ITV have smelt blood in the water!
I am imagining a high viz vest with ‘I AM A DICKHEAD’ written in bold letters on the back.
Handcuffs, muzzle, prison.
The only way out of this is for mass civil disobedience to make it impossible to police.
Liberty has a petition against the Coronavirus Act
https://liberty.e-activist.com/page/63681/petition/1?ea.tracking.id=Website
This is the number of positive tests as a percentage of overall test. Flat line….
https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus-data-explorer?zoomToSelection=true&year=latest&time=2020-04-08..2020-09-03&country=~GBR®ion=World&positiveTestRate=true&interval=smoothed&hideControls=true&smoothing=7&pickerMetric=location&pickerSort=asc
I’ve finally written my letter to my MP, inspired by the first part of today’s summary – thanks Toby!
Here it is, in case anyone wants to cut, paste and adapt:
Dear Mrs Atherton MP,
Sir Charles Walker, the Vice Chairman of the influential Conservative 1922 committee of MPs, has recently slammed the new restrictions on social gatherings saying he would vote to “curtail” the Government’s powers.
I quote from the Telegraph:
The changes will impose a legal limit on gatherings in private homes, parks, pubs and restaurants and will come into force in England on Monday.
Sir Charles argued that ministers needed to come to the Commons and “win the argument” on policies, admitting he was “increasingly uncomfortable” about the way the Government was running.
He said: “I am incredibly exercised about the continued use by the Government of powers that we granted it six months ago admittedly, to basically restrict people’s civil liberties without any recourse back to Parliament.
“Now these powers are due to be reviewed at the end of September, or the beginning of October, and hopefully there will be another vote on them.
“And I will be voting – if given the chance to vote in this rather strange Parliament – to curtail the Government’s powers in his area.”
Could you please tell me whether or not you agree with Sir Charles? If you disagree, could you please tell me why?
I’ve contacted you before to congratulate you on your stance opposing the 5-mile restriction that continued in Wales long after the English restrictions had ceased. My family and I are currently politically homeless, aghast at the way the hysteria caused by this pandemic has been mismanaged and indeed stoked by all parties. We are of the firm belief that now, with the Covid-19 death rate and hospitalisation rate all but vanished in the UK, and the threat of a second wave vanquished, we need to “Keep Calm and Carry On” in order to get the UK back on its feet, not impose more draconian restrictions. This country needs MPs with a strength of character, such as Sir Charles and yourself, to hold the Government to account and help steer the UK away from the rocks.
Yours sincerely …
So it is confirmed now that we will be using “Digital Immunity Passports.”
“People will be given digital immunity passports that would allow those who test negative to take part in more normal activities.”
https://news.sky.com/story/coronavirus-scientists-doubtful-as-leaked-government-document-reveals-plans-for-10-million-tests-by-next-year-12067722
Another ‘conspiracy theory’ proved correct. The information is all out there .The ultimate aim is you have a tattoo embedded in your skin with all your vaccine history and it can be scanned so you can partake of ‘normal life’.This has to be the aim because testing of itself doesn’t prove anything.I could be infected after I took my test so unless you are continually tested throughout the day it wouldn’t even work on its own terms.
they want a micro chip in you
Well said, KH and can you clone one for us down here at the same time. Someone who actually has the courage of their convictions. Sadly, Tony Abbott was the only good one after John Howard, and he is pilloried by the media as a misogynist, and a homophobe. 3 daughters, adores his gay sister and his chief of staff was Peta Credlin who anchors a Sky current affairs program. The most tolerant and upstanding member of my community.
And he is doing it at no cost to the taxpayer from either UK or Australia. Handles himself very well in bushfire and surf lifesaving scenarios also.
Absolutely.
Seems to me they have reached the breaking point – Telegraph and Mail seem to have gone largely sceptical and comments are mostly absolutely fuming.
Think penny is now dropping that unless the fight back starts we are into the world of health passports and mandatory vaccination
Walked bare faced into Petrol station yesterday – guy politely said this is retail setting so please can you wear mask – said o am exempt and he was fine. Then said we have more and more people who just can’t be bothered – I hope this is spreading !
Sadly I think he is a believer – was masked up and when I said I was sympathetic to the non maskers and that that masks did more harm than good you could sense the fury !
Agreed kh; no opposition worth its salt up here, although there are a few-very few-hopeful signs.
Nigel Farage, though bloody useless on Covid so far, yesterday seemed to be turning against the government (perhaps testing the water)? – see first 5 mins, particularly from 4 mins in. ‘We cannot close the whole country down…’
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6u2Ci9pOpcs
This could really help. The Tories fear Farage more than anyone. If he becomes a full lockdown sceptic, then the currently AWOL invisible Tory MPs will have to move to his position if they don’t want their party to dramatically shed support.
Perhaps worth emailing Farage and the Brexit Party (and probably more responsive than most MPs) with your scepticism and facts. Let’s reel him in.
anyone got his contact details???
Finally, a political party is prepared to speak out.
https://sdp.org.uk/sdptalk/coronapolitics-defending-the-unmeasurable/
Was hoping they would finally come out as sceptics
Given that Labour is even more strongly lockdown than the Tories, it would give the SDP an clear identity.
Be prepared kh; the 2020 Environmental Health bods are on their way.
Oh no WendyK, don’t give the powers that be any ideas or we will all be having to wear one😆
Just as I suspected kh.
It’s a Science. And you can get a degree in just a couple of weeks.
this is the marshall’s outfit – for safety in all circumstances.. and because they will be dickheads
Fantastic mjr!
“the rules are simple to understand”. Reading the updated guidance (guidance, not law) that Toby linked to to try and work out whether the heritage walk I have booked on next week is allowed. Meetings of 30 are still allowed in churches and community groups. But it says nothing about a group of people outside say on a ramble or in my case wandering around the town looking at historic buildings. I suspect it is within the law, but rather think the organiser will pull the event as anybody who questions us will be hard to convince.
And what really is this project Moonshot the BBC have as lead story today?
If it’s a project to banish Matt Hancock to the moon then I’m all for it.
Sorry – where are the rules linked? I can’t find them and I want to show a friend who is wondering whether he has to cancel a ‘community group’ event next week (and I want to read them myself)
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/covid-19-guidance-for-the-safe-use-of-multi-purpose-community-facilities/covid-19-guidance-for-the-safe-use-of-multi-purpose-community-facilities
The word Moonshot intrigues me. I first heard it a few weeks ago in conjunction with Tony Blair – so I associate it with him. Is it one of his ideas perhaps?
Anyway, I found this article from 2017 which seeks to explain the term:
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/what-is-a-moonshot_b_59ace5abe4b0c50640cd6096?
“A Moonshot (10x improvement), in contrast, can’t be achieved by working harder alone.
You have to start with a clean sheet of paper and be willing to try seemingly crazy ideas.
You have to keep writing down crazy ideas until you find one that doesn’t actually seem so crazy. Don’t forget that “the day before something is truly a breakthrough, it’s a crazy idea.”
This ties in with Cummings’ plea from about a year ago, where he was seeking ‘weirdos’ and ‘geeks’. So an idea of his also?
It sounds quite cultish though – there’s something New Agey and sinister to the word.
–
“Have you had your Moonshot this month, Mrs Jones?”
“Yeeeerrrrshhhh.” (Drooool)
I suspect it goes back to the space race in the 1960s. JFK saw getting a man on the moon as a vital project for American prestige and, given the American proclivity for shooting at things, the etymology would definitely fit.
Just checked and the terms dates to 1958, so right at the beginning of the space race.
But what has that got to do with a vaccine? Why call it Project Moonshot? It’s not a word they’ve just plucked out of a bag. There must be some psychological reason for choosing this word. At face value, Project Moonshot just sounds bizarre.
As someone said on here yesterday, it’s a newish and seldom-used word otherwise, so easy for all the government trolls to scan social media for – ie to find where people are discussing it and shut non-compliant discourse down..
Mmm… interesting. Thanks Carrie.
Moonshine calls it, apparently wankcock got laughed at by Labour while introducing it to the commons.
Boris is worried about a possible shortage of green cheese.
For the life of me i can’t understand how anyone can support these lockdown crimes against our civil liberties. They just don’t have the right. I pray some of the old school 1922 tories make a stand. It’s time for Boris and his corrupt henchmen to be gone. They can’t keep doing this to us. They can’t be allowed force vaccinations and testing on us and they can’t force these so called digital passports and all that surveillance. It’s my life and i have the right to go about my business not harming anyone else without being spied on or asked to show my papers or barred from using public services i’ve paid for because i’ve not taken some dodgy vaccine made by a man who isn’t a scientist and went to jeffery Epsteins peso island. I’m not against vaccines, i had my kids vaccinated and i’ve been vaccinated but can’t these mother fuckers see how sinister the whole thing is.
I feel we have two choices here, either these 1922 committee and others make a stand in parliament maybe some kind of sit in protest or we take to the streets like the Poll Tax/ iraq war demos and stay there until this is stoped. Toby’s mates in the Telegraph and other such esteemed organs need to be printing this sort of stuff on there front page. A call to arms for those of us who want our country back and don’t want to be governed by a “scientific elite” who seem to think because the’ve a degree and a fucking bunsen burner, a note pad and a model done on an old Apple Mac they can toy with out lives forever. I’m the one that’s got to die when it’s my time so i’m the one who gets to decide how i live not these people. The way it stands at the moment it’s like they’re gonna force us to take up an armed revolution and hang these bastards from lampposts. I wonder how the woke diverse police are gonna cope when there are five million people on the streets of London demanding their freedom. I can hardly believe i’m saying this in our country but we are no different that China in the governments total and utter disregard for the sanctity of the individual. I think Boris should be very ashamed and his father needs to give him a good fucking slap.
Biker, at least China tell you it to your face
Liberty piping up is huge, is it not?
I think we need to hit people the old fashioned way with mass letter box drops. Perhaps someone more lucid than myself could put together something we can download ourselves and print off at home to distribute to our neighbourhoods and suburbs depending on how energetic we feel. In Victoria they could only do a 5km radius and I would be worried about police raids on homes if the police got a snifter. We need to get round all these censorships that are taking place and the only way I can see is by the old fashioned letterbox. Happy to do my bit where I live and then some. We need to bring this on worldwide if we want to get our liberties back.
One of my old schoolfriends on Facebook received something of the ilk through his letterbox yesterday. It touched on the Gates conspiracy (which I think is something of a mistake) but it mostly stuck to the evidence. He shared it on FB, but whether many people will read it I don’t know. Some people commented that it was too long, which suggests you need something short and snappy to get through to people. Our friend at Lockdown Truth may have something that fits the bill.
So true Andrew, even if we can just point people to look at Lockdown Sceptic perhaps. I’m not on Facebook (old dinosaur), but I gather it is fairly regulated. I’m frustrated that a lot of people are only being served msm etc and taking it all in as gospel.
To be honest, I’m only on Facebook because it’s an easy way to keep in touch with my nephew. I rarely post anything personally (used to do the odd theatre review back in the days we had theatre).
Aah yes, the theatre – in the good old days!
The Facebook group Save Our Rights UK is getting a bit more intelligent than it was at the start. It used to be mainly a lot of ranting about masks, and even though I agreed with the conclusions there wasn’t much logical argument on display. However it’s getting better in that respect.
Agree with going old school. Anonymous letterbox drops are much harder to track than online. Something that sticks to the facts without conspiracy theories is really important.
May have been one time, but with loads of houses having CCTV and Ring doorbell systems the anonymity is long gone. Although our arch nemesis, the mask, will help to protect us from identification.
That’s when a mask IS useful.
wankcock has already gone old school. His Lockdown London Dictat will be via Myspace; hoping nobody notices him tossing off to Cute Cat vids.
Yes, but where are the five million going to come from? I don’t know anyone outside my own household who hasn’t swallowed this bollocks all the way.
Maybe Great Britain is just done. As a society we don’t deserve to get out of this. The truth is, most of the people in his country deserve what they are getting because they won’t stand up to it.
Why am I still the only one walking through Morrisons and Tescos unmuzzled, and the only one dropping my child off at school unmuzzled?
Pathetic and pitiful.
There will be no 5 million people on the streets..Maybe if you cancelled EastEnders and Love island on the same day but not for anything else.. 99% of the people are brainwashed sheep..Look at the London protest..35.000..that is fucking abysmal..London has 9 million people..If Arsenal played fucking Stoke tomorrow in the 3rd round of the Carabo cup there would be 70000 people no problem..Nobody cares, nobody want to do anything..Democracy does not die with a scream , but with a whisper.
It was nothing like 35,000, maybe 5,000. We occupied 1/2 of Trafalgar Square, an area of about 3,500m2. Maybe 2 people /m2? You try & get 10 people in a phone box, that’s about 1m2!
But I think a march with a libertarian theme rather than the conspiracy crowd could do well.
Unless and until the money runs out and/or people start dying because of their vaccinations, or a real scandal came out or took place that shakes the now firmly established firm beliefs of the crowd at their core (e.g. masks do increase Corona infections, and they knew it; vaccines against Corona ARE indeed completely unnecessary for 90% of the people, and they know it; HCQ does work, and they knew it), there is little hope for a change of mind, neither for a change of course.
I don’t agree. The problem is that most people probably didn’t know about it.
It’s very difficult to communicate in mockdown and while facebook and twitter are so heavily censored, it’s difficult to successfully advertise such gatherings.
On point Biker, as always!
A good slap upside his head.
Many in these comments are puzzled by the apparent inability of the British public to think for themselves and escape from the fear trap. The answer is that they have been brainwashed. The Government deliberately chose fear based brainwashing tactics in launching ‘Project Fear On Steroids’. You can start to find out about it here:
https://evidencenotfear.com/how-sage-and-uk-media-created-fear-in-the-british-public/
Here are some sample quotes from the SPI-B documents:
Government persuasion through fearA substantial number of people still do not feel sufficiently personally threatened.
The perceived level of personal threat needs to be increased among those who are complacent, using hard-hitting emotional messaging.
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/887467/25-options-for-increasing-adherence-to-social-distancing-measures-22032020.pdf
In our efforts to persuade people we are trying to overcome this massive government brainwashing effort.
Are there any applied psychologists out there who can help us to focus our response?
The whole public does not need to be brainwashed. Only about 10%. What happens is theses fundamentalists push their views and most others go along to get along. In the end the society becomes more fundamentalist.
Exactly. 10-15% for, 10-15% against, 70-80% sheep that just go along with whatever.
Herd stupidity! You don’t need 100% of people to be stupid, just some to be so and if the rest are passive then that is sufficient.
Yes, I agree with that, but how do we counter it?
The antidote to fear is love.
Ageed. But the antidote to despair is anger.
I’d go with action. But anger would probably work too. 🙂
Leaked photos of new Covid Marshall’s uniforms with matching coin bag for the “twenty shillings a town”, fee
They are protected in their ivory towers and need TO HEAR THESE STORIES.
Sorry not shouting at you kh, it makes my blood boil.
It’s good to get these stories out. That’s why sites like this are so important. I believe every single action of alerting people to what is really going on, will make a difference. It’s clear that we all have days when we think what’s the point? But then they win
Well done to Will Jones once again for today’s post.
Sue Denim’s piece is absolutely bang on, especially this bit:
Rephrased, his [Ferguson’s] conclusions could have been worked out on the back of a napkin, as “any” model would give the same conclusions given just three variables. Therefore it didn’t require 15,000 lines of code or any particular expertise to do his job. Literally “any” model would agree.
Yep, as I did in a few lines of Excel back in April. The Emperor has no clothes. Within about three minutes I’d found that the critical variable was population susceptibility. And somehow Ferguson et al missed that – or so we are asked to believe.
What Ferguson and the rest fail to admit: given the lack of basic knowledge about covid transmissibility and population susceptibility, the models back then were of no predictive use whatsoever. They might have helped policy makers to think about the disease, but never to predict it.
But why bother to think when ‘models’ can take the responsibility for you. Fuming, because I’ve seen exactly the same in another area of government science, and how embedded it is, and eventually I just had to walk.
And exactly the same mistakes – or rather abuses – are being made now, as anyone who has read the ‘Reasonable Worse Case Scenario’ data, as leaked to Deborah Cohen, will realise.
Once again, it is Imperial College ‘models’ which are being (ab)used now to crush our society.
And these very same hypocrites would cry out in terror if their car, their food, their phones were deemed suitable and safe for use on the back of an unvalidated and unverified model.
If Ferguson’s models were used to build bridges, the bridge would fall down and he’d be put in jail.
Dilbert: “The aim of every engineer is to reach retirement without getting blamed for a major catastrophe”
Doesn’t seem to apply to scientists.
Yes, although I think ‘academics’ should replace ‘scientists’ here.
That’s why he chose modelling and not engineering.
The other issue was that if the same input was used the output was different, which it should never be.
Yes, that is correct – but this effect is in the noise compared with the assumptions being wildly out. It is however a sure sign of laziness.
Basically, his modelling is random number generation.
The man is a fraud and charlatan.
And so is the government.
I hope they did, because part of the modelling process is to expose the assumptions and assumed range of values. The assumption that there was little to no pre-existing immunity was the right one to make at the time, given that there was no way of finding out in the time available, and the disease was novel. But the outcome of the “unmitigated” model was not the precise number but the qualitative “catastrophic”. Funnily enough, that turned out to be correct. The experience of Manaus and Guayaquil shows that although the number of deaths would not have been as high, it would still have been catastrophic (and caused the collapse of the NHS in London at least). So this particular model was, as Box famously put it “wrong but useful”. It gave the right answer, which informed the decision that doing nothing was not an option. Whether the thing done was the right thing is quite another matter, and one on which most people reading this have a very clear view.
Sorry I haven’t replied for a while, but I’ve been out and about all day.
Well I’m sure they didn’t think about what the disease progress might be. And of course, using a simplistic model such as Ferguson’s leads, and effectively an infection doubling rate every 3-4 days, 100% susceptibility, and a death rate of 0.9% lead to some horrendous figures.
But were they ever plausible? I think not. These sorts of diseases never involve 100% susceptibility – not even AIDs. Not everyone gets the flu when it goes around, or a cold. Perhaps only about 35-40% of people in England got bubonic plague in 1348-9.
And, as has been said many times now, deaths were dropping from the second week of April, implying that peak infection rate was before lockdown. Whatever benefit of the doubt the more generous may be inclined to allow them, the measures could have been wound right back from the end of April the latest. In any event, lockdown didn’t ‘save the NHS’.
In my experience, models are a great way for policy makers to abrogate responsibility – it wasn’t them, or their advisors, or even the modellers: it was the model . As if the model itself is some sort of independent reality.
And, astonishingly, Ferguson and Imperial are still calling the shots. Ferguson’s method is I think quite clear – make the most apocalyptic warnings, and he’ll get the government’s ear. The real scientist, who is honest and doesn’t go to the extremes of terror, doesn’t get the contract.
I don’t know who “they” are, but if you mean members of SAGE and SPI-M, I’m pretty sure that they did.
Seems unlikely, considering that something like 50% of the population died of it.
… but after social measures started. If you want to argue that social measures had already effectively mitigated the spread of the disease, that’s fine, but not strictly relevant to discussing the hypothetical process of the unmitigated scenario.
Conflating two things here. Flu typically has a lower R0, implying lower herd immunity threshold, and probable pre-existing immunity, not to mention vaccination. Certainly not everyone is susceptible, but more to the point, not every encounter with an infectious person causes infection.
I share that concern. After all, quite a lot of the people commenting here are blaming the model, or the modellers, or the concept of modelling rather than our democratically accountable government whose job it is to decide.
Thanks for your reply, and of course now there’s a new page up I’ve no idea whether you will see this.
When I say ‘they’ I mean policy makers. I don’t think Johnson, Hancock and co are capable of thinking about covid-19. To the extent that SAGE did ‘think’ about it, they clearly came with preconceptions, or at least an unwillingness to take responsibility for a light touch approach. Lack of clarity of thinking has been a major feature of the government’s handling of covid. I also think there are some serious questions to be asked about the makeup of SAGE, and whether it included a suitable diversity and range of expertise, and about the diversity and range of expertise the government has consulted during the whole episode, They appear to have limited themselves to a very narrow range of opinion.
My experience of government using models is they do indeed replace the need to ‘think’. Other people may have had different experiences, but that is what I’ve seen, and for me it has uncomfortable apparent echoes here.
According to what I’ve read, only about a third of the English population died of Black Death. But even if it was 50% my point still stands – somehow or other half didn’t, and given that the mortality rate of those with the disease was close to 100%, that means they can’t have had the disease. And given the living conditions, where it could spread very easily, they probably had some sort of immunity, or for some other reason weren’t susceptible.
Lockdown was announced on 23 March – yes there were measures before that, but they weren’t lockdown. My position at that time was that I accepted the measures announced up to 20 March, although with reluctance and some doubt; but I was entirely against actual Lockdown from the minute I heard about it. We just don’t know how much effect the measures announced up to 20 March had – the debate is still out on that, and the experience of lots of countries will have to be analysed before we have a reasonable idea.
My point on AIDS and flu, etc. Like Black Deat, it was just to show examples of diseases against which the population does not apparently have 100% susceptibility. Covid has many features in common with flu – but as you say, it appears that significant proportion of people do have immunity to the various flu strains, even new ones. This may well have been gained by previous exposure to those previous strains. That appears to be the thinking now with covid-19. I’m not an epidemiologist, but I’m gobsmacked that policy makers didn’t consider this as being a likely, and even highly likely, feature of covid-19.
Your point about not every encounter with an infectious person causing infection is of course an interesting one, which we don’ appear to understand fully. Again, there is every reason to think it is also a feature of covid-19.
I think your last paragraph is makes a fair point.
Have you been posting on here for long? I should say that I welcome people coming on here and making contradictory points, particularly technical points – saves it becoming an echo chamber – although a lot of people come on and read here to get like-minded company and stop themselves going nuts during all this, which is fair enough.
Sorry for dashed post, and please read (if you see it) in that light. And we are debating highly complex issues here, which perhaps a forum like this isn’t entirely suited to.
The susceptibility issue is huge.
The Irish Health body were defending their ‘with/of’ Covid numbers today in this horrendous article. Largely in line with the CDC analysis 95% approx of deaths are ‘with Covid’, the number in Ireland was around 110 people from 1777 deaths.
https://www.thejournal.ie/how-many-people-have-died-from-covid-19-in-ireland-5198763-Sep2020/
They try to maintain the narrative by saying that “Well, a third of Irish people have underlying conditions, so we have to stay vigilant”
These kind of nonsensical arguments appeal to common sense. But it’s not useful for the purposes of the argument at all. They are trying to imply that everyone of those 33% are susceptible. How many of them have actually tested positive and recovered for example? Are any of them immune as we we see in studies of antibodies and T cell responses? Are all those underlying conditions proven to make people more susceptible?
It’s obfuscation at the most basic level. Being liberal with the truth. Cherry picking. No integrity. Absolute liars.
The Health Police are crazy. Not to be trusted most of the time.
Your last paragraph is bang on.
On one of the BBC have your day was a comment that stated his 1 year old daughter had had her regular childhood vaccinations and had developed a temperature. They were self isolating and waiting to get tested, their elder child hadn’t been to pre school either. I responded by saying they didn’t need to self isolate as the child had a normal reaction to a vaccination. I also pointed out that their children were too young to be tested. I don’t know where they got the idea that they needed to be tested at all.
My comment received at least one down vote.
what is wrong with people?
Have your say, not day. Predictive text error.
Having your day is better. Less easy to ignore.
What is wring with people?
Stupidity.
Against which the gods contend in vain.
Those whom the gods destroy they first make mad, or the Christian version, “God gave them over to a reprobate mind . .”
Genuine question about the operational matters of freezing out parliament by the government – Linsays letter to Hancock and the 1922 chair expressing incandescence at the path the cabal are leading us all down.
Genuinely, how do the givernmet actions fit with the idea what we are seeing is cover up of incompetence?
I don’t mean to labour the difference between views that there is or isn’t a plan causing this. I simply would like to understand how Hancock and the rest are acting with so little respect for the customs and procedure of OUR parliament.
Speaking as a long-term supporter of the cock up theory (whose faith is wavering somewhat), remember that this is a leadership that used every trick in the book to subvert the constitution and play fast and loose with parliamentary rules last year over Brexit. I strongly suspect that they’ve discovered that using the Coronavirus Act to rule by SI is simply too easy and too much fun for them to want to bother with such boring things as accountability, parliamentary scrutiny or democracy for as long as they can get away with it.
Their underlying motives, however, are very much up for debate
Thank you Matt. I appreciate your reply. Fairly plausible, I won’t add comment because I haven’t given thought to it yet.
Where can we see Sir Lindsay’s letter, please?
Read Tobys Update.
It was in the DT. A verbal reprimand from Sir Lindsay in Parliament yesterday. The letter was from a bunch of backbenchers.
Don’t forget de Piffle tried to prorogue Parliament within weeks of becoming PM. In effect he’s succeeded by a backdoor route.
“We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it.” ― George Orwell
The analogy I’d put forward, is our government, along with many others around the world, are standing in the bottom of a pit they’ve dug themselves, with help from the WHO, media/tech and NGOs. They all believe if they keep digging, they’ll eventually come out the other side. It’s obvious they won’t, but the more they dig, the more likely we’re all going to fall in.
If they keep digging we’ll end up in China. Like the Road Runner.
The belief in testing is like homeopathy. You take an ingredient, amplify (or dilute) it a million times, and claim it is still effective because it is present.
Homeopaths believe that the more you dilute a remedy, the more potent it is.
Hence the joke about the man who firgot to take his homeopathic remedy and died of an overdose.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-54096061 under 5’s wearing masks??
What happens to employees on furlough come October?
We know the money will stop. Some offices will only allow 20% of staff back so they can comply with social distancing rules. Perhaps it is worth looking at the definition of furlough
A furlough is a temporary leave of employees due to special needs of a company or employer, which may be due to economic conditions of a specific employer or in society as a whole. These involuntary furloughs may be short or long term, and many of those affected may seek other temporary employment during that time.
Will employees find themselves in a state of permanent financial limbo?. Not sacked or made redundant. On unpaid leave and not able to claim benefits as they are still ’employed”
one thing for sure is my hard work over the years and the tax i pay on my earnings is going to people sitting around doing nothing. It’s not fair. Everyone can be unemployed from time to time and then get back to work but millions aren’t and many of these will be sitting their with their hands out looking to the likes of me to drop some coins in their hand so they can do fuck all. Seems to me the more you do to look after yourself they want it from you.
A man on Jeremy Vine recently:
“Where do you work?” “Public sector.” “Can you work from home?” “No, not really.” “Are you keen to get back to work?” “No, I prefer to work from home”.
Your tax doesn’t go anywhere. It effectively goes in the bin. You earn more than you otherwise would have because government spending maintains demand in the economy. That’s how the furlough scheme has worked for six months.
Tax arises as a result of government spending. It’s how they get it back *after* they’ve spent it.
What we need now is a guaranteed alternative job to go to so people can still sell their labour hours while the private sector reconfigures itself rapidly to the new way of working.
Otherwise we’ll have sound capital being destroyed alongside the stuff that is no longer viable.
the last thing we need is a guaranteed job from the government. Who will pay the wages but me and my tax. The drivel you posted makes me think you’ve a hard time working out out much something costs in a pound shop
I suspect many of them will be made redundant or re-hired on new contracts. However given that many businesses are now deep in debt and possibly have little or no reserves, it will be the former.
Also business rents are due to be collected during the last week of September. That is crucial because I foresee more shops and offices closing down.
So Ferguson again says: “The key conclusion [is] that severe social distancing measures were required to prevent health systems being overwhelmed”. But that is not what we are doing, is it!
I can accept the argument that, for a very limited time in March or April, there was a risk of hospital facilities being overwhelmed. That creates bad TV, especially for a Conservative government. But now we have the data we can see that this was a cohort of the terminally ill, mostly in hospital for other reasons.
If you started the clock from now, and you asked: “What is required to prevent health systems from being overwhelmed?” and someone said: “Lock down all social and economic activity. Close the hospitals, shut schools.” people would thing you were either mad or a fanatic with an agenda.
They’d been saying this for years. Even the government’s own emergency response plan from a few years back was saying don’t do this
“Sydney family told only one child can go to Queensland to say goodbye to dying father“
https://7news.com.au/lifestyle/health-wellbeing/sydney-family-told-only-one-child-can-go-to-queensland-to-say-goodbye-to-dying-father-c-1304260
Horrific modern day ‘Sophie’s Choice’
Vile, diabolical evil.
Tonight’s news update on this is they all can go to see their dying father, but they are only allowed to drive there (900 kilometres), quarantine for 2 weeks, then an hour’s visit each child. It will cost $16,000. What was noticeable though was the slight change in attitude of the reporter and anchor. I am getting the impression of a change in rhetoric.
There are no words
That’s is an abuse of human rights. I honestly think that would break me in so many ways.
These people are evil. Outright Satanic.
Very sad to hear this. Its not the virus that’s done this to people, its lockdown and social distancing.
This story should be circulated far and wide to demonstrate what is really going on in the real world and not in the la-la land of the shires and posh parts of the big cities.
The politicians have blood on their hands and the lockdownistas are collaborators.
Never forgive, never forget.
The shires are la-la land ?
Back to the model and Sue Denim’s comments. One thing we don’t hear enough of is the limits of current medical knowledge. As Sue says, if the results don’t follow your predictions, your hypothesis is wrong.
I think public health is somewhat fooled by the success of science rather than medicine. We can inspect cells and genes with astounding precision. But that does not mean we know how they work. There was a phase when the pharmaceutical industry thought it could discover new drugs with robotic testing of compounds. It was a dismal failure.
As Ferguson says, the essence of the model is based on “infection” and “fatality”, and yet medically we do not know what those are. We can’t even measure them when they are right in front of us. When someone tests positive, we can’t even say whether they are infectious. When someone dies, we can’t even say with accuracy what they died of.
Excellent point. At the data collection level this is obvious. At the policy level the margins of error are compounded with a need to do something.
Thats also fine. But you need to review positions as the data evolves
Very sceptical editorial piece in the Telegraph (I strongly suspect it was penned by our very own TY). I really do think this is the last concession the Johnson will be allowed to make to the doom mongers. The 1922 committee and the editorial page of the Telegraph are clear and unequivocal that enough is enough and we have got to get on with our lives and live with this glorified cold.
We should all buy a copy! Boost their sales….encourage them to continue their scepticism
No, there is talk of curfew now. We will end up like Victoria State, Australia.
Cheerful stuff, jh. Hungover ?
Yes agree with Hitch, matey nicknames no longer fit the man. A guy restricting liberty in such wanton manner is nobodies mate. Covid the WHO name makes me squirm as well. We should follow the US Reps and use China Virus, or more fairly CCP Virus.
Why is Ferguson not considered a junk scientist? He has utterly failed the Feynman test.
Feynman’s other advice to his students was the first thing you think when coming across a scientific pronouncement, no matter the lofty individual or book saying it is:
DISREGARD.
Do not take claims on their face and work back. Always start from a sceptical position and work up
“In the final analysis facts are more important than PR, because nature cannot be fooled’ Richard Feynman, report on Challenger shuttle disaster.
Nature is speaking, let’s hope more people are listening.
Science is pretty much dead
It’s probably not a fashionable view to have – on this site at least! – but I rather feel sorry in advance for those covid marshals. They will be the personification of this authoritarian regime; in short modern-day capos, prisoners in charge of other prisoners. When the worm turns, and it will, it will all be unleashed on them as the face of it all. God help them.
They don’t have to take the job do they. They could refuse.
What’s amazing is how quickly people join the Stasi, and then deny they ever did afterwards. Happens time and again.
Indeed they could; but if no-one joins up, it’ll be a job passed to local authority employees.
And, of course, that should be kapos.
In saner times, a person wilfully applying for the job of Covid Marshall should be ruled out on the basis that they are unsuitable.
However people who have lost employment and need to support their families may step up. People are already desperate and more will become so. Having said that there are probably plenty of little dictators who would do it for free.
The Quebec government is considering the same tactic. I think that they are collaborating. It’s an orgnaized, global blitz.
Many people take shitty jobs they’d rather refuse, simply to feed and shelter their families.
However, any retired EHOs who sign up should be dealt with appropriately.
I disagree very strongly. You could make the same argument for collaborators in occupied France.
And then many decades later these collaborators tried to pass off being in the Resistance or claiming that they opposed the German occupation.
We’ll get the same here, lockdownistas claiming that they were actually against lockdown and social distancing.
That’s why I want an FPN at least. 🙂 Evidence.
The Milice, active enforcers of Nazi rule.
It will be like being a traffic warden, only worse.
Make Boris, Matt and all the others enforce these rules. Quit using proxies, Nazis!
When is a journalist going to have the balls to ask Ferguson how his modelling fits with Sweden? This country has been destroyed on the basis of the jottings of this scientific shag sack and no one ever asks him the most obvious question..
He was interviewed on Radio 4 Today this morning. Disgraceful interview. I was shouting “Sweden” at the radio!
Yesterday’s news filled me with rage and so did the reaction from my colleagues when the social events they’ve planned had to be cancelled – oh its all for the best, infections are going up, yadda, yadda. Goes to show how much of the population is still asleep and shutting their brains to the reality of our situation.
While the imbeciles in the government continue along the path of transforming this country into a police state, meanwhile, a few days ago someone was murdered not far from where I live and yesterday there were police in my street due to I suspect another domestic incident.
The government’s obsession with the mythical eradication of what is nothing more than a bad flu has led to all sorts of problems from untreated illnesses, mental health issues, abuse, people are having to put up with the prospect of their livelihood being decimated and having to live with rising crime and antisocial behaviour as a result of lockdown and antisocial distancing.
I am fed up with the crocodile tears from others, their constant platitudes of “we’re in this together” and “saving the NHS.” The government has blood on their hands and the so-called opposition are nothing but collaborators – they should be reminded of this all day everyday.
I hope and pray for the day when the likes of Johnson, Hancock, Whitty, Vallance and Ferguson are brought to the dock to answer for their crimes.
Agree. And also when their savings and generous pension schemes are raided to pay for all the debts we’ve accumulated.
I will have no sympathy for them.
Well said but unfortunately many of these people think that money grows on trees.
And they shouldn’t be so smug working from home and claiming that they’re “saving” money. When companies cotton on to the possibility that they can pile on more work on them for less pay then either their salaries will be cut or frozen for years with no hope of a pay rise.
They should also be aware of the possibility of hiring someone in India to do the same job whilst paying in rupees rather than pounds, they’re expendable and can be thrown in the scrapheap.
Their actions are starting to look intentional. They are crazed and deluded.
I think they’re deranged and insane and I think you’re spot on.
Definitely intentional. One well-orchestrated psy-op.
Jonathan Sumption with Alison Pearson on Planet Normal. I love this man! https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/09/10/planet-normal-use-fear-has-brought-greatest-invasion-personal/
… but Prof Pantsdown is pushing for more restrictions… Still spouting nonsense about ‘flattening the curve’: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/global-health/science-and-disease/coronavirus-news-social-distancing-gatherings-rules-covid-vaccine/
He’s like a stuck record!
He has been like a broken record since the late 1990s to early 2000s.
Why he’s still been listened to is a mystery.
I notice on the PM’s briefing they pointed to a chart showing a 4 week forecast. Only Belgium had a good outcome. Dim Whitty said this was down to precautionary measures taken. I remember this being masks worn indoors in bars and restaurants
‘Professor Neil Ferguson, whose modelling led to the decision to impose the lockdown in March, has warned that the UK should not rule out more restrictions.
The Imperial College epidemiologist told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “The measures just announced will take some weeks to have an effect, so we need to wait at this point and see how much it will flatten the curve.
“And then if that is not sufficient to bring the reproduction number below one, so the epidemic starts shrinking again, then yes, we may need to clamp down in other areas.”
The Government has tightened restrictions on meeting in groups after a surge in infections prompted concerns over a second wave of coronavirus.
From Monday 14 September it will be illegal for people in England to gather in groups of more than six.
Prof Ferguson said he was still working from home, and cautioned: “Certainly I think we should hesitate and maybe pause at the headlong rush to get everybody back into offices.
“But some people have to work and I completely understand the concerns in many quarters that everybody working at home has an economic impact, particularly on city centres.”
Yes, he is INSANE!
he is wedded to his initial model and assumptions and he’s hardly going to backtrack when many other people accept his predictions as well.
He’s not insane, he’s an imbecile. A mediocre melonhead.
Certainly a smug self-righteous b’stard.
Imperial College Shattock on Sky News Burley.
The vaccines are not going to be perfect. As time goes by we will get them better.
There’s no point developing a vaccine that has side effects people won’t tolerate.
We need treatments and vaccine this is going to be around for years he said.
Earlier a Mr Sommers vaccine trial participant remarked I had my first vaccine in May. No symptons, slightky raised temp, red arm. If I was going to keel over I would have by now. Oh wow, the man presented as a self consciously intelligent man. Why is he not aware of how vaccine testing must pass through time.
Christmas cancelled? I guess Diwali will not be the same this year
Watch these doctors say it’s all a massive crime https://youtu.be/l5YJhwJCS2o
“As we’ve seen before in this paper, at some point epidemiologists started to define success for their predictions as “matches what other epidemiologists predict” instead of “matches reality”.”
So basically, any number of people could have claimed success for their flying inventions before the Wright brothers:
“I never lifted off the ground by flapping my arms with my contraption. I concluded that I was not successful until I saw that many other inventors were attempting to fly using flappers on their arms just like I was. Therefore, my invention is a success!”
Of the 32 deaths reported yesterday or the 8 today it would be informative to know if ANY of them caught the virus in the community, out & about.
Remember, 75% of hospital’covid’ admissions are of people already in the hospital!
Only 60% of deaths have been of people in hospital. That means at most only 15% of the numbers they’re trying to terrify people with could conceivably come from outside the care system.
These are still the fundamental statistics we all still need to know. If this information was shared regularly it would calm everyone down.
It’s all here https://www.england.nhs.uk/statistics/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/08/Covid-Publication-13-08-2020.xlsx
82% of all ‘Covid’ admissions to hospital since March 20th to August 9th were people who were already in hospital. They just went from the non-covid ward to the covid ward!
Only 60% of the deaths were in hospital. The other 40% came from people in care or care homes, so they didn’t get the virus from a young person down the pub! 18% of 60% = 10.8%, that suggests only 10.8% of all the fatalities came from outside the care system.
We have 2 pandemics, 1 of old people & 1 of obese/diabetic/ill people.
I note that the dictatorship has slipped in a power of arrest with their latest ‘laws”
If these powers had been in place for the past month then it is highly likely that Piers Corbyn would be remanded in custody in a prison by now
How you ask?
Once arrested an individual can be charged with an offence and bailed to a court. In Mr Corbyns case it would likely to have been conditional bail i.e. not to attend demonstrations etc
If he (or anyone) subsequently breaches their bail conditions they can be arrested taken before a court and remanded in custody to a prison
If he (or anyone) commits a further offence whilst on bail (for example meeting more than six people), they are again liable to arrest and remand in custody for committing an offence whilst already on bail
(Bail Act 1976)
I presume the prison service has told the Home Office that they will not be able to cope with the influx of refusniks.
I suspect there will be plans afoot to build camps to house them (where have we heard that before?)
Meet six people once= arrest, charge, and bailed to court
Meet six people on a second occasion= arrest, charge, remanded in custody
All introduce by means of Statutory Instrument
The “rule of six” – does it include babes in arms?
In a household of seven? – does someone have to be exiled?
it bain’t be clear to me at all, at all.
To the first, yes. To the second, no. Single family units are exempted from the limit (but of course, a family of 6 or more can’t meet up with anyone as as a family unit, full stop).
Thank you for that clarification. I’ve another question which I’m going to post above now.
It’s part of the depopulation plan. More planned parenthood. Smaller families.
Watch these doctors it’s all a massive crime https://youtu.be/l5YJhwJCS2o
It is all starting to unravel now. All tyrannies rule through fraud and force, but once the fraud is exposed they must rely exclusively on force. George Orwell
As Abraham Lincoln didnt say (false attribution)
You can fool all the people some of the time and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time
i also like
A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on
most pertinent
“Tell me lies, tell me sweet little lies” Christine McVie. with a little help from Stevie Nicks. 🙂
But these are enormous clanging whoppers.
So Sir Charles Walker seems like he is one of the few MPs who are sound on this issue. Do we know any others? Toby, perhaps we could have a list of the known sceptics among our MPs so we can lobby them to organise into an effective opposition against the monomaniacs running our government?
Steve Baker, John Redwood, Desmond Swayne, Graham Brady, David Davis, Christopher Chope, Robert Courts, Robert Syms, Edward Leigh have all made some dissenting noises, though they are by no means all proper sceptics, at least publicly
Good list, thank you. We should add more who we think might be on our side. I hold cautious optimism for our local MP Theresa Villiers as well. The ERG may be a good source of “sensibles” on this matter.
If the ERG members are to be considered sensible, we really are lost!
Listen To The Scientists
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FhBy2zy-Evo
Democrats say that President Trump needs to “listen to the scientists.” And when he does, they attack him for listening to the scientists.
The Democrats also say that they will contest the election results even if Trump wins by a landslide. You could win all the Electoral votes and they still wouldn’t concede defeat.
08.30 BBC R4 Today
Grant Schapps admits the technology for johnsons moonshine scheme does not yet exist.
the interview with David Spiegelhalter after ended with the interviewer suggesting “More Mars shot than Moonshot?” David replied “your comment!”
after watching Boris and his depressing performance showing a sharp uptick in cases among young people someone suggested this was down to the Eatout/helpout in KFC,McD and Nandos mainly frequented by younger people. If so, the Government themselves are responsible for the uptick.
They wanted an uptick. They prayed for an uptick. By hook or by crook.
They engineered one!
My first post.
There is a big issue with the Fat Controller’s “moon shot” idea of mass testing.
If you are seeking to determine whether someone is clean every day, then to be sure and “safe” you will need a very sensitive test. That means that it will be inevitable that it will pick up false positives. So let’s be generous and say we have a false positive rate of 0.1% (which is lower than current PCR swab test). Say we test 30 million people each day, Gov aim is ultimately everyone, but let’s say half for now. 0.1% of 30 million is 300000. That is 300000 people with a false positive that would have to self isolate for 14 days. Say they each have had 10 recent close contacts on average, that will then be a further 3,000,000 people who will be told to isolate through T&T. So every day you will have circa, at least, 3,000,000 people self isolating (and potentially worried and stressed) – for no reason.
They have clearly not thought it through, and as I keep saying, it reinforces the view that our Gov. are bumbling and dangerous idiots. Or alternatively they are very devious and clever at finding more ways of control. Take your pick. Either way, we need regime change.
Do they think anything through?
Ha ha good point!
You make a good point but are a factor of 10 out. 0.1% of 30 million is 30,000 and not 300,000
Well spotted.
I’d love to see Dido Harding trying to organise test and trace for 30,000 people every day!?!?
As I have stated earlier, regardless of the logistics, covid is NOT exceptional so exceptional measures are not called for
I’m surprised you’ve only got two thumbs up (that I can see anyway) – I’ve already been quoting you.
20 now!
Devious and clever!
Welcome by the way. Great first post!
“The rule of six”. I can’t arrange to meet up with six friends in a pub. But I can go in to a put with six people already in it. Is that correct?
Yes. The aim of the legislation is to stop groups of people being close to each other. They may talk and become sceptical otherwise 🙂
The only limit on the total number of people in a pub are the capacity limits, guided by the “Covid safe” voodoo “rules”. You can’t have more than six at a table, but the pub can have as many tables of 6 as it can fit in.
Thanks once more for that clarification. I was in a small little bar the other day. At one point there were nine of us in the bar – four different groups (if I can call myself a “group) – sat at four different tables.
If only six people at most can be sat round a table the limit of no more than six people who know each other meeting in a pub seems pointless – they’d have to be socially distanced (dread term) anyway,.
It is pointless.
Do you recall, the ‘deal’ with mandatory masking was that ‘restrictions could be eased’. Restrictions are now screwed tight shut again and, guess what? Still need masks? Who’da thowt it eh?
Unless you are playing sports…then you can meet 30 of your mates to play a rugby game but no pub after..that is illegal..The sheer fucking stupidity boggles the mind
Boggling the mind is all part of the psych ops game intended to distract us from their crimes.
And inspires some people to spend countless, useless hours trying to figure out what it’s all about.
30 is just 5 groups of 6 – you’d never get all 30 round one table anyway!
I think what would be powerful would to have some people who had coronavirus bad stand up and say “yes it was awful, but awful things happen all the time and I don’t want the country locked down for this”. Boris has been traumatised and lost all perspective as a result. We don’t know how we ourselves would react in such a situation but I think your wife is right that it is unfortunate that as PM this has happened to him and he has gone somewhat (completely?) mad about it. Mind you, SAGE don’t seem to have gained any perspective in the last few months either. Maybe it’s a collective thing…
It may have affected him a bit though the key blunder – to lock down, and to ramp up fear – occurred BEFORE he got ill
And what about the rest of the cabinet, or parliament
Every man jack of them, spineless
Regardless of the modelling deficiencies Ferguson shouldn’t be given a platform anywhere. He broke the lockdown. If the person who, in theory, knew better than anyone else the risks involved didn’t think they were that worth bothering about what does that tell you? Even if you’re a lockdown zealot he should still be persona non grata.
In the US Nancy Pelosi broke the lockdown too, what is she like 79,80? yet it revealed a new doctrine, presumably it will come in over here with MP’s soon: anyone who breaks the lockdown, it’s not down to them… it’s Donald Trump’s fault.
There was a great film with Ida Lupino in the 50s. I think she killed her husband by locking the garage door while the car motor was still running. During her court scene she declared ‘the doors made me do it’.
Anyone else find today’s update one of the most optimistic so far? Genuinely feeling a bit more positive. Clare’s piece, the JCorbyn supporter, all really good. And that picture of Whitty studying the graph upside down always makes me laugh out load
“In an instant masks were off, with a visible sigh of relief from all”
How soft are people really? Well done to that gentleman for brining his friends into the light. However, when people are couching their entire view of what is the biggest power grab we’ve ever seen in peace time in terms of not wanting to upset the host then we are in some dark waters.
While I feel we urgently need a restoration of values such as freedom and self accountability, we have to somehow give the confidence to people to express their true feelings. Without fear, whether that is fear is of social disapproval or state punishment.
True freedom of speech needs to be defended with an almost fanatical mindset. That means you defend those you do not agree with to say whatever they want. It is the space of debate that needs reingfenced so it cannot be corrupted by the mob.
The last 6 months have really brought that into perspective for me.
in peace time
People keep making that qualification, but to me, it seems that this is bigger than a world war. At least in war, if your side wins you know you can go back to normal. Our situation seems far worse. I think our lives as we knew them are over.
I think you’re wrong Barney, and bad for morale to boot.
They are testing your will to resist and return to normal. They are trying to break you. They are torturers. They are anti-human technocrats. Do not let them win.
I think Boris Johnson can now officially be diagnosed as insane.
Moonshot is beyond absurd and completely unaffordable, even if he can save himself the similar annual outlay for the likely ineffective, dangerous and for most people absolutely useless anyway vaccines.
Given the recent resurfacing of the ‘R number’, and this lunatic term – I propose MoRonshot.
At least people will finally see what an idiot he is. Make more confusing rules, more ludicrous comments like this, more people will start ignoring these and go back to “normal”.
I wonder if the Covid marshals (Collaborators) work over Christmas, will they be paid double or treble time or just the standard rate of 30 pieces of Silver?
The Corbynista postdoctoral molecular neuroscientist makes the standard and tragic error of ignoring the most important resource of all, human ingenuity. Watt’s condenser increased efficiency hugely (as did Bateman and Sherratt’s but that another story). Our contribution to Enlightenment and Industrial Revolution more than offset our other manifold sins and wickedness. Millions were being raised out of abject poverty until this madness aflicted the world. As ever the poor suffer to satisfy the whims of the wealthy first world.
Most people would struggle to generate more than 1 kWh (100 Watts for 10 hours, try keeping a tungsten bulb alight with a bicycle generator) from a day’s hard physical work for which we complain about having to spend 15p.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZLK0r6Ha5sM
New York Post Lockdown “A Big Mistake”
Covid Marshall = Black Shirts
I note that Toby is still rabbiting on about the total irrelevance of Ferguson’s code – despite the fact that there are hundreds of models that produce the exact SAME result.
DEAR TOBY: It’s got F— All to do with the code. It’s the initial assumptions that are used in the m odel.
Now, if he really, really wants to support his belief that the lockdown was not effective he might want to dig out some evidence. For example this from the Royal Society (Aug 24th):
https://royalsociety.org/-/media/policy/projects/set-c/set-covid-19-R-estimates.pdf
See Page 49 (Fig b). The Royal Society’s estimate of the Reproduction Number (R) is approaching 1 before March 23rd and the trajectory of the curve is unaltered the lockdown.
I think if Ferguson were to do the decent thing and shut up and stop trying to justify his idiotic predictions despite the actual, real world evidence that they were just so much uninformed bullshit (regardless of the sophistication or otherwise of the maths behind them) then we would all, including Toby, cheerfully ignore him and pretend he didn’t exist.
Except Ferguson is never going to admit he was wrong. He will just say, as so many others do, that it was because we had a lockdown that so many lives were saved. If we’d locked down sooner, we’d have saved more lives. It’s not his computer model that was wrong, it’s the real world not matching up with his prediction…
Well, much as I would like to see the man pilloried in public, I’ll settle, as I say, for him just shutting up and going away. The evidence of his failure is in front of our eyes, the fact that he continues to try to justify himself is ridiculous. He doesn’t have to admit he was wrong, he just has to stop pretending he was right.
Tbh it’s not a surprise that such a man should go to his grave refusing to stop claiming he was actually correct on something vital and consequential (see Blair and other WMD obsessives, especially in the US, on Iraq). The problem is that media, politicians and other scientists still seem to be willing to take him seriously and give him platforms, without any proper challenge.
His prediction in the event of a lockdown were pretty near the mark. I’m sceptical of the results of the alternative scenarios but I still say that’s due to the assumptions made – particularly those relating to homogeneity.
But, in his defence, most of his assumptions were based on knowledge at the time and, even now, we can’t pin down the level of ‘prior’ immunity with any certainty.
Well, they may have been ONE plausible set of assumptions at the time, but they are no longer plausible, yet he sticks to them and claims he saved hundreds of thousands of lives, despite much evidence to the contrary
Even a stopped clock is right twice a day.
As I’ve said before, the whole thing serves to demonstrate the uselessness of computer modelling. It is true to say that Ferguson’s work was based on the data available at the time (although it ignored other, plausible, less alarmist data), but that being the case it should not have been presented as anything other than guesswork.
His model’s predictions for Sweden were 20 times higher than reality – in keeping with his historical record
Hysterical record.
Bullshit. At the time Michael Levitt wrote to him and suggested that according to the data already available from Wuhan and other places he suspected he was out by a factor of 10, but Ferguson ignored him… and lo and behold he was out by a factor of 10.
Ignoring real world evidence when doing mathematical modelling is bad science, doing so when it leads to hugely damaging public policy is unethical to the point of actively malicious.
If he was a GMC-registered doctor I’d be agitating for him to be struck off, he has done far more damage than Andrew Wakefield could even dream about. But there’s no professional recourse or accountability for academics – that is precisely one of the big problems here.
Your suggestion that Wakefield dreams about damaging people is offensive.
If people aren’t keen on anti-vaxx material here, they should have the grace and good manners not to make remarks such as this.
There are valid discussions to be had about vaccine safety. On the other hand, Wakefield’s research was found to be wilfully fraudulent and unethical and he was rightly punished by the GMC.
Bollox on stilts. You sound unaware of the cdc whistleblower Thompson ? There are ‘valid’ discussions to be had on Wakefield’s integrity, methods, and correctness too. As for the GMC …
But you are missing my point. If you throw nasturtiums here, and people who have the cheek to disagree with you respond, it is us who will get pilloried by people nervous about aligning themselves with anti-vaxxers.
Perhaps this isn’t the place ?
Imperial College received funds from the Gates Foundation. That’s all you need to know. Ferguson was just following orders. Where have we heard that before?
I do think the code is a bit of a red herring, but I think it’s a bit of both. The initial assumptions are the main problem but I believe there is also a fundamental issue with using predictive modelling to drive public policy. Certainly a policy that has such huge implications on society.
Hmm – Yes & No. Policy makers need to have some idea of the worst possible scenario (among others).
In truth, a ball park figure can be obtained without a complex model. e.g.
1/ Assume all population are susceptible
2/ Assume each individual has same probability of contracting & spreading virus.
3/ Assume R0=2.5
4/ Assume Fatality Rate = 0.9%
UK population = 67 million
If R0 = 2.5 then Herd Immunity reached at 60% infected. Given HI occurs during pandemic a further 20% will be infected during the decline.
Total infected = 80% x 67 = ~54 million
No. of Deaths = 0.9% x 54 = ~490k
Crude but it shows the potential scale. You can now work to bring those numbers down using further research, observations, etc.
I’m still not sure Ferguson’s total infected numbers are that far out but the geographical spread of the population slows the rate of infection.
How many respiratory infections, historically, have achieved the total number of infections suggested by the kind of straight SIR model you describe?
How plausible was the 60% infected figure?
How plausible was the IFR figure (not what were the estimates of it at the time, but what would an epidemic disease generally be expected to end up at if those were the estimates of ifr/cfr in the early stages?
Why was it assumed that a new coronavirus would not be subject to a degree of existing immunity, when that phenomenon appears to be well known with flus and colds?
If the numbers had been put forward in honest contexts so it could be clearly seen just how much guesswork was involved and how many alternative low end outcomes were equally or much more likely, then I don’t believe for a second that we would have seen anything like the widespread panic response that we did see. Using worst case assumptions has its place, but especially when you use multiplicative worst case assumptions for your modelling you need to be very clear that the results are likely to be grossly, gratuitously alarmist.
And sure enough, so it came to pass.
Mayo, all your posts are anti-LS. WHY????
I could suggest several reasons …
This is the third evening running that Mayo has generated a very long thread of earnest responses to his/her arguments.
That strikes me as very successful troll behaviour.
Don’t feed the trolls.
Royal Society – bankrolled by the Wellcome Trust and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
Try linking to an independent source that is not compromised and I may take it more seriously.
These are also the people behind DELVE and their infamous report on masks used to justify the present policy. (DELVE’s full name is The Royal Society’s “Data Evaluation and Learning for Viral Epidemics”) – note – data evaluation, no medical type people involved. has been covered in full a few times in the comments on this site in the past month.
Can you give links to “the hundreds of models that produce the exact same result” please?
I can’t find any unless the result you are looking for is commonly called “garbage” as in garbage in, garbage out.
As to the R number CMO Chris Whitty stated openly in a videoed parliamentary hearing “If you look at the R, and the behaviours, quite a lot of the change that led to the R going below one occurred well before, or to some extent before, the 23rd, when the full lockdown started.” and has NEVER been challenged by MPs, Parliamentary Committees or the MSM in any way, shape or form.
It’s about the only thing he has said in months that has a ring of truth to it.
You’re at it again. The whole concept of the ‘R’ number is discredited by the revelation (known all along by immunologists but not modellers) that the immune system is dynamic, and infection isn’t binary. The ‘R’ number is a concept derived from a toy model, not the other way round. It has very little to do with reality. If you are going to quote the ‘R’ concept, tell us your definition of ‘infection’. Yesterday you denied that you equated ‘infection’ with antibodies. OK. Tell us your definition today.
The 1922 Committee had better do a bit more than talk, bombast, bluff and bluster and start making things happen visibly and undeniably.
“In the background” or “behind the scenes” means absolutely nothing.
If testing is one answer (it’s not reliable) you would have to mass test the population often. Those with daily contact and face to face would have to be tested daily, those taking other measure’s would have to be weekly and results would have to be rapid (in both cases).
The present system is chaotic and not fit for purpose. The system proposed above is impossible as the capacity, lack of a fast test and infrastructure is and never will be available.
So what do we do, we of course live with the virus as we do with all other types of illness.
Mass testing MIGHT be a proportionate and cost effective response to a much more deadly disease, but this one isn’t especially more deadly than bad flu, and it’s pretty well known that it affects badly quite specific groups
It’s not an exceptional public health threat so exceptional measures not appropriate
Ministers announce new grants for businesses affected by local lockdowns
From a selfish point of view, how about the same for travel and tourism businesses that cannot operate due to restrictions and measures in place?
Where is all this grant money coming from? My council tax going to £10k a quarter?!
And where is this magic money tree that the government appears to have, and can I have one??
Same tree that the £100 Billion testing will come from, I believe it is in Sherwood Forest somewhere.
If you’re talking about the Major Oak, it’s hollow and needs to be propped up to stop it toppling.
Totally agree kh. I have 2 elderly lonely widowed friends with health conditions that have suffered and suffered in a country that is now unrecognisable.
Israel: locking down strict and early, mandating masks from the start and tracking, tracing and cracking down on citizens efficiently.
Result: ruin and the biggest Coronavirus infection surge of all.
Conclusion: if there is a relationship between lockdowns and virus infections, it’s inverse.
And the same is true for masks.
But then, maybe that surge in infections was and is the real goal of all politicians outside of Sweden. For whatever reason.
https://jordanschachtel.substack.com/p/the-worlds-most-intrusive-contact
https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/313310/signatures/new
Repeal the coronavirus act
Signed, for what it’s worth.
However, the issue at hand isn’t really about repealing the act, it’s about ensuring that it isn’t extended at the end of this month.
Signed
At the begining the joke was about enjoying your free trial of 21 days of Communism . Personally now we are into our 7 th month of this sham medical totalitarian state the joke has turned rather sour.
Yesterday was an early morning visit to the barber as despite my senior medical status I still have my own hair …and teeth unlike Whitty and Vallance.The barber told me the rules had been changed and did I have a mask …. I really couldnt be bothered to say I am exempt or that I don’t wear one because I follow evidence based medicine. I just said no .
He searched around and I thought he was going to offer me his own !! Instead he decided to swiftly close the door so no snitch could see. I felt I was in some war movie in occupied France. It is nuts.
“At the begining the joke was about enjoying your free trial of 21 days of Communism . Personally now we are into our 7 th month of this sham medical totalitarian state”
Did someone in government forget to cancel the direct debt again?
We need a new satirical version of Allo Allo.
We already have a Lieutenant Gruber
Haha maybe… if only to see how many are triggered by a character called, ‘Mimi LaBonq’ 🙂
I’m probably late to the party, but here’s your Covipass, right here:
And he said that “in the near future” he wanted to start using testing “to identify people who are negative – who don’t have coronavirus and who are not infectious – so we can allow them to behave in a more normal way, in the knowledge they cannot infect anyone else”.
Or, as we used to say, “Papers, please?”
The current YouyGov poll makes for some depressing reading.
It seems like the majority support the new 6 person rules, would support a curfew and think the most important thing is to save EVERY life.
Hard to believe
They think saving every life from Covid is important. Deaths from cancer, suicide, economic depression, etc. they don’t seem too bothered about.
Painful to believe, but not hard. As someone said, stupidity is more prevalent than hydrogen, and they are out there. They still think we will all die without a magic vaccine. And because so many believe that so strongly, this government can, and will, do what it likes.
How many supported communism in the USSR, as opposed to just going along with it? And then, when it failed to deliver, it collapsed, although the decade long aftermath in Russia was likely worse. I think we are headed for a Russia-style collapse. And one phrase I have come across in relation to that decade-long event – not surprising given the economic advice of people like Dr Jeffrey Sachs – is, “hidden famine.”
Yes the Yahoo poll was 76 / 24 in favour of these new measures. Extraordinary. We have work to do. At least it’s better than it was, at the start 95% or so supported lockdown. Nuts!
What was the exact question and how was the question shaped? Polling tricks. And who did they poll? Here, in Quebec, it’s almost always 1006 people. Is that a magic number?
as mentioned elsewhere the yougov poll is unscientific – you can complete it without login etc. i did it yesterday and today. so it is simple to influence with bots or lots of squaddies . But clearly from your response it then seems to have an element of veracity even if it is bullshit
Never believe a Yougov poll any more than a statement from Christopher Whitty.
The pole results are not so depressing when you consider the very biased question:
“Would you support or oppose the introduction of a curfew (a time each day after which people are not allowed to leave their homes) between 10pm and 5am to help prevent a second wave of COVID-19?”
The question presents as fact that:
If those two were facts, then I would perhaps vote to support it, but the question should be:
“Would you support or oppose the introduction of a curfew (a fundamental breach of basic human rights) between 10pm and 5am when it will make no difference to anyone’s health but it will make Matt Hancock look like he is in control of the situation?”
Put in that way I think the poll would produce very different answers.
Hello Richard, is Private Eye all over this, haven’t read it for a few years now?
I’ve heard depressing reports about Private Eye recently.
“here we still are, in Sept, threats of lockdowns, Maskism, MSM still pumping out fear, claiming asymptomatic (poss false) positive tests ‘cases’, no context etc etc. With the democratic process shut down (and/or locked in orthodoxy) and Govt ruling by capricious diktat, backed by the Police and prosecutors, our judiciary silent and anyone who asks reasonable questions about the proportionality of NPIs (let alone wants to protest) closed down”
Tell me it’s any different in the majority of other countries. It’s not just this government. We saw the photo of the Spanish lifeguard being arrested by a couple of police in full protective clothing, as if she had Ebola or something.
“here we are, months later, about to witness the collapse of many Western economies and plunge millions in this country alone into relative poverty and allow hundreds of millions to succumb to starvation and medical abandonment in the developing world. I do wonder why the Left has just allowed this nonsense to grip when this was known to be the inevitable outcome back in April”
The worst offenders across the world are left-wing governments. Just look at Democrat-run California, Jacinda Ardern’s New Zealand, Victoria in Australia which is not run by a conservative PM.
It seems to me that these measures are being imposed by governments in line with the revolutionary Marxist-run WHO, the socialist-dominated UN, which is also in thrall to climate change nonsense.
Our government tolerates BLM and XR protests, but not those who oppose them, or those who protest against illegal immigration.
Toby doesn’t think it’s a conspiracy.
But lets face it, when it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck….
Keep pestering Toby. He will give in eventually. Try different angles. There are many ways the conspiracy thing can be explained and some are less controversial than others.
There seems to be a rule for mainstream media journalists that you can’t mention anything / or agree with anyone that Wikipedia links with conspiracy theories or calls anti-vaxx. It’s like a CIA control mechanism. Would a mainstream journalist (who all loved Robert F Kennedy Junior when he was involved with the green movement) write anything but a hack piece today? No mainstream journalist will dare go near Agenda 21 or 30, ID2020 or the Great Reset – all public knowledge but unquestionable.
Sweden is a social democracy and has been very grown up about it. While we have a populist right wing government but they have gone mad. Yes, the Left love the opportunity to demonstrate the interventionist power of the state in the name of the collective, but it’s not wholly consistent. Southern US states perhaps most predictable in their approach.
“we have a populist right wing government“
LOL!
Need to examine closely your beliefs about what constitutes “right wing”, clearly, if not just supporting but almost worshipping collective state healthcare, condoning police “taking the knee” to radical leftist and anti-white racist anarchist mobs while funding endless “diversity awareness” indoctrination and supporting “hate speech” censorship is your idea of “right wing” then your ideas are pretty far removed from any kind of realistic perspective.
“Populist” of course is generally used as a term of abuse, but in practice usually just means “sensible ideas that the left hates”.
I don’t see much right wing about the Conservatives. They certainly favour big business – particularly large multinationals. They seem very keen on the nanny state and petty rules which they always criticise when they aren’t in power. They broadly support BLM and the Green movement and completely demonise anti-lock down freedom protests.
Funnily enough they always promise a bonfire of regulations and simplification of the tax system – but it always seems like a continuation of the work going on over decades – like there is a controlling hand.
Important to bear in mind that there is absolutely nothing right wing about supporting big business these days, because much of big business and big money is in the hands of more or less openly left wing management and ownership. As Toby and Delingpole point out in their latest podcast, BLM and XR are not rebels against an oppressive establishment, they are the establishment’s shock troops.
True. Look at the US, in general terms, a lot of the big companies, certainly all of big tech: lot of love for the Democrats. Wealthiest Congressional districts (currently, probably not in the ensuing few months) something like 80%, 40/50: Democrat.
Boris and his inner circle either are, or have been, infiltrated by neo-Marxists. At some point the Tory party via the 1922 Committee will realise this and get rid of them. Mid October is the key turning point in my view, although that might not be completely evident until the end of the year. Boris will not be in place on 1 January 2021.
I think it will happen sooner. But prepare for Olympic level gymnastics in double speak
We might have a Happy New Year after all.
I cant say whether it’s right or left wing. Taken to extreme they are both totalitarian which is what we’ve got. We need a new word for full-on dictatorship without the “right/left” connotations which only work at local level. This is a globalist plot which is being masterminded by a few. A psychopathocracy.
I’ve seen the word ‘technocracy’ cropping up in a few places.
It looked suspiciously like a war against the people around the world from day one. No one in the mainstream media will ever acknowledge any of the so called ‘conspiracies’ because they are fully complicit in promoting the ‘new normal’ and the ‘new green deal’ and all the other scams. Watch the mainstream media coverage of the Australian anti-lockdown protests verses the reality on the ground https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3yxOCq1C2os we are being completely lied to.
It is the Great Reset they even admit it! what more do people want as evidence.
It’s a duck!
However, he started a sentence with “I’m not a conspiracy theorist but… ”
A good sign!
I’ve got this suspicion that this is a typical con and BS from Bojo and his school prefects ( cabinet)
Frighten the people,bring in stupid,useless and damaging measures then “Surprise, surprise” around the end of October he announces that “because of the measures we have taken, etc,etc I can announce that we can ease down the lockdown measures, etc in time for Christmas”
The people (he hopes) will spill out onto the streets singing “Good old Boris,etc” and he will have conned everyone with obvious exceptions(lockdown sceptics) again just as he did last December.
No chance. Full lockdown coming. Planned all along.
But will the people,not the sheep, stand for it?
When the Daily Mail questions the actions of a Conservative(BOJO) government,surely there must be hope.
The tipping point could be when the furlough payments dry up. The gov know that though.
They won’t dry up, there is no way they will be able to keep up this controlling agenda with millions of unemployed people taking to the streets.
If they can find £100bn for their “Moonshot” program from the magic money tree, they can magic up more cash to keep people from rioting from job losses.
The DM is not consistently questioning, their editorial line is wobbling but judging by their awful headline yesterday blaming Gen Z for all this, I suspect they have a way to go before they stand against it all. Recall that much of the media loves a good catastrophe.
I believe The Times is the paper that matters the most to those in power between elections. The Conservative only try to appeal to Daily Mail and Telegraph readers coming up to an election, other than that they ignore them.
The Times today was incredibly pro-establishment and Big Pharma – and scathing of the anti-lockdown movement in a leading opinion piece. There is absolutely no hope from The Times.
Christmas will be the pinch-point. Kids coming back from Uni, families getting together, etc. We will find out then which way the government will go but I haven’t seen anything over the last few months to give me any sense of optimism.
Nope, Wancock wants to cancel Christmas too much. Think how sad and sorry he can look whilst explaining that it’s essential to keep us all safe.
Vested interests
Get writing to your MPs. I’ve pasted below the e-mail I plan to send. Feel free to use it as inspiration and/or to suggest improvements:
—
Dear [my MP],
As my MP, I am writing to ask you to vote against the renewal of powers afforded to the government under the Coronavirus Act, if and when you get the opportunity to do so later this month. I well understand that the novel coronavirus presents a significant health risk to vulnerable people, but that risk has to be understood in the context of the risks inherent in living a normal life, and of the deleterious effects of this act.
You don’t need me to tell you that the powers afforded to the government under this act represent an extraordinary incursion into our fundamental freedoms, impinging on our rights to liberty, family life, religious practice and political association, at least (articles 5, 8, 9 and 11 of the Human Rights Act 1998). Moreover, in the period that this legislation has been in force the laws governing us have repeatedly been made and changed by ministerial decree, with barely any parliamentary scrutiny except on a retrospective basis. This is not a situation that should persist in a supposedly free country. The civil liberties advocacy group Liberty is taking the same view.
The original rationale for the act was that it was needed to prevent the NHS from being overwhelmed. Whatever the merits of this reasoning at the time, it does not apply now: the government’s own data show that deaths, hospital admissions, bed occupancy and ventilator usage have all tailed off dramatically and not picked up in any significant sense with the relaxation of lockdown measures. The recent fixation on a supposed increase in “cases” is just the latest example during this epidemic of the goalposts being moved. What conclusions should anyone be drawing from this “increase” when there has been a relentless increase in the number of tests carried out? And when, according to both SAGE and PHE, even a relatively small number of false positives can produce a statistically significant effect when the prevalence of the virus is as low as it is now?
But in fact, there is very good reason to believe that the measures were unnecessary in the first place. Again, according to the government’s own data, COVID-19 deaths in the UK peaked on 8 April. Given that multiple studies have shown the mean time from infection to death to be around three weeks, this means that new infections peaked at least a week before the Prime Minister’s speech of 23 March. In other words, the R number was brought below 1 without the need for the measures contained in this act, and in fact without the need for any coercive measures at all. The Chief Medical Officer for England admitted as much in evidence to the Health and Social Care Committee on 21 July. The conclusion is unavoidable that the virus can be kept under control without the need for the powers contained in this act. Given how objectionable the act is on its own terms, this is what should be done.
Your sincerely,
[me]
I’ve just emailed mine with something similar and I’m telling all my friends and family to do do as well. Everybody I know is well and truly fucked off with it all.
I’ve just emailed mine. Tried to appeal to her Labour sensibilities regarding mental health, other NHS services, education and restrictions to religious festivals. Advocated a “more appropriate and holistic strategy with cross-party input”. Hope it works and we don’t get stuck with something even worse.
Brilliant, many thanks. I’m going to email it now and put the template on my FB page.
You’re welcome.
Great content, but could I make one suggestion. Considering they are likely to skim over most if not all correspondence, and thus likely to miss crucial aspects of your argument, possibly consider putting the salient points as bullet points at the very beginning of the document and keep the rest as it is should they want further detail. Aim to engage their attention from the onset.
Thanks.
Yes – I put in the subject box of my email “Coronavirus Act 2020 – Do Not Renew”. And the first and last sentences of my email text were direct requests that the Act should not be renewed.
Many thanks. Have done so and added a final paragraph outling the personal catastrophe this has caused to my livelihood and industry (opera, concerts, performing arts).
Why is no one in the medical profession shouting from the rooftops – forget spending billions on pointless daily tests on the healthy( since when was it a sensible thing to do this?!). Spend the money and resources on clearing up The backlog of cancer, cardiac and other actual medical cases- which present CURRENT serious risk of deaths. How can wancock say he’s interested in ‘keeping people safe’ with a straight face. Odious man, drunk on his own power and with zero humanity or empathy. My 80 year old mother( a ‘granny’) is livid at his comments. The whole charade makes me feel physically sick. The public should be enraged. I almost feel like an alien in my own country now. Simply don’t recognise it.
Also to advertise to all that they should work on improving their immunity systems (prevention is better than cure)
Exactly…constantly referring to “symptoms of the disease” reinforces a false mindset. Most “symptoms” are symptoms of the body fighting back and, in 99% of cases, our bodies fight back very successfully. We are nearly all of us walking miracles (laboratories on legs) when it comes to our ability to deal with a huge range of pathogens, of all types.
Why? General cowardice, PC herd behaviour and censorship by BBC, Sky, ITV, and Global News account for the apparent silence.
As a senior medical professional I take a little offence at that . The main reason is fear. You and I might not be a paid up member of the new cult with its promise of heaven and hell and associated rituals for the true believers , but I can assure you 75 % of the population are from my conversations with patients.
Any scepticism on my part has to be done very carefully because I fear being denounced on social media by a patient.. ” granny killer doctor fails to wear rubber gloves in consultation ” , or one of the supreme guardians of the cult the pratice staff.
I understand your predicament but I think the Royal College Knights and Dames could speak up much more: shout it from the highest hills, one might say.
What I personally would like to see more of would be the names of ‘senior NHS management’ responsible for mandating most of the nonsense.
That’s part of The Global Reset.
It’s extremely worrying that Mad Prof Ferguson who with his fantasy figures was responsible for persuading the government to introduce the initial death-dealing lockdown, now is smiling upon the latest policy turn by Bozo and Co.
It’s further concerning that the BBC is reporting this in triumphalist tones. And it’s also very, very irritating that our “trusted broadcaster” never reminds us that the Mad Prof broke the social distancing rules multiple times to go shag his bit on the side. They are always happy to remind us of Dominic Cummings’ alleged misdemeanours in relation to social distancing.
Given his track record, if Ferguson thinks it is right it is almost certainly wrong.
News from the US
Doctors’ group: HCQ-hoarding FDA cares more about power than Americans’ lives
https://www.naturalnews.com/2020-09-09-hcq-hoarding-fda-cares-more-about-power.html
Can I claim ignorance of the new rules on the basis that I’m a Guardian reader – which doesn’t appear to think these drastic new curtailments on civil liberties are newsworthy?
https://www.theguardian.com/uk
No, but you should be thoroughly ashamed of yourself for being a Guardian reader.
Actually I stopped reading that a long time ago, just had a look out of curiosity.
Unbelievable.it wasn’t even a minor headline.
I wonder if at least some of the Moonshot tech does exist but it’s just being held for optimum timing. So come November, Poppycock can threaten to cancel Christmas if an ‘enrolment target’ isn’t met. As others have suggested before, they may have planned this for a vaccine but with phase 3 trials going pear-shaped they’ve had to dial back to just the IDs.
The Coronavirus doesn’t fulfill any of the established criteria for the usefulness, need and acceptability of a vaccine.
The virus mutates, any vaccine will be ineffective.
The virus can’t be eradicated, as it will still always be around in animals.
The mortality risk is skewed to a small group, and this is basically equal to the general mortality risk and profile.
It therefore makes absolutely no sense for anyone under the age of roughly 70 to consider getting vaccinated in light of that vaccination’s huge risks (as demonstrated by and in all of their trials sofar) – unless one demands and considers it to be a price to be paid for establishing herd immunity and establishes, quantifies and raises that price through discrimination or sanctions of those who refuse.
Vaccinating children is criminal in light of them being not statistically significant affected (risk of death similar to being struck by lightning) and in light of these vaccination risks, which cannot even be assessed properly because of the rushed development of all those vaccines.
And mRNA, DNA and vector vaccines main long term and impossible to assess or rule out, for at least another 25 years, risk through reverse transciptase seems to be oncologic, an increased risk of cancer, but they should also never be allowed to be given to anyone still capable or willing to reproduce:
we simply don’t know whether the DNA of the offspring of a herewith vaccinated person will be altered or not, and whether that will have positive or negative effects.
Everything is imaginable here, e.g. maybe those future newborns will all be Supermen and Superwomen, maybe there is no change at all, maybe they will all die immediately/upon contact with a coronavirus, maybe only two mRNA vaccinated parents will have healthy children, maybe parents must have had a mix of vaccines for that, and so on.
In light of our lack of and impossible to establish for another 10-25 years knowledge in those regards, the odds for each scenario, the positive, neutral and negative one, are currently the same: 33% each.
Why risk that, if the neutral outcome is the guaranteed one anyway for those age groups?!
It’s really high time, in particular for parents and adolescents, to wake up and demand a halt to this criminal madness.
Good post Jay. Anyone who hasn’t yet responded to the consultation needs to do so – and keep a copy of what you submit!
Don’t read the Times article by David Aaronovitch today. I get the impression he would like anyone who doesn’t get the Covid vaccine immediately to be imprisoned in their home or preferably sent to a detention camp.
Questioning anything the government or Big Pharma tells us is soon to become illegal. Apparently we are incapable of making calculated decisions regarding risks / benefits for ourselves anymore. Really annoys me that the civil service thinks they can govern every aspect of our lives and the media meekly go along with every step.
Aaronovitch is an establishment shill, pure and simple.
If all viruses mutate then producing a vaccine is a complete waste of time and money that could be better spent elsewhere.
Mandatory crawling: if it saves one life it will be worth it.
Well in Japan there is a lot of bowing and they’ve done pretty well so maybe there’s something in it?
Lol!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gq7pxUgjLz0
The Limbo Rock-‘how low can you go?’
I would love to see Boris and his minions do The Limbo Rock. On national TV. That would knock them off their high horses a peg.
How appropriate that the next piece of lunacy is being dubbed by its proponents as “Moonshot” – although Moonshine would be even better. Bozo has clearly lost his marbles. £100 billion to test well people all backed up by a gargantuan bureaucracy?
Lunatism is the new Conservatism.
Except until Handjob allows it, well people absolutely must NOT have tests because we’re running out of tests and it’s all their fault for having tests like he asked them to last week because he didn’t think that lots of people having tests would use up test kits, and if they continue to have tests they’re KILLING GRANNY… But as soon as he says so it will be compulsory for well people to have a test or they won’t be allowed to leave their house, and if they don’t have a test they’re KILLING GRANNY. Got it?
Yes, it’s utter bollox!
From the post above:
‘Like many others, I thought that the propaganda wouldn’t survive contact with the bright daylight of facts (and the v obvious shifting of Govt ‘strategy’).’
I thought the same! To be honest, and no disrespect, but I had hoped that by now I wouldn’t be looking on the Lockdown Sceptics website anymore since I thought that common sense would prevail and that there’d be no need for this website! How wrong I was!
I don’t know if it’s because I’m very tired today but I feel so despondent. We are being governed by cranks and I question Johnson’s sanity.
Please will someone get us out of this mess!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qdCBwi0MMp0&list=WL&index=44&t=0s
Your Chance To Decide – Conspiracy?
Peru went into lockdown 16th March – 911 deaths per million (the highest death rate in the world after San Marino)
Brazil – no lockdown – 602 deaths per million
I’ve moved from poo-pooing conspiracy to believing it’s the only explanation for the continuing and unrelenting repression after the virus has died away to a background murmur.
What I couldn’t work out is the end game. Why? What are they after – this world cabal?
I should have been following the money. Davos. The Bilderberg Group. It’s ALWAYS the money. I think they’re doing this to get tight control of the population because of the upcoming financial crash. The trillions and trillions everybody owes everybody has to be reformed and soon. It just cannot be allowed to go ,it’s unsustainable and it’s becoming very unstable. The world financial system is broke. But what would happen whilst it is reshaped? Normal trade would cease. Billions would starve. Riots. Back to the dark ages. Civilisation effectively ends. UNLESS – unless, suddenly, there is only one world entity. Then nobody would owe anybody else, because there wouldn’t be anybody else. The ‘entity’ would have to control everything, of course. Production, food, distribution. Everything to keep the population alive. But no trade. It’s sort of Marxism, yes. It’s certainly totalitarianism, in the literal sense of the word. It’s THEM doing this for our own good. Gee – thanks. Now fuck off.
It’s also the only way I can justify things, despite all the positive data they plough on with destructive measures. It can’t just be group think.
The most powerful companies and people in the world have done very well – just look at the share prices of the Big Tech companies. Unfortunately, the poorest are suffering the most, just look at the queues for food in the US (and that is a rich country!).
Many of the most powerful and wealthiest people in the world before WW1 and WW2 emerged more powerful and wealthy at the end of it. It will be the same after WW3 (the war against the masses) – that is if we let them win.
“It’s sort of Marxism”
Not by any known definition. It is totalitarianism – Mussolini and Franco are the nearest neighbours.
Welcome to the wonderful world of being a conspiracy theory (but rapidly heading towards fact) nutter land as we are portrayed constantly and not just on this subject.
Post it on social media and wait for the howls and condemnation no matter what facts you post.
Yes, I can remember a friend of mine telling me about Davos and the WEF when this started, and I did not believe her. I thought the virus was an accidental lab escape and that was why there was the overreaction. But no, it has definitely been planned from the start and the propaganda is increasing, not dying down.
I now think the underlying reason is to restructure a collapsing global financial system
Just got a thankyou for posting the link to Ivor Cummins latest on fb.
Liberty petition
https://liberty.e-activist.com/page/63681/petition/1?ea.tracking.id=Website
When the left joins in something might move
Thanks. Signed.
Comments about MP’s not questioning the lockdown
Not surprised. They didn’t get where they are today by having principals. They would have been weeded out early on in the process if they had principals
What they will want to do however, is be on the winning side. So they will wait. They will sit on the sidelines smiling and attending coffee mornings with the WI, careful never to answer a question
When the final whistle blows, they will announce that they backed the winning side all along, but that we were just not astute enough to notice it
I am pretty sure our new boy Tory MP won’t rock the boat as he clearly wants to be something like Parliamentary Under Secretary for Paper Clips. Its a great pity we have a parliament dominated by professional politicians rather than by people of principle.
Likewise ours, who replaced Phillip Hammond..
1000 Doctors agree this is all a scam. Must watch and share.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l5YJhwJCS2o&feature=youtu.be
Up to 90% of COVID-19 “positive” test results are false, test kits matching dead viral fragments that pose no infection risk
https://www.naturalnews.com/2020-09-09-90-percent-covid19-positive-test-results-false.html
There was much noise made about a spike in deaths earlier in the week to justify the latest madness. Where is it:
1st-8th Sep daily deaths:
3,9,3,4,8,6,7,2 (total 42).
24th-31st Aug daily deaths:
5,9,10,7,4,2,3,6 (total 46)
https://www.england.nhs.uk/statistics/statistical-work-areas/covid-19-daily-deaths/
Answers on a virtual postcard please…
The Gov.UK site has 32 for 8th Sept.
https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/deaths
NHS England (hospitals) has 2
It would be scurrilous to suggest that the 32 spike was somehow contrived for the day before the announcements.
And there is no conclusion to be drawn from the fact the PHE has form with inflating numbers.
Quite right. The 30,000 double counted tests, the 1.3 Million double counted tests and the 5000 odd false deaths were all just ‘alternative facts’.
Where do you see 32 for the 8th? I see 3. Have they just changed it?
The 32 were spread over quite a few days, it was just ‘announced’ on the 8th.
It’s on the “Deaths within 28 days of positive test by date reported, by nation” chart.
They also have a date of death chart, with non spikey numbers. So I jumped the gun with my suspicious comments.
Perhaps you didn’t jump the gun. How strange that they managed to pick up 32 deaths to report – on the day in question. They wouldn’t have been building up a “stockpile” to suddenly release when the time was right? No, they wouldn’t do that.
Good point. I had that thought earlier but then forgot it!
In fact I then had the thought that this could be demonstrated or weakened by going back to see if there is a correlation between these “administrative spikes” and subsequent announcements.
No you were right first time.
BTW, cComparing the two graphs, totals 1st-8th Sep :
‘By date graph’ : Eng, 51, NI 6, Sco 3, Wal 0
‘By reported graph’ : Eng, 71, NI 7, Sco 5, Wal 2
Funny how PHE continually has ‘reported’ numbers which meet the govt propaganda agenda.
They make up new shit all the time. Wankers!
“Who do you think you are, the Covid bloody Stasi?”
“Well actually, yes.”
It will soon be possible to have this exchange in a British town centre.
Does anyone know if they will be armed…. no I’m not joking
We owe it to ourselves to disown – if not tar and feather – anyone we know that signs up to be one of them.
Possibly long sticks to begin with like the religious mullahs in Saudi, then once bored with whacking our ankles they may request tasers.
Once they are in place, they will be able to check lots of things, won’t they? Mandatory public masks, one way pavements, “Second shopping trip this week, sir?”, “Can I see your Covipass, please, as you know you shouldn’t be out without it” etc…
And people will bow their heads and comply..And if you don’t your friendly neighborhood armed Police officers are going to be there to support these brave Marshals if god forbid any dissent occurs. Well if you comply , you have nothing to fear the MSM will say. My parents grew up in E Europe during Communism and my father has been getting quieter and quieter as weeks progress..He has seen it before so he knows what is coming and how ti feels..
Now, that *is* worrying.
That is precisely why it should NOT be allowed to happen..
It appears that PM Johnson really approves of all this. Shameful.
If they are sent into the towns, it will be another nail in the retail sector coffin.
Throw them in a peat bog.
Listening to Peter hitchens making fun of the government rules I think we should go one further. The picture at the bottom could be printed and stuckaround the busiest places in your local area.
The falling tortoise example he gave is funny, but then so is the risk of putting on trousers. So trouser wearing should be banned (think image of people in their underwear on the metro in New York). Was it 6 people who died doing this last year?
Having a bath too is too risky. Crossing the road, wear a traffic cone on your head…
We need to laugh at all of this as it will probably be the only way to defeat them :>)
Procreation is the biggest factor contributing to death. It should be number one on the list of things to ban.
No life = No death
The crime isssss life … The ssssentence isssss deathhhhhh…
Quick get the Boing
Depopulation for the Nation.
Yeah, but they had to put on their underwear first. That could be dangerous as well. Let’s all go naked.
I attended a Rolling Stones concert at Maple Leaf Garden in 1975. It was hot and muggy before the Stones came on stage. Really humid. I casually told the young woman that it was so humid that we should all take off our clothes. She stood and socially distanced herself from me a few more seats. Later, during the concert, Mick Jagger remarked how hot and humid it was and that we should all take off our clothes and the crowd cheered and roared.
Apologies if this has already been posted – I’m just catching up with developments. Here’s an example of “covidiocy” on the part of an airline and its staff. It’s the sort of thing that makes your blood boil:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-54096061
And how’s this for consultant-speak bollocks:
“Our crew requested the presence of the authorities after the guests [passengers] refused to comply with Transport Canada’s interim order and subsequently refused to deplane [leave] the aircraft.”
I hope the airline goes bust.
“Deplane the aircraft”. So, the plane was on another plane, was it? Novel.
I have a friend who suffers from psychological issues. He believes that he is a messenger of God and has been brought to earth to do his bidding. It was something that I did a little research into a while back.
I found evidence of many people around the world with a similar mindset. They have committed crimes and used something called the “Jesus made me do it” defence. The severity of acts committed range from minor misdemeanors to actual murder. The idea is that these people believe what they’ve done is justified because of some belief that it was a righteous act. To most rational minded people this is not a valid defence in any way shape or form.
When we look at what has happened and is still happening, I don’t really see much difference between killing, or letting people die, and causing untold suffering on millions of people in a belief that it is the right thing to do and the “Jesus made me do it” mindset.
Oh no, this lot can’t be allowed to get away with the insanity defence!
I was truly staggered at the level of state propaganda in the Times today, they really are fully behind the government and Big Pharma. Endless pro-establishment articles and adverts.
There was an incredibly dehumanising opinion piece on lockdown sceptics and anyone who won’t be in a rush to get a vaccine. I have a feeling anyone deemed anti-vaxx by the Times and establishment might soon be on a cattle truck and in striped pyjamas. I believe they are building up the hatred so they can act brutally against any dissent. And yet this is meant to be a free country, what a joke.
The UK governments strategy is clearly now to make life miserable for months to get everyone to have a mandatory rushed vaccine and digital vaccination passport.
So in keeping with the new religion….
”and the Lord Master Boris sayeth “ thou shall count to the number 6 and the number of the counting shall be 6. Neither shall thou count to 7 nor higher for thy numbers greater than 6 are false and evil and shall not be uttered for they Are displeasing to our Lord Master. Thy Master’s Servants of Covid, thy Marshall’s shall verily issue wrath against his people for gathering in False numbers and shall beat upon the number breakers and issue a mighty tax, for they are evil and dirty and spreaders of disease. Nor do they worship thy Master as prescribed by the Great Law and must be punished.
Thy pleasures of life are False Pleasures and those that stray from the path of True Pseudoscience must be punished under the Great Law for they are not pleasing to our Master.
Thy true believers shall follow the path of enlightenment in word and deed.
Thy Master decrees these laws for he loves thee and his wisdom and knowledge is greater than Man.
Good news, written to my MP on the same matter, we should all do the same, Boris is getting slammed in the MSM for this madness, he, Hancock, Cummings and the mad scientists need to go, dystopian society, they are a disgrace.
I really feel the government have overreached itself.Even Sky news are running critical stories now
Attempting to do the same this morning. However my wordskills are clearly lacking, compared to some of the more articulate on here.
Does anyone have a relatively neutral letter template that I could use to get the point across to my MP?
TJN posted a lovely one a couple of days ago.
I put a draft in a comment earlier. I’m open to suggestions for improvements.
Tried it a few weeks ago with copies to the 1922 committee.
nada, nothing, no reply.
This sit hat i sent:
https://1drv.ms/w/s!Agv7JEO8MngCiT1jG5oT09bcl3mk?e=bSHjXY
Perfect AG, thank you!
Forgot the links to the graphs:
https://1drv.ms/u/s!Agv7JEO8MngCiUT_JYHE9cTXpLwh?e=jfXdC9
easy enough from the letter what graph went where.
Go on holiday to Cyprus. Don’t go on holiday to Cyprus
The Cyprus government require a negative PCR test in the UK in the72 hours prior to travelling. It also requires a written declaration from the traveler that they have been free of covid symptoms for 72 hour before travel
The UK government will not give you a test unless you have symptoms
Kafka should be reclassified from fiction to modern history
Dr Clare Craig’s article today is perhaps the best article published in Lockdown Sceptics. This goes to the essential fact. PCR tests were useful at the height of the pandemic. The risk of false positive tests now is enormous. Her insistence of more viral cultures to prove infectiousness must be the cornerstone of any surveillance system. Instead of spending billion of pounds in Moonshot’s lunacy let invest less money in viral cultures that could possibly stop unnecessary school closures etc and normalize quickly.
Is there any need to test for this virus at all? Surely normal is when we only do such tests when a Dr thinks it appropriate to help treat a sick person.
Today’s Postcard from LA was a thing of beauty.
Yes, well done that guy!
10PM Curfew coming soon.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8712081/Britain-CURFEW-businesses-shuttered-10pm.html#comments
Actually a 10pm curfew wouldn’t affect me in the slightest. In bed at 10.30 and the days of late evening drinking in pubs is long gone.
Doesn’t affect you? Well that’s alright for the rest of us then isn’t it?
I don’t drink gin so ban it as it won’t affect me. OK?
Good for you, Mr. Smug.
I haven’t been out late in years, but I think that I will start off it becomes illegal
I’m just back from Greece. The talk there is that the midnight curfew is directly attributable to a slight uptick in cases as everyone is chucked out onto the street at the same time, calling cabs and fighting.
Folks, this is an important ‘intervention’, from Sir Mick Davis (senior businessman and former CEO of the Tory Party). I think he is signaling to donors. The 1922 are receiving many messages from individual members, and quite a few of us have cancelled memberships. Keep optimistic that things will get better, even if they get worse in the short-run.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2020/09/09/irrational-inconsistent-policies-succeed-breeding-fear/#comment
Hope you are right!
I see the government still thinks the Ferguson model was the appropriate counterfactual rather than real world data from Sweden.
“In May, initial modelling by Johns Hopkins University showed that almost 6,000 additional children could die per day due to disruptions due to COVID-19.” – Unicef
I had a great day yesterday ( until I saw read the latest last night ).
A nice, very relaxed lunch at a riverside pub. Complete normality, stroll up to the bar, order food, no corona bollocks, a bit of a laugh with everyone in the bar paying cash. Great.
As this were a family day out, we’d decided to ban the C word from conversation. However, in the pub garden where we sat, everyone around was talking about it, loudly and all very anti lockdown. Either I’ve discovered the secret Lockdown Sceptics hangout, or the tide has gone beyond turning?
I really hope that you’re right.
Well these may be pockets of dissent, but a few months ago, we were far fewer in number. While masks are everywhere, I believe the numbers of zealots are shrinking by the day.
“Despite all the evidence and growing numbers, ‘we’ Sceptics seem to just to be a flea bite on the elephant.”
I think that feeling expressed by a ‘Consultant’ is common to many of us.
Seeing the egregious distortion of data and plain lying become more and more apparent from April onwards, we thought that the bleedin’ obvious would dawn more widely – particularly given the known incompetence that was the joke that Johnson called a ‘cabinet’.
But such realization didn’t dawn – despite evidence of a growing underlying scepticism (or simple lack of conviction). The compliance to utterly bogus nonsense and magical thinking was overwhelming – and the incompetents must have been popping bottles of bubbly as they decided to push the absurdity further.
This despite the fact (as outlined by ‘Sue Denim’) that epidemiological modeling, upon which so much rested, was a pseudo-science detached from real world verification.
And no – contrary to the assertion of one correspondent above – this wasn’t a ‘left/right thing’. It was across the board, with defenders of civil rights and democratic procedures very much in a minority.
As I’ve touched on before – a car journey at the weekend did raise hopes that the ‘lack of conviction’ was indeed growing. But at the back of my mind was the possibility of what indeed happened : given the effective disappearance of the virus, the incompetents would still feel emboldened enough to ‘double down’ on a still susceptible population, confident in keeping the Big Con going by even more egregious distortions of reality.
And so it was.
Now – it’s not all bleak. I am confident that some of my efforts in simply giving acquaintances good information has had some effect – but mainly amongst those who weren’t entirely sold on the narrative, but who had excuses for it.
But the induction of Fear has been incredibly successful across the population, and has once again been whistled up.
So where does the flea go from here?
I’m not sure.
Continuing to put out good information whenever and wherever possible is obviously necessary.. But it’s not magic. Bluntly, a large number of people don’t know whether it’s shit, shave or breakfast time when it comes to information and logic.
Now that parliament is (at least in theory) back in session, it is clearly necessary to keep up pressure in that direction, with focused questioning rather than rambling rants. Putting MPs on the spot over basic democratic issues is key, and the Coronovirus legislation is a focus. As is asking pointed questions about the issue of vaccination and the government freebies for the pharmaceutical industry.
Demonstrations? Yes – IF you have the numbers (big ‘if’) and can detach the various ancillary hobby-horses that will be used as a distraction from the main issues.
… and, I guess, encouraging simple non-compliance and contempt for executive fiats.
But beyond that, I can see no magic tipping point.
One big sign in todays update for me. Liberty are now getting behind this ( maybe we can argue later why they stayed quiet for so long ). I suspect they’ve noticed that a lot of their regular supporters are anti lockdown.
And Big Brother Watch, too.
You can’t have Granny over for Christmas seems to be a massive tipping point.Its the last national festival we have left.The questions that were posed at the press conference got Johnson and Whitty to admit that the restrictions could still be in place.Raiding homes on Christmas Day to drag out our elderly relatives will not be a good idea
Not just Granny…. there must be many families like mine, where siblings live in different households and the combined total of immediate family members totals more than 6.
I live alone, so do my brother and mother, and my sister plus husband and 2 kids makes a total of 7… so one of us will have to be excluded..
It disturbs me greatly that they now seem to have the right to enter our private homes to see if there are more than 6 people gathered..
My widowed mum would have survived Covid but hated lockdown. I’d been doing her big shop for some years but every day she would walk to her small shops, as much to bump into her friends as to buy things.
I feel sorry for the elderly who wear masks when they’re obviously in distress and discomfort. The look of relief on their faces back in the day when I could tell them that they didn’t need to wear them always would make me want to blink back tears.
What are we doing?
Although it has been touted that SARS-COV-2 is a new virus, I suggest that in fact it is an old virus.
What is the basis for this hypothesis?
In pre-school age group the main immune response is from the innate pattern matching receptors.
In primary school aged children the adaptive system starts to supplement the innate system, with the latter still being dominant.
In secondary school children the adaptive system is maturing but the innate system is still very active.
As a person ages their immune system diminshes and hence become more susceptible to infection.
My hypothesis that this is an old virus is based on the ability of the innate system to control it through the primitive pattern matching receptors that have evolved over millenia with the adjunct of T-cell immunity which may be identified by swelling to the cervical lymph nodes (glands) and a raised temperature but without serious complications.
This is not true for the influenza producing corona virus which can affect all age groups indiscriminantly.
Hence very young children will exhibit no symptoms and are not infectious. As the age range increases then symptoms may appear or they may not. It is only in the older populations that the risk of a seriously adverse reaction occurs.
As Daniel M. Davis in his book “The Beautiful Cure: the new science of Human Health” (pp141-142), states “background inflammation might persist in elderly people” ..”the effect is that the (immune) system is less able to discriminate between germs and the body’s own cells and tissues, and is particularly weak at detecting germs it has never encountered before.”
“it is easier for an immune reaction to be triggered in elderly people, but, by the same token, the system is less stringent in responding appropriately”
“Effects arise not just from the ageing of immune cells but from the ageing of the system as a whole – a consequence of the system having spent decades battling germs”.
The upshot of this is that the current lockdown should be lifted and people allowed to mix.
I welcome your continuing reporting of the ‘false positives’ problem, but perhaps we miss a trick – when paraphrasing reports etc, we can make clear to everyone just how much amplification is done in these tests. 30 cycles will multiply the sample amount by over 1,074 million – and 40 cycles (which is reached in many tests) is over 1 million million times – which gives some context with which to interpret the presence of tiny amounts of contaminants and RNA fragments.
It may also be worth stressing that the PCR tests ‘identify’ the virus by detecting only one or two fragments of 20 to 30 ‘bases’ length; the whole strand consists of almost 30,000 such ‘bases’.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zHgBPfNXHEg
Quite right we don’t want the fishes getting the lab flu
Seen the other Spanish incident, of a boy having his neck knelt on, for not wearing a mask? In the DM today…
I put his on http://johnredwoodsdiary.com/ and he published it.
***************************************************************************
This year’s exam results have no value as they are based on guesswork.
Money has no value anymore it the Daily Mail headline is corecct:
Freedom has no value
What’s the point of having members of Parliament if they don’t protect their constituents form an overbearing Government.
By now the Government must know that lockdowns don’t work.
Peru went into lockdown 16th March – 911 deaths per million (the highest death rate in the world after San Marino)
Brazil – no lockdown – 602 deaths per million
Only 8 reported Covid death in the UK the day Boris Johnson decides to become Oliver Cromwell and threatens to ban Christmas.
No doubt we should call his Covid Marshal social distancing clowns Oliver’s Army, but that sounds too friendly’
If we had a 100 billion spare I’d prefer to spend it on an actual moonshot
And look what happened to Cromwell’s reign in the end.
Might have taken a while but the people eventually woke up.
Do you think Charles I was better? Or Charles II, so corrupt that nobody would lend him a halfpenny, so he sold himself to the King of France for a pension?
At least Cromwell had principles.
Cromwell – principles: Yep, especially with regard to Irish catholics.
Will be interesting to see what replies you get to that post, from others who read his diary..
Covid Marshals = Boris Black Shirts
Nick Triggle is the best BBC journalist out of a bad bunch
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/world-54098675
“Ministers will then face the choice of more restrictions to try to curb the virus in the knowledge these will damage people’s health in other ways as well as harming education and the economy.
Or let the virus spread, while focusing efforts on protecting the vulnerable – that means protecting care homes and perhaps reintroducing shielding.
Lockdown bought us time, but simply deferred the problem.”
“let the virus spread, while focusing efforts on protecting the vulnerable – that means protecting care homes and perhaps reintroducing shielding.”
should have been the plan in March. Of course has to be tempered by whether the vulnerable actually want to be shut away or are prepared to take the risk
Yes. We Old Farts are quite capable of doing our own risk assessment – a task which Mr Toad’s Flying Circus is clearly incapable of on my behalf.
I repeat, for the benefit of that utter shower “Now – just f. off”
Has Deborah Cohen done any recent reports? Or has she been sidelined after spilling some truth?
Genuine question, since I don’t watch BBC News except by accident.
On the above quotes – it’s still BBC bollocks :
dont know. I just check the govt live feed to see what bollox its spouting. Nick Triggle has been reasonable from the beginning not that I agree with him necessarily but I expect he is walking a fine line if he wants to keep a job. It also allows the BBC to reference his articles when its shown the emperor has not clothes
1 – agreed – as a comparison with our and swedens curve showed. It did delay it in S America, S Africa and India to catastrophic results
2 – a conversation is needed about what a care home is. Is it somewhere we send vulnerable relatives to be isolated in a germ free environment in order to eek out their miserable life as long as possible? Should the residents get a say?
“ Should the residents get a say?”
Of course – although in some cases that will essentially be the family.
The underlying point I was making is that many years have a season of heightened infection. This last was nothing unusual – the ‘crisis’ is entirely a political artifact.
And every year care homes and the ‘vulnerable’ have to deal with such a possibility, remembering that even vaccines provide no magic solution.
There is no ‘problem’. These journalists institutionalise mis-truths.
The Hitler youth image somewhere on this page is probably pretty accurate.
Got a spring in my step this morning as I think the silent majority are feeling emboldened enough to, finally, acknowledge that the emperor isn’t wearing a stitch….
How long before Gove breaks rank, possibly with Raab and the honourable member for the 18th century?
This is Gove’s chance. Will he take it i don’t know but if i were him i’d get up in Parliament and go through all the lies of this virus and declare that we should be opening up the country again with an emphasis on people who are weak and ill to take care but the rest of must get moving.
Oh Jeez! Frying pan to fire with that creepy Chuky look-alike doll.
I wonder when you’ll realise that socialism doesn’t work bro. When will people like you get their little grasping fingers out my pocket? We don’t want your socialism. We want the ability to stand or fall on our own efforts and if you can’t well tough fucking titty because my money and my rights come before yours. That way we can all be free. I know you don’t get it and can only surmise you can’t live off your own efforts and require a massive state to take whats mine and give it to you. Can you grasp it yet. Wait, silly question, off course you can’t.
What happens to the disabled under this philosophy? Two people (stupidly, maybe but acting with good intentions have just been disabled by the vaccine trial – multiple sclerosis and transverse myelitis. They were previously healthy and able to look after themselves but not any longer.These neurological disorders have an insidious effect on energy and mental functioning.
Are you going to kick them into the gutter?
Yes, where are the libertarians? I could happily forgive Brexit if they stop this particular Madness (sorry Brexiteers). I think this is much more important.
I voted Brexit to free ourselves from the E.U. I no longer care, this is so much more important
Gove missed his chance months ago. But I guess if he and a few others do finally do the right thing after collaborating for all this time, we ‘ll have to take what we can get for the moment. But I won’t forget or forgive.
On Gove personally, though, I tend to agree with Rick H. I shudder to think of the wars he will manipulate us into if he gets into the top office. He’s a certifiable neocon moonbarker on foreign policy.
I agree,this seems to be the turning point.There seems to be a lot of anger in the air,finally,and also there is a lot of humour directed at the government which is good too.
A note on Johnson,he looks insane,
But nobody warned us that this would happen!
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8717505/Model-32-sent-creepy-texts-bar-worker-leaving-phone-number-Track-Trace-app.html
Totally predictable. I’m sure lots of young women leave false details to protect themselves.
Just saw this on the BBC website – unbelievable they don’t mention the incidence of false positives and people who have had it and recovered and/or not infectious yet are registering positive.
How reliable are the tests?
When it comes to the most common type of diagnostic test, scientists at the University of Bristol believe 20% of positive cases could falsely appear as negative, wrongly telling someone they are not infected.
This can be because the swab sample wasn’t good enough, there were problems in the lab, or the stage of infection the patient was at when tested.
Why am I not surprised?
All I can say reading this website is that local councils and this lot giving them advice are either failing miserably as incompetents, ignoring their local population and there realities of life or just enjoying the power.
https://www.local.gov.uk/our-support/coronavirus-information-councils
I’d like to pose a question. We all know that PHE and the NHS threw thousands of our most vulnerable old persons under a bus with the way they handled care home transfers. Is anyone here aware that the NHS also transferred untested and symptomatic patients from Generals into Community Hospitals? I’ve not seen a single mention of it, but a friend who works for a large Trust and is responsible for bed management told me exactly that – and he’s a hardcore lockdown zealot too. I guess the truth will never out about that as the NHS will cover it up as an internal issue? They couldn’t hide the care home data, what with care homes being privately run.
Apologies if already posted but the Liberty petition is gaining traction
https://liberty.e-activist.com/page/63681/petition/1?ea.tracking.id=Website#start-of-form
Signed.
Singed
Signed.
Signed! But needs a lot more than 28,500 signatures though..
UK Government and Parliament Petition Repeal the Coronavirus Act 2020 https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/313310
Signed
Signed.
Signed
I appreciate Sue Denim’s comments, but have to disagree with this one
That’s in response to this comment by Prof. Ferguson
In other words, Ferguson is defending his model against the claims made by others that the software is fatally flawed and hence incapable of producing a reliable output.
There’s a confusion here, and it’s hard to resolve. There were two aspects to Report 9. One, which of course attracted media attention, was the estimate for the results of the “do-nothing” or “unmitigated” scenario. Ferguson is almost, but not quite, correct, to say that this depends only on the parameters he lists, but there is one more parameter and one, or maybe two, more assumptions. The missing parameter is initial immunity. As Denim says, initial assumptions were that this would be low, as the virus was believed to be novel. That was conservative, but the only reasonable one at the time.
Not quite, but nearly, Herd immunity levels and asymptotic case numbers do indeed depend only on R0 and can be worked out on the back of a napkin, indeed I’ve done so myself. I’ve also written a simple SIR model that shows the effects of varying the parameters. You need quite a big napkin to do such things as estimate the peak infection rate, which is a rather important policy input.
So, using a simple model for “unmitigated” spread, we do now have some experiences (I prefer not to call them “experiments”): Manaus and Guayaquil. There the herd immunity levels were seen to be in the 20-30% range, not the 80% or so predicted by the simple model on the assumption of low initial immunity. The model output is perfectly consistent with observation on the assumption of 50% initial immunity, for example.
There is a further, non-analytic assumption, which is that the spread of this disease does follow the general single-population-level model being used. The SIR and its descendant models are consistent with observations over the last hundred years or so since they were first developed, so it’s not quite as bizarre to use them as Denim implies. Indeed, as Denim says, “their theories/models are general”
But that’s the point of science, isn’t it? To bring as wide a variety of special phenomena as you can into one general understanding.
After he was found breaking lockdown rules this slime should have disappeared under whatever rock he was living under.
… which has nothing to do with the validity of the mathematical model, does it?
It shows he didn’t believe a word or code he had written
And don’t forget Cressida Dick standing with her undistanced Met police on Westminster Bridge clapping for the NHS. It’s almost as if those in power know something that is not being shared with the rest of us.
Well, that’s one interpretation. Others are possible, but again, not really relevant.
The problem with much epidemiology as I see it is that the modeling has lost touch with reality, and confuses models (which do have their proper place) with that reality.
A simpler example is the use of the term ‘excess deaths’ which I have noticed being used as a guideline ‘fact’, when it is a variable term which is, actually simply the error component of a particular model projection. As such, that baseline varies according to the method employed in its calculation – but is treated as some fixed measure of ‘natural’ mortality.
That really only makes sense if you’re determined to use “model” to mean any sort of calculation. The “model” here is that the death rate in any given month is pretty likely to be pretty much the same as it was in the corresponding months over the past few years. In 2020 it was different by an amount well beyond any reasonable “error component”.
Would that have had anything to do with this, do you think?
https://www.england.nhs.uk/coronavirus/wp-content/uploads/sites/52/2020/03/urgent-next-steps-on-nhs-response-to-covid-19-letter-simon-stevens.pdf
Government action based on model predicted outcomes?
Perhaps, But that’s assuming that there were excess deaths, which the previous comment seemed to deny.
Isn’t it interesting that yourself and Mayo have both admitted that the product of the model was erroneous but that doesn’t mean the model itself is wrong. Could it be that it has dawned on supporters of modelling, as a driver of policy, are getting their excuses in early lest the general public start to question some other models that are driving other public policy areas. The mantra is to be “yes, the predictions were wildly exaggerated, but that is because we fed false information into the model, not because the model itself was unreliable.” The goalposts are not just shifting, they are turning into rugby posts.
Or could it be that people who know about modelling are trying to explain clearly how modelling works and what it is and isn’t good for, to audiences who are determined not to hear them?
Don’t make me laugh Richard. All models are wrong, but some are useful is the mantra. I’ve modelled many things in my time, including thrust profiles of spacecraft engines. None of these are ever used to drive final verification. That is just lunacy.
This seems like to good moment to challenge you, as an experienced modeller, keen to correct the mistakes of others, to say what you would have said at the SAGE meeting of, say, 13 March. The chairman turns to you and says “What happens if we do nothing?” How would you proceed?
I hear you loud and clear, it wasn’t the model that was at fault it was the data that was put into it. It is actually irrelevant whether or not the model was at fault because the product is cat litter. That the product precipitated the catastrophic decision to impose a, completely pointless, lockdown that will kill more people than covid is the disgrace. That Ferguson has the neck on him to persist in promoting his garbage when it is as clear as day that he wildly exaggerated the threat from this disease, is actually verging on the psychopathic.
Then I don’t quite understand why you’re so keen to establish that it was.
Sorry – but a little bit of quite simple analysis in April was sufficient to show that the conclusions of the model were wildly at variance with what was happening, and what was most likely to happen.
If it was obvious to some of us that this *wasn’t* an unprecedented infection-driven event quite early on, why was Ferguson (amongst others) still piddling around with a failed model instead of comparing output to the real world, whilst Wiittkowski got censored for making pretty accurate general predictions?
Well, of course they were. The model for a do-nothing scenario was never going to predict the results of a do-an-awful-lot policy, was it?
I can’t believe there are still people who give this charlatan the time of day.The rate of infection had already peaked before lockdown due to the social distancing measures that had already been taken.Whitty admitted this.Remember they modelled a flu epidemic and didn’t take into account any pre immunity in the population.Please educate yourself before posting pithy put downs
I address this below. It’s a parameter of the model.
Please refrain from making personal remarks if you wish to continue this discussion.
Im up for that,a computer model is only as good as the information you put in.Fact.Ferguson dusted off a 13 year old model for flu.it wasn’t peer reviewed and when it finally was reviewed it gave a different outcome every time.
If you feel this is a strong enough basis in which to destroy the economic and political life of this country then there is no helping you.This is not March and we have many opportunities to study this novel disease.The model has been found wanting and the fact that the author didn’t even believe in it is very relevant.
The fact is the virus has behaved the way viruses always do despite Government actions,all over the world.
The “do-nothing” estimate was, as Sue Denim pointed out, not dependent on any one model. Even my own simple SIR model gave a similar result. The results were that “do nothing” would have led to catastrophic results. In the handful of cases where something similar did actually happen, the result was indeed catastrophic. We may reasonably say, then, that the result of the model was,qualitatively, correcy, and that the corresponding decision to do something rather than nothing was, so far as that goes, the right one. What that something should have been is not something I have expressed an opinion on. We can say that those real-world figures show that the initial parameter of little pre-existing immunity may have been pessimistic.
Sage recommended measures which were implemented and were content to see the results..They never advocated lockdown,which was a political decision.Ferguson and his dodgy model were invited in to give it a veneer of scientific cover.A man with his track record should not have been let anywhere near the levers of power.
On the subject of doing nothing causing catastrophic results then what has the lockdown resulted in.
Mass deaths in care homes,Cancer treatments suspended which will lead to countless deaths in the near future,I could go on
Just to be clear, are you referring to Sweden? The Sweden that didn’t close it’s schools, didn’t close it’s cafes or bars, didn’t limit gatherings below 50 in number, didn’t impose face masks and has fewer excess deaths than Finland and almost the same as Denmark. Oh yes, and where the virus has basically disappeared.
I’m not referring to Sweden at all.
‘In the handful of cases where something similar did actually happen, the result was indeed catastrophic’. Which cases?
Manaus, Brazil and Guayaquil, Ecuador.
Speaking of Prof Wittkowski, you might like his comments in this article.
https://gruntstuff.com/new-yorkers-are-throwing-corona-potlucks-and-visiting-speakeasies/79692/
Yes – he was generally right all along in terms of policy.
Makes no difference. They were wrong. And the other studies (whatever they were) were equally wrong.
And we know they were wrong because Sweden had no lockdown and the bodies didn’t pile up in the streets.
“No lockdown” is not the same as “do nothing”.
So what? Imperial said a lockdown was vital, but it wasn’t.
Then argue with them about it, not me. I’m referring throughout to Sue Denim’s comments about the simple modelling of the “do-nothing” scenario. I’m not saying anything here about the “mitigation” versus “suppression” choice.
Moving the goalposts is moving the goalposts though.
So it is. The question is, who is trying to move them, where, and why. Three questions, actually.
And the rest of Europe is moving to emulate them. Unfortunately not the idiot UK government because they are still following the erroneous product of Ferguson’s model.
“As Denim says, initial assumptions were that this would be low, as the virus was believed to be novel. That was conservative, but the only reasonable one at the time.”
Was it, though?
Since this appears to be one of the areas where the modelling was based on what has probably proved to have been a drastically false assumption, it’s important to assess just how justifiable that assumption was.
Granted, it’s a legitimate “worst case” assumption, but was it really reasonable to assume it with any confidence for a new coronavirus, given as I understand it we assume cross-immunities amongst other colds and flus?
I think it was the right assumption at the time. Denim seems to think it was absurd. As |I say, modelling exposes such things.
My impression is that there was a strong element of groupthink in that assessment at the time.
Maybe, I’m not a virologist. As has been pointed out, we now have some real-world data to calibrate it.
No the point of science is to state your assumptions and know when to keep out of real world policy when using models.
If you are any type of scientist the uncertainty levels alone preclude using a model to drive real world policy. There are procedures for this, mostly in the engineering and audit field.
And secondly I already answered your Manaus assertion for unmitigated spread. The numbers do not tally with reality so there are other factors going on, most notably how Covid is attributed. Something that comes from, oh yes, the Scientific Method.
i.e. Make sure your measurement precision is sufficiently less than the variation you are trying to measure
No, the point of science is to give us understanding of how the world works. We can use that understanding to help us make the world work the way we want it to,
As a scientist, Richard, yes it does give us an understanding of how the world works but only predicated on our assumptions. As a scientist you have an ethical duty to stay within the limits of your assumptions, because you are not an advocate.
Our understanding is certainly predicated on our assumptions. One of the values of a well-conducted modelling exercise is that it exposes assumptions and allows their effect on outcomes to be assessed. The degree of uncertainty in the inputs to a model should be reflected in a corresponding degree of uncertainty of the outputs. If those outputs are to be used to answer questions reflecting on policy, or other real-world actions, then the degree of uncertainty needs to be clearly and frankly stated.
I’ve said before that I think modelling is far more akin to engineering than science.
If science is a process to understand the natural world, engineering is the processing of using scientifically arrived knowledge to produce something unnatural (i.e. by humans). A model is not the natural world.
The data used by Imperial College was junk data.
‘From Jan 15 to March 3, 2020, seven versions of the case definition for COVID-19 were issued by the National Health Commission in China.’
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanpub/article/PIIS2468-2667(20)30089-X/fulltext
Their assumptions were junk and some of their key players had form in that regard:
‘In 2009, Ferguson and his Imperial team predicted that swine flu had a case fatality rate 0.3 per cent to 1.5 per cent. His most likely estimate was that the mortality rate was 0.4 per cent. A government estimate, based on Ferguson’s advice, said a ‘reasonable worst-case scenario’ was that the disease would lead to 65,000 UK deaths.
In the end swine flu killed 457 people in the UK and had a death rate of just 0.026 per cent in those infected.’
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/six-questions-that-neil-ferguson-should-be-asked
An excellent assessment, from within China, by a leading coronavirus expert, of events in China had been available from 06 February.
‘People are saying a 2.2 to 2.4% fatality rate total. However recent information is very worthy – if you look at the cases outside of China the mortality rate is <1%. [Only 2 fatalities outside of mainland China]. 2 potential reasons 1) either china’s healthcare isn’t as good – that’s probably not the case 2) What is probably right is that just as with SARS there’s probably much stricter guidelines in mainland China for a case to be considered positive. So the 20,000 cases in China is probably only the severe cases; the folks that actually went to the hospital and got tested. The Chinese healthcare system is very overwhelmed with all the tests going through. So my thinking is this is actually not as severe a disease as is being suggested. The fatality rate is probably only 0.8%-1%. There’s a vast underreporting of cases in China. Compared to Sars and Mers we are talking about a coronavirus that has a mortality rate of 8 to 10 times less deadly to Sars to Mers. So a correct comparison is not Sars or Mers but a severe cold. Basically this is a severe form of the cold.’
Professor John Nicholls, University of Hong Kong 06 February 2020
In fact the Imperial College model simply provided useful cover for the British Government to cave in to pressure from overseas.
And it continues so to do in an attempt thereby to achieve a decent Brexit deal to save it from ultimate electoral immolation.
That is the dirty little secret and it is doomed to failure.
The only achievement of this government will be to have burnished the legends of the Major and May governments by comparison with itself.
A Reasonable Worst Case scenario is not a prediction, it is a planning tool. The RWC for your house might be that it burns down killing two of your guests. You use that as a planning tool to decide such things as how much insurance to take out. It’s not a prediction of what is actually going to happen in the next twelve months.
A planning tool using rubbish data and dumb assumptions produces silly predictions
Sequential silly predictions define someone as either a complete numpty or stark raving bonkers.
Take your pick.
… not a prediction …
A scenario is not a planning tool. It is one of a number of possible outcomes created (predicted) by modelling using a variety of different assumptions.
The assumptions made by Imperial College were unrealistic, potentially self serving.
They had form in this regard:
‘During the 2001 epidemic of FMD in the United Kingdom (UK), this approach was supplemented by a culling policy driven by unvalidated predictive models. The epidemic and its control resulted in the death of approximately ten million animals, public disgust with the magnitude of the slaughter, and political resolve to adopt alternative options, notably including vaccination, to control any future epidemics. The UK experience provides a salutary warning of how models can be abused in the interests of scientific opportunism.’
‘The 2001 predictive models were constructed in an environment of poor-quality data (e.g. they used out-ofdate census data for stock levels), and poor epidemiological knowledge (e.g. the transmission characteristics of the virus strain, and the distribution of the initially infected farms, were unknown). Therefore, their use as predictive tools was inappropriate.’
‘These early calculations provided the support for the announcement on 21 March by one of the Imperial College team that the epidemic was not under control (4). Furthermore, the model of Ferguson et al. (31) did not include separate species, and so modelled all farms with the same ‘homogenised’ species, even though virus output varies substantially between species.’
https://www.research.ed.ac.uk/portal/files/14288330/Use_and_abuse_of_mathematical_models_an_illustration_from_the_2001_foot_and_mouth_disease_epidemic_in_the_United_Kingdom.pdf
‘These early calculations provided the support for the announcement on 21 March by one of the Imperial College team that the epidemic was not under control’ Oh! That sounds a bit like a prediction!
But a wrong one, again:
‘For this reason, predictive disease models, which depend on statistical probabilities of transmission, have not met with much success in predicting the spread of FMD from herd to herd, and still less the impact of control measures.’
Deja vu all over again, but this time thousands of human lives tragically cut short as a consequence.
You will have noticed, I’m sure, that I was discussing the Swine Flu outbreak of 2009, not the Foot and Mouth outbreak of 2001 (which I think was very badly handled indeed). The Swine Flu estimate was a RWC, and a RWC is not a prediction.
Why did we persist with the blanket assumptions based on the novelty of the virus when it became known that it maps the seasonal evolution of a severe flu?
His model may have had justification in a broad light back in Feb. But science should evolve yet there he is, defending it. People like that seem to want to own the cautious approach that led to lockdown, and saved the NHS, but now in the cold light of day they should own the consequences of their miscalculation too.
I’m not sure what you mean by that. The point about epidemic models is that they model the behaviour of a wide variety of infections.
I’m not sure you’ll see this but I’ll reply anyway.
There are two distinct issues here. The first is the failed do-nothing prediction. Ferguson’s defence is that the prediction of disaster can be arrived at with very simple assumptions, and thus many other epidemiologists concluded the same thing. This is no defence. It just means they were all wrong for the same reasons. We know what the do-nothing outcome looks like in reality and it looks like nothing: the virus is quite simply not deadly enough to yield any serious outcome. If that weren’t true we’d have been seeing people flee Sweden over the summer to escape the Swedish policies and of course, we did not. The Swedes are reportedly happy about what happened there.
The second is the code issues. These matter because ICL’s (implicit) claim is that COVID-Sim is a useful program. If literally “any” model could yield the basic conclusion, then the value of Ferguson’s work must come from the precision of the numbers for other scenarios. This is clearly impossible because the implementation is so incompetent that the predictions for other scenarios vary wildly between execution runs depending on irrelevant variables, like CPU architecture. As previously demonstrated on this site (please read the archives if you didn’t see the prior analyses), these meaningless variations were e.g. larger than the UK field hospital programme. Thus the model cannot predict anything useful about interventions, levels of hospital demand or anything else it’s trying to generate as output. To the extent it has any use, it’s only able to generate big numbers for the do-nothing scenario, which as Ferguson admits, literally anyone can do.
That’s why his assertion is surprising. What exactly is the justification for his department’s existence? If anyone can incorrectly predict disaster using three variables then the much higher number of parameters in his model can only be justified if the predictions are correspondingly precise and accurate, which is impossible given how buggy it was. Thus there is no justification for his department’s existence, and he should be defunded.
Finally, you have made at least two serious errors in your argument above.
Not only was this assumption entirely wrong, but there was nothing reasonable or conservative about it. It was the most extreme assumption possible given that viruses develop through mutation. An entirely novel virus would share no RNA in common with other viruses, by definition. It was obvious from the start that SARS-CoV-2 isn’t novel, that’s why it even has the number 2 in its name.
Coronaviruses have been around a long time and are well studied, meanwhile, there have been no large outbreaks of deadly new viruses since HIV (and even for that, there are people – like the inventor of the PCR test that now so dominates our lives – who believed HIV/AIDS are not really linked). The only reason to expect a global health apocalypse is the general priming that exists in our society for this outcome via e.g. zombie movies, the predictions of Bill Gates, etc.
“Novelty” is an academic obsession reflective of the bad incentives that exist in their world. Discovering something novel leads to fame and perhaps fortune, discovering a minor variant of a not very interesting virus leads to nothing. The real world is now paying dearly for allowing academia such a free rein to pursue “novelty”.
Can you please cite a single case where epidemiological models have successfully and closely predicted the course of an outbreak? I have not yet heard of one. Even just a few years ago, epidemiologists were predicting multiple waves and seasonal re-emergence of Zika, which never happened.
If these models were “consistent with observations over the last 100 years” then models would have predictive power. It is proven beyond doubt that they have none whatsoever. It’s very odd that you’re insisting they do. That’s why it’s bizarre to use them – they do not work, therefore they shouldn’t be used to drive policy.
Finally, you try to imply that I’ve contradicted myself. The generality of epidemiology models is irrelevant to the accuracy of their outputs, so there’s no contradiction. It may be that a fully general disease simulation is possible to construct, but epidemiologists don’t seem to currently believe it as COVID models are all fresh programs written from scratch, even though the underlying assumptions they implement are mostly general.
Thanks for taking the time to engage.
I dispute this. As I have said before, the precise numerical value is not the point. A decision had to be taken given limited and imperfect data, and estimates from basic back-of-an-envelope upwards made on those simple assumptions. That was the only game in town at that time, and its purpose was not to produce precise numerical predictions, but to answer the question “What happens if we do nothing” (always the first option, you’ll be pleased to hear). The answer to that is not a precise number but a word: catastrophe (plus collapse of the health service). We know what the do-nothing outcome looked like in Manaus and Guayaquil, and that is: catastrophe (plus collapse of the health service).
I haven’t seen the code or the underlying model, and have said so. I can only go by what is reported to have been said, by Ferguson and others.
You’re quite correct in that the virus was not “entirely” novel in the literal sense. Indeed, if had literally no RNA in common with other viruses, it would probably not have have been capable of infecting humans at all. I meant that it is not a simple variant of an existing virus to which people have been exposed, in the way in which most flu viruses are. It is genetically related to the SARS virus of 2003, hence the -2. However, at the time, the best assessment was that it had just jumped species from animals. Whether the assumption was reasonable is a matter of opinion. if SAGE collectively came to the conclusion that low pre-existing immunity was a reasonable assumption, that’s good enough for me — I’m a mathematician, not a virologist.
I don’t think so. I point out that generality is often a good thing in modelling, while you appear to think differently. That’s a disagreement, and you’re entitled to your opinion.
See DOI 10.1111/1469-0691.12308 for some comments about this, especially in the context of policy making.
http://bioinvasions.org/wp-content/uploads/Cohen-Kessel-medRxiv-Supplemental-Material.pdf https://twitter.com/LenCabrera/status/1303825827591790595 “Why did the CDC change guidance on who to test? Read the Cohen-Kessel paper on false positive rate (FPR). They reviewed real-world data on RT-PCR tests for RNA viruses since 2004 & estimated 2.3% FPR”
Swift reply from my MP:
Thank you for contacting me about the Government’s coronavirus powers.
I agree with the many of the sentiments shared by my colleague Mr Walker, it is really important to push for the country to get back to normal.
I am also surprised and disappointed by the recent changes to social gathering numbers. I would have preferred to delay such a decision until such a time when the impact of rising case numbers could be assessed.
As a member of the Government in my role as PPS to the Secretary of State for Wales I cannot vote against renewing the Government’s powers in relation to the Coronavirus Act 2020 and remain within the Government. I believe that I can better push for a return to normal from within Government than from outside it. I understand that some people, perhaps yourself included may disagree with this decision but I hope that you can understand where I am coming from. From within Government I will continue to have greater access to Ministers and will hopefully be able to push for further relaxing of lockdown rules over the coming autumn months.
Thank you for taking the time to contact me about this important matter.
Yours sincerely
Sarah Atherton MP
Member of Parliament for Wrexham
“I prefer having a minor government job than actually standing for any sort of principle.”
And an equally fair point.
If this statement of hers is true:
“I believe that I can better push for a return to normal from within Government than from outside it.”
Do you all think she is someone we can work with? Is it worth me sending her info (eg from the Swiss Doctor site) – maybe a fact each morning so as not to overwhelm her? Tactics anyone?
To give context, she is a new MP who has taken Wrexham from the Tories after something like 2,678 years of Labour dominance.
Oops – for the Tories!!
I think it’s absolutely worth opening up the conversations.It sounds as though she may be new to the parliamentary game, but her reply heartens me because it’s a complete change from the usual cut and paste waffle that most MPs have been sending us. Yes, in an ideal world she would stand up for what she believes in, but I think it’s a step in the right direction, and may provide a small crack in the door.
I may be being too harsh on her. I know how difficult it is to go against the flow in an organisation.
It’s the first time I’ve seen any MP (apart from the few vocal dissenting Conversative MPs on Twitter) give what looks like an honest and frustrated response. Her quick turnaround speaks to that too. I can’t imagine what she’s up against, so I think we should give her all the encouragement we can.
I wouldn’t be too harsh on her. It sounds like a reasonable judgement call that she can have more influence by staying in government. Principle is good but pragmatism also has its merits.
Wow! That reads like an honest answer from someone whose hands are tied!
Tied by who?
By their own lack of honour.
If she truly believed she give up the PPS job and stand up for what she believed in.
..and make a big public speech about it. Now that might actually have an effect. If you vote in favour of the restrictions, no matter what you say, then you endorse them.
Exactly.
it is understandable that she doesnt want to stick her head above the parapet. She does not have the freedoms of a back bench MP. and it is really they who should be starting to fight. Hopefully the 1922 committee will start this At least this one is a sceptic and will turn
In other words “my career is more important than people’s freedom”.
Well done on getting a reply.
Walker and his deputy were copied on my letter to my MP but never even acknowledged it (no-one did) so maybe he’s had a change in attitude in the past few weeks now he can see the tide changing.
For those who missed it, I posted up my letter on this site earlier today.
John Redwood always published my comments on his blog
today’s offering
http://johnredwoodsdiary.com/2020/09/10/qualifications-for-the-class-of-2021/#comment-1151996
Stephen Priest
Posted September 10, 2020 at 6:07 am | Permalink
This year’s exam results have no value as they are based on guesswork.
Money has no value anymore it the Daily Mail headline is corecct:
Freedom has no value
What’s the point of having members of Parliament if they don’t protect their constituents form an overbearing Government.
By now the Government must know that lockdowns don’t work.
Peru went into lockdown 16th March – 911 deaths per million (the highest death rate in the world after San Marino)
Brazil – no lockdown – 602 deaths per million
Only 8 reported Covid death in the UK the day Boris Johnson decides to become Oliver Cromwell and threatens to ban Christmas.
No doubt we should call his Covid Marshal social distancing clowns Oliver’s Army, but that sounds too friendly.
Snout in the trough and no courage. Shame on her and her family!
Why don’t you put that on several Newspaper Comments pages?
Ha! I have about three projects on the go at the same time this week – but if anyone else wants to do this (an excellent idea) feel free. I assume her reply to a constituent is immediately in the public domain? Or do I have to ask her permission to use her reply like this?
If she’s written to you. You’ve already put it in the public domain.
I think I might email her response to Toby and see if he wants to do anything with it…
I can understand the response, but I think some people here are being a little harsh on this MP by expecting her to sacrifice her career on this point. As a junior MP, a resignation by her would carry little weight, and it might well be true that she can be more useful as a voice of reason inside the government. Though I absolutely do understand the cynical response, since it is an all too common excuse for lack of action by members of governments.
I do believe there should have been resignations from ministers over the lockdown in the first place, but this is relatively minor in comparison, given what has already been swallowed.
Just take a rare positive and thoughtful response as a good result, for now.
“I think some people here are being a little harsh on this MP by expecting her to sacrifice her career on this point.”
It’s not ‘a career’ – it’s a role to represent the interests of constituents.
She obviously doesn’t rate that democratic role too highly.
That is indeed also a fair position to take. I’m open to both sides of the issue myself, but tend to think in this case it’s better to focus on the positive content of the reply (I think it’s pretty much the best response I’ve sen from an MP here so far).
I don’t believe for a moment she has played any meaningful part in the decision-making of government on this, so I wouldn’t class her with the hard core criminals in the Cabinet.
I guess I’m intolerant of those who play at the role of MP – which involves working with a multitude of pressures. But if you flinch at those pressures, the job isn’t for you. Nobody forced you (unlike your constituents, bowed down by anti-democratic rules).
I mentioned yesterday that I had been looking at a film clip of Aneurin Bevan speaking at a rally in Trafalgar Square at the time of Suez.
Now Bevan was of a different order – but the clip is a reminder of what politics and opposition is all about. Remember- Suez split the country. But democratic politics never stopped, and Eden wasn’t given a free pass to behave like an idiot.
You are absolutely entitled to be so intolerant, of course. But the example you gave merely emphasizes the very different position in this case.
Exactly – it is not a career but a vocation to represent your constituent’s interests.
I agree that it’s nice to hear anything other than the stock response and it’s perhaps something to work with but if you don’t vote against it and don’t make any public pronouncements about your objections or concerns then it doesn’t really amount to a hill of beans does it? What if there’s 200 other MPs that feel and act in the same way? We’d still be locked down in 2 years. Let’s be clear this isn’t a vote on the size of EU bananas it’s the most severe restrictions on our freedoms since wartime with long-lasting effects on our society, economy and our childrens’ education. It’s very likely that she and her colleagues will never have a vote on something with such far-reaching consequences ever again. If you can’t stand up for what you believe in now then when can you?
“if you don’t vote against it and don’t make any public pronouncements about your objections or concerns then it doesn’t really amount to a hill of beans does it? “
Well in truth her resignation wouldn’t amount to much more than a bean, either. It’s not the kind of impact a cabinet member resigning could have made. It’s easy to imagine that having some questioning voices inside government could have more impact, even at the lowest levels.
I mean I do understand the point about resigning on principle and have full respect for those who do (one or two over Iraq I recall), but I also have more sympathy for not doing so the more junior the individual.
I have no sympathy whatsoever for cabinet members in this regard.
I don’t need her to resign but some kind of attempt to bring sceptical ideas in the open for public debate would be nice at the very least. As far as the party are concerned as long as she votes the right way they won’t give a monkeys what she thinks. Do you see any evidence of Government changing policy? I can only assume that MPs either agree with it or are just going along with it because nary a one wants to raise their head above the parapet. I have sympathy for her position but I have more sympathy for the people who can’t see their loved ones in care homes, who couldn’t go to funerals, who’ve had their cancer treatment stopped, who missed out on their education, who’ve had their businesses ruined. That’s not directly her fault but if you’re a sceptic in a public position and don’t speak out then it’s still on you.
Good reply from the MP, all things considered
Interesting that she’s in Wales but in a border constituency. Which raises the nonsense of these issues being devolved. These “England only” measures will apply to many of her constituents as much as anything from Cardiff.
Son says he’s losing friends on Facebook by the day which he takes as a compliment as he’s annoying them with the truth – his old work place has instigated masks for all kitchen staff at all times during their shift and due to being shorthanded they are doing 15 hours a day and they are all complaining like hell about it.
He posted what I’ve been sending him about masks, the law, how to tell you company you are not happy and how to fight their edicts and so on and he says they all unfriended him rather than ask more info on the subject.
The company have asked him to go back and he told them not very politely no until they get rid of all the mask bullshit and if they wanted more info to contact me as I live 2 miles from their main premises.
They ignored him.
Now local rumours are they are down 90% on pre-lockdown takings and going bust.
Serves them right.
“Serves them right.”
If people won’t apply reason (due to fear or other emotional over-ride of the rational facilities) then only harsh reality can teach the lessons that should be learned through applying common sense. You can ignore reality as long as you want, but you can’t evade the consequences of ignoring reality forever.
Sadly when government panics, the innocent and the wise are dragged down along with the foolish and the feckless.
That’s right. Boris, Handoncock etc. will carry on with their plentiful assets intact, and the revolving door will eventually spit them out into a world of money for old rope.
Meanwhile, those working in kitchens may be struggling to find viable employment.
Assuming your son is a reasonably young man, have his friends not noticed that they themselves are at an effective zero level of risk?
He’s 26 and his friends don’t believe the numbers he’s posted.
Because “I saw it on facebook”.
When he pointed out other facebook posts telling the different he asked “why not believe this one a sit’s on facebook?”.
NO answer.
“Our toilets remain closed for your comfort and safety”.
Have you told them that if they want your custom they have to lose the muzzles?
Print something off explaining why you won`t go and put it through their letterbox. If they are begging for customers and not getting them, then they need to know why that is.
All the intelligent ones (who are also great producers at work!) leave dumb companies like this!
And from Monday compulsory details to be taken for T&T.
Another SI or adding it into a “guideline” which is unenforceable?
Has he said which? I haven’t seen anything other than his quotes and verbal edicts.
Lots of false contact being given or even less customers going in is what will happen.
We will see more and more of that sort of thing – businesses going bust due to these so-called Covid safety measures.
When will businesses, leisure centres and visitor attractions realise that people don’t want to be treated like lepers and be forced to wear masks, sanitise their hands and use ludicrous one way systems?
They seem remarkably resistant to the idea. I’ve taken a personal pledge not to patronise any business that treats me like hazardous materials. I am going to make an exception for my dentist in a couple of weeks but that is for an essential check. Otherwise, I haven’t set foot in a shop since July. My ASDA delivery guys love me, although they only see me once a month. eBay gets the rest of my business.
Your son is a brave man.
Hope he soon gets a top job working for people who are worthy of him.
When he opens his own restaurant, I’ll book.
He’s been on the cruise ships, Worked for and with Rick and jack Stein, Rick sent him to assist Gordon Ramsey for a cooking demonstration, he is a really good chef but not head chef material yet and the plan up until March was I would get a pub/restaurant (actually in negotiations in March) and get him trained up as a proper head chef and then me and the wife go off travelling taking our share of the profits while he runs the place.
All gone to shit now.
Son just called, the place has just sacked all kitchen staff, front of house management will have to do the cooking for any customers that come in.
Bollocks to Boris.
That is all.
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/php/public-health-recommendations.html
Not much confidence in masks according to CDC guidelines. Look here for definition of close contact ie less than 6 feet for 15 min and what they should do.
“Note: This is irrespective of whether the person with COVID-19 or the contact was wearing a mask or whether the contact was wearing respiratory personal protective equipment (PPE).”
https://brandnewtube.com/watch/dr-vernon-coleman-latest-september-9th-2020-this-fraud-is-now-blindingly-obvious_R7CB3DDGxFK4eHC.html
DR VERNON COLEMAN ~ LATEST ~ SEPTEMBER 9TH 2020~ THIS FRAUD IS NOW BLINDINGLY OBVIOUS
The longer this goes on the more it discredits science, for one thing, and the medical establishment for another.
one would hope so ……. maybe the climate change “scientists” are now seen for what they are – their models are already discredited
More Attenborough crap coming on the BBC.
that is somebody who should have been in a care home in March
Physics died on 9/11. Now the covid hoax put an end to science.
It’s about time.
Lockdown measures to fight Covid are like Brexit: illogical, sustained by smart and subtle propaganda, harmful for the country and for the population, used a cheap bargain to raise consensus. Crazy times
I happen to share your opinion on Brexit but I no longer care about it all. This is way bigger than that and it’s pointless bringing up issues that divide us. There are too few of us as it is.
I agreed. I thought I was in despair about Brexit. Then I found out what despair really feels like. We need to stick together as the last sane people on Earth.
These politicians know full well that there is no pandemic. They are deliberately doing this because their economies are collapsing and using this virus is the best way to pretend they are protecting the people while they are preparing to try to reorganize the economy and cleverly default on national debts. Boris Johnson is a disgrace to the conservative Party. I am glad Maggie Thatcher is not alive to see what Borris has done. Anyone who doubted that the British pound would penetrate the 1985 low, perhaps should take a closer look.
https://www.armstrongeconomics.com/international-news/britain/the-insanity-of-boris-johnson-the-destruction-of-britain/
This is way bigger than Boris or the government. Why is there a lockdown in France, Italy, Spain, Germany, Belgium, Holland? Why is the lockdown even stricter in Australia, New Zealand? It’s like the descent into WW1. Nobody wanted it, but everybody let it happen.
The two primary forces are the public guardians; and magic money.
A lot of people wanted lockdown
A lot of people still want it.
It’s so much easier than living.
The Lockdown Army.
It is the same all over the world because they are all singing from the same songbook, the governments are getting their orders/guidance from the same sources. The public are obeying because there has been a massive propaganda campaign resulting in the vast majority of them being terrified out of their wits.
Quebec is considering implementing measures like your PM just did. What a coincidence!
A whimsical historical observation..
Two hundred years ago a repressive government introduced a bundle of repressive measures which were known as “The Six Acts”. Now we’ve got “The Six Act”!
And Henry VIII had his Six Articles to enable the (still more) brutal repression of dissent.
6 6 6…
Hmm. Not sure why you’re publishing comments from an XR anti-Semite. Hardly what I would expect of this site.
Stop that nonsense now.
Censoring (or “cancelling” if you prefer) people’s opinions because he disagrees with their views on other matters than the main focus of the comment would seem to be directly against the whole thrust of Toby’s work at the Free Speech Union, and would be behaving in exactly the way the worst kind of cancel culture antiracist bigots of the left behave.
Actually I was very favourably surprised that Toby did publish that opinion, because I would expect “antisemitism” and Israel to be a vulnerable point for his free speech principles, given his family connections, so credit to him. Of course, hostility to israel is no more meaningfully antisemitism than brexit or opposition to mass immigration is meaningfully “racist”.
“hostility to israel is no more meaningfully antisemitism than brexit or opposition to mass immigration is meaningfully “racist”.
Indeed – it’s a politically driven linguistic nonsense.
Fwiw, I agree with you that the accusations against Corbyn (and others) were exactly that, but I have no sympathy whatsoever for him or for any senior Labour Party or other leftist figure targeted for such smearing over Israel and “antisemitism”, because it’s basically what they spent their entire political careers doing to “racists”.
Rarely has the expression “hoist by their own petards” been more apt. It’s only a shame that they are undoubtedly too dogmatic and unselfaware to grasp the point.
There were Jews who were prepared to leave the UK if Corbyn had been elected PM. Tells you all you need to know.
God, not this bs again. So what? There were also Jews who supported Corbyn and thought the accusations against him were nonsense. Were they the wrong sort of Jews?
I can certainly believe that some Jews would very, very much like for hostility to Israel to be rendered taboo in this country. I regard them as I do black people who want anyone who opposes mass immigration to be imprisoned for “racism”. (And, by the way, I don’t see any reason to give them any more credence than all the hysterics in the US who claimed they would leave if Trump was elected – not personally aware of any who did, in the event. People tend to exaggerate and to get overexcited about these issues. We’ll never know now, of course, but genuinely I don’t believe a single Jewish person would have left the country merely because Labour had won the last election.)
There surely is genuinely nasty antisemitism and genuinely nasty racism around in this country, as everywhere, but in national cultural and political terms neither is anywhere near as much of a problem as is the intolerance of free expression and opinion represented by the attempts to render such positions (as pro-Palestinian or anti-immigration/brexit etc) taboo by association. Imo.
I left the US in 2018 because of Trump (in part). I’m not a hysteric, obviously, as evidenced by my presence here. But I left because I expected the US to break out in civil war after the upcoming election. We won’t know for a few more months whether my prediction was correct.
Out of the frying pan and into the fire, as we say in the States (fire pronounced in two syllables). Now I’m wondering if I’d be better off back in the US if we have mandatory daily testing here. I’m hoping that our government’s famous incompetence will save me from that choice.
Which is to say, I abhor cancel culture, whether it is from the right or the left.
Karol Sikora on Triggernometry:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jFRR58D1oW0
“And iI will be voting – if given the chance to vote in this rather strange Parliament – to curtail the Government’s powers in his area.”
Derisible.
Action to end the interminable unlawful lockdown
It worries me that he wrote ‘if given the chance’ – implies the government do not intend to allow Parliament to vote, even though I believe that was written into the legislation..
Will they just use another SI to avoid giving MPs the chance to vote?
I wouldn’t read too much into that. I don’t think he’s actually implying that he thinks he won’t be given the chance, it’s a sarcastic comment about how little parliament has been consulted to date.
That is beyond sad. I feel so bad for those two, and angry at those who have tortured them so
One By One (2014 Film) Rik Mayall
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kLPPNyAnwCA&feature=youtu.be
Thanks for posting this. A huge Rik fan, but I’ve never seen this film. Know what I’ll be watching later 👍
So the three national liabilities who stood there yesterday at the Downing Street press conference want to implement daily population-wide testing so that we can “get back to normal”. A cost of £100bn has been suggested for this grand scheme. Quite apart from the total impossibility of implementing the nonsensical idea let’s just consider the amount of money it could involve. One hundred billion pounds – that’s one hundred thousand million pounds. An astronomical sum in more ways than one. A £20 note has a thickness of 0.113 mm (i.e. it’s bloody thin). A vertical stack of £20 notes with a value of £100bn would rise 565 km, or 353 miles. Outer space commences at about 100 km (62 miles) above the ground. So it’s an astronomical amount of money, without doubt. As someone pointed out below, it must surely be time for the three stooges, and a few of their fellow maniacs, to be put in straight-jackets and carted off to the asylum.
” An astronomical sum in more ways than one.”
Not really. It’s just a few numbers on a computer which then move accounts within the Bank of England causing real things to happen.
Surely after the furlough scheme you no longer believe that there can ever be a shortage of money to do anything we have the physical capacity to do?
Money never is and never has been the limiting factor in the UK.
they will just QE it I imagine. But there are better ways with better health outcomes of spending £100bn
Undoubtedly. Another time-wasting opportunity: how long would it take for a printing press to create the money – and let’s be generous, it can print £1000 value per second as a sheet of 50 £20 notes. Answer: 115 days. God job they don’t have to actually print it. The bastards are sending us to hell in a handcart.
You keep believing that.Somewhere along the line it has to Keep touch with reality.We cannot feed ourselves so our very existence is reliant on foreigners excepting our currency in payment.How long will that last if we continue to print or these days with the touch of a keypad.
Well we can re-prioritise people from one activity to another, yes, but then there are not people doing that other activity, which was presumably previously deemed useful
I’d rather not live in a country where we employed thousands of people doing tests that were not needed
Absolutely, right until rampant inflation takes hold and we have to pay thousands of pounds for a loaf of bread….
Come by my place. I’ve got lots of potatoes from my allotment. Some onions, shallots and winter squash. Last meal before we all starve.
Wouldn’t it be cheaper just to put Granny in a better nursing home?
and spend the £100 billion moonshine on the care homes and improving productivity and clinical outcomes in the NHS
Please turf out Hancock and take over his job.
What are you waiting for?
I saw 10 million tests daily as the initial goal. With a 1% false positive rate, we’re looking at 100,000 false positives a day, 700,000 a week, unless you’re unfortunate enough to test positive twice. Add whatever number (small) of true positives. With a 14-day quarantine for each person, we’re looking at millions under quarantine within a month. And this rolling on indefinitely or until we finally do manage to shut down the entire economy.
This floated insane idea should be enough to set people thinking that the intention is even more sinister than all but a few have hitherto realised.
Edit: Sorry! I’ve just seen that this has already been shared.
Very good interview with Jonathan Sumption in this podcast. It starts at about 14 mins (though the other bits of the podcast are interesting too).
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/09/10/planet-normal-use-fear-has-brought-greatest-invasion-personal/
He points out (which I didn’t know) that most of the government restrictions are not made under the 2020 Coronavirus act but under the 1984 Public Health Act. So that even if Parliament opposes the renewal of the the Coronovirus Act later this month, that won’t affect most of the restrictions.
It is indeed an excellent interview. The point he makes about the government not using the correct originating Act of Parliament from which to hang the coronavirus legislation (mostly statutory instruments) primarily to avoid parliamentary scrutiny is a damning indictment. And I think that’s the same argument being advanced by Simon Dolan and the Keep Britain Free campaign in their court action seeking judicial review of the government’s decisions – https://www.crowdjustice.com/case/lockdownlegalchallenge/ (it’s worth having a look at the legal documents referred to).
Not 100% correct.
They needed the 2 original coronavirus S.I.s to get the Public Health legislation going as it does not mention coronavirus nor Covid-19 in it so it could not be used as a stand alone piece of legislation in this instance as it stands.
Additional problem is that if councils enforce the Public Health Act to do so requires court papers signed by a Justice of the peace, it cannot be used to shut down whole industries, cities or areas but is done on an individual person or premises basis and then the kicker – the councils are liable for paying the compensation for any costs or losses incurred from day the notice is serve dot the day it is lifted.
So to shut down whole swathes of businesses and areas another set of S.I.s were needed.
This is why councils are not doing it this way but verbally with threats of prosecution under HSE law plus central governments ay “self isolate” and this way when you ask for compensation they answer is “but you are doing it voluntary, we never told you to do it so you get nothing”.
It’s all smoke and mirrors.
I know this is true as I have it in writing from various councils this is what is going on plus the government had to remind them a month or so ago to use the Public health legislation in their “new framework”.
It’s been discussed on here previously so Jonathan Sumption just catching up on something that has been known about for months.
At least he’s waking up and catching up.
This is all the public health act covers:
Notifiable diseases
In this Act, ” notifiable disease ” means any of the following diseases—
(a)
cholera;
(b)
plague;
(c)
relapsing fever;
(d)
smallpox; and
(e)
typhus.
See, all victorian diseases, no coronavirus, no covid-19 etc
Hence the S.I.s.
What I took away from what he said was that he thinks Dolan has a good case.
Dilbert bought a smile to my face from a few days ago
“Understanding the change requires some mastery of cutting edge molecular genetics”
Hmm. Well, it might require some degree of knowledge of bog standard lab tests in molecular biology. The PCR test is not new.
I’ll have a go at this. I have a degree in Chemistry and an educated layman’s interest in biochemistry and molecular biology.
Put very simply. DNA is an extremely long stringlike molecule which is wound up like a ball. A copy of it sits in the heart of every living cell. The length of the individual strands contain “codes”. We refer to these codes as genes. When a cell receives signals that a particular gene needs to be expressed a piece of the DNA is copied. This is a relatively small stretch of this DNA. It is a very similar molecule referred to as “RNA”.
The RNA is transported out of the centre of the cell and a further chemical process takes place to create a piece of protein. This is what DNA ultimately “codes” for. We are often said to be carbon based life forms. More accurately we might be described as protein based life forms.
Viruses are clever in that they consist of a strand of DNA or RNA which “codes” for the protein coat that contains and protects it. Ingenius. It invades (infects) cells and hijacks the machinery of the cell, using that to manufacture copies of its DNA (or RNA) and the protein coat that protect it. These pieces spontaneously ressemble themselves and when the cell is exhausted, whole viral particles break out of the dead cell and go on to infect and kill other cells.
The PCR test works by using these processes to make copies of any strand of DNA or RNA that may exist in a sample. A single strand on it’s own cannot be detected. If you have one strand an identical copy can be made. Still that would be impossible to detect.
Do it again and you have four. Again and you have eight, then sixteen and fairly soon by continually repeating this process you have millions of copies of the single strand you started with and that can at some point be detected.
So you then know what you had to begin with.
You can gauge to some degree the amount you started with in this way, but the sky’s the limit with these “cycles” the more you do the more material you end up with. So if you stop at a set number of cycles (eg 25) for all samples you can get an idea of the relative amounts you started with for each sample and thus the level of “infection”.
Great post.
Wow – you’ve managed to explain the whole process – now I fully understand the false positives/ no of cycles conundrum . Agree – great post.
Except they go on to 35-40 cycles and report the tiny amount of virus or viral fragments as a positive test result.
Excellent. Explaining complex scientific matters in such a way that they can be understood by non-specialists is a valuable skill.
John, you have a stronger platform from which to analyse this than many who are currently advising government! As many as us fellow scientists (originally, anyway!) as submit to the vaccine consultation the better. The government cannot be allowed to get away with this any longer and heads need to roll.
This from Andrew Bolt tonight. Sky News Australia
https://youtu.be/xDekUsoJgtg
Impassioned stuff and absolutely nail on head.
At what point does a military coup happen?
Too late. UK armed forces under EU rule now i think.
We have had the coup we need a counter coup
lifelong conservative as are the rest of the family….next time I will vote Labour, not as they are any use or would be any better, but its about the only way I can do anything to show how much I hate boris, hancock and the rest of them.
My current voting intention is to spoil my paper.
None of the above, thank you.
You’re assuming we will get to vote again, at any point. I believe the Trilateral Commission has stated somewhere – they believe in [basically] removing the ability of citizens to participate in democracy, just let the ruling elites get on with it.
Donald Trump I’m pretty sure has previously said something to the effect, ‘they don’t hate me, they hate you. I’m just in the way.’
With elections suspended what happens in the event of a death of an honorable member?
Parliament was a disgrace this morning. All the focus on Karen having to travel 50 miles to get a test for a runny nose.
Hrdly a peep about the measures.
Who are these idiots and how did they get to positions of power?
Unfortunately, we voted for them.
And unfortunately, there was b*gg*r all choice.
This Is ALL Too Much! GOV FACTS EXPLAINED – PLEASE Share
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LeIeCFoEjmU
Alex Belfield – THE VOICE OF REASON
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I can’t believe what I’m seeing. Piers lies about hospital admissions, BBC online print what they wouldn’t broadcast on the news & Denise gives up. Here’s the facts!!!
It’s gone ?!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wt_YeYNutYU
Is this it?
Has anyone else spotted this comment from the DM:
“I work in a lab processing the results, the reason for the spike was given to the government in a statement from the Association for Clinical Biochemistry and Laboratory Medicine stating that the results do NOT show a rise in infections, but that due to the backlog of tests, it meant that we was processing 4/5 days worth in a day, causing the daily results to appear grossly different to the previous days. I have absolutely no idea why the government are dismissing this, I was completely all for this government but to see this happen, has absolutely flabbergasted me!”
That’s entirely plausible. Labs won’t necessarily run samples as they arrive in a lab, as it’s not always cost effective, but will batch samples up and run them all together.
So the “spikes” in infections may be nothing of the kind.
Good one. It makes sense, given the sudden, large, rise. A gradual increase would normally be expected. If there’s a decline in the positive test numbers over the next few days, it would support the claim.
I wonder if there’s any independent verification and auditing of the testing data?
If there is a decline, they will say that the rule of six has been effective before it has even come into force, in fact it’s so obviously effective if it works before it’s even started that we must continue with it indefinitely.
Were you Lewis Carroll in a previous life?
I’ll take that as a compliment!
Surely even a complete imbecile would know to report on the date of the test and not the date of the result? It’s almost like someone is manipulating the results to further an agenda. The stuff of conspiracies of course.
It’s the same as the government announcements of the number of CV19 deaths. The CEBM looked at them and many were distributed over the previous two weeks or more.
I really think they are. Same way we had those 32 deaths for just one day, right as cases dramatically doubled overnight, the week that schools returned which of course we’ve been told will raise the R level (but schools are safe! Kids don’t spread it! We’ll fine you if you don’t send your kids to school!). It’s all way too convenient and highly suspicious.
This is truly outrageous, this should bring down this risible and corrupt government, when we have our day of reckoning.
Not at all surprising, but to see the factual proof and still bring in new draconian measures, unforgivable.
The blonde buffoon was never my choice for Conservative leader, but I never thought he would turn out like this, not fit to run a bath, never mind a Country.
Next up he’ll commit trillions to fix a problem that doesn’t exist (AGW) and betray the fishing industry and get us a shit trade deal. No spine, utterly gutless.
God help us!
The reported “cases by specimen date” does still show a large increase from 1st September onwards (https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/cases). However what is STILL missing is the number of tests performed in England since 2nd September…
Daily Mail: Meet the covid marshals: Army of workers who will enforce new lockdown rules.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8718097/Meet-covid-marshalls-Army-workers-enforce-new-lockdown-rules.html
From the article:
Ken Marsh, chairman of the Metropolitan Police Federation:
‘Because if they don’t actually have any powers, you know what Joe Public will do very quickly. When the stick needs to be wielded then you need to have the ability to wield it.’
I hope he’s speaking figuratively. What contempt the police have for the people who pay their wages. A contempt increasingly being reciprocated.
I’m actually looking forward to them being deployed. I know we will do it on the cheap and they will be sitting ducks.
What a recipe for chaos.Some Prat in a hi vis telling you what to do with no power to enforce anything.
When PCSOs were introduced I remember the kids chasing and hounding them calling them snide old bill.Good luck breaking up a group of youngsters in one of the rougher areas
“I work in a lab processing the results, the reason for the spike was given to the government in a statement from the Association for Clinical Biochemistry and Laboratory Medicine stating that the results do NOT show a rise in infections, but that due to the backlog of tests, it meant that we was processing 4/5 days worth in a day, causing the daily results to appear grossly different to the previous days. I have absolutely no idea why the government are dismissing this, I was completely all for this government but to see this happen, has absolutely flabbergasted me!”
Comment btl.
Entirely plausible.
.
https://www.infowars.com/australia-corona-cops-arrest-grandma-sitting-in-park-for-not-wearing-a-mask/
Which is especially egregious as it’s very well known that the virus is killed within minutes in bright sunshine, and is very poorly transmitted outdoors.
You know, I’ve always hated infowars. But this is horrifying and I’m glad they’re publicising it.
Since we seem to be seeing (finally!) the beginnings of proper dissent and debate in this, presumably we are now on the clock for the PM and his cronies withdrawing into a bunker of denial under fire from all quarters.
Has anyone yet done one of those “Hitler bunker speech” parodies for him? Seems like we’ll need them soon.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m5R0UHGh8vA
Good old Bruno Ganz. Sadly missed.
https://twitter.com/ianbrown/status/1304010322123141122?s=20
For those feeling a little down, and as if the world is against us, hope is growing. Take a listen to this guy, who has supported the government throughout all the measures. It’s made my day:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YmoGEPIJZ9Y
Power to the people!!!
https://www.infowars.com/spain-citizens-stop-police-from-arresting-a-woman-for-not-wearing-a-mask/
I love the way they pull her out of the hands the police and all the police can do is back away.
JHB gets at Schapps also – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R-DpsGTYKd4
He mentions deaths spiking in Spain. Not that I can see, is there evidence of that?
According to Worldometers, the average has increased from 30-odd deaths daily to 60-odd.
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/spain/
And if you look at the graph you can see that from 30 to 60 is a very small number compared to what it was in March. Overreaction, as usual.
Yeah, universal mask wearing and foul abuse of kids is plainly bearing fruit.
This was the reply I received yesterday from my MP Greg Smith, Buckingham, after I asked how he would vote in the upcoming review of the Coronavirus Act 2020 and his reasons:
Thank you for your email.
All the measures in the Coronavirus Act are temporary, and proportionate to the threat we face. I understand they will only be used when strictly necessary, and will only be in place for as long as required to respond to the situation. I can assure you that I will be first in the queue to vote to remove these measures when circumstances allow.
Thanks again for getting in touch and sharing your views.
Kind regards
Greg
They are disproportionate, he doesn’t get it, or isn’t willing to differ from his useless cabinet colleagues. Argh.
Do he doesn’t answer the question! When ‘circumstances are appropriate’?
Well that was a non- answer.
At least he didn’t say that the bollox is going to last for ever and he wanted it that way.
Was thinking about those polls that ‘show’ that 60+% of the population agree with the governments restrictions and got to wondering why this could possibly be the case.
The most obvious starting point is that the media did a fantastic job in frightening everyone to death and this has continued ever since. Other factors in relation to this is that it’s a global ‘disaster’ and other countries are imposing similar or worse restrictions on their citizens.(why would they all be doing that if it isn’t true???)
The biggest issue for me now though is that we’re living in two parallel worlds with no sense of proportion of the disaster looming outside of ‘covid world’. ie
Little reporting of the impending economic collapse
Little mention of the wider health problems that lockdown will/is bringing.
Little perspective/context of the number of daily covid deaths against ‘normal’ mortality rates
Despite the restrictions, there is a continuing sense of ‘normality’. Apart from the ‘bog roll blip’ at the beginning, supermarkets are full, ads on the TV (apart from showing people in masks to reinforce the message that covid is still here) still want to sell you lots of stuff and Holly and Phil are still happy clapping and yaying on daytime TV.
People can still indulge with online shopping, Amazon delivery drivers have never been busier!
People are sat at home on full pay or have been furloughed.
Restricting gatherings to 6 mean very little to most as it’s a ‘little price to pay to keep just one granny alive’.Unfortunately, I think reality will only bite when the financial reality bites at a personal level, when services start to collapse and people get a great big slap in the face with the ‘new normal’. But by then it will be too late……
The polls are wrong.
No doubt about that…
How can you be so sure?
Because they often are, e.g. predicting the Brexit vote, or the U.S. 2016 election
Actually – it isn’t as simple as that. The ones that you mention were about very narrow margins.
In other polls like this are highly dependent on the way in which a question id posed – which is a key factor.
… then there’s the critical issue of sampling.
Election 2016 wasn’t supposed to be all that narrow – just before election night CNN had Clinton 90+% (chance of winning) NY Times also well over 90%.. sure I remember BBC being around 98% for Clinton too…
But yes, totally, a lot of polls ask the wrong questions – A lot of people, when asked, may well somewhat dislike things about Donald Trump: but they still will sure as hell vote for him!
Seems to still align broadly with my own experiences talking to people. There’s a lot more willingness to question around, now, but still plenty of people not really resisting authority.
I reckon that’s a fair summary – it gels with my experience.
A lot of people think the whole think is absurd and overdone, but accept they must obey the law.
Few realise unjust laws should be opposed, especially those brought in by government diktat or decree, unsupported by parliament.
It’s down from the frightening, astronomical 90% and more back in the Spring.
True.
Keep pushing.
Polls are a means to influence public opinion not gauge it
depends on the poll .. some of them are fixed. the yougov one referred to elsewhere on this page allows a person to vote as many times as they want. So you dont think that government agents are fiddling these .. either manually or with bots ? Of course they are… they want you to think that you are a minority view
It’s purely to stop the people getting together to form a people’s trade union.
It won’t work. It’s already happening.
“Was thinking about those polls that ‘show’ that 60+% of the population agree with the governments restrictions and got to wondering why this could possibly be the case.”
I was wondering the same myself.
My feeling was that yougov polls may contain some degree of pro-government bias in the same way that a poll conducted by Simon Dolan might contain some degree of anti-government bias.
A twitter poll by Julia Hartley-Brewer, who is a bit of a fence sitter, gave 30% unwilling to comply and 30% who will comply but think the rules are stupid.
It’s how you frame the question. To’ prevent a second wave’? Should ask – do you think the government should be allowed to tell you how many people you can meet socially inside AND outside – and make this a criminal offence ( even if you meet one person too many) and for an unlimited period?
Remember too that the phrase ‘second wave’ means things getting as bad as they were first time. SAGE clearly imply this though they have no basis outside panic for doing so.
1 – people watch the bbc
2 – some people have jobs they hate and have liked furlough
3 – guardian readers
4 – teachers (see 3)
5 – government workers
Your own brain-washed slip is showing.
To me, 40% not in favour of the law seems too high a proportion for this to continue. For a society to function properly you can’t have 40% of the population not ‘bought in’ to the law. The house of cards will fall soon enough.
Sincerely hope you’re right…..
My cousin who used to work in the NHS in an allied profession is utterly convinced that all non-covid concerns are the result of people not complying with restrictions and will be resolved if we all cower at home. I am sure plenty of others think the same
I can only hope. However my neighbour in her late 70s (usually very levelheaded), appreciates the restrictions, she says her husband is vulnerable and since lockdown they only allowed the grandchildren in the house a week ago. No he is not vulnerable in that sense.
They listen to the letters they receive from the NHS telling them they are vulnerable, they religiously take their cocktail of pharmaceutical drugs (potentially some contraindications and some unnecessary). They have no clue that they should build their immune systems as that is the only thing that protects us all from the daily onslaught of bacteria, viruses and other pathogens.
And yet the sensible response is to take action to strengthen your immune system. I’m in the process of switching to a low carb diet and have lost over 6 kg in the past two months. Aiming to lose 15 altogether, along with about 6 cm off my waistline to match the recommendations I’ve found. That plus sunshine and working my allotment has made me feel physically better than I have in years. Too bad most people make other people responsible for their health.
Good work! I have lost over a stone this year so far. Silver linings of lockdown.
I’ve lost half a stone and acquired a fine tan.
Gold star! Well done you!
Well done.
Good for you! I started intermittent fasting a few months ago — only eat between noon and 8 p.m. as it’s great for metabolic health. Limiting carbs is the key, which I need to do more of in addition to the intermittent fasting. I stocked up on Vitamin D, Magnesium, Vitamin K and Zinc as the summer is just about done. We sceptics need to stay healthy!
Thanks everyone for your kind words. I feel driven to do something positive with my life, even if it is just making myself more physically healthy. I’m also on a lot of the same supplements mentioned below so I think we’re on the same wavelength. I don’t think I’ll ever voluntarily use the NHS again.
My mental health is another issue altogether. I was a loner before but now feel like no one is worthy of trust. I’m isolating myself from other people completely – who knows who will be the next coronafanatic I run into. Better to stay away from people.
It’s a struggle to use an exemption card and put up with the hate stares and occasional nasty comment, but I feel like I’ve got to do something to fight this. Considering how few people I see without masks, it seems quite a bold stance even with an exemption card.
If they’ve been having flu shots, as well as all that medication, the odds are their immune systems are shot anyway. I have neighbours like yours and I am so sad to see that previously sociable, salt of the earth types have become so lethargic.
I am in London this week. I just went for a walk around Southfields. The cult of Covid is strong there. NHS rainbows in every window, and horrible pictures of a woman in a superman mask as well.
It’s a very strange cult-like thing. Why is it so strong here? I would say it is mostly young middle class families kind of area.
Actually it is probably the sort of area that gets polled a lot (remain & labour voting cosy middle middle class lifestyle, sort that worship Tony Blair & the NHS, Bridget Jones types)
That’s why I left our city place in May and hardly go back. The city is full of young virtue-signallers and it makes me physically ill to see all the mask wearing — even outside where we don’t even have a mandate (yet)!
We had the poll debate yesterday as well .Before we take any notice of these polls can someone please tell us how many people took part ? was it online ? and were the questions loaded?. And even if after all this we give it the benefit of the doubt and say its true ,so what ? .At the start of the lockdown the so called polls said 90% agreed with the government and now they say only 60% .I call that progress.
A lot of people have been making light of the Covid Marshals, including me.
But there is a very real chance that the outright scum of the Earth will be recruited, empowered to abuse all and sundry in whatever way takes their fancy. Anyone believe for one nanosecond there’ll be any proper vetting, criminal checks etc? Me neither.
Amongst other things it is an attempt to reduce the unemployment figures when furlough ends
testing, track and trace and these masrshalls could probably employ everyone in the country
Full employment! The majority of the population paid to do counterproductive makework.
It’s a pretty logical consequence of believing in the magic money tree, after all.
Like the Black and Tans in Ireland under Lloyd George, until the King told the prime minister to desist.
The parallel had occurred to me.
Me too.
Aye, another act of sheer bloody lunacy that gives me a recurring twinge of shame to be British every time I hear that group mentioned. With the same result as then, if the government isn’t careful.
My concern is – what powers will they have – in particular to enter property- or will they simply contact the police so the police then enforce. We’re are living in frightening times.
They must NOT be given the right to enter people’s homes..
they’ll be as useful as PCSOs
Another bunch of useless wankers.
Hard to see them being anything other than seriously outnumbered.
https://twitter.com/Telegraph/status/1304010171983818753?s=20
Pin this.
And if there isn’t….
Game over for him.
There will be….any ‘respiratory’ or flu death will be down to covid.
BTW, why is this twerp still infecting the air waves, thought he resigned?
Loving the comments on the thread
They are funny!
If they use the current metrics of reporting and attribution along with the prevalence of Covid in the population, deaths due to Covid will be any respiratory ailment. Plus we always get the start of the flu season late August and September.
Has he quantified exactly and with what level of uncertainty (between 1 and 10000 doesn’t count)?
Given the reaction to the “Law of Six” so far, there may be trouble ahead if they’re thinking of pushing any harder. Bring it on…
People are out ‘to prove President Trump wrong’ on Hydroxychloroquine
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V-EYl1QI_h4
Sky News Australia
Liberal MP Craig Kelly says there has been study after study that shows that Hydroxychloroquine, when administered early, can “lower the rates of infections” of COVID-19.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=66C6AQW3yt0
Surprise! Swedish PM Admits Immigration Crime Connection / New “Super Simple” Rules for the English
I would keep immigration out of this and focus purely on the issue of personal freedoms vis a vis Covid. Our cause needs to be pure and seen as apolitical as possible!
Definitely. There are fortunately few hobby-horses being ridden around at the moment. Keep it that way. I’ve just been watching the latest UK Column, and the hobby horses in this edition were diluting their generally strong output re. Corona.
Anti-vaxx and conspiracy and 5G &c &c just don’t help us. The coronaphobes will jump on ANYTHING to undermine our case.
Agree. ‘Restore the old normal’ should be our sole aim.
Yep, we should base our behaviour on what brainwashed frightened sheep would prefer.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8718097/Meet-covid-marshalls-Army-workers-enforce-new-lockdown-rules.html
Boris admits his new ‘Covid Marshals’ WON’T be able to arrest people or issue fines and can be volunteers – as ‘baffled’ police say they have ‘no idea’ what their role is
I assume The Boris Blackshit ‘Covid Marshals’ will have MAGIC immunity from the deadly COVID
Even more licence to treat them with the contempt they deserve then, bring it on!
It will be interesting to see how many saddos might sign up to this.
They will be nothing more than state-licensed bullies, and should get the disrespect they will so reichly (not a spelling mistake) deserve.
As for the colour of their shirts, they should be brown, as for the SA in Germany, which they seek to imitate; black, so reminiscent of Mosley, has already been taken by our Border Force!
What could happen is the marshals inspecting one house/place after another and spreading the virus themselves in the process.
For consideration: Howie Hubler, a Morgan Stanley broker (famous from the Big Short) lost $8 billion in one trade in the midst of the GFC.
Compared to the impact of Ferguson he is a rank amateur.
Someone will have been on the other side of that trade so the money was not lost to society. But this farce will see permanent damage that can’t be recovered. There is a difference.
Just as some astonishing blaggers (a.k.a. management consultants, specifically in this instance, Boston Consulting), are on the other side of Rasputin Cummings’ fantasy trade of up to £100 BN on Operation Moonshot ( Mass Observation Of Numpties: Super Hyper Outrageous Tomfoolery). The money funnel swings into action, the taxpayer foots the bill for something entirely pointless at enormous cost. We fund Cummings’ dream of ruling the UK from a NASA style
bunkercontrol room (says it all, doesn’t it?) all flickering screens and flashing lights, to monitor us, ‘for our own return to normal(cy)’)!Cost – about 6 times what we were alleged to be sending to the EU annually, or so we were told on the side of that bus. Not that anybody believed any of those figures, except the majority of the great British public, of course -rather like now. At least we used to get something or other back for it, the odd road or swimming pool possibly, not constant blanket surveillance.
Excellent comment!
Surely it should be CumShot (I appreciate the tone but it’s Cummings Moon Shot)
It was called the money shot back in the 70s, that is what the male starts got the money for.
This is going to be pissed away in the wind like an alkie in a back alley.
Yep. Although the Money Shot is also the key shot in the most expensive set piece in a movie. Hence the money being all the stuff you have to spend to get it.
It also means the most valuable piece of information that drives all your profits in a business sense.
I always used to be sceptical when people kept on going on about Dominic Cummings being a dangerous individual. Sadly they were correct, they are reshaping the UK whilst everyone is distracted.
So the only outcome for anyone who has ever had a serious, life-threatening illness is to become a bedwetting dictator?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YmoGEPIJZ9Y
Caller: I have been behind the Government throughout the pandemic, but I will defy the Rule of Six
An angry caller has told talkRADIO that he will “defy the new laws” around social gatherings.
Simon in Buckingham called Mike Graham’s show saying he had been “very compliant” throughout
It took THIS to prompt defiance? I was defiant from the start! But better late than never I guess…
“I have been behind the Government throughout the pandemic”
Response – ‘No you haven’t – you’ve been under their cosh.’
But that apart : all offerings gratefully received.
Dudley North
Bassetlaw
Great Grimsby
Rother Valley
Bishop Auckland
Scunthorpe
Newcastle-under-Lyme
Stoke-on-Trent North
Penistone & Stocksbridge
Ashfield
Bolsover
West Bromwich West
Sedgefield
Workington
Don Valley
Wakefield
Wrexham
West Bromwich East
Leigh
Clwyd South
Durham North West
Stoke-on-Trent Central
Blyth Valley
Heywood & Middleton
These are the Red Wall seats. It didn’t take that long to google the mp, send an email quoting Charles Walker, urging them to vote against the extension to extraordinary powers. As many on here that can do should do this?
I wrote to my MP yesterday!
We should contact all these MP’s, not just our own
Trouble is unless you are one of their constituents they have no obligation to even read your correspondence – this is why when you write or e-mail an MP you must put your address on the missive, so they know you are a constituent of theirs.
It’s not ‘the trouble’ – it’s what MPs do : represent a particular constituency. They would rightly just pass on any letter or bin it if it didn’t come from a constituent.
I would advocate not putting an address on- it increases the chances of someone having to read to the end.
And not all of them refuse to reply- just had this from Desmond Swayne:
“As you should know, I agree. I said as much to the PM in the Commons yesterday -looking at him straight in the eye; I took a shot at the health Secretary and the Leader of the House this-morning. I just done an interview for Newsnight
I will continue to agitate”
Mansfield as well
I vote in Dudley North and the lesser-spotted Marco Longhi is my MP. Sadly, he just goes along with whatever the government says. He’s been a huge step down from Ian Austin, who, if nothing else, actually seemed to have beliefs and principles. The majority of the constituency is actually blue rosette on a pig territory, and the only reason Labour lasted as long as they did was Ian Austin. Anyone else would’ve been sent packing quickly.
Sorry – just fell off my chair laughing at the idea that Ian Austin had principles!
His only principle was Ian Austin.
Visited my (original) hometown of Bridgnorth Shropshire this morning.
I saw this message written on the entrance wall of the Golden lion pub: It is better to live one day as a Golden lion than to live for a thousand years as a sheep (Nuff said)
Later I walked past a dentist and outside the entrance a sign said ” Please do not wait in the waiting room”
Talk about two extremes!!
What if someone were to stick one of those pictures of a flock of sheep wearing face masks next to that sign on the pub wall? That would be awful….
No it would be brilliant.
Gentlemen, you cannot wait in here, this is the waiting room
https://brandnewtube.com/watch/dr-vernon-coleman-latest-september-9th-2020-this-fraud-is-now-blindingly-obvious_R7CB3DDGxFK4eHC.html
DR VERNON COLEMAN ~ LATEST ~ SEPTEMBER 9TH 2020~ THIS FRAUD IS NOW BLINDINGLY OBVIOUS
On you tube he was getting 100,000 views – on this he gets 500
BNT launched this year!
This is his official channel video (your link was someone elses):
https://brandnewtube.com/watch/this-fraud-is-now-blindingly-obvious_17uG1jJdsRcitiZ.html
With about 9,000 views.
9,000 more than he’d get on YouTube which would censor the whole video
10,900 now.
Dr Craig’s article is very interesting, but I was surprised by the claim that PCR false positives can be caused by other viruses as I do not believe this is possible.
She linked to this paper: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2095096/
Which does not support that claim, but is very interesting nevertheless.
The paper describes an outbreak of “common cold” coronavirus OC43 in a care home that they were worried was SARS1. Antibody tests appeared to confirm SARS1. Antibody tests certainly can result in false positives from infections with related coronaviruses.
They also did PCR testing and found some false positives from one lab but not from the other. But these were not because of the OC43 RNA– “With respect to the nucleic acid-based tests used by the NML in these investigations, false-positive results driven by intrinsic test performance or amplicon contamination remain most likely. The reference laboratory had processed hundreds of specimens during the preceding SARS outbreak” was their conclusion.
The outbreak had an attack rate of 67% and a CFR of 8% in a vulnerable care home population, even though it was “only” OC43. Pretty similar to COVID-19.
The FDA stated:
https://www.fda.gov/media/136151/download
Seems to back up the argument to some extent?
No, that’s not what they mean. They just mean that if you have a SARS2 infection don’t assume you don’t also have a “superinfection” or a “co-infection” with some other pathogen. Not that that other pathogen would cause the positive result, although of course it might be causing the disease.
I think the over-riding point is that the PRC test isn’t fit for diagnostic purposes.
Technically speaking it is a diagnostic test in the presence of symptoms to confirm infection of an individual. What it isn’t is a screening tool when doing this kind of mass surveillance testing.
The deviser (forget the name) explicitly warned against ift being used as a diagnostic tool. It was never meant for that purpose – and we can see why.
That was in the context of a debate about whether HIV caused AIDS that isn’t relevant here.
HIV does cause AIDS, but even then, it’s much more indirect than the way SARS2 causes COVID-19. HIV destroys your immune system and then your actual symptoms and death result from other infections and cancers and things.
Yes, exactly. And in the presence of symptoms the likelihood of a false positive becomes much lower, just because the prior probability that you have SARS2 if you have symptoms is so much higher.
But as the FDA says the doctor shouldn’t assume that the SARS2 infection is definitely causing the disease– but this is true with most pathogens and tests. The doctor has to look at the whole picture.
The PRC test for the CCP virus 🙂
Yes – fingers getting ahead of themselves 🙂
I emailed my local MP’s researcher and directed him to this website. His dismal reply was that the fact that Toby Young was running it told him all he needed to know and he sent me grabs of TY’s Twitter feed of 12 years ago in which he appeared to be being rather abusive. I don’t know how accurate those grabs were, but I replied that the PM’s past writings hardly stand up to scrutiny either.
Such a shame that the researcher and associated MP were not willing to engage on the actual issue but instead looked to undermine the credibility of the evidence itself.
We have a very long road ahead of us, folks.
What fuckwits
The nation is in the biggest (self-made) mess it has ever been and they ignore information on the basis of irrelevant political point-scoring
I had a half-serious conversation with my wife about moving to Texas or Sweden…
haha who would have thought those two places would appear in the same sentence!!
I’ve instructed the Estate Agent this morning
Are you serious
I’m getting the materials together to renew my US passport that expired while the London Embassy was closed. It’s a desperate thought to consider going back to the States. I hate living there but almost everything I love about the UK seems to be gone. I wish I thought I could survive in a non-English speaking country.
Play the ball not the man
This issue couldnt be more bi partisan as they say.
Socialist parties here in NI are pushing the whole line that anyone anti is Far Right as well.
Seems this is going to a new level
I’d suggest pointing them in Carl Heneghans direction instead but I doubt they’d understand it.
.. and Ivor Cummins : https://youtu.be/8UvFhIFzaac
About the best summary data up to this point.
Done. I doubt it too.
I am in a frenzy! Anyone else get the red banner saying “You are posting comments too quickly! Slow down!” ??
A long road? All the more reason to keep going.
Yes, Annie. Per the proverb the longest journey starts with a single step. I hear you.
would it be a fair guess that your MP is labour ? MP’s researchers are always young and very keen … and for labour MP likely to be radical…. TY is already a hate figure of the left – and to come back with grabs of a 12 year old twitter feed indicates an element of “here’s one i made earlier)”
Nope, Surrey heartlands Tory. I think it reflects the bunker mentality rather than political leanings. His dismal Toby Young Twitter point was almost like a stock answer he had prepared. So I sent him an alternative source – Achilles’ suggestion of Carl Heneghan below – and asked him to engage with the actual issues.
We have to give these people no easy excuses to ignore the facts. I refer them to sources that can’t be derided or seen as biased. Try these two sites, where the graphs make an immediate impact:
https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk
https://www.cebm.net/covid-19/covid-19-uk-hospital-admissions/
Great riposte about the PM’s past writings!
Liberty, the prominent Human Rights campaigners, have a petition to abolish the Coronavirus Act (the legislation permitting Boris to issue dictats like last night’s) – would love us to spread the word. Link is here: https://liberty.e-activist.com/page/63681/petition/1?ea.tracking.id=Website
Probably like many they trusted the government and saw light at the end of the tunnel.
What did Reagan say the most dangerous words in the English language were…
Better late than never. It is like boiling frogs, they don’t know the dangers until the process is well advanced! Hope not too late.
I sense so much more anger out there now. Many more dissenting voices. Have they finally overstepped the mark?
Hope so, keep pushing, the who,e rotten edifice has to collapse some time.
Yes, back in March I was a member of an ignored or derided fringe, on this. Now I feel I’m part of a small but vociferous and growing dissenting minority.
First they laugh at you, then they fight you, etc.
We’ll be listed a heroes of the revolution soon
Noooo, we don’t want that. Heroes of revolutions usually end up in front of a firing squad or under a guillotine.
Why not? You want to line forever with this bullshit?
Or Die with your boots on?
I know my choice and the wife is starting to feel the same.
Maybe it’s just me or just being a biker drilling and that causes it.
https://genius.com/Iron-maiden-die-with-your-boots-on-lyrics
I’d say highly likely..
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8718413/Nicola-Sturgeon-saves-Christmas-Scotland-excluding-young-children-rule-six.html
Ignore the reference to Sturgeon. The headline starts “Boris faces Tory revolt over sweeping new ‘rule of six’ restrictions. This may or may not be hyperbole, but I’m sure those MPs reading headlines to find out what they should think might find some inspiration…
Useful testing stat.
In Wales yesterday 99% of those tested yesterday were negative.
And no mask mandate. The coincidences are many regarding masks and the infection rate.
In NI we’ve had 98/97% since testing hit capacity. What does it say about the ridiculous waste of resources being thrown at this?
I will tell you. This is all about management consultants advising companies how to jump on the band wagon of public spending by ‘shaping the new normal’. Boston Consulting clearly one of the front runner firms here. They’re a piece of work:
https://www.bcg.com/publications/collections/your-strategy-needs-strategy/intro
One of their ‘Strategy Fellows’ (cod academic sounding BCG Henderson ‘Institute’) has a book about it, entitled (this is priceless): ‘Your Strategy Needs A Strategy’…
Speaking of wasting resources, I have two sets of friends who just get tested unnecessarily when it suits them. One friend was staying with her sister and BIL at an AirBnB and so all 4 got tested a few days before, and another friend hunts with a group of guys for a few days and they’ll all be getting tested before hunt camp. It’s the new thing here — whenever small groups want to get together overnight or for a few days, they all get tested beforehand. These are the same people who will bitch and moan when our taxes go up. Go figure.
And the main symptom of Covid remains the same: most who have it are never even aware they’re ill.
The worm is turning ladies and gents, the worm is turning!!!!
PLEASE LET IT BE SO!!!!!
I took my friend out for afternoon tea yesterday as it was her birthday. We haven’t met up in person since Christmas. After a lovely afternoon, she hugged me, which greatly surprised me as she has never been the least bit sceptical about the numbers, the tests or the MSM and has followed the rules without question.
She did ask me about my badge as she had an elderly friend who couldn’t wear a mask and who had been humiliated by a staff member in M and S. My friend is going to print out a card from the government website which she will give to the elderly lady, so I suppose that is progress.
We tended to keep off the subject of Covid for the most part as she knows that I have very strong opinions on the matter, backed up by a lot of evidence. I asked her at the end of the afternoon what her husband thought about the events of the last few months. She said that they didn’t really discuss it. It hasn’t really affected their lives very much as they have a lovely house with stunning views and do most of their shopping on line. It meant that they couldn’t see their grandchildren as much but they all live some distance away anyway.
Therein lies the problem. She is an intelligent person but has done no independent research or fact checking and life has gone on very much as normal for her. There are millions just like her. How do we “turn” these people?
Wealth tax to pay for the response will wake them up. And that’s coming let me tell you…
Use emotion. I’ve said it before. If you support the governments measures and think people should wear masks to protect others, you also support people dying alone and scared in care homes and hospitals, not being able to see their loved ones or have the compassion and dignity shown to them in death.
And for a while you couldn’t even give them dignity and respect putting them in the ground.
There is a very real cost that just needs hightlighting.
Kids too.
So you could say, maybe they were calling out “Son, is that you?” but he never came.
Or “Daddy, daddy! Where’s my daddy?” but Daddy wasn’t allowed to be there.
This is the kind of thing.
Very good, mhcp. It’s impossible to seriously defend such blatant inhumanity.
Hope you are right, but what specifically makes you think so?
It absolutely is – further to my post below, this was sent to me by the Law Society: Liberty Human Rights Group’s petition: https://liberty.e-activist.com/page/63681/petition/1?ea.tracking.id=Website
Really? What makes you think that?
The ludicrous change of narrative around Ferguson and Sweden is the surest sign yet that the lockdown zealots know they have backed the wrong horse. The silent majority have had enough of this nonsense and the more Piers Moron stamps his feet the clearer they can see that the emperor is disrobed….
It started turning a couple of months ago, and it’s picked up a bit of pace after last night.
https://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/politics/nicola-sturgeon-lockdown-rules-changes-22660050
There’s no escape: The Holyrood Gauleiter has extended the misery .
Society cannot survive this.
How’s the reaction up there? Next protest at Edinburgh might be interesting :o))
Most people ‘listen to Nicola’, so I’m in a minority.
There seems to be a state of almost suspended animation, as the unquestioning acceptance of ever more restrictions and edicts spreads.
It’s surreal and very very depressing.
Tell him to go for murder.
Suggest suitable targets.
Hahaha if you’re going to go down then at least take some of the C-phobes with you!
I love you Annie. You are a star.
This is how I feel; I’ve lost the little hope I once had.
Most days just seem utterly pointless as the futility, stupidity and steady encroachment of DIY- style edicts and impositions take hold.
he’s not alone. 2 in this house ready to kick off soon.
Moi aussi.
If – and it’s a big if I know – the anger down here continues and swells, will that help?
I’d like to think so, but the SNP cult has such a hold here now.
If she keeps on pushing the way she has been, that might suddenly change.
I’m not so sure; the public sector provides much of the employment here, the opposition at Holyrood is weak and the Nicola cult is securely embedded.
And anything that looks like it is building on what’s coming out of England will simply be labelled as anti-Scottish. That’s the SNP’s standard defence.
Weren’t she and the Swine pressured into opening in-person schools though?
Just playing the optimist here.
Indeed, but she’s tightened the rules again and a couple of schools in my area have now been affected:
https://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/ayrshire/staff-two-south-ayrshire-primary-22659208
Just proves she’s not completely immune to public pressure if there actually is some though.
I find it very sad and depressing too. I can’t understand why people can’t see they are being lied to. On three recent shopping trips I only saw one other person, apart from myself, who didn’t have a mask on.
I’m the only one now at our local supermarket.
Maybe us un-masked ones are generally staying away?
Yes, I’ve reduced my visits but as I don’t drive, I still have to go there.
I’ve done a couple of home deliveries but they’re rather pricey and some of the stuff I received was not that good.
Fortunately small independent shops-zero waste and green grocer’s -are easy going and don’t make any fuss although I always wear my badge now,as hostility seems to be growing
This is my experience as well; I used to look at other customers and smile but now I look away.
No one makes eye contact ,apart from till staff, who are their usual pleasant selves-and not all gagged, as you say.
The staff are pleasant and don’t enforce mask nonsense but there’s an almost funereal air about the place.
The young masked evening staff in a Co-op I go to don’t seem to like me being maskless,they are quite unfriendly,one girl particularly so.The older staff in another Co-op are very pleasant though and seem to like talking to someone without a muzzle.
The muzzled customers seem to pretend I am not there and carefully avoid eye contact with me,suits me just fine I ignore them aswell.
A tiny glimmer of opposition from the media? https://twitter.com/HTScotPol/status/1303715751669510147
(not to the lockdown, but one step at a time)
Here’s a bit of fantasising. If you had a loaded rifle, with Johnson or Hancock in the sights, and an assurance of no consequences for yourself, would you pull the trigger? I probably wouldn’t, as I don’t think I have it in me to kill someone. But I have the fantasy, and others must too, some of whom would pull the trigger. And some who would no longer care about the consequences.
Yes I would.
Boris to follow that one today or tomorrow?
It’ll be definitely on an evening, when most are too tired and sleepy to react properly.
Oh fuck no…coming soon to England, given Bozo’s record.
Where I am we have to wear masks to enter the restaurant and until you sit down at the table, for going to and from the washroom, and back out again. It’s insanity and I refuse to do it. Outdoors only for me and no using the indoor washroom. I’ve only eaten out once and only outdoors since this madness started, and with the cold weather coming I can’t see going to a restaurant at all. The sheeple here seem to think it’s an OK tradeoff. I guess time will tell whether restaurants can survive this, particularly since I anticipate another shutdown. It’s utter madness.
She is.
Sadly, Scotland has rolled over and gone belly-up. There is no fight or backbone here any more, just unthinking obedience.
It will end up with compulsory masks when you leave the house, no doubt. If you follow a policy of safetyism one-upmanship without any recourse to the facts or science that’s the only inevitable conclusion.
Yes, a sliding descent into Madness. It must be stopped.
one step beyond…..!
This is what I dread. I cannot make any headway in discussions, try as I might.
50% of care homes had at least one covid death which probably means that a high proportion of all the residents (over 200,000 in those covid infected homes) had some exposure to the virus, most no doubt asymptomatic. Residents live on average 20 months in care homes before they die.
330 of these people will die on average every day! Some of these would test positive for covid but they just died of old age, it happens!
We really should be able to get a profile of who these fatalities are, where they caught the virus and what comorbidities they had.
The registration of deaths has been so much rubbished that we will never know what the cause of death was – but it’s a fair estimate that, in fact, a low proportion were primarily caused by Covid.
What has gained more profile recently is one obvious fact – that because of the ‘weak’ infective season of 2018/19, there was a much larger vulnerable population in 2019/20 which significantly exaggerated the mortality figures.
Yes, Ivor Cummins shows this in his video posted below. He talks of it being “dry tinder” and his graphs taken from Euromomo show that those countries in Europe who had below average deaths in the winters of 2018 and 2019 had the highest Covid peaks. Other countries like Denmark and Germany had normal death rates during those winters so haven’t seen as great a peak.
It stood out a mile when I did my own analysis of mortality over time.
It prompted me to look at the hypothesis that deaths over two years show a balance (given that the balancing may be over longer periods). The hypothesis stacks up when you look at bi-annual deaths.
So last night I started wondering about all-cause mortality and was stunned to find this chart on the Statistics Canada web site. It clearly shows deaths by month from January to June over the last 5 years in my province. Not only was our “spike” nothing unusual, there was a steep drop in deaths afterwards. I’m flummoxed as to why this is not news and no journalist has taken the 20 seconds to search this very public document. The authorities can fudge Covid deaths but they can’t fudge all-cause mortality numbers, and it’s quite clear there was nothing unusual about 2020 except the precipitous drop in deaths! Had Covid not been reported and splashed all over the media 24/7, this year would have been no different from any other. Makes my blood boil.
https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/daily-quotidien/200724/g-a004-eng.htm
Thank you Lisa, that’s a cracker! What was the date Ontario started lockdown?
We returned from Spain on March 13th and that was the last day of school. Over the next week or so pretty much everything shut down. We had the same issue as NYC and Sweden with our care home deaths, so had we protected our elderly our numbers would have been far lower. Around 80% of all our deaths in Canada were from LTC facilities.
A big contender for the “How PATHETIC can you get?” award.
Just read about a pub that’s considering banning under 25’s because it’s their fault that the CV virus is spreading.
I repeat:HOW PATHETIC CAN YOU GET ?
From a 71 year old.
Who does that landlord think they’ve caught it from?
Surely grounds for someone to sue them for age discrimination! And I sincerely hope someone does.
Age discrimination? Not sure that’s lawful- so also idiotic
There’s probably some Statutory Instrument that nobody voted for that makes it required.
Sounds like a good candidate for a boycott. You should name and shame them here, and anywhere else you can. The under 25s, and many over 25s, are already harassed by pubs for unnecessary identification, but this is just laughable.
Age discrimination innit
Look in the Metro paper’s website
Said pub is in Yorkshire.
Also if they carry it out to the letter, they would probably have to sack 90% of their staff.
I wish I was still harassed by pubs for age-proving ID. Sadly, they stopped asking fifty years ago and I’m only fifty-four.
Yes, they deserve to go out of business.
Name and shame please.
What a rotten deal for our young people. Huge debt if they go to University (and no guarantee of a decent job after), remembering that degrees are now frequently required for quite basic jobs.
Very little chance of owning their own homes.
Bloody Covid restrictions on their social and romantic lives.
And now, blamed for killing granny.
There is a very good chance. Many people just link Serco with refuse collection and other council jobs, however they are an international company with high access security clearance to the the most important areas of government. Governments and business use Serco extensively for Internet Scrubbing – sometimes you will find it is impossible to find old incriminating information as it has been wiped completely. They also run parts of the US air traffic control system. It’s about time people in the media started to question Serco’s roll in government.
Apparently it’s World Suicide Prevention Day today…….
Well that’s quite apt because I found out an hour ago a young man I know made a bloody good go at killing himself last week, had no help and precious little human contact in months.
Poor poor soul; has anyone managed to help him since?
Don’t know details but he’s still in hospital. Poor lad was getting himself back together quite well when I saw him around New Year.
Poor guy.
If this wasn’t so tragic it would be laughable. Oh, the irony.
If it wasn’t so tragic, it would be laughable. With the current discussions around daily testing and digital passport, I’m revising my person suicide metric. Either that or escape the UK. But where to go? No place seems sane now.
Reading the comments gives me some hope.
https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/C1D46F6A3118D0360CDAB7A08E94ED22/S0027950120000307a.pdf/living_with_covid19_balancing_costs_against_benefits_in_the_face_of_the_virus.pdf
LIVING WITH COVID-19: BALANCING COSTS AGAINST BENEFITS IN THE FACE OF THE VIRUS
“However, the £30,000 figure per QALY is the figure used in resource decisions within the UK health system. It is not an arbitrary number. It is not based on likely future earnings lost or the value of future consumption – calculations that are open to the moral objection that they reduce the value of human life to how much people would have spent on commodities. Instead the figure we use for the value of a QALY is a measure of what is considered the highest level of resources (i.e. what part of GDP) in the UK health system that should be used to generate extra quality adjusted years of life – and it is saving of lives which is what the lockdown was for.”“On that basis it would seem as though the benefits of the three-month lockdown were likely to have been lower – perhaps far lower – than its costs. Yet even if one used a valuation of a QALY three times as great, the figures in tables 2 and 3 (with benefits raised by a factor of 3) would still generate costs of the lockdown in excess of benefits in nearly all the cases considered”
This is very mild language. Just have a look at Table 2 and 3.Even in Fergusson’s 500 000 deaths scenario lockdown is not cost effective.Why are C-19 lives valued more than cancer,and any other disease in the NHS?This is now a published article(previous preprint) with the most comprehensive calculation that lockdowns is too costly. The public must be informed in an easy way about the cost. How about the estimated cost -20%GDP is the same as all NHS expenditure in 2 years for the first lockdown?
Pre the covid nonsense NICE (National Institute for Clinical Excellence) would approve expenditure of up to about £30,000 to prolong a life for a year. If you had a kid with cancer you could get £30,000 worth of drugs, as an example. This was a figure widely known, discussed by medical ethicists etc. We’re now spending over £10m per year per life prolonged & these lives aren’t kids with cancer they’re 85 years olds in care homes with comorbidities that are killing them.
Let’s be generous & assume an 80 year old covid patient lost 5 years of life. That would be £30,000 x 5 = £150,000 we might spend to extend their life. If we multiply Neil Fergusson’s 480,000 deaths by £150,000 we get £72bn. So pre lockdown the most society would spend to prolong these lives would be £72bn, accepting Fergusson’s mad figures & the maximum NICE payout & an extended life span of 5 years. But we’ve spent £350bn almost 5x the most conceivable amount we should have spent on the most generous assumptions. This from a conservative government.
I think the problem is that there are a lot of idiotic people in this world who have never considered that, given resources are not infinite, someone has always made these decisions. I recently pointed this out to a supposedly intelligent person of my acquaintance and was told that this was the sort of consideration Hitler would have made. I managed to remain calm and point out that doing this is a good sign you’ve lost the argument.
And yet it’s well known in lots of academic communities. In my previous life as an economist, we often talked about using cost benefit analysis when valuing public policy, and explicitly placed values on human life. Within our current economic system, I’m not sure how else you can deal with the problem of scarce resources. Obviously, what’s happening now is not a viable alternative.
This paper and the LSE’s Centre for Economic Performance Occasional Paper 49, back in March, have much more fully argued figures for all of this. Read them and weep.
https://cep.lse.ac.uk/pubs/download/occasional/op049.pdf
Thank you (yet again!) Swedenborg for this. Have been wondering whether anyone would try an update of LSE’s CEP Occasional Paper 49 (which they reference), which calculated that costs in WELLBY’s (not exactly QALYs) exceeded benefits by 1 Jun. And that was on the information available mid March, and assumed (IIRC) that Ferguson’s 125K deaths was possible. This Imperial/Manchester paper suggests it wasn’t worth it by end June, a bit timorous for me.
This is a paper done by Imperial academics. Not Fergusson’s crew! It provides a useful table that shows costs, assuming different QALY v GDP% loss. It’s quite an interesting read though I’d argue that the real cost/benefit should look at the delta between our heavy lockdown & a lighter Sweden style lockdown (about 50% of the economic shock) & an estimate of Lockdown saved lives, hardly any. https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/national-institute-economic-review/article/living-with-covid19-balancing-costs-against-benefits-in-the-face-of-the-virus/C1D46F6A3118D0360CDAB7A08E94ED22
And what value would one place on lost liberty?
??? The exact same paper as the one I thanked swedenborg for in the first place!
This week on London Calling Toby Young said that the brass at the NHS would not be capable of deciding who should make the coffee, therefore any conspiracy theory flies out the window. The NHS brass don’t have to make the decisions, they receive orders then implement them. Hassle-free decision making.
The management of NHS England is highly politicized. I think Toby Young is naive over this.
Yes, it is. In all the trusts, you don’t have to look very far before you find Common Purpose. When my mother was in hospital, I looked at the CVs of those on the advisory and executive boards of her local trust – they certainly didn’t get there on talent, experience and competence.
Common purpose is everywhere..
https://www.cpexposed.com/
I am absolutely raging. Just picked my son up from school, half of the parents were masked up stood out in the fresh air waiting to pick their kids up… must keep the fear and virtue signaling up (saw some of them in the park afterwards un-maksed stood right next to each other so just masked to make themselves look good in the playground). After yesterdays announcement I thought that people would start to see this massive charade for what it is and would stop complying…beyond pathetic.
I used mattghg’s template MP letter (thanks mattghg) to write to my own – Andrew Mitchell Sutton Coldfield – this morning.
I lobbied him frequently and successfully during the Blari/Brown period over ID cards so I think he’s always been a bit more libertarian than most of his fellows.
His response below – which came back within 3 hours.
This came as a bit of a surprise. By all accounts Hancock had a rocky ride today from his own side in the HOC today and the Tory supporting press (Times excepted) are seemingly going full-on sceptic.
I am beginning to think they’ve overreached on the Rule of 6 and moonshot testing. I suggest others follow my lead and get lobbying.
Yes, seems it was the Covid Marshals bit that did it for a lot of people – they are just ridiculing Bojo for that. Maybe sanity will prevail.
Yes – lots of good comments on the DT article about covid marshalls. Good article as well.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2020/09/10/would-listen-covid-marshals-politicians-scientists/?li_source=LI&li_medium=liftigniter-rhr
Annoyingly you cannot now even access the comments on the DT site without an account..
Yes, I noticed that. It’s a shame because they have become quite scathing and witty of late.
I usually can – unless it’s just happened in the last few hours?
I only noticed it today.
Actually – it was the comments on continual testing that were the most idiotic – although it’s a close contest.
The National, the pro-independence Scottish newspaper, reads sometimes like a Nicola Sturgeon fanzine. Once I counted no fewer than seven photographs of the dear leader, sometimes in a tartan mask, on the front page. But it isn’t the case as someone here once said that The National has about seven readers. In fact it has more than eleven thousand online subscribers (including my husband). So instead of venting my feelings on Lockdown Sceptics, I thought I would do more good by commenting on covid19 articles in The National. There are plenty of them, all written by people who genuinely seem to believe that covid19 is a deadly plague and people who go to the pub are selfish granny-slayers. I am very polite and matter of fact. I quote statistics from the National Records of Scotland. So far none of my comments has been moderated. One even received nine upticks! I would suggest that instead of writing to their totally useless MP, people should try to spread the word among the unconverted by quoting statistics and the words of unheard scientists under covid19 articles in local newspapers where comments are still allowed.
Yes it may not seem like much but writing a comment with a couple of incontrovertible facts and a link to this site on any Covid comments section you can find in the media is worth doing. I assume the BBC will do their best to moderate them out but still worth a try even on theirs.
Just seen this comment on an article in the DT. Made me laugh.
“I am starting to believe Boris and the Cabinet passed away after catching Covid and has been replaced by a Hologram operated by Sturgeon.”
On second thoughts, this could be a viable theory?
As viable as any other theory
Sadly no. The Czarina Alexandra de Pfeffel of all the Russias, and courtiers, have been bewitched by a dishevelled monk like figure. Hopefully Revolution follows.
Lest we forget:
Mr Johnson referred to women who wore the veil as “bank robbers” and said they looked like “letter boxes.”
He said in the Telegraph column: “If you tell me that the burka is oppressive, then I am with you.
“If you say that it is weird and bullying to expect women to cover their faces, then I totally agree – and I would add that I can find no scriptural authority for the practice in the Koran.
“I would go further and say that is it absolutely ridiculous that people should choose to go around looking like letter boxes.”
Mr Johnson said he did not support a burka ban in the UK as this would give a boost to radicals who said there was a “clash of civilisations” between Islam and the West, and could lead to a “general crackdown on any pubic symbols of religious affiliation.”
But he felt “fully entitled” to expect women to remove face coverings when speaking to him at his MP surgery.
Why does not someone pin Matt Hancock down as to what the latest science thinks is the best estimate for the Infection Fatality Rate? The estimate has been coming down and down as more is known, but the Government is still acting as if it was the original 3.4% instead the real rate which is much, much, lower. Even yesterday Hancock was stating that the latest max 6 person measures would save ‘hundreds of thousands of lives’. This is more fear mongering and he should be asked how that statement is justified.
Why indeed
Lazy, evil journalists, opposition not interested in getting out of this mess
I doubt Hancock knows or cares what the IFR is
The best estimates now of the IFR are around 0.3%
Based on serology. The real figure is probably about a third of that as serology greatly underestimates the number of infections.
On the Jeremy Vine show with Dr Lee today they continued to claim the IFR was 0.1% for flu but 1% for CV-19 so 10 time as deadly
Truly astounding at this point
Why does not someone pin Matt Hancock down
as to what the latest science thinks is the best estimate for the Infection Fatality Rate?while someone else jumps on his head?That’s a cracker
https://twitter.com/Alpenstrudel/status/1303903916384542721/photo/1
Deaths per 100 000 all causes (incl C-19) week 1-week 33 2015-2020 Sweden
Can you spot the pandemic the worst since Spanish flu 1918?
Even more astounding. Pandemic should lead to excess deaths. In age group below 65 there has been no excess deaths compared to average 2015-2020.By definition there has been no pandemic of C-19 in Sweden below 65.
https://twitter.com/HaraldofW/status/1292805398093848578/photo/1
Just been working on updating aspects of the data since 1993 in England and Wales.
Confirms the unexceptional nature of 2020.
Current nonsenses have no justification whatsoever.
Ivor Cummins would agree with you. His latest update says the same thing for lots of countries. https://youtu.be/8UvFhIFzaac
Mixed day. I am a sports coach. This morning I gave a 1-1 session with an 80-year-old man. He is fit as a fiddle, and not at all bothered about the virus. He looks after his body and eats well and moves like someone 20 years younger. Made me so happy to spend some time with him. It was all very normal and life enhancing. This afternoon, went to pick up child from school and there were more parents wearing masks. Nooooooo!!!!
Same here, I left the school raging. They have no worries about catching anything from me anyway as I will be staying well clear from such morons.
https://newsroom.taylorandfrancisgroup.com/more-cats-might-be-covid-19-positive-than-first-believed-study-suggests/
This study from WuhanMore cats might be COVID-19 positive than first believed, study suggests “Although the infection in stray cats could not be fully understood, it is reasonable to speculate that these infections are probably due to the contact with SARS-CoV-2 polluted environment, or COVID-19 patients who fed the cats.
“Therefore measures should be considered to maintain a suitable distance between COVID-19 patients and companion animals such as cats and dogs, and hygiene and quarantine measures should also be established for those high-risk animals.”
Reminds me of that Simpsons episode that begins with a committee deciding to release a deadly virus and saying it is transmitted by cats..
According to my vet coronaviruses are extremely common in dogs and cats so most would test positive, but it would not necessarily be SARS2. There is even a coronavirus vaccine available for cats. Also – by extension – any vet tested who works with small animals will also test positive.
Something else to make people go mad with anxiety. The government, in its infinite wisdom, may say that people can no longer own cats. Cat lovers will be frantic that their beloved pets are under threat. Cat haters will be thrilled at the possibility of reducing the number of cats pooing in their gardens. Civil war will break out on yet another front. Divide and conquer.
That’ll be Week 38’s Coronabollix.
First comes pet distancing then expect pet quarantine, pet masks, and a ban on pet gatherings >6 animals involved. Good luck to the pet police for enforcing all these…
And ultimately, mandatory pet vaccination…
It’s already started: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-highlands-islands-54026119
No chance you’ll separate me from the dogs. If they have Covid I probably gave it to them anyway.
Yeah, good luck with that. Very unwise to try and distance the Brits from their pets.
My cats have kept me sane during all this social distancing as they stay close beside me.
I feel your pain. I’m returning to work soon and I have to obey all sorts of insane rules just to enter the building. It is very disheartening to realise just how many people really have no clue as to just what is going on.
That’s meme of the week!
Am I alone in thinking that a family game of rounders in the park with some coloured bibs would be exempt from the rule of 6?
“organised indoor and outdoor sports, physical activity and exercise classes (see the list of recreational team sports, outdoor sport and exercise allowed under the gyms and leisure centre guidance)”
Does this mean a rave would be exempt – as it includes dancing?!! Hope so ( not for me but for the young ins)
Sounds like orgies would be exempt too.
I’ve spoken to a few other sport organisers, and it seems any sporting activity is pretty much exempt, so long as there is a risk assessment to ensure a covid safe environment (whatever nonsense that means!). So basically just go and have a fun game of rounders. If questioned all you are doing is organised sporting practice. No one will ever ask to see a risk assessment.
Form your own Rambling group.
Hi, does anyone have or know of any data sets which back calculate possible numbers of community infections preceding the initial peak of confirmed cases (as I understand hospital testing of those who needed treatment/died)?
There may be some hope:
Citizens Stop Spanish Police From Arresting Woman For Not Wearing Mask
“In Spain, police tried to arrest a woman for not wearing a mask. Dozens of people took off their masks and then helped the woman,” states the description accompanying the video.
The video is by PJW on Zerohedge.
https://www.zerohedge.com/medical/citizens-stop-spanish-police-arresting-woman-not-wearing-mask
Any idea what the crowd were chanting?
“Freedom” I believe…
Libertad = Freedom
watched it yesterday.. I think it was libertad = liberty/freedom
Outstanding meme! The next challenge / competition on this board is to replace the sound track on the current pathetic NHS TV advert which came out yesterday. (Nearly made me throw the television set out the window – you have been warned!)
A key argument for the new severe lockdown rules are to avoid a second wave like other countries. Is there a significant second wave in terms of hospital admissions and deaths anywhere in the world? Anyone know of a good place to see all the covid death rates for major countries —– I’m very keen to see the data. (Please keep up the great work Toby – its crucial)
Inconveniently for a mild sceptic like me, the figures show there is something happening in Bouches-du-Rhone: Fewer than 10 in ICU in early August, now around 80, having climbed steadily for 3-4 weeks. Hospital admissions climbing, though with some volatility in the daily increment.
Detailed figures here:
https://dashboard.covid19.data.gouv.fr/vue-d-ensemble?location=DEP-13
Maybe something local, but seems to be making some people properly ill.
I wish we (UK) had such full information available presented in a way that treated us like adults.
Follow the link given by Toby above to Ivor Cummings’ video (first one in “Roundup” section), he covers the figures for a lot of countries there, discussing the “second wave” issue at length, and generally gives sources for at least the graphs. Good discussion of what’s going on generally, numbers-wise, as well.
Given the government’s many claims this last week that PCR detected cases have increased (with Hancock letting it slip that testing had also going up 25%), it is strange that by 4.30pm today they still have not updated the weekly figures on this: https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/testing
I’ll review it all if/when they do update, and let you know
PHE issued guidance yesterday to all laboratories that they must test twice before declaring a positive and initiating contact tracing.
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
I don’t see how they can update the data until the new guidelines have been followed.
Those instructions to Pillar 1 and Pillar 2 labs were published online 3 days ago, but given to the labs 2 weeks ago. The new regimes do not stop the weekly data release (which still have not yet come out today (6.30pm). Suspicious ??
Thanks for letting me know the labs received the instructions 2 weeks ago.
The instructions are a small step towards avoiding positive results at the limit of detection but they do little to bring us to and ideal situation where we only detect infectious people or those likely to become infectious.
Nevertheless, I believe that even this change will reduce the false positives by a large amount, so yes the lack of publication looks suspicious.
The doc I linked above is marked as updated on the 9th. I do not know what the update changes, but while we are being suspicious……….
I had been checking it each day and it is strange that the no of daily tests processed is not updated after 2nd Sept. It was usually updated daily. Number of positive cases alone doesn’t mean much without considering the test positivity rate (no of positives per 100 tested).Test positivity rate for UK on 2nd Sept was 0.80%, among the lowest in the world.
They ceased daily release of data about 20 August, and switched to weekly release (on Thursdays) of the last week’s daily numbers.
They also started to combine Pillar 1 and Pillar 2 positive counts, which helpfully (for them) obscures the fact that Pillar 1 has not been increasing AT ALL
They usually release mid afternoon, but as yet (6pm) have not done so today
Please let it be true and successful!
According to the Brussels Times over 240 Belgians, mostly from the business community, are suing Bill Gates, the Belgian government, and British epidemiologist Dr. Neil Ferguson over their existing Covid-19 lockdown measures.
https://www.aier.org/article/litigating-over-lockdowns/
Good on them! I heard a while ago that some construction companies were suing Sadiq Khan / London Mayor office for shutting down building works, even though he wasn’t required to by the government. Not sure how that’s going now.
Splendid news. Keep the ball rolling, all over our planet.
Good luck to them.
Well, that’s me on my “final warning” from Times Online. It seems I was reported by a bed wetting cretin who I called out for posting demonstrably false information. These bedwetters don’t like it up them (or perhaps some of them do).
Good work, have you read the David Aaronovitch article today? they like to have their weekly articles trying to demonise anyone not rushing to have their vaccine. The Times pretty much reads like it is written in Whitehall over the past 6 months – pretty much pure propaganda.
Well done, annoying someone.
Count it as a victory.
https://twitter.com/DavQuinn/status/1304019688108822528/photo/1
ECDC Case notifications C-19 per 100 000Weeks 35-36 Europe.
Must be the best irony today. If one visits Sweden ,one should quarantine for 14 days. Seems to have by far the biggest virus free area in Europe.
Well, that shines a light on the political bias.
BBC and Other MSM are today ‘discussing’ the moonshot idea of using ‘enabling tests’ to determine who is virus free and so able to enter concert venues, trains, planes, etc. What they are NOT then asking is what happens if you test positive – with the presumption being you’d be excluded from the cinema, school, hospital, plane etc.
They NEED to discuss that, because 1-2 weeks after SARS-CoV-2 infection and then for several months more a person will still score PCR positive and yet be non-infectious. So how will these “enabling tests” distinguish people who carry virus (recent infection) and are infectious vs those that carry the virus (ancient infection) and are non-infectious .
And what about false positives – perhaps 1%
Even worse, what is not being asked about is the obvious implication that these tests will be REQUIRED/MANDATORY. So we must all submit to daily testing, with this collected in a central database, also recording out name, location, contact details, family members….
This is so obviously all and only about control and monitoring of the whole population, and hence removal of liberty and soon thereafter a compulsory vaccine containing who knows what.
They need to stop discussing the idea, or just dismiss it for the nonsense it is – impractical and completely unnecessary
I suspect it is deliberate nonsense, they seem to specialise in spreading misinformation to the public.
The problem is the media – policy dynamic.
This sort of things gets the attention the media craves. So they pursue it. But the fact that it gets the attention makes it plausible policy. And before you know it, it’s happening.
It’s almost as if society can’t stop itself from self harm.
Maybe they are going for the complete scam of compulsory testing (with financial penalties for non compliance) and if you want to leave the testing program you have to take the vaccine. They are cunning devils and they are desperate to bring in digital IDs and compulsory adult vaccinations.
It’s all about control and monitoring once people accept this concept everything makes sense. I don’t believe for a minute it is random chaos – it’s the work of psychologists.
Spot on and we must resist.
The other thing I thought of is that they will start making you pay for your own tests if you don’t have the vaccine. This gives a way out for all of them and their friends and associates who don’t want vaccine.
These people are always scheming. I wouldn’t trust a single one of them. We pretty much have the whole government, military and media complex all working in tandem to get us compulsory vaccinated and digitally monitored. And we have the added bonus of having to pay taxes to enable them to do so!
And neuroscientists. And Think Tanks. And…
Chinese-style digital test IDs, which will become vax IDs, have been planned for a while.
See this great Dave Cullen video: https://www.bitchute.com/video/4tLcwsCrAmI/
It’s just a way to force you to have the ‘non mandatory’ mandatory vaccine.
So the first member of the family tests negative (in the privacy of your own home). What’s to stop him then doing another test, and another, and registering them to different family members?
Linked to DNA?
Exactly. There would have to be a population-wide DNA database. And it may require all swab samples to be submitted for retrospective checking.
False positive rate of 1% means every single day a random 600,000 people would be locked at home for two weeks (or whatever rule they come up with). After a while, you’ve got an average 840,000 people out of action, constantly changing. Utter chaos.
Wait until a larger proportion of BAME people test positive and will not be allowed to go out or use services
It’s such a f.ing stupid idea, only brainless morons (or the truly evil) would contemplate it. 1% ‘false positives’? You must be joking – nearer 90% if you are looking for infective illness.
Such a proposal will be a one-question intelligence test : if you go along with it , society will probably be safer without your input. 🙂
Brainless morons can be a vessel for evil.
Maybe we can rely upon the general incompetence of politicians and the NHS for the whole idea to be either dropped or become an ignominious failure.
This is a You Tube video from back in June, an interview with Dr John Lee:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nMsaEqGzU0A
I would be interested in his opinion on the current situation.
he was interviewed on Jeremy Vine show yesterday lunchtime R2 12.00 https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000mdfp
Thanks.
Thanks for the post. Things are turning ‘A significant minority are now beginning to think that the cure is worse than the disease.’ and that was Jeremy Vine’s words.
Dr John Lee gives it all barrels too. He’s a legend.
The bedwetter he’s up against is a full on scaredy cat.
Just listened, thanks again. We need widespread discussion in the MSM with the ilk of Dr Lee.
Just listening. That virologist is very stupid. He says that Covid is much worse than flu, and you shouldn’t be allowed to say otherwise on a national broadcast – a warning that I am sure will have been taken on board by the higher-ups at the beeb.
Check Richie Allen in the next couple of weeks. He said that he wants to bring him on again soon.
https://www.rt.com/business/500333-age-of-disorder-deutsche-bank/
Another interesting article from RT.
It pays to shop around now.
Deutsche Bank, eh ? Bloody conspiracy theorists !
I’ve just posted this on the Telegraph site and it sums up how I feel about the latest round of restrictions; just wonder what’s next though – muzzles all the time anywhere outside?
“They can all whistle in the wind, as I couldn’t care less what that twerp Johnson and his fellow lickspittles say, I will not comply.
I have tried to support local businesses where possible, but with these further restrictions, I won’t be any longer; I have no desire to give my personal details to a retailer of any type.
Would you risk going for a beer or meal, then being told you have to stay home because someone who’s not ill, showed a possibly false positive to an unreliable test?
Certainly those with children in the family won’t be too keen as their children would then also have to be at home. Maybe the whole class would be placed under house arrest again. Who knows and who would want to take that risk?
This is probably going to be the end of many small pubs and restaurants, or perhaps even the not so small.
It is also going to be the death knell of many local groups, and clubs and societies, and perhaps the venues they meet in, as they will again be without customers and income.
It is sticking a knife into the heart of civil society and expecting the patient to live; some hope.
Not sure why this is happening if the original motive to was to avoid grief and distress, as the consequences of every government decision has had the opposite effect.
Yet, still there is no stopping the destruction of our lives, futures, health, and economy, to say nothing of the loss of hope for tomorrow.
I am in utter despair, and angry beyond belief. I wish all of our ‘masters’ ill.”
“It is sticking a knife into the heart of civil society and expecting the patient to live”
They really don’t expect the “patient” to live. You’re far too naieve about what is happening.
They don’t want the patient to live. The Global Reset is now fixed in their minds and, somehow, they can’t get rid of it. Doped?
You’re right : as long as sociopaths and psychopaths are allowed control, this will be the case.
In the end, heads above the parapet are the only solution.
Dismal news – Mrs Ozzie has just returned from the garden centre south of Oxford. All the punters were muzzled, even in the outdoor section. Compare this with just after lockdown was being eased with lots of unmasked customers enjoyed their re-found freedoms.
Long time no post.
Happily ignoring masks, distancing and quarantine after returning form a country on the naughty step.
I have another exclusion and way around the rule of 6.
Very simple.
Organised sport is excluded.
Meet up with 7, 8, 9 + friends in the park or wherever.
If questioned and / or harassed say you are playing an organised sport.
Chess.
Designated a sport by the Olympic Committee.
Either have a set there or on a tablet/phone.
Fine me and I see you in court.
How about a Rule of Six in Parliament? Only six MPs at a time. Maybe they’ll talk to each other if the PM is not around.
Parliament is currently working on the rule of zero. That’s the total number of MPs doing their duty.
Or just say ‘f.it’, carry on regardless and sing ‘Alice’s Restaurant’.
Oh, I’ve been singing ‘Alice’s Restaurant’ for some time now. A very underrated song IMHO.
Checkmate ! 🙂
Looking for some help/assistance please;
My elderly mother has suffered with M.S for over 30 years and has lost use in her arms and legs, her sight is impaired and hearing minimal. She was cared for by my father who died recently from cancer.
My bother who lives in the UK regulary visits to assist and help.
Unfortunately my Partner and I are unable to assist as we live in Phuket, Thailand.
Two regular female care assistants supplied by the council have been offering care throughout “Lockdown”, including showering and preparing for bed.
I spoke with my her today and found out that she has been informed by the council that, from now on, the care will be provided by two male assistants.
Is this even legal?
My partner is required to be patted down at airports by a same sex worker… the care involved is a lot more than a patting down.
Not to mention these will no doubt be two masked men entering a partially deaf, partially blind, elderly ladies home.
https://www.carersuk.org/forum/support-and-advice/tips-and-practical-advice/can-one-request-carers-of-one-s-own-gender-34393
These people should be able to help.
You could also seek advice from a solicitor: an elderly, essentially helpless woman in need of intimate personal attention should be able to stipulate that she requires female helpers.
great thanks, apparently that is all they have to offer due to “staff shortages” currently, either accept or no care minimum 2 weeks.
I have emailed and left messages to the council.
There should be a director of adult social care at the council, and that’s the person you should contact. Keep a record of all your email correspondence; copy it to the council’s chief executive; and confirm any and all telephone conversations with a follow-up email (and if the person you speak to won’t give their email, then confirm with an email to the director of adult social care). In my experience, this works better than either dealing with a local (elected) councillor or even a GP (and that’s before you take into account that GPs have largely gone awol over the past six months).
Also, if you feel you are getting no joy there, then you should contact the chairman of the local safegarding adults board – every council has one, with a independent chairman – as this is clearly a serious safeguarding issue.
I wish you well.
A tribune from 35 researchers, academics and doctors published in today’s “Le Parisien” in France.
“We, scientists and academics from all disciplines, and health professionals, exercising our free will and our freedom of expression, say that we no longer want to be governed by and in fear. French society is currently under tension, many citizens are panicking or, on the contrary, laughing at the instructions, and many decision-makers are panicking. It is urgent to change course.
We are not at war but faced with an epidemic that caused 30 deaths on September 9, compared to 1,438 on April 14. The situation is therefore not at all the same as 5 months ago. Moreover, if war can sometimes justify a state of emergency and exceptional restrictions on the rule of law and public freedoms which are the basis of democracy and the Republic, this is not the case for an epidemic. Today as yesterday, this crisis must unite us and empower us, not divide us or subjugate us.
This is why we call on the French political and health authorities to stop instilling fear through an anxiety-provoking communication that systematically exaggerates the dangers without explaining the causes and mechanisms. We must not confuse enlightened accountability with moralizing guilt, nor civic education with infantilization. We also call on all journalists to no longer relay without discussion a communication that has become counterproductive: the majority of our fellow citizens no longer trust official speeches, conspiracies of all kinds abound on social networks and extremists are taking advantage.
General lockdown, an unprecedented measure in our history, had sometimes terrible individual, economic and social consequences which are far from having yet all been manifested and having all been evaluated. It is not responsible to maintain the threat of its renewal.
We must obviously protect the weakest. But just like the imposition of the wearing of masks in the street, including in regions where the virus does not circulate, the effectiveness of lockdown has not been scientifically demonstrated. These general and uniform measures, imposed under police surveillance, stem more from a desire to display a protective posture than from a precise health strategy. Hence their great volatility for six months. Many other countries are acting with more consistency. European coordination should be a necessity.
We also call on the government not to instrumentalize science. The sine qua non of science is transparency, pluralism, adversarial debate, precise knowledge of data and the absence of conflicts of interest. As the Covid-19 Scientific Council does not meet all of these criteria, it should be overhauled or disbanded.
We would also like to point out that the first to treat the sick are general practitioners. Removing them from the fight against Covid, by not providing them with tests or masks and by suspending their freedom to prescribe the authorized drugs of their choice was an error that must not be repeated. On the contrary, all caregivers must be mobilized, equipped and united in order to improve our reaction capacities and not restrict them.
Finally, the imperatives of protection against contagion must not lead to betraying medical ethics and fundamental humanist principles. Isolating the sick and protecting those at risk does not mean depriving them of all rights and all social life. Too many elderly people have died and are still deteriorating in abandonment motivated by unjustified health reasons. Too many families suffer from not being able to provide them with the affection essential to their happiness and their health.
We urgently need to get back to thinking together to democratically define our health strategies, restore the confidence of our fellow citizens and of the future to our youth.”
Vive La France
Beautifully put, and exactly what I think as a nurse and a human. If only they would listen. The harm done to the elderly and their families is truly appalling. I think there will be a massive backlash once the dust has settled. I also think that in part this is why the dust isn’t being allowed to settle.
Vive les français(es) intelligents(es)!
Good statement. The only point I would disagree with is “European coordination should be a necessity”. That would presumably prevent Sweden from following its own policy.
They will do anything to stop the yellow vests
Can I ask whether you have sent this to Toby for inclusion in a forthcoming LS edition? Could be something that he would include. We need a similar group here to write to the DT or similar.
No I haven’t, feel free to do so.
Many, many thanks for posting this. It restores some of my battered faith in French clarté.
Anyone been sent a letter from Ipsos Mori/ Imperial College asking to be part of testing research study? If so what blood group are you? My partner was sent one. I am wondering if they are targeting certain blood groups?
It’s been filed in the bin by the way.
Yes, my other half got one today too. Filed on top of the shredder for “processing” later this evening 😀
Do you know their blood group and have they recently been in hospital? I am wondering if it is targeted. My partner is a rare blood group and has recently had an operation where his blood group would likely have been taken.
She was in for three nights about four years back for a hysterectomy due to endometriosis, but that’s been about the extent of her dealings with the NHS to date, thank god! I don’t know what her blood group is, to be honest I doubt she even knows 🙂
I would save it for the inevitable toilet roll shortage
I read somewhere many months ago that O positive blood groups are less susceptible.
Yes, I have read that and that they maybe searching for something specific through the testing.
lot of stuff came out in June .. Group O had slightly less chance of catching. Group O is about 45% of population . Group A is about 40% and they were slightly higher risk
I do know my blood group, O+…. Used to give blood many years ago but stopped due to some heart investigations. Now with prostate cancer I am not allowed anyway. Not seen one of these invitations but I know my friend Mike has and has enthusiastically agreed…
Send them the letter back with a sample of your faeces. Tell them to test that.
Loads of people here have had them, seems to have started back in July. Someone’s 9 year old had one, I’ve had 2 invites (both binned). Think they’re desperate to recruit by now.
Shopper who refused to wear mask fined twice in one dayworrying — but
“Greater Manchester Police said officers on daily patrols had been handing out masks in supermarkets as part of a council scheme.” and she did not plead an exemption .
The fact that anyone can claim an exemption makes me think that this is fake news designed to make people too scared not to wear a mask.
It is strange. As far as I know, you can simply say that wearing a mask causes you distress (bending the knee to tyranny causes me distress!) and they have to accept that. I don’t think you need any sort of medical proof.
It’s one of the most bizarre laws I have ever come across – specifically that exemption
I think that the government is attempting to cover its a*se in case masks turnout to have major negative effects. The punters have to determine their own risk levels of wearing them.
The originating SI is so widely drafted that you can drive a bus through – whether that’s by incompetence, or (more likely) because such a law is simply not reasonable or enforceable, and they know it.
You are quite right. Take a look at this website for more detail: http://www.nomasks.info
Absolutely no proof required and, what’s even better, is that no-one can question your right to be unmasked as it contravenes the Equality Act 2010.
I am really surprised that more haven’t taken up the mask exemption route. Do people really want to walk around with face-coverings on?
Sadly my experience is that most people don’t know they can claim an exemption. I hear so often “I hate wearing them but I have to wear it”. Of course, I always enlighten them, beaming at them with my mask-free smile, but they just sort of nod vaguely.
I’m planning to make up some business cards to hand out with QR code links to the the excellent website, Law or Fiction (http://www.laworfiction.com/) which spells out what the legal position ACTUALLY is.
Some do. Saw one this evening walking around a breezy seaside resort wearing a face nappy under a visor.
He made me feel sick. Acute distaste.
I have simply not gone anywhere that requires one, because I dislike confrontation, or the prospect of it. Cowardice, one of my many weaknesses. I am sure I am not the only one.
But should I need to, I am tempted to say I am exempt and if pressed (by a police officer I suppose) cite the severe distress exemption. How on earth would a court decide that?
It would never get that far. As soon as you state that you are exempt that is the end of the matter. The exemption law makes that clear. I had a jobsworthy ask my grounds for exemption at Eurotunnel. I told him that was an illegal question under the Equality Act 2010. I then took his name and said that I would write to his employer. He backed off rapidly.
Good for her. If everyone did that they’d be snookered.
to comments in reply
no – i think it is genuine.. One of the problems highlighted here is that most people do not know about exemptions and obviously the fact they exist is not mentioned by the authorities or shops. So the person in question who was being wonderfully bloody minded just did not know she could claim an exemption
And correct – you dont need any proof. You dont really have to specify what your exemption is unless it is the police asking you and as you say, distress is valid and usefully very vague
Actually, you’re right – very few people have bothered to look at the actual legislation, and are just blindly following the government/shop/police instructions.
As I stated in an earlier comment, I’m planning to make up some business cards to hand out with QR code links to the excellent website Law or Fiction (http://www.laworfiction.com/) so people can go and find out what their rights and obligations are.
I don’t think the police can ask that, but if so, just say due to asthma or mental illness. These are private matters and the police can’t delve further as the exemptions don’t require any medical documentation, which is explicit on the gov.uk website.
I’ve been back in Blighty ten days and I’ve yet to see a police and I’m out and about every day – not even loitering near the local supermarket.
me neither – that is normal in most places. .. However as per the post — this was a council initiative so obviously had active police presence on the lookout for no masks
Make up of Rochdale Council There are currently 44 Labour, 9 Conservative, 3 Liberal Democrat, 3 Independent and 1 Non-Aligned. Go figure!!!
Sweden added to Travel Corridor this week. I predict a holiday mass exodus.
Very tempted!
Yes and hopefully people will remember how nice it is to live in a free country and not stand for all this nonsense when they return.
Would not surprise me if some decide to claim asylum.
For a while now i have been convinced this situation we face is not incompetence. It cannot be. Backtracking incompetence shows up logic in it’s route back to sanity and nowhere is there any logic in the decisions being made.
My steadily hardening opinion is that this situation is tied into the economy, as is shared by some of you on here. So this afternoon i went searching for a “way to reset an economy” and came across this article from 4 years ago.
Reading it made sense under the cold light of this years events and I am even more convinced by it’s conclusions.
Then i saw the author. Member of Boston Consulting Group.
I am no economics expert – far from it – but this is the only explanation i can come up with to explain the illogical and ruining decisions coming out of Westminster. Then again i could be a lonely dog barking up the wrong tree.
https://www.theglobalist.com/global-economy-debt-inflation-policies/
Yep, it’s called the Great Reset – WEF seems to have been thinking about it for a while too:
https://www.weforum.org/great-reset
Wherever we look: The world needs a reset. As with a computer that freezes, we need a reboot of the global economic engine. Ideally, we do it in one step for the entire world.
Indeed, that’s how it looks…
You are giving them WAY too much credit.
I actually only looked to see if there was any insight into what would actually happen during this great reset. What to expect, you know..
Dont know what a reset would actually do if they devalued and we all ended up the same as before. No one worse off, no one better off. I would say this is all about the Global Climate Change zealots wanting to stop the plebs, living basically, enjoying holidays too often and destroying what they think of as THEIR world. They want us, not the elite, to have a health passport (the reason for the pandemic) and to be able to restrict movement.
Great Reset as promoted by the World Economic Forum, who incidentally were part of Event 201 also sponsored by the John Hopkins Center and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation which in turn have links to Gavi and Imperial College where the modelling came from. The WHO and the United Nations are all interconnected into this too. If you stop thinking this is about a virus and refocus on control instead you can see that it is about restructuring society and the economy.
Agreed. And this is worth watching too – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sb9jRqgDOJ8
Boston Consulting are all over this. They spout the usual management speak that appeals to Cummings, not surprisingly his blog and their favourite opinion formers tie up nicely. Enjoy their website, e.g. on Track and Trace, always remembering, they’re trying to sell you some ‘actionable insights out of thought leadership from their world leading POV solutions centre’ (or something like that):
‘ahttps://www.bcg.com/en-gb/publications/2020/pros-and-cons-of-contact-tracing-amid-covid-19
I can say that the amount of material produced by the Big 4 to appeal to businesses when Covid hit was incredible. Mountains of propositions for all areas of service
I am a child of the 60’s,you know, the generation who “hoped they died before they got old”
Now as I see a lot of my fellow 70 somethings in their face nappies using hand sanitizer like there’s a world shortage,scurrying from 1 Covid secure shop to another before they rush home to lock themselves away for days, hardly daring to look outside, I truly think that they are dead but nobody has told them.
One of those toy guns that shows a flag when you pull the trigger and it reads ‘Bang! You’re Dead’!
Don’t frighten them, they’re scared enough already.
Scared to death.
one of these
I don’t think there’s a reason to be ageist at this miserable time. As a fellow Old Fart, I’m finding that the real disease – that spread by SPI-B – is pretty indiscriminate in terms of age.
If anything, my concern is that those of the age -group that I would expect to be kicking most strongly against the incipient fascism have not been doing so.
And, no, I’m not speaking with a sense of superiority; I was hedonistically fairly politically unaware and inactive at a time when contemporaries were sticking their necks out over, for instance, Vietnam and the invasion of universities by corporate interests.
But I don’t see the current equivalent when totalitarianism is smacking everyone in the teeth.
Agreed.
What’s more this is supposedly a virus and the hand sanitizer they are slapping on is anti bacterial. Not sure if very effective for a virus but at least it’s giving people eczema and dermatitis.
And encouraging superbugs. Very clever.
Comments at the BBC very unimpressed with the government’s latest rules. Worth a look. Quite cheering:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-54102872#comp-comments-button
This ones a cracker:
I made a comment which was deleted after literally five minutes. Somebody at the Beeb is working really hard – or do they have an instant scepticism-deleting app?
I sour idiot PM doing his best to destroy the UK because of his family roots:
https://www.trtworld.com/magazine/does-boris-johnson-s-politics-resonate-with-his-turkish-ancestor-s-28690
https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-britain-eu-leader-turkey/turks-welcome-ottoman-grandson-boris-johnson-as-british-leader-idUKKCN1UJ1ES
It is anti-British.
OK, this is just getting silly now. Daily covid tests? Yeah, that’ll work. That idea’s right up there with the A-level algorithm. And all this talk of “cancelling Christmas” and what we “can and can’t do” (to use the government’s own words). Are these new Covid marshalls going to knock on the door of every single house in Britain on Christmas Day and make sure their aren’t more than 6 people sat round the turkey dinner? Next thing they’ll be saying “If you are socialising indoors in a group of 6, and somebody gives birth to make it 7, you could face a fine of £100 and risk arrest”.
Were those ‘deaths’ today ‘reported deaths’ or real ones that happened yesterday? They have been bumping along with single figures for weeks now. I’m betting they were throwing a few deaths a week into the pending bucket to be brought out when the government propaganda needed them.
I agree, obvious backlog stuffing to promote the latest scaremongering and the renewal of their dictatorial powers.
It’s reported deaths. The figure will be adjusted to actual deaths in the coming days (and weeks). Essentially, hardly anyone – perhaps no one – is dying of lab flu now. Any deaths reported are more than likely to be people in hospital with an unrelated illness but who’ve tested positive for the virus.
https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/deaths gives both deaths by date of death and also by date reported. Numbers are available under the Data tab.
The 32 deaths reported on 8th Sept are ‘reported deaths’. Actual deaths on 8th Sept are 8.
I’m glad that the NZ Covid Plan B group got a shoutout. Their interviews with Prof Sunetra Gupta, Jay Battacharya, etc really are excellent. And with more support, it might change things for NZ, Aus, and maybe even the UK. I push them but I just want things to change in Aus.
Agreed. And their list of resources is a treasure trove. If you need to inform, I urge everyone to raid it.
https://www.covidplanb.co.nz/international/everything-you-need-to-know-right-here/
Make your own Lockdownsceptics.org stickers folks. These can go in a variety of places.
Toby – you need a welcome page with the basic facts – the millions starving, the millions losing their livelihood, the half a billion pushed into poverty, the tens of thousands dying of cancer and heart disease which could have been avoidable had appointments not been cancelled, the range of estimated IFR.
“Lockdown Was an Overreaction” – Professor Karol Sikora
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jFRR58D1oW0
Short watch, 4 minutes. Tony Heller calls out the US press. Unbelievable
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FhBy2zy-Evo
Something NOT seen mentioned on here regarding Valence at yesterday’s press conference.
Valence used the term ‘epidemic’ when describing current situation.
Didn’t correct himself.
Slip of tongue or otherwise?
Why be specific or proportionate or evidential? Keep it vague, scary and untrue….
Look on the bright side : referring to it as an ‘epidemic’ proves that he knows shit.
This is just tragic. And then it caused more political drama.
https://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/politics/queensland/my-dad-is-dead-and-you-made-me-fight-to-see-him-but-it-was-too-late-20200910-p55u8c.html
Whenever you think these fiends can go no further in bestial cruelty, they go further.
Those who can make you believe absurdities, WILL make you commit atrocities…
Coronavirus Marshals
Blockleiter (English: Block Leader, derived from city block) from 1933 was the title of a lower Nazi Party political rank responsible for the political supervision of a neighborhood. Referred to in common parlance as Blockwart (Block Warden), the officials were in charge to form the link between the Nazi authorities and the general population. The derogatory term Blockwart (“snoop”) survives in German colloquial language.
One thing you can be certain of – the bastards who are signed up for the role will not answer questions about coronavirus or the supposed dangers their position relies on.
Maybe we could all get a job and spread the sceptic word.
What do you reckon?
I think our record would be made known at application stage.
Is it a criminal offence for impersonating a blockwart?
“You! Yes, you people over there, group of five in flowery masks! What d’you think you’re playing at? You don’t need those rags over your face, that’s ruining millions of years of evolution that is! How dare you? Take ’em off right now. Chuck ’em in the bin and don’t let me see you wearing them again! You’re shopping to buy things, not rob the place!”
I’m actually looking forward to having a close up discussion with a Blockwart which I don’t think is against the law (yet).
Not snoop, Schnueffler, but Denunziant.
The verdict upon them used to be clear, after the Nazis and the Stasi, but sadly, modern day Covid zealots have forgotten history’s lessons there as well.
“Verpestet ist ein ganzes Land,
Wo schleicht herum der Denunziant.
Der Menschheit Schandfleck wird genannt
Der niederträcht’ge Denunziant.”
And most popular:
„Der größte Lump (rascal, scumbag) im ganzen Land,
das ist und bleibt der Denunziant“.
Britain’s Finest?
Not!
Dolores Cahill quoted the German protest organisers saying 60% of Germany is awake. I wondered if cultural legacies and education has a role to play in that.
Daily Mail full on sceptics now I think
Significant.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8718365/Sweden-averaging-just-ONE-coronavirus-death-day-Heres-Australia-compares.html
Yep, you can spot the paid trolls now on a lot of the “stories”.
Other than the rabid pro-narrative few the rest are very anti.
The proles finally waking up.
Thanks for that assessment I’m unable to see a lot of comments so spotting a trend like that is impossible. Good to hear.
“Anders Tegnell, the brains behind Sweden’s coronavirus strategy, is considered controversial by many of his academic peers in Europe but is regarded as a hero in Sweden“
Well here’s a “compare and contrast” quote for that one:
“- Today, all countries in Europe more or less follow the Swedish model – but no one would admit it. That is not politically correct.” Antoine Flahault, professor of epidemiology at the University of Geneva and head of the Institute of Global Health.”
https://twitter.com/jhnhellstrom/status/1302951272119758849
Tegnell chose the conventional, time-tested, logical and all-incorporating approach.
This only became controversial as the RoW chose the first time ever, illogical and one-dimensional approach instead.
The rest is or will, hopefully soon, be history.
As Tegnell said, Sweden is the country sticking to the tried’n’tested methods, it’s the RoW conducting the dangerous experiment. Worse, using their own people as if we live in a giant petri dish.
No masks, no Corona and no other problems.
A few have started to turn. DT and the Currant Bun too. Maybe others.
The problem is that those two are so badly compromised by their history that it’s not a great asset – except in terms of perhaps influencing readers dim enough to buy them.
At least it’s a start. There may even be others.
Aaargh. Trying to post a pic! Failed – again.
I find the easiest way is to save a copy onto my desktop then attach it from there.
I’m sure there’s a better way but I’ve not tried to find one.
right click on image. save as … give it a name and save then on post click on the mountain image and find it.
note there is an issue with windows 10 . you think it saves as jpeg but it doesnt ,. it saves it as a jfif which is not accepted on here ..
Solution is when you do save as .. specify the extension e.g. image.jpeg and on the file type field drop down select all files .
German doctors come right out and say that COVID is an ‘organised crime’
Twitter video 2 mins. Press conference. Germany leading the way.
https://mobile.twitter.com/YellowCube7/status/1304032980864651264
https://www.bundestag.de/dokumente/textarchiv/2020/kw37-pa-gesundheit-corona-709474?fbclid=IwAR05dFLC85xMpCelTlkk8G9jcUW3591_TuSDaQrkjN8zB_TpSSbHj8VeF7M
But the doctors the government listens to testified in parliament yesterday that it’s all so bad that the restrictiond need to be kept in place open-ended.
Whose bread I eat…
Thanks. The German effort is really excellent. Worthwhile looking into. Britain needs something similar.
Perhaps one of the few positives of this situation is the confirmation that any structural concentration of political power is a bad thing – even if you think you’re in favour of those who hold it.
Constraints are all in a democracy.
It’s significant that, in Sweden, government cannot control public health advice and action.
Before getting back to service as normal (if not too late), we need a consensus to eliminate direct political control of essential institutions without handing them to equally dictatorial private influence.
I think we used to have at least one political party that undestood and upheld the Lockean settlement of limited powers, checks and balances. But apparently now we have none.
Liberalism was such a good idea. In a form that could make its peace with tradition, it was a sublimely good idea. [Sad face]
Well – it was actually more than one party. There was a balance of powers that – in that messy way of good governance in a democracy – did actually work. One of the key balances was between levels of governance.
When the balance changed is an interesting question, but it wasn’t down to one party. Thatcher’s governments had a key hand in the growth of centralization and diktat, and so did Blair’s. The confluence of Cameron’s Tories and Clegg’s Orange Book Lib Dems headed in the same direction.Both worked to destroy local autonomy. I watched the destruction of local government and the substitution of more and more incompetent centralism.
Aneurin Bevan said that the purpose of holding power was to give it away.
How many politicians would say that now?
Liberalism was the dominant political idea of the C20. It was not limited to one party, but had in effect seeded three across the political spectrum. Now it’s nowhere.
I’ve been thinking for some time that the NHS, elderly social care (mainly, but not necessarily exclusively) and education really ought to be owned “in trust” by the State, rather than micro-managed and run by the State. The greatest failure of politically-controlled State ownership is that these services become political footballs of the yah-boo style of politics inevitable in a free society. A circle we need to square, if you will.
But how we make that work… Christ knows.
Tend to disagree on the state bit.
One of the main causes of our current problems is overcentralisation of everything.
Copying the Swiss canton system for the UK would mean devolving 60% + of all govt activities to shire level.
That is the level that should ” own” health, care, policing etc etc.
It certainly works in Switzerland.
My old director of studies wrote a book called “why Switzerland?”
Always thought the title was amusing, but anyway, the fundamental point is that the very odd medieval federal constitution of Switzerland has never worked anywhere except Switzerland and the universities of Oxford and Cambridge.
UK shires are analagous to the Cantons.
At one time UK shires were much more independent of central control, more locally accountable and much better run.
Health is done like that in Sweden – ie regionally. Amounts allocated by size of population.
Agree completely. The ludicrous situation we are in has shown me the system has gone terribly wrong and needs a reappraisal.
On the futility of lockdowns, masks and test&tracing:
https://jordanschachtel.substack.com
On the fraudulent futility of testing, whether PCR, antigene or antibody, not to speak of totally deluded and unaffordable moonshots:
https://peds-ansichten.de/2020/09/coronavirus-test-pcr-antigen/
(You will often find these articles translated at the offG in a few days)
On the futility and huge risks of vaccinations against Corona viruses, also available per video at RPP Institute, by Prof. Paul Cullen.
https://alpenschau.com/2020/09/10/die-seltsame-pandemie-warum-eine-massenimpfung-keine-gute-idee-ist/
Intro summary: The 4 criteria for a good vaccine candidate since Ed Jenner’s perfect example from 1796: a really bad and serious disease for those to be vaccinated, the vaccine offers long term protection against it, the pathogen doesn’t mutate and it exists only in humans.
(Seems if one wanted to create the exact opposite, one would have to invent SARS Cov2 and Covid 19…)
The problems of the Oxford/AstraZeneca candidate, and that was before the trial halt:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Pv6tzWfDK-w&t=347s
I come from Jenner’s part of the world, and one of the ‘Houses’ at school was named after him.
I’ve since learned of William Farr and his 19th C. insights into epidemics.
Both are in advance of the devious time-servers now being gifted policy decisions.
A sickening regression.
Apologies if posted already.
3 month old and 19 month old forced to wear masks by American enforcers on plane. The parent seems like a really decent man.
More videos each day – themselves part of the control psy-op. Never-the-less here is the tweet and link to short video.
Earlier today my family endure the most horrific & dehumanizing treatment onboard
@WestJet
plane. My wife was threatening to be arrested & forcibly removed unless my daughters, 3 yrs & 19 months would wear a mask. While my 3yrs wore her mask, the 19 months old was hysterical.
[..]
Several
@WestJet
crew members wrongfully citing
@Transport_gc
policy for enforcing my 19 months to wear a mask. Eventually, the entire flight was cancelled & all passengers were removed from the plane.
“children under 2 years old should not wear a mask”
https://tc.canada.ca/en/initiatives/covid-19-measures-updates-guidance-issued-transport-canada/covid-19-information-travellers
[…]
While the sudden shocking decision by
@WestJet
to cancel the entire fight moments before take-off caused some passengers to hurl racist & Islamophobic remarks at my family, we are incredibly grateful and humbled by the overwhelming support & love from a majority of the passengers
[..]
We wish to extend our sincere regards & prayers for the passengers who had to endure any form of discomfort & hardship, we’re glad to learn that most passengers have made it to their destination. We are dearly touched by all messages from various passengers throughout the day.
https://mobile.twitter.com/SafwanChoudhry/status/1303551588389146624
I read about it yesterday. Absolutely disgraceful that the airline employees didn’t even properly understand the rules. I could mention that masking young children is abusive, but I’d be preaching to the converted on this site. Of course the 19-month-old was hysterical — I become hysterical when I put a mask on. Kids react naturally and the natural reaction is to rip the damn thing off.
Again we see police in yet another country with pickled brains not acting with the sense they were born with.
Not just kids reaction most people still have that desire to rip the stupid things off. Kids have good sense, when it’s all educated out of them they become politicians and evidently airport police.
These threads are a kind of archive.Hopefully useful to add things even though most of us know. Also, there’s the gallery of readers who don’t comment. Some who like to read. Others who may be officials – good to let them know we see them – that little man in the black bike hat on the plane has his conduct seen by the world.
Offer a correction to myself above. These were Canadian enforcers. Not American as I wrongly stated.
This is absolute over the top barking mad lunacy, surely there is an airline travel body of some kind who can issue some overall guidance on this? This whole Covid thing is becoming like a cult religion, with the magic religious talisman being the purposeless face-rag. All for a virus that does?????????????? can anyone tell me what this virus is doing? ‘sweet fanny adams’ as far as I can see and yet we must all bow to the great God ‘Covid’ and do ridiculous things or the horrible beelzebub devil Covid might get us all………… and we thought the medieval witch hunts and the Salem witch trials were silly primitive stuff, they now seem like sophisticated behaviour compared to living in Covoid land!
They changed their stance on 1st Sept:
Zero tolerance mask policy
Effective September 1, 2020, the WestJet Group will implement a zero-tolerance policy in support of the requirement for all guests over the age of two to wear masks and face coverings. Non-compliant guests will face penalties including denied boarding, return of the aircraft to the gate to offload the passenger and the suspension of travel on any WestJet Group aircraft for up to one year.
Non-compliance on board the aircraft will be managed through a three-step process:
Passengers will receive notice that non-compliance will result in follow up notification that they will be placed on a no-fly list for 12-months
I posted the other day as shocking that they impose this on toddlers.
My God,they are vile.
I’ve voluntarily put myself on the no-fly list until this lunacy ends. It could be a while…
The phrase “zero tolerance” is a strong bullshit indicator. As I said in an earlier post, I hope WestJet Group go bust.
and ‘guests’. Ffs.
Will somebody please let us know when they do?
They’re going to go bust.
3 and 19 months.
2 year olds must wear masks. No words. Just read it and turn away from west jet for good.
The delights of the caring Justinland for you.
Isn’t that the tolerant & welcoming place that kicked out Harry & Meghan for being foreigners??! 🙂
Carrying on from an earlier post:
Son just called, the place he used to work for has just sacked all kitchen staff, front of house management will have to do the cooking for any customers that come in in all 7 sites/high end gastropubs they run.
Well – that looks like suicide. They’re f.ed.
Give it a week?
who wants a meal cooked by a waiter !!!
Good way to run down a business with a reputation. They think they are getting customers, but the customers don’t come back.
Couldn’t bear to listen to all of the Jeremy Vine interview with John Lee and a very stupid virologist. When I left it, John Lee seemed to be on the defensive, having already said that New Zealand were “very lucky” – I don’t think he should have granted that.
There’s a really devastating question to ask people like that virologist, and Matt Hancock:
“Have you modelled how many people will die from causes other than Covid as a result of your policies? If so, what are the figures? And if not….”
Can no-one – none of the ordinary folk going about their daily lives nor any of our elected representatives – see how monumentally stupid this all is? We were supposed to be having another family visiting us on Saturday for a couple of hours. There would have been more than six of us. Following Sturgeon’s latest diktat, although we would still have been glad for them to come, they have cancelled. What needs to happen for this country to wake up?
It’s odd. What people were perfectly happy to do one day in the twinkling of an eye they become frit to do the next day. I can’t explain it. But I do have a bit of cheery news to relate from my own bailiwick.
Sat at the front of the open top double decker bus today I be on most days, when I got up to leave I found myself looking at faces and not masks! – of them as got on after me!
It needs to get a whole lot worse and people need to stop moaning incredulously at the calculated stupidity and incompetence of our elected representatives and actually do something. Possibly something quite drastic.
If Toby et al want to create a class action to charge the Cabinet with misfeasance in a public office, I will gladly contribute.
I keep wondering a out the Repulsive Matt. It’s clear that Boris has been incapable of coherent though for months, but does the R. M.
I think 2 – enjoying the power whilst at the same time being aware somewhere deep in his soul, such as it is, that he is an odious lying little creep who has caused irreparable harm and misery to the country and who will eventually get his comeuppance.
I do wonder how much Matt H is being paid by Bill Gates and co for all this…?
I wonder where the fuck he expects to live once it’s all over …
Good point.. there will likely be a target on his head for the rest of his life.. Maybe he will move to NZ, like a lot of celebs are apparently doing..
Quarantine him for life with a bit of luck. I’ve just been told you’re let out for 40mins per day if you’re quarantined in NZ.
I didn’t think I was that bad.
Aaaaaargh, I forgot we had our own Matt!
I grovel.
Dust and ashes!😿
Just read daily mail article on man thrown of easyJet flight from Edinburgh to Luton for not wearing a mask. The comments are absolutely depressing. About 70% supporting the airlines action.
Sorry fellow sceptics, but I don’t think we are winning the war!
Would have been 90% 4 months ago. We’ll get there.
Please help me out with my sums here.
Quite apart from the cost. Govt are going to spend £100 billion, 3/4 of the NHS budget on daily spit tests for all. Could be 10 million tests a day. Say the false positive rate is 1% (we have no idea). 100, 000 false positives a day, all to quarantine plus contacts. At the end of the first 14 days that generates a permanent rolling quarantined population, a standing/mexican wave, of………………at least 1.4 million.🥶
Just found this about spit tests :
https://www.ft.com/content/763adbe8-5059-4528-8d06-baf525dfc7d7
“Studies conducted by the University of Bristol found that the test had 99.8 per cent sensitivity, identifying all real cases and avoiding false negatives”
Even if they were 100% I just can’t fathom how the expenditure or imposition on our lives could be justified.
Just out of interest, how did they verify the tests? I thought the PCR test had a false positive rate of the order of 1%, and it is supposed to be the Gold Standard. I thought the spit test was supposed to be the cheaper alternative.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sfir7fkf158
Waffling there, with hesitation and a tremor in the voice. What a w*nker.
Never in the field of human history has so much bullshit been sold to so many by so few.
Wise words, well put.
https://off-guardian.org/2020/09/08/covid-19-scamdemic-part-2/
This is an excellent article that brings up the ‘mindspace’ of nudging, framing and messing with your/our mind.
From the above article: ‘So far in 2020, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (BMFG) have given Imperial College more than $86 million.’ I had no idea it was that much… Wonder if Ferguson got a personal pay-off, and if so, how much?
He’s bribed every government and institution, someone reckoned he’s spent about $200 billion (?)
I know – I just had no idea that he had given Imperial college quite that much dosh!
There was a pie chart/wheel type diagram posted a few weeks ago, showing how much money and to which organisations B&MGF have been ‘donating’ to. Certainly an eye opener!
People in two local authority areas of Wales (Merthyr and Rhondda Cynon Taf) have been asked by – among others, police – to wear masks to avoid full local lockdowns in the coming days. When the heck did the police become experts on the science of masks and disease? I suppose it was when they worked out that two biological sexes was not scientific. All care home visits suspended, except for end of life ones, in which case full PPE is required. So, the last thing you see in this life will be a suited up stranger dressed like aliens. Completely inhuman.
It’s quite hard to get to grips with the data on the Covid Dashboard, whether it’s deliberately obfuscated or not I have no idea however…
It seems the major “uptick” (how I hate that bloody word) occurred on the 1st. September. but bear with me whilst I bore you with some figures!
Using the specimen dates, as opposed to the reported date, we have 1499 cases from 182,065 tests on the 31st. August, a positive rate of 0.82333% whilst on the 1st. September it was 2237 cases from 181,934 tests, a positive rate of 1.22956%.
In percentage terms this is an increase of positive tests in just one day of 49% which seems extraordinary to me.
A relative plateau for positive tests appears to be the case for the last week or so but testing numbers are not available after Sept. 2nd. so it is not possible to do any more comparisons.
Apologies for such a dry post but can these numbers be genuine or has there perhaps been been a tweak to the system?
I said this yesterday, but, if you are looking at data and it does something like that, your first assumption has to be that the data is wrong. What you then do is eliminate all the possible ways in which your data might be wrong before you make any decision to act on the data.
Absolutely!
That’s like the amount of asymptomatic cases too, 72% is a huge amount, no other killer virus or illness has that high an amount of asymptomatic cases, but there is no investigation to see if something is wrong as it very much appears to be.
I guess most, if not all, other infectious diseases aren’t routinely tested for to identify asymptomatic cases.
Studies are done into the to determine asymptomatic cases, for example Influenza studies found that there 4-28% of cases which are asymptomatic which is significantly lower the COVID-19.
A good analysis. As for these words “uptick”? “surge” – use increase instead.
https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2020/09/10/boris-johnson-has-led-a-fascist-coup-against-the-united-kingdom/
Delingpole tells it like it is.
Cracking stuff. The comments are a joy.
How do we buy that every state except Sweden have been paid off?
The Swedish government has no control over the Public health agency so politicians cannot directly influence measures in the same way that is being done in the UK.
As someone living in Sweden, I have my suspicions that we are being used as a ‘control’ in this experiment, and may be ‘brought into line’ at a later date (although I hope not!)
My suspicions for the possible choice of Sweden as a ‘control’ are that it has a relatively small population and also that the State agencies do hold a lot of personal information on us already (not DNA though). However, thus far there are very tight controls regarding access to data – a rogue person doing too much snooping would be very quickly picked up, as things stand at the moment. But the potential already exists to merge all the information..
Belarus was offered IMF and world bank loans if they instituted a Italian style lockdown.The president refused and made it public.He is now facing a colour revolution similar to Ukraine
Maybe Johnson was offered a similar bribe by the IMF and World Bank, and accepted?
Or, this is a theory from a commenter on the Breitbart article:
‘Boros Moonshot and Handycock both look carefully cultivated by multi billionaire Bill Gates who is desperate to vaccinate the whole world for everything and anything…
Bill Gates has endless millions to spend on pipsqueaks to get what he wants… and Boros Moonshot with approx three wives and eight children is apparently a little short of cash, and probably would love a massively well paid non job in Seattle.. Just like the $6,500,000 non job, incl bonuses, Nick Clegg landed at Facebook appointing Soros compliant individuals to the Facebook compliance board. With a $9,000,000 house in California thrown in. (This is true, I’m not joking!)
Strange coincidence then that Boros Moonshot is doing everything Bill Gates wants……….
Next Moonshot stop by Gates jet…. Seattle !’
I wouldn’t mind living in Seattle. It’s a very nice town.
standard mo
when can we rid ourselves of these evil bastards?
Yes, for example:
‘After the covid hoax, the conservative party will no longer be able to say that a vote for us. Means you aren’t letting the insane, magic money tree communist labour party into power.
As the covid hoax, has proven to everyone that the conservative party is now the insane, magic money tree communist party. Who have decided that 2020 was the year for them to go full blown tyrannical with draconian measures on the British people over a sniffle no worse than the flu.’
In another comment, Kamala Harris is referred to as ‘Kameltoe Hairs’ – I’d heard the camel toe bit used before, but not the rest!
Excellent article. Met James Delingpole at one of the anti-lockdown protest the only person from a media organisation not masked or keeping 2m away from everyone – a good man.
This is the chappy who tried to close down Parliament. We shouldn’t be surprised.
You can fool all of the people some of the time and some of the people all of the time but you only need to fool most of the people most of the time to bring in a new world order.
Sorry Winston you missed the point.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WJe35QutT8o
How do we mobilise to unify our efforts?
Support the protests. Print out leaflets and distribute them in your area.
We really need all organisations to support one another.
Point me to the leaflets and I’m in
There may be a group already at work in your area. May take some searching to find them. Where there has been a protest there is a group.
“Where there has been a protest there is a group”. Sorry Basics, didn’t read, yes, you are right 😊
I had found it really difficult to find a group in my area, it was very frustrating, if I didn’t have a group of, albeit it small, sceptical friends, I would have gone cheerfully insane! I did meet some lovely people who run a group in my area at the rally on 29th August – people and groups are out there. It would be wonderful if everyone could join together…maybe that day will come?
https://www.standupx.info/
From the ONS itself:
https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/deaths/bulletins/deathsregisteredweeklyinenglandandwalesprovisional/weekending21august2020#deaths-registered-by-week
Next massive freedom rally: 26th Sept, Trafalgar Sq
Really needs to be well attended to make any difference. I bet there will be a 2 week solid media campaign to demonise anyone who attends these events as ‘granny killers’, ‘anti vaxx’, ‘conspiracy theorists’ etc. They will literally throw everything on every media channel to raise fear and gain complete subservience and obedience from the population.
Based on the last 6 months I think most people will fall for it again, but I pray not.
Those charts are worth showing to people – especially the one with the green and blue bars showing covid versus non covid deaths..
There’s something on the 19th too.
Piers Corbyn Birmingham and Leicester this weekend:
https://www.standupx.info/
https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2020/09/10/farage-predicts-people-will-break-draconian-restrictions-wholesale/
And Farage has a warning
This is good. Farage has frustratingly been a bit of bedwetter before now. He’s making arguments that we make now.
Quite so and it seems that he’ll keep it up now, along with pursuing Mr Blobby on the Withdrawal Agreement.
Overall I’m very disappointed with Farage I thought he lead the charge against these fascists.
Saw him being interviewed on Talk Radio yesterday. His position on LD was very much like everyone elses at the start because we didnt know what we were dealing with and the pictures coming out of China were pretty grim. BUT, now we have the real world data on the progress of this ‘mass killer’ over the past months, his current views are VERY different and VERY clear. Toby should get him to pen a few words for us on here.
Farage and Young could be a dream ticket
There was a good live interview on Twitter this afternoon with Laurence Fox – he’s also very articulate and could be good to have on board..
I saw that interview, I was impressed – I think it would be a good idea for him to contribute to this site.
Kath, I think it would certainly bring more people (converts?) here.
A neighbour of mine went to school with Farage. Apparently he was known as plain old Faridge back then. She remembers him, for being a bit obnoxious. So the Fraraaaaj pronounciation came a while later, along with his career.
https://thecritic.co.uk/the-dystopian-age-of-the-mask/
Another good one
Indeed.
It’s why my mantra is ‘stay human’. The horrid faceless morons we now encounter cannot be described as human.
It’s so difficult to read eyes alone. Without facial expression I tend to see them as beady little points of raging hate. But then, as often as not, a friendly voice comes out with a ‘Good morning.’ It’s difficult to connect the blank beneath the eyes with any but the darkest of human emotions, but important to recognise that under the mask there might be a smile.
Beady they are.
Alan Butterworth is getting wound up, he can see where this is heading
MY 85 year old father-in-law is one of those who is probably going to go private for a much needed knee op (pun not intended…). He has been in a lot of pain for some months and it is very clearly making him very depressed, but there is no hope of an op on the NHS any time soon. He is also awaiting a cataract op. So Boris has saved him from Covid but for what? Either to spend £11,000 to go private for a knee op or an unknown amount of time awaiting one on the NHS.
He’s lucky to find a private hospital willing to do any operations.
My friend who has been struggling with hip pain right through the pandemic has finally managed to arrange it privately and is having it done next week.
He’s lucky to have the money. Many others will have to put up with their pain. I picked up my car from its service today and the service manager was wincing from back pain. Said the operation he needs is delayed by months because of the virus. Persistent pain strains the heart and is dangerous. And yet it is considered preferably to risking Covid. Glad for your father in law though, hope his op goes well.
BTL comment in the DT:
Don’t let the b—–ds cancel Christmas. It’ll be dark. Move your guests in the night before, dressed in black so neighbourhood snitches can’t see, let them stay overnight and enjoy your Christmas with the curtains closed. It’ll probably be dull and rainy outside. Buy two small turkeys on separate occasions so no-one’s suspicion is aroused!
I have no doubt that Boris the Buffoon will ‘cancel’ Christmas. Our payback time for him cancelling Eid
But we lost Easter. In place of the Resurrection we got the risen Johnson.
Forgot about that!
…which was definitely timed for political purposes..
https://thecritic.co.uk/un-believable/
The UN knows that calamitous covid has run amok because of the supremacy of the patriarchy: who’d have guessed?
Good article. Yep, men are to blame for everything.
Noticed anything similar with the stated aims of BLM – dismantle the patriarchy?
So that lasted a day.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/09/10/moonshot-testing-plan-could-send-28-million-needless-self-isolation/
£100 billion needlessly spent
Alleluia!
So in the article “Sage, chaired by Sir Patrick Vallance, the Government chief scientific adviser, warns: “In populations with low prevalence of infection, mass testing… would result in many individuals receiving false positive results.”
And yet Vallance stood silently alongside Boris yesterday, with a straight face, as the PM spewed forth his fantastical moonshot nonsense.
As someone mentioned earlier, Patrick Vallance yesterday referred to the ‘epidemic’, NOT ‘pandemic’ – accidental slip of the tongue revealing the truth???
Pandemic refers to the pattern across multiple countries, whereas epidemic applies to an area or single country, so accurate when talking about the UK. Whether this particular virus now truly merits either label is a different question!
To be fair both Whitty and Valance looked very uncomfortable when Moonshot was explained. Both said yesterday that it wasn’t a clear solution. Boris cast both a sharp look at the end.
They don’t believe it will work, clearly.
But they are still party to all this. If they don’t believe it will work then that just makes it worse. And why would anyone want to be fair to Whitty and Valance?
Along with the blond clown these people are in the process of destroying thousands of peoples lives.
When will they stop giving everything names worthy of the nursery? Bubbles, moonshot, Hands Face Space everyone! It’s nauseating.
Excellent. Quite apart from all the other reasons why this is one of the dumbest ideas I’ve ever come across, the false positive “problem”, as explained here, kills it off immediately. I like it! I bet Wankock and Fat Head are still pressing ahead with it, though.
It seems that they are still in search of a ‘magic bullet’ to solve a problem that doesn’t exist outside the fevered imaginations of the ‘lockdown’ zealots.
The strategy, costing £100 million, was defended by Matt Hancock, the Health Secretary (see video below), in the face of guffaws in the Commons over his insistence that the programme – promising to produce results in 20 to 90 minutes and still requiring untested technology – was feasible.
Promising!
I know a Covid marshal who
Lurks in a town near me;
He bullies folks from morn till night,
None nastier than he.
And this the essence of his task
As Boris tells to me:
He will spare nobody, no, not he,
Who cares for liberty.
The reason why he loves his job
Is easy to surmise:
He is a nasty, brainless yob
Whom all good folk despise.
To strut and gloat and throw his weight
Is joy to such as he:
He will spare nobody, no, not he,
Who cares for liberty.
So let us his example fear,
And from town centres flee;
Where faceless morons crawl about
And Covid marshals be –
But plan revenge, and then come out,
Bare-faced and bold and free
And deal with every Covid lout
Who shames humanity.
Annie, our Lockdown Bard!
Thank you.
I’m pretty impressed with the amateur sleuthing that can be found on Twitter. Could this help to explain why some countries stats are better than others (links within links here). Logically identifying actual cases helps you focus resources in the right places too:
https://twitter.com/boriquagato/status/1304049927257980928
this is an interesting story. uruguay developed its own PCR test and used <35 cycles for detection (1/64th the amplification in the US) so is this a success in suppressing virus or just a test that does not pick up so many minor/trace infections and has fewer false positives?
Also this from a story back in June:
https://twitter.com/DaFeid/status/1303997295667671040
Taiwan: “Only samples with a CT value under 35 are considered positive in Taiwan, while those over 32 are unlikely to be contagious, Chuang said.”
Just want to say AARRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHH. This week has been fecking mental. Really feels like we have entered a weird parallel universe. When we this madness ever end?
Unfortunately, it seems like only a revolution would change things now. This looks like a one way street to dystopia to me.
This week has been hard for me too, more insanity, it’s never ending. I have reached another level recently…Not sure where I am yet…
I’m guessing the same level as your sceptical acquaintances…it’s a comin’. The one thing I’ve watched like a hawk (from April) is the comments left on various pieces in the good old Torygiraffe (Janet Daley, Cherelle Jacobs, Micheal Deacon, Allison Pearson, Allister Heath and of course Toby Young…there is another sceptical writer, can’t recall his name)… my point being is that, in April Mr and Mrs middle England, middle of the road we’re a bit peeved in April, now many are calling for rioting and all that comes with that. Massive sea change.
To note, I was there on 29th August and I met many people who said that they would never have thought they would do ‘anything like this’, many who said ‘I’ve never been on any sort of protest before’ – and such like. The people know something is off and they are fighting back – I do believe they are, this has all been too quick to be remotely plausible.
20 days to go until the money stops. This is going to be a wake up call for the sheeple. No more job. no more money in the bank at the end of October. No more savings by Xmas. Thousands in debt by January, payday loans in February, Repossession of property in March.
Ouch. About 9 million people right?
Do not know the artist but………
https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=lucky+dube&docid=607993577734409359&mid=F18A5166A013809FE80DF18A5166A013809FE80D&view=detail&FORM=VIRE
They’re shitting themselves over the ‘deadly second wave’ they are convinced will happen as soon as the clocks go back at the end of October. I hate to say it, but I think this madness will continue until the spring.
I’ve asked that before but it now just feels we’re on a runaway train now.
Account of Moderna vaccine guinea pig’s post-jab symptoms. Not pretty!
He went to the trial site for a physical, and signed a 20-page consent form. The vaccine, it told him, could conceivably cause severe anaphylactic shock, and there was no way to predict exactly how his immune system would respond to the new vaccine. He’d looked at research on other Moderna experimental vaccines, which work via an entirely new technology that uses messenger RNA, the body’s key envoy of genetic information inside cells, and thought they seemed relatively safe.
Twelve hours after receiving his second dose, he developed a fever of more than 103 degrees, sought medical attention, and, after being released from an urgent care facility, fainted in his home.
https://www.statnews.com/2020/05/26/moderna-vaccine-candidate-trial-participant-severe-reaction/
Meanwhile in Oxford (as reported by The Spectator):
I looked tranverse myelitis up. Doesn’t sound like much fun.
https://www.ninds.nih.gov/disorders/patient-caregiver-education/fact-sheets/transverse-myelitis-fact-sheet
Lovely! I’ll have three please.
Would that be 3 of the moderna vaccine Sir or would you like to pick and mix your vaccines? We have plenty of every variety.
In Scotland for a break. Campsite open but no showers or toilets available.
Mask use is a dreadful 100% in the shops. Everyone looks so sad. Almost automatic behaviour from everyone!
Watched one man put on his mask and check his reflection in the mirror before entering supermarket.
I know I used to have a face, but I can’t find it now.
Yep, Scotland has gone from being Land of the Brave to Land of the Compliant.
There’s still a few of us fighting the good fight up here!
I feel for you and yours. I have such fond memories of camping…my favourite thing, falling to sleep absolutely twatted to the sounds of my friends chatting around the fire – only to wake up feeling completely refreshed…I hope you enjoy your break as best as you and those you are with are able.
Glad to hear that Shetland is exploring independence from Scotland. The beauty of it is that they are using exactly the same arguments that the SNP use for independence from Westminster, so how could a true nationalist object?
Orkney might join them. The northern Isles are nearer to Norway than Edinburgh and I think they don’t have much time for Nicola
Is it possible that the virus arrived in Europe in Nov / December and then kept on doubling leading all the way to the peak in March. The Lockdown then stopped the climb to the peak too early and artificially stopped the pandemic until the full sweep had occurred. As soon as the brakes come off in June it starts to grow again and is increasing like it did in Nov, Dec, Jan in July, August and September and that by mid October the second peak is reached. This theory accounts for their high confidence in a second wave as far back as June. It also, would explain to some degree that their approach had some merit if they had been honest about what they have done. Break the whole thing into two manageable chunks. Where as Brazil or Sweden just legitimately let the pandemic run its course and are actually through it.
Otherwise I simply can’t seem to put their responses and policies down as anything other than frightening wrong.
To be fair nothing in the SAGE documents so far has indication breaking the pandemic in half was the approach. Which rather suggests this might have happened by chance as a result of lockdown.
Although, worryingly Anders Tegnell stated today that there are signs that infections are starting to increase again in Sweden. But even if they are it doesn’t change the IFR and the fact this is a serious disease only in the very old, so life should carry on as normal and as has often been said we need to learn to live with it as we do with many other diseases.
Even Whitty accepts that infections had peaked before lockdown. Lockdown had no effect on the Rona. The idea that lockdown cut ‘the whole thing into two’ is I think pretty fanciful.
Hospital admissions aren’t increasing again though.
It feels to me that there are 10% who are passionate sceptics and 10% who are passionate believers in the killer virus. This leaves 80% who have put their faith in the established institutions, the MSM, and politicians. But this 80% are not closed minded. They are just going with the flow. They are persuadable.
We shouldn’t worry about the vocal 10% who passionately believe in the virus. We will never convert them. But the 80% – the majority – are up for grabs. As others have stated, we still have a long way to go to win this battle. But in March, 95% believed in the official killer virus narrative. Over the past 5 months, this has gradually dropped – 90%, 85%, 80%, 75%.
We are making progress, but still lots more we need to do. More scientists, politicians, professionals from other disciplines and celebrities are starting to be vocal. And they seem to be getting a little more airtime by MSM.
Ever the optimist, I still believe this is a battle we can win. Obviously it would be great if there was a visible mass movement – huge demonstrations on the street, but even if this doesn’t happen there are other ways. All the small actions we are doing – everyone on this site – talking to friends and colleagues, sharing links to videos, refusing to wear masks in public – it all makes a difference.
I know we all feel a bit helpless, but we are making a difference. Scepticism is growing. We all feel it. We just have to stick together and keep taking these small actions. These small actions can lead to something much bigger.
Thanks to all of you for keeping me sane.
Nice summary. The Mrs and I were discussing over supper how effective a school strike would be. They did it over climate change last year, so why not over the appalling conditions in schools taken in the name of mitigating the virus?
I admire your optimism, I really do. Where this may go wrong is that they – whoever the merry fuck ‘they’ are – are doing things too quickly…folk ain’t daft. This dystopian oppression was, most likely meant to be be drip fed to us – frogs slowly boiling to death without realising an’ all that. I have every faith in humans and every faith that we will, to quote Dr. Vernon Coleman, “win this war”.
Thank you Tommy, yes this site has kept me sane too. Today between the 2 of us we have forwarded Ivor Cummins most recent video to as many people who we felt would look at it, including a senior consultant at partners hospital. One of the friends I sent it to is a local BBC reported. Every little helps.
Ivor Cummings also mentioned the paper Toby had the 3 scientists produce about the second wave. Both of these things were retweeted by Carl Heneghan. That gives them great credibility.
And I think you are right that people are turning. The local baker told us he has stopped reading The Guardian in disgust and started reading The Telegraph and more widely, we told him about LS and Carl Heneghan. It’s taking people some time but they have had enough.
I don’t think many people with bother with any of Boris rules as he has lost trust now. Here in the North west people have ignored the restrictions. It is not just young people it is people in their 80s. They have decided to take their own risks and not be told who they can meet.
We will keep supporting each other and slowly we will get through this.
Nice post, thank you. Yes, I’m too hopeful that the 80%-odd are persuadable… reason for saying that is because I suspect 99.9% (of that 80%) around the time of the last election were ranting screaming and threatening violence because “not my Prime Minister!” I’m guessing those did not voluntarily opt out of any furlough or grant scheme, on the grounds he wasn’t their PM… I’m guessing those aren’t opting out of any rules & regs because he’s not their PM… so, yes I am hopeful a large number are persuadable.
I think your 10 – 80 – 10 is about right. But I think a lot of the 80 is inclined in our direction and waiting for permission.
Yesterday I went to the pub, because Boris. A friend joined me after a while, but at the next table was a lady on her own in her mid 60s, I’d guess. After a while, à propos of literally nothing, she turned round and asked us what we think of the whole thing. My friend is less convinced than I am (though I’ve been working on him a while and he’s getting there), but when I started talking her through it, she was obviously delighted. We ended the evening by shaking hands.
I met my brother in the same pub today (yes, I know, dissolute). My brother is nearly a decade younger than me and as woke as they come, but has never bought into lockdown. He said “I feel like we’re coming from different directions, but arriving at the same place”. “I don’t know why it is, but this has turned into a left/right issue.” On the subject of his friends, who are all also screamingly woke “they all post on social media, complaining about people not following the rules, but apparently it only applies to people going to beaches, not to them, because they’re all ignoring the rules themselves. Hypocrisy is the essence of being human, I suppose.”
I hope you are right, though I’m a bit less optimistic than you. I think most of the sceptics are not of the demonstrating type so the lack of big street demonstrations doesn’t mean that our numbers are small. We do need to keep up the pressure in whatever ways we can.
Heading off for a couple of days at Alton Towers tomorrow (not my cup of tea but Mrs Bucky insists) – will not be wearing a mask, naturally. Anyone know what the local regs are, and how strictly enforced?
(Will of course state I can’t wear one)
Look forward to the report!
Make sure to carry an exemption card or pic on your phone, you will be challenged no doubt.
Have a generic one, hope it does the trick. Thanks!
Here are their rules. Totally mental. Good Luck.
https://www.altontowers.com/plan-your-visit/coronavirus/
Oh brilliant – they seem to have leapt on the new Rule of 6 bollox already… wonderful. Well, this is going to be fun with 15 of us going… I wish their staff the best of luck!
After Spaffer’s latest “moonshot” nonsense it does look that the MSM is, at last being more critical. Long way to go, however, and it may take riots to bring these morons to their senses.
I saw a figure of £100BN quoted. Let’s assume it would save 50,000 lives (being generous here). Let’s assume each life it saves is worth 1 QALY – again being generous as average age is 80 and average person dying from covid pretty ill already sadly. A QALY is worth £30,000. So benefit = 30k x 50k = £1.5NB. Cost = £100BN. But as my “friend” told me the other day, Hitler would have done a cost benefit analysis…
Australia, circa 450 deaths. Cost to the economy of LD’s 450 million Australian Dollars. Do the math…….
Is a ‘moonshot’ having an injection while exposing your bottom?
Well the policy is being promoted by a bunch of arseholes.
The Moonshot is Moonshine.
With all the information we’ve been bombarded with over the months it’s all too easy to lose sight of the bigger picture.
I’m a fan of the Swedish approach. It’s not perfect but it always seemed the most rational because it was a balanced approach. There are many ways they can be regarded a success and there is only really one way they are portrayed as being a failure and that’s in their death toll.
But let’s wind the clock back to the start of all this and ask a simple question.
If Swedens deaths had been predicted to be slightly worse than a bad flu season would that have been justification for all the draconian measures imposed by most other countries?
Right from the start Giesecke and Tegnell said they expected deaths to be in the thousands. They had a plan which they stuck to and things turned out pretty much as they expected. Only people who are results oriented could see that as a failure.
Only people who are mad or evil or idiotic could see that as a failure
I see where you’re going. The dishonesty was in the people who stood up in front of a nation/state and said “we’re locking you away because it will save lives” without having any idea whether or not not would. And 6 months later, all they have to rely on is correlation. Giesecke and Tegnell had courage – probably they didn’t realise it before, because they were only doing what everyone had done before.
They had the courage to stick with it when they were being shouted down and the Swedes in the main seem to have thought it the right approach. It is the approach in our and all other pandemic plans but Boris lost his nerve.
Like I say – courage. Remember when we used to have that?
Suggested viewing for my boys this weekend: Zulu
“probably they didn’t realise it before, because they were only doing what everyone had done before.” or said before, like the very dubious Fauci…
https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/03/what_did_dr_fauci_have_to_say_in_2009_about_the_deadly_h1n1_pandemic.html
I remember early on our malicious media spent a lot of time hanging around in both Sweden and Japan, confidently expecting both to have dead bodies piling up in the street. When it didn’t happen they melted away but dishonestly just stopped reporting on how much better than us they were doing. Equally they spent loads of time on Brazil but have generally ignored Peru: super-strict lockdown and worst Covid death rate in the world.
Reposting this from a couple of weeks ago ( or was it months? )
Anywhere I can find a higher resolution picture of that? Want to get a T-shirt made and that’s going to com up teeny tiny.
Seems the upload downsizes it. I’ll post it in the forum, see if that works..
PM would be best..
Sweden’s excess deaths are lower than Finland and Scotland and only slightly higher than Denmark. The people who died with Covid in Sweden would have died anyway from something else because very sick old people do, unfortunately, die.
Indeed, if they’d hadn’t lost control of the big Stockholm care homes they’d be even lower.
Ivor has a logical explanation for the differences in Sweden, Denmark et al, Worth sharing to destroy the myth…(apologies if you’ve already seen it Will)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8UvFhIFzaac
This was planned before then. De Piffle spelt it out before he was ill.
I don’t see any particular change inhim, other than that he seems more tired. Still the lying self-serving wastrel he always was.
https://youtu.be/R-DpsGTYKd4
Julia Hartley Brewer interviewing Grant Shapps on LBC this morning.
May have been posted already today, in which case, apologies.
I’m posting it not because of the interview (which is anyway pretty good) but because of Shapps’ nonverbal communication.
I know from experience that “maintaining eye contact” on a video call is difficult, because – counterintuitively – you have to look at the camera, not at the face of the person you’re talking to. Also, you don’t behave on a video call the way you would face to face. It’s almost impossible not to fidget more (and I’m a real-life fidgeter anyway).
It looks like the screen on which he’s seeing JHB is down and to his left, while the camera is up and to the centre. That’s just bad planning, but regardless. He focuses down and to the left a few times when he’s most confident in what he’s saying. On the few occasions he’s consciously making eye contact, he’s up and centre.
It’s also worth bearing in mind that he’s ostensibly on a radio programme and so maybe not conscious of performing for the camera. I gather he was on the media rounds today, so maybe he did better on breakfast TV.
But even taking those things into account, the man is shifty. His eyes are all over the place. He never reacts to a question as if he’s taken aback, but his facial expressions and the direction of his eyes say either “this is a rehearsed answer to a question I’ve been coached for” or “this is bullshit I’m making up on the spot”.
I speak not as a psychologist and not as someone who has any formal training in this stuff, but as someone who has spent many years negotiating with people across a table and who relies on being able to spot the difference between bluster, bullshit and honesty in order to be able to put food on the table.
Grant Shapps doesn’t believe a word he’s saying.
He is a weasel.
He was staunch Remainer but sold out to Cummings for political gain.
On Brexit whatever your views you don’t jump sides.
Well if he is not signed up to it could it mean there are manoeuvres somewhere. Perhaps noises about how they have got it wrong, perhaps getting rid of Hancock and maybe Boris?
Gove has been mentioned in the press for the first time in weeks. The mood of the country is changing very rapidly.
Tuesday was like someone threw a switch, lol.
How, out of interest? I know his wife has been very active lately.
It’s the only way out politically.
Cabinet: We were only supporting Johnson because he said he was following the science and we HAD to save Granny
Labour: We were only supporting Johnson because he said he was following the science and we HAD to save Granny
MSM: We were only supporting Johnson because he said he was following the science and we HAD to save Granny
Joe public: We were only supporting Johnson because he said he was following the science and we HAD to save Granny
Johnson and Hancock: Byeeeeee
Conservative Party: We must NEVER let such an aberration blight the peoples’ trust in democracy ever again….oh look over there, Brexit has collapsed……..and look at all those asylum seekers that have arrived in rubber boats since we took our eyes of the ball because we were only supporting Johnson because he said he was following the science and we HAD to save Granny
I saw that and 100% agree that his body language said ‘I’m really not signed up to this shit’
Detail please?
Agree. Grant Shapps is very shifty. I’ve often thought he should be selling get-rich quick schemes. Then I remember that that’s one of the things he has it seems, done
(https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/grant-shappss-get-rich-quick-site-investigated-9twgvgwsh0v)
I can’t believe a word he says. I remember when he announced the HS2 review, promising a frank review, with option of not doing it. I just knew what the outcome of the review would be.
Some politicians are good at acting (Tony Blair in his younger days), Shapps isn’t.
“I’ve often thought he should be selling get-rich quick schemes”.
Untested vaccines? £100 billion ‘covid’ testing kits?.
Get rich schemes be damned. I wouldn’t buy 4 lighters for a pound on the street from someone who acted like that.
He used to have a website under an assumed name selling crappy old out of copyright management books while giving the impression they were contemporary.
Paul Weston another commentator telling the truth.
That’s good
Testing – help please.
I cannot book a test because I do not have any symptoms. So, when a “mobile testing unit” descends on a place, tests lots of people and generates a local “spike” in cases where do all the people tested suddenly appear from? Was there some kind of unpublicised waiting list? They must have come from somewhere.
Part 2 – if you need symptoms to get a test how can some organisations arrange “mass testing” of their staff?
You can book a test without symptoms, they just don’t want you to because that would use up all the tests they’re saving for parts of the country where they know there is a concentration of “cases” and so they want to focus the testing to generate the maximum possible number of positive tests. Unless you happen to live in one of those areas, in which case – fill your boots because you probably have 5 testing centres within a 5 minute walk. In fact, go and get tested at every one of them, just to be sure.
They also go door-to-door in these areas and if I remember correctly they set up stall (literally) in Pendle high street and tempted passers-by with the irresistible offer of tests.
Take one, get one free and we promise not to count it twice honest.
Yes I think a journalist took one on Pendleton high street and chatted to the other folks getting a test … some said best be sure. What a waste of time and money.
As I was thinking, local pressure to get tested whether it is relevant or not and thus generate the excuse for a local “lock down.
This needs to get into the MSM somehow.
Just out of curiosity – why do you want to get tested? Seems like a lose-lose scenario to me.
Yesterday it was Belgium being held up an example.
This evening Sweden is finally off the naughty step.
Daily Mail has picked up on this, I just wonder whether that door ajar?
Sweden is no longer being hidden away and perhaps that offers some glimmer of hope?
“…but according to YouGov 62% of Brits would support a new curfew. Project Fear on steroids has worked”
Here’s a plan. The 62% in support of Bozzo’s “Idiots Guide to Dealing with Covid” should be the first to be vaccinated…at least that may leave a lot of us way towards the back of the queue….
And if their living costs are being funded by the taxpayer, those funds should be withdrawn quick smart as is the case in Australia. The sooner the PM here indicates to state premiers there’s no more money, honey, the sooner they will be forced to open up the state borders and get people back into work and business again. This vaccine crap is nothing more than smoke and mirrors to keep the population subdued.
“This vaccine crap is nothing more than smoke and mirrors to keep the population subdued”
Yep just another means of kicking the can down the road (as in, we’ll see a surge in deaths in 3 weeks time). Really feel for our fellow sceptics down under but I have just one question, why isn’t Dan Andrews hanging from a lamp post yet? .
You would think that would be the case wouldn’t you. I don’t get it. We don’t get their news in NSW but I would say cynically it’s probably very much pro what he has put in place etc. Andrew Bolt did mention on Sky last night there murmurings on the internet about Andrews being removed. Just saw on Sunrise he would lose election if held today. Libs are way ahead in polls there.
And there is that other nutter in Queensland(?) who denied a girl to cross borders so she could attend her dad’s funeral! What is WRONG with people? It’s like something out of N*zi Germany
I wonder if Oz and NZ will ever re-open their borders again, given how poorly the vaccines are now going. Depends how desperate they get economically.
“Depends how desperate they get economically”
I don’t think that that is even a consideration any more. Realistically, what will happen to all those people that leave a trail of absolute carnage in their wake? Absolutely nothing. They have NOTHING to lose. Meanwhile the collective ‘we’ sit back and just watch it happen….
Sorry was at work, T. Prince. Oh they will get their very generous taxpayer funded pension with all the bells and whistles. And no accountability for their actions.
The people of Australia number a mere 25 million but have a whole continent to themselves. I can’t see them ever being economically desperate. They are 250% self sufficient in food and have huge energy resources. If they stopped being China’s b***h they could develop their own dynamic economy.
Good points. They’ve got a lot of land that is not particularly habitable though… could get seriously lost in the bush!
Yes, but most of it’s desert.
Oh I like that OKUK, and today we heard that Alan Joyce CEO of Qantas has outsourced 2,500 ground maintenance jobs to a chinese owned company. It’s appalling, all political parties are complicit, federal and state. A rare few fire up, but get nowhere. I’ve often said not a shot has been fired and we’ve been taken over. Water, ports, dairy etc. Oh give me strength.
You Gov is a Blairite propaganda outfit and can’t be trusted.
Sofia Garnett
@sofia_garnett
11:53 pm · 9 Sep 2020·
Message to my followers:
Please would you very kindly put a post on FACEBOOK on the Protest in York St Helen’s Sq at 11am on Saturdays against New Normal?
Thanks a million !
https://mobile.twitter.com/sofia_garnett/status/1303828801349193729
Who she?
Does anyone else think it is very funny that the day after England announced new restrictions and even hinted at possible future curfews Sweden was taken off the Red Travel list. I did have to laugh and I would love there to be a huge demand from English tourists. Oh the irony of it all!
The whole idea of us picking safe and unsafe countries was a joke. Like we’ve got our shit together and aren’t a complete basket case…
Yes I do agree. I don’t think Sweden stopped incoming flights from EU or U.K. I think they stopped from further afield.
Carrie would know for certain but I don’t believe they did.
To be honest I’m not sure – our Foreign office was more into dissuading Swedes from travelling elsewhere unless absolutely necessary and it was that information that I saw broadcast. If you travel when you have been advised not to, then travel insurance is usually invalidated..
All those articles criticising Sweden in the Guardian, the BBC and the New York Times were pure figments of our imagination. The new narrative from Ferguson and his groupies is that Sweden actually locked down all along; they just didn’t shut their schools, their bars, their places of worship or, most importantly their health system. Ferguson has a neck on him like a jockeys bollocks.
One way to look at it would be they simply did what was necessary to control the virus whereas other countries wasted billions on smoke and mirrors.
Ferguson? Why is this insidious little twerp still around? Didn’t he resign after emptying his ‘jockeys bollocks’ into some far-left married bint? ( sorry ladies)
It really is tiresome trying to keep up with the ever-shifting arguments used to discredit Sweden. First it was that they were going to have apocalyptic levels of death. Then, when that failed to materialize it was that they had higher levels of mortality than the other Nordic nations. Now, it seems to have morphed into them actually having had some sort of lockdown even though we have been told for months that what they were doing was nowhere near enough and would lead to disaster.
Just wondering if you could get away with having a handwritten mask exempt card and lanyard. I know that just saying you’re exempt and/or showing a mobile card is usually enough if you get challenged, but just in case you get hassled.
You won’t get hassled, as they will be fearful of breaching disability discrimination laws. If you do need to say something just mumble something like ‘ cancer … ear’. I genuinely have had 2 minor ops this year for a suspected ear cancer. I haven’t been challenged but if couriered I would mumble that and you can too if you would like to!!!
Say you have high blood pressure, and that wearing a mask means your heart needs to pump harder to get enough oxygen around the body, which would further raise your blood pressure.
I’ll be doing pretty much that. Just on the off chance there’s anyone asking, and won’t take no for an answer.
Can you believe the neck of the WHO warning on childhood diseases accelerating as a reult of COVID, what are they trying to pass the buck of blame? they are still stoking the covid fearmongering to the world, they are theones promoting draconian lockdowns and face coverings, they have blood on their hands along with the majority of coutry leaders, and no amount of patsy mealy noth words will wash it off now.
I can believe it.
And it was obvious it was going to happen too, from the outset.
I’ve emailed the woman in the statement- the press officer chaibf@who.int asking ‘Whose fault is that then?’ & that they have blood on their hands and I’m glad they are about to be de-funded
Don’t know if it was suggested many moons ago but was listening to Michael Jackson’s Human Nature (Thriller album) and a lot of that is strangely pertinent.
This is a bit of an oddity – my hobby intersecting my political concern. This guy (Matt Easton) is an influential Youtuber and practitioner in the hobby of historical (especially edged) weapons use and collection.
I haven’t seen him comment on the coronapanic before, and he’s generally pretty mainstream and conformist – straight as a die and very respectable, so it was a bit of a surprise to see him so obviously very pissed off with the government. I suspect that he, like a lot of martial artists and other hobby activity organisers, has been spending time getting ready to resume activities and has just had all his work thrown in the dustbin by this abrupt reduction in the gathering size (the exception for “organised team sports” is unlikely to be available to eg martial artists, and a lot of people rely on running schools and classes of 10-30 people in a class for an income).
So a lot of his complaint here isn’t relevant to people here (the weapon law stuff), but I thought I’d put it up here because of the evident frustration on covid policy. He’s no sceptic, and I would’t expect him to be one, but he’s clearly pissed off and that’s a start.
UK Gov INCOHERENT POLICY on Pandemic: Now Imagine Policy On KNIVES, SWORDS & FIREARMS
I suspect many will become sceptics when all this starts hurting their pockets.
Indeed, but this is ahead of that – this is just the government losing the confidence of ordinary (ie neither sceptic nor coronazealot) people in their basic competence to handle this issue. Incredible as it might seem to us, most people have pretty much bought the government line, hitherto. I think it will be important and we have seen the beginnings of a real change.
I posted something quite lengthy about this earlier (why are people happy to go along with this madness) Answer: They’re not suffering enough financially…..
Why wouldn’t you expect him to be a sceptic, Mark ?
(and that was a long job of saying “governments are useless wankers”. 🙂 ).
Just the way I read him – too respectful of mainstream, received opinion on social issues to question the authorities on an issue like the coronapanic. And indeed he starts out by qualifying his criticism, by establishing his mainstream credentials on the issue.
But it looks like the government has pretty much lost him, atm.
“(and that was a long job of saying “governments are useless wankers”. 🙂 ).”
If a thing’s worth saying……
It’s reminded me to polish my katana at any rate …
Maybe he just needed a reason to get angry, much like many people I would guess.
A bit like Achilles in the Trojan war who after refusing to continue fighting rejoined after his best friend Patroclus is killed.
Some truth in that I think – there’s a widespread dawning realisation that they’ve been had, that is not necessarily consciously formed, but inclines people to anger perhaps..
I just took delivery today of this. Toby posted the cartoon (from Bob in the Telegraph) weeks ago and it’s stuck with me ever since as probably the most poignant little piece from this whole debacle.
A few days ago I decided to buy a print (ill-advisedly, at unjustifiable expense and after at least two beers too many). It’s lovely and I’m not sorry I own it.
There’s a little detail I’d missed in the online versions I’d seen before. The little boy’s clothes are patched and threadbare.
‘Bob’ did that on 23rd May. Poor kid wouldn’t have any clothes now and Grandpa well…. RIP
No, Grandpa’s fine. The kid tried to kill him but luckily hero Handcock locked the little shit up and Grandpa never has to see him again.
The little kids clothes got ripped because Grandma put up a struggle.
As an aside – maybe it’s just part of the job, but has anyone noticed that the cartoonists have been far more consistently sceptical than the journalists or the columnists?
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.09.07.20187666v1
Gastrointestinal involvement attenuates COVID-19 severity and mortality
“Unexpectedly, we observed that GI involvement was associated with a significant reduction in disease severity and mortality, with an accompanying reduction in key inflammatory proteins “
I need someone to help me parse this. Is it essentially saying that those who exhibit a gastrointestinal reaction may be doing so as part of a healthy immune system response, so these people are less likely to die / experience serious disease?
Think so. Short summary: better out than in.
I feel so enraged I can hardly focus. What is being done to us is obscene, demented, Satanic.
Been there, regularly. Ignore the BBC and similar, focus on understanding the arguments, breathe deeply and then focus the anger.
Thanks. Long haul ahead.
Let’s hope not, but yes.
Hi Liam,
Take some time to read Kelly Brogan on this. They want us to get upset. It actually makes things easier for them to control us that way. They have ‘war gamed’ this whole thing far deeper than most of us can even begin to imagine.
“Say not the struggle naught availeth.”
Hi Everyone,
There is a website: questioning covid.com
that is a treasure house of deeply sceptical and very well reasoned material. If you have not come across it yet I highly recommend that you all dive in. There are some very good articles on the psychology of compliance and the massive systematic manipulation of that compliance by highly sophisticated networks of authoritarian control that have been operating for the last century. It can be daunting but it is actually uplifting: in that if we can begin to understand why we find it so hard to believe that ‘ bad ‘ people exist and are intelligently exploiting our naïveté and essential good will, we will be better able to resist; and hopefully become liberated from the intended tyranny before it gets too powerful to stop. If we are going to stop this steamroller we are going to have to go a lot further than just blaming it all on stupidity and greed.
allegedly books of that sort have been Cummings reading for quite a while, doesn’t seem to have helped his popularity with his colleagues.
Does Dominic Cummings read such analyses because he wants to join the game or because he wants to learn how to help liberate us all from the intended tyranny?
https://truepublica.org.uk/united-kingdom/something-more-than-a-bit-fishy-about-cummings-visiting-castle-barnard/
I heard that story. It could be coincidence. With lies being told every where it is hard to know what to believe. I think looking at the pattern that the dots make is more fruitful than trying to establish the complete significance of each dot.
There is nothing in that, trust me.
This kind of deal is brokered at executive level. And executives don’t work at manufacturing sites in the North. They work at head offices in London and Paris (and work from home when the instruction is to do so because – unlike Cummings – they feel a responsibility to lead and are mindful of their public image suffers if caught out).
GSK’s vaccine manufacturing isn’t even done there. It’s in Belgium. And big companies are pretty good at using MS teams etc.
Thanks but I’m sure that you can understand the cynicism!
https://twitter.com/Covid19Crusher/status/1304123391578910722/photo/1
“A smart bureaucrat in Madrid has decided to publish 2 maps of the 2-week new confirmed cases per pop. The second one only includes the 29% of cases WITH AN ACTIVE VIRUS. What a difference it makes…”
But seriously counting asymptomatic cases is useless and also dangerous as more difficult to spot those areas with risk of transmission. See the maps. It is only on the second map you could really say that you should concentrate resources if you want to try to isolate active cases.
Question: why now?
It would have been easier for Bojo to give the impression that he had no plans for further measures, at least until his Enabling Act had been extended.
Why instead does he impose new restrictions and announce further measures bordering on the loopy (Covid Marshals)? What’s the game here? Is he aiming to spread the complicity to Parliament (the logic of the infamous Iraq vote). Or has he blundered by stoking up more opposition than he can ignore?
It is odd that Bojo does this before the vote, when he could so easily have waited.
If I understand Lord Sumption correctly. The main act in use is the 1984 Public Health act and not the Coronavirus act 2020. The 84 PH act is applicable to anyone with infection and therefore the more infections evidenced the higher the justification on control. That’s a poor summary but broadly right I think?
Paper headlines mostly Brexit today and with France hitting 10,000 cases today I think we are well in the shit.
Posted on the guardian forum chat today words to the effect that perhaps if we set aside the focus on daily “infection” numbers completely and only listed hospitalisations and mortality, it would help inordinately to reduce the climate of fear.
Within ten minutes I had been moderated by the guardian and had the post removed.
I then wrote follow up explaining as much, still politely. That lasted even less time. All in favour of moderating hate speech, trolling etc and perhaps I shouldn’t be surprised but it really shocked me that a supposedly liberal broadsheet should be so unable to retain objectivity. No recourse to appeal either. Anyone had similar?
I think the reason this site started was that sort of opaque politically driven censorship: https://off-guardian.org/
Now you know why some disgruntled former readers set up the http://www.off-guardian.org
Not on Guardian but I had this post removed from the main political discussion blog for Northern Ireland this evening. I’ve been positing there for years and never been flagged as spam. It’s getting quite scary now this is considered unworthy of debate. It was in response to a comment saying the idea of herd immunity was ‘stupid’
“The idea of herd immunity is just that the same strain doesn’t infect twice. Its hardly made up. It also relies on heterogeneous populations so the herd immunity level can be a lot lower than was originally touted at the start of all this. 80% was based on everyone being equally susceptible.
And yes, infectious diseases burn out once they’ve reached the limits of the susceptible population. The R0 rate will be 1 or less at that point.
Flu burns out every year due to natural or vaccine acquired herd immunity but it mutates and a new strain rears its head. CV-19 is following an identical pattern.”
I have no idea
“CV-19 is following an identical pattern.”
Not yet it’s not.
I probably worded it wrong. I was trying to say it progresses through a susceptible population quickly, but burns out. That is still up for debate but the pattern is the same on that basic point.
Didn’t want to imply it will mutate but maybe it reads that way.
Yes it is. The typical curve of hospitalisations and deaths show it.
I am not surprised. I got banned from Mumsnet after I posted a link to the Swiss doctor site, which is about as even handed and fact based as it gets.
I think people want to wallow in the fear, the weirdos. I cannot fathom it out.
“All in favour of moderating hate speech“
“Hate speech” was used as the pretext for purging dissent from the Guardian comments pages many years ago. Basically, “hate speech” is what leftists (mostly) call political opinions they really, really don’t want people to be allowed to express.
The concept of hate speech is the wedge inserted into the principle of freedom of speech that allows it to be cracked open and destroyed.
No. ‘Hate Speech’ is what it says – the incitement of hatred and violence.
Like ‘anti-semitism’ (the right’s favourite), it is a term that is often abused, but that doesn’t alter the meaning.
No, virtually none of the things that are routinely suppressed or punished as “hate speech” are actually meaningfully incitement to either hatred or to violence. What would-be censors like you do is make up fairy stories about how opinions you disapprove of will somehow result in “hatred” or “violence”, almost invariably only of groups you want to see specially privileged in this regard, when in reality mostly what they are, are merely expressions of disapproval, which you dishonestly insist will result in hatred or in violence.
Typical Guardian behaviour.
Scary and stupid. Your idea is very sensible.
“ supposedly liberal broadsheet”
“supposedly” is the key word.
The Groan is notorious for censoring comments that go against certain key propaganda lines. ‘Liberal’ isn’t in it, except in the tactical sense of supporting the LibDems when it suits. It was heavily into promoting ‘anti-semitism’ fictions against Corbyn and Labour, and obviously has a direct line to establishment/security service interests.
The change of the owning Scott Trust to a limited company marked a significant sell-out of the paper’s previous independence.
After several days of overwhelmingly depressing updates, it was refreshing to read this one – which felt a lot like good news. That has been tempered, of course, as I read what everyone else is publishing, today.
The Ivor Cummings video was fantastic, and should be spread as widely as possible.
All of Ivor’s videos are fantastic. This older one is a bit older (and longer) but you can really feel his incredulity and despair…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3HR9IV-y1D0
https://www.cdc.gov/h1n1flu/estimates/results_2009_h1n1.htm
This is interesting. Swine flu deaths 2009 in the US. Total death about 12000 but look at the age of deaths. Completely opposite of C-19.
1200 children under 17 years died of swine flu. That is more than 10 times more deaths than C-19!
Swine flu was a terrible thing, but largely unnoticed by the public and the media at the time. Older people generally had immunity from prior exposure in previous flu pandemics (1958 or thereabouts) but younger people, and especially pregnant women, did not, and most of the deaths were in these cohorts. In terms of years of life lost, likely a far more serious event than covid, but the response was proportional.
I wrote earlier that:
“Given the government’s many claims this last week that PCR detected cases have increased (with Hancock letting it slip that testing had also going up 25%), it is strange that by 4.30pm today they still have not updated the weekly figures on this: https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/testing
I’ll review it all if/when they do update, and let you know”
Well its midnight, and they still have not released this weeks data
Very suspicious
How dodgy does the arbitrary +1000 in positives going forward from 5th Sep look!!
That’s just too convenient isn’t it? Maths and nature just don’t work like that
I was looking for the missing testing numbers just now. It is indeed strange they are not available. When did Gruber let slip “testing is up by 25%”? If it has shot up and they are deliberately hiding this fact to make the “case” number seem worse this would be big news.
Australian woman with cerebral palsy harassed by police for pausing to sip her coffee. Lockdown excesses begin to alienate the left in Victoria as well (in Victoria it’s the Labour government imposing lockdown).
‘Even the lockdown left see new Government guidelines as ridiculous and petty’, says Helen Dale
Coming to a town near you VERY soon…
https://www.infowars.com/spain-cop-kneels-on-14-year-old-boy-for-refusing-to-wear-a-mask/
Ok so a man, 60, has been charged in Edinburgh following two ‘unlawful’ gatherings. One happened today and a previous occaison on Saturday 5th.
Officers say the events breached current coronavirus restrictions, which do not permit mass gatherings.
The police who oversaw the event must have been complicit in the ‘crime’ because from what I saw they had been fully prepare to allow the peaceful gathering. Earlier blm protests no problem.
Polical policing.
XR also. Political policing.
https://twitter.com/officialmcafee/status/1303808076127047682?s=20
“First Court Case to Challenge Masks!
Tulsa Doctors sue to abandon masks.
They allege masks don’t help the wearer or others, and they cause O2 deficiency, harming health.
They claim irrefutable evidence.
The Court’s decision in this matter will have far reaching implications.”
Tweet includes a doctor explaining how he examined the data that has caused whole society wearing of masks and found there to be a complete lack of ‘high level science’ as he puts it.
Brilliant!
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/africa/un-says-new-polio-outbreak-in-sudan-caused-by-oral-vaccine/2020/09/02/2da5cf4e-ecf9-11ea-bd08-1b10132b458f_story.html
“UN says new polio outbreak in Sudan caused by oral vaccine
“LONDON — The World Health Organization says a new polio outbreak in Sudan is linked to an ongoing vaccine-sparked epidemic in Chad — a week after the U.N. health agency declared the African continent free of the wild polio virus.
[…]
“More than a dozen African countries are currently battling outbreaks of polio caused by the virus, including Angola, Congo, Nigeria and Zambia.
“Amid the coronavirus pandemic, many of the large-scale vaccination campaigns needed to stamp out polio have been disrupted across Africa and elsewhere, leaving millions of children vulnerable to infection.
“In April, WHO and its partners reluctantly recommended a temporary halt to mass polio immunization campaigns, recognizing the move could lead to a resurgence of the disease. In May, they reported that 46 campaigns to vaccinate children against polio had been suspended in 38 countries, mostly in Africa, because of the coronavirus pandemic.”
Move along folks…nothing to see here. Remember – “vaccines are safe”. This message was brought to you by Big Pharma and its paid allies in government, the media and the health services. 🙂
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/africa/south-africa-coronavirus-flu-season/2020/08/17/bd8aaaca-e084-11ea-82d8-5e55d47e90ca_story.html
“Flu was all but eliminated in South Africa this year. Coronavirus is to thank.”
Ema, your letter sums up where we are and its moving to me. Unfortunately, the cult is all encompassing and the MP’s along with the media and academia have nearly all joined it. But cults do not last long and never have a good outcome so we will prevail. Its only a few weeks until it all falls apart once it becomes obvious that we have been lied to with the manipulated and faulty modelling, testing and biased statistics presented by government and their departments which have driven this disaster.
FRIDAY PAGE IS HERE
although it seems all the stragglers have already gone
I like very much the idea of an anti-lockdown party. There is a sizeable minority against all this nonsense and surely it must start to grow as the collateral damage becomes clearer and the threat of the virus diminishes. How about the CALM party? (Coalition Against Lockdown Measures.)
Birmingham heading back to lockdown because a whole 75 people are in hospital (7 in ICU) with covid out of a population of well over a million.
Yet more complete dis-proportionality. Another string to the bow of Project Fear though of course. That’s all this is about now.
I am so sorry. This just makes me want to cry. Could you get him to watch Ivor Cummins’s latest 30 minute blockbuster? It might just get get through to him.
Great meme btw
I just caught a bit of “In Which We Serve” on the box.
Now – of course, this is a dramatized piece of propaganda in it’s own right. But it does relate to a grim reality that people endured.
The contrast with this current confected Panicdemic is shaming. Did people actually die in order that, 70 years on, a generation of snowflakes could jettison what their predecessors had fought an suffered to preserve, with a drunk Mr Toad showing his metal by falling over his feet in front of the Cenotaph in mock ‘remembrance’.
I want to puke.
Very, very good