“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…
Discussion
Comments
This week across the site:
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Very, very good
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.
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
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 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.)
FRIDAY PAGE IS HERE
although it seems all the stragglers have already gone
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.
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.”
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://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!
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.
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/
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
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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!
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.”
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 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?
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… Read more »
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..
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.
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 [email protected] asking ‘Whose fault is that then?’ & that they have blood on their hands and I’m glad they are about to be de-funded
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.
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.
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?
“…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.