ONS: Flu and Pneumonia Have Killed More People Than Covid Since June
That’s the headline finding in the ONS’s latest release, as far as the Telegraph is concerned. But there’s another pretty striking finding in the second paragraph too.
Influenza and pneumonia has contributed to more weekly deaths than COVID-19 since the middle of June, new figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) show.
Just 78 people died of coronavirus in the week ending September 4th – the latest for which death registrations are available – the first time the figure has fallen below 100 since lockdown began in March.
Just one per cent of deaths now mention coronavirus on the death certificate compared to 12.8% which mention influenza and pneumonia, making those conditions nearly 13 times more deadly.
The numbers of overall deaths has also plummeted well below the five-year average for England and Wales, with 1,443 fewer deaths in the most recent weekly figures.
This is a bit awkward for the Government. The day after its new draconian “Rule of Six” regulations are introduced, the ONS reveals there were fewer deaths in the week ending September 4th.
Worth reading in full.
Noel Gallagher: Sceptic of the Week
The NME has written a furious piece about Noel Gallagher, the rock star, who has said he refuses to wear a mask in shops.
Noel Gallagher has said he refuses to wear a face mask while shopping, in defiance of laws which were introduced earlier this year.
Appearing on The Matt Morgan podcast, the former Oasis singer described the use of face coverings as “bollocks”, after they were introduced in an attempt to curb the spread of coronavirus.
“The whole thing’s bollocks. You’re supposed to wear them in Selfridges, yet you can f***ing go down the pub and be surrounded by every f***ing c**t. Do you know what I mean? It’s like, ‘Oh actually, we don’t have the virus in pubs but we have it in Selfridges?’,” Gallagher said.
Wearing a face covering over your nose and mouth is mandatory by law in all shops and supermarkets in the UK, although exemptions are in place for children under 11 and people with health issues.
They are also compulsory on public transport, with Gallagher recalling how he refused to wear a covering on a recent train journey to Manchester.
The podcast is well worth a listen. The bit when Gallagher explains why he refused to wear a mask on the train is gold. He makes exactly the same point James Delingpole did on Sunday in his piece about why the mask-wearing rules on planes are such nonsense.
Like I was going up to Manchester the other week and some guy’s going, “Can you put your mask on?” On the train. And he said, “Because the Transport Police will get on and fine you £1,000, but you don’t have to put it on if you’re eating.” So I was saying, “Oh right. So this killer virus that’s sweeping through the train is going to come and attack me but is going to see me having a sandwich and go, “Leave him. He’s having his lunch.”
The podcaster he’s talking to tries to justify the policy, but Gallagher just says “bollocks”. “The science says they’re pointless,” he says. When the presenter disagrees and says he “read something earlier” saying masks are effective, Gallagher cuts him off: “F*** off. You only read things that reinforce your own opinions.”
A worthy winner of Sceptic of the Week.
Stop Press: The podcast is no longer available on YouTube – but of course.
A Nation of Bedwetters
Unfortunately, Noel Gallagher is an outlier. YouGov has just published some depressing polling: a whopping 69% of Brits – and a majority of all age groups – say they would support a 9pm curfew on pubs and bars to help reduce COVID-19 cases.
As Julia Hartley Brewer asked on Twitter, what the hell has happened to this country? We used to be in favour of… you know… fun.
You can see the polling here.
An MP Writes…
A reader wrote a letter to his MP, Sir Gary Streeter, questioning the scientific basis for the Rule of Six and saying he wasn’t minded to follow it, or to wear a mask. This was the reply he got. Bedwetting MP of the week?
Dear Mr Martin,
Thank you for your email which I am afraid wins the prize for being the most irresponsible communication I have had this year.
We have suffered over 42,000 excessive deaths in this country due to this virus and no doubt it is partly being spread by irresponsible people such as yourself. I urge you to reconsider as the second spike threatens another wave of serious illness and death as we approach winter. You will be aware that the police have increased powers to ensure that social distancing is enforced.
Kind regards,
Gary Streeter
Stop Press: Another contender for Bedwetter of the Week has hoved into view: David Nabarro, one of the WHO’s special envoys on Covid, who testified before the Foreign Affairs Committee in the House of Commons yesterday. The summary on AOL is quite something:
The world is still at the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic, and it will take some time to work out how to deal with it, an expert has told MPs.
David Nabarro, who is one of the World Health Organisation’s (WHO) special envoys on COVID-19, told the Foreign Affairs Committee the present situation is horrible and grotesque.
He said the outbreak is worse than any science fiction movie, and appears to be getting nastier as cases reemerge in Europe.
Worse than any science fiction movie? So worse than Contagion, in which a rogue virus wipes out the human race? Sorry for the spoiler, but come on!
SAGE Knows All About the False Positive Rate
We got an excellent email yesterday from one of the regular commentators – DocRC. He was an NHS GP for 25 years and now works in sports medicine. He’s done some sleuthing and discovered that SAGE knows all about false positives, although it isn’t clear whether the information has been shared with Matt Hancock.
I read the letter in today’s update written by the Trafford GP to her MP Graham Brady. In it she said she had been trying in vain to get information about PCR false positive rates and cycle thresholds out of the local health bureaucrats. I too have corresponded in vain with a local (Cambridge) Pathologist who couldn’t or wouldn’t answer the same questions. Then this morning a friend who used to be the Medical Director of a biotech company reported drawing a blank from a contact in Oxford’s Immunology Department. The twin questions of false positive rates (especially at low prevalence levels) and cycle thresholds (the number of cycles they run the PCR tests before deciding whether it is positive or negative) are absolutely key to understanding the published figures of “cases”. Actually, I could add a third one which is the percentage of those tested who are symptomatic.
My friend, the ex-Medical Director has just come up trumps. He has found a paper by two people who work for NHS England which says:
“The UK operational false positive rate is unknown. There are no published studies on the operational false positive rate of any national COVID-19 testing programme. An attempt has been made to estimate the likely false-positive rate of national COVID-19 testing programmes by examining data from published external quality assessments (EQAs) for RT-PCR assays for other RNA viruses carried out between 2004-2019 [7]. Results of 43 EQAs were examined, giving a median false positive rate of 2.3% (interquartile range 0.8-4.0%).”
The paper is here.
So we know that The Government, or at least its scientific advisors, know that the false positive rate for the Covid test is in the range of 0.8-4% with a median of 2.3%.
This of course confirms what James Ferguson was saying in his analysis a couple of days ago, that the vast majority of so-called “cases” are the result of false positive tests, i.e. on people who don’t have the virus.
Let us look at the Government statistics, the latest of which I could find is to August 26th:
So to take the week ending August 26th, the total tests were 452,679 out of which 6,732 were positive. The positives were 1.487% which is well within the estimated false positive range of 0.8-4% so they could all be false positives!
Then I found another paper by said Carl Mayers of NHS England which was apparently submitted to SAGE meeting 41 (June 11th)
There is a table on page 6 of the document (see below) which shows that at low prevalence of Covid the majority of positive tests are expected to be false positives. So at a prevalence of 0.1% they expect 209 positives of which 200 will be false positives and 1% prevalence 288 positives of which 198 are false positives.
This blows the whole test and trace program out of the water and of course makes operation moonshot even more ridiculous than it ever was – if you test the whole UK population of 67 million you will get 1.5 million false positives! Go figure, Hancock!
I wonder if we could get Carl Heneghan to comment on this?
Unmasked
My friend Roger Bowles, with whom I made a 15-minute film about Brexit in 2016, is making a documentary about Covid called Unmasked: The Virus and the Disease. He’s looking to include stories from ordinary people – like you and me, dear reader – about how they’ve been affected by the pandemic. Message from Roger below.
Unmasked: The Virus and the Disease will be a feature-length documentary that will follow the progress of Corona from its sensational debut in January as the only player on the world stage, through those salad days of early Lockdown and clapping the NHS, and into the autumn as we try to navigate our way through contradictory rules and ranks of “Covid Marshals” towards our doubtful economic future. The narrative will be told through contributions from experts, footage from the mainstream and alternative media, and – crucially – through the stories and experiences of ordinary people.
We are seeking contributors who are willing to speak on camera about their experiences, particularly the impact that Lockdown and other measures have had on them or their loved ones. All submissions will be dealt with in strict confidence and if it is necessary to protect identities we will do so.
We are also looking for material – video, photos, letters, emails, recordings – that evoke the strangely heightened experiences of this socially distanced year.
The film’s tone will be reflective and, where possible, lighthearted, seeking to balance the seriousness of the main theme, so we are looking for uplifting stories too.
As we move around the country filming over the next few weeks we will be putting out calls for certain kinds of stories or material, or announcing that we are visiting particular places. It would be hugely helpful if you could follow us, like our posts and tweets, comment, and share them if you can.
Website: https://unmasked-doco.net/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/UnmaskedDoco/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/UnmaskedDoco
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC9zh2-e15WDRC9mTXXeJiSQ
Finally, like many others, our industry is decimated and we are time rich but cash poor. If you are able to make a donation to support the project we would be very grateful.
GoFundMe: https://www.gofundme.com/f/unmasked-the-virus-and-the-disease
Government Responds to Vaccine Petition
The Government has responded to a petition asking it not to impose any restrictions on people who refuse to have a Covid vaccine. It has over 125,000 signatures. You can read the full response here, but one reader has drawn my attention to the following paragraph which she thinks is very sinister:
We believe it is everyone’s responsibility to do the right thing for their own health, and for the benefit of the wider community. There are currently no plans to introduce a COVID-19 vaccine in a way that penalises those who do not take up the vaccine. However, the Government will carefully consider all options to improve vaccination rates, should that be necessary.
Should we be worried about this? I’m not an anti-vaxxer, but I certainly don’t think people should be penalised by the Government for refusing to be vaccinated, particularly if said vaccines are being rushed out during an episode of mass hysteria and the manufacturers have been absolved of legal liability. From the wording of that paragraph, it sounds like the Government hasn’t ruled that out.
Covid Death and Taxes
I was forwarded another penetrating analysis of the Covid crisis by a financial researcher today – this one by Louis-Vincent Gave, who runs a firm called Gavekal Research with Anatole Kaletsky, the much-revered financial journalist. I thought it was so good I immediately emailed Louis-Vincent (his address was at the foot of the document) and asked if him I could publish it on Lockdown Sceptics. Turns out, he’s a fan of the Spectator so he said yes. Not only is he a brilliant analyst, but he’s also the Chairman of the Biarritz Olympique Pays Basque Rugby Club and is engaged in an ongoing negotiation with his local prefet (unelected regional official) to allow the fans back into the stadium. So an all-round good egg.
Here’s the section in which he speculates about why Governments across the West are continuing to vacillate over lifting restrictions when political leaders must know that the virus only poses a mortal threat to people in their 80s and 90s with co-morbidities.
So, given that death rates are now at long-term lows, and that the disease only seems disproportionately to kill folks coming to the natural end of their lives, why are policymakers still bickering about the reopening of schools (the UK), whether restaurants should be allowed to welcome patrons (New York), whether kids should be forbidden to go trick-or-treating this Halloween (Los Angeles), whether organised sports should even take place (France), and over the resumption of a dozen other everyday activities?
The first possible explanation is that policymakers are consciously making the choice to protect the old, even at the economic expense of the young. And they are doing this out of political calculation, because old people are more likely to vote than the young. However, this explanation runs counter to Hanlon’s razor, which states: “Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.”
The second possible explanation is that policymakers, having stumbled into this crisis, have now seized on the Rahm Emmanuel dictum “never let a good crisis go to waste”. For the last decade, lacklustre growth across the Western world has led to events as unfortunate (for policymakers) as the Brexit vote, Donald Trump’s election, the rise of the French yellow jacket movement, and the rise of the AfD in Germany and of Matteo Salvini in Italy. In other words, the sort of “pre-revolutionary” grumblings Gavekal warned of almost a decade ago are becoming ever-louder.
Disconcerted by this increasing roar, a number of policymakers have concluded that western economies are suffering from a lack of government intervention, combined with a shortage of fiscal spending, and insufficient money-printing. But cometh the crisis, cometh the moment to embark on the sort of Keynesian orgy my business partner Anatole Kaletsky has lately been applauding (see Why I Was Wrong To Turn Bearish). If to a hammer every problem looks like a nail, then to a large section of western policymakers, the answer to every problem increasingly seems to be more money-printing and more money-spending.
Of course, the real problem may not be Covid, but something else entirely. But then policymakers will use the pandemic as the pretext to embark on policies to fix the “something else”. This means they need to keep Covid humming in the background. How else could they justify the gradual introduction of some form of universal basic income funded by Modern Monetary Theory or MMT (the magic money tree)? Combine this with a healthy dose of Parkinson’s Law at work, and governments have little incentive to walk back on any of their panic-mongering. After all, now that government commissions have been formed and funded to deal with the pandemic, are these commissions going to be in any rush to declare the pandemic over? Or are they more likely to insist that Covid remains a major threat, and that they need more funding to counter it?
Finally, the third and most likely explanation is that western governments were panicked into taking dramatic decisions. This panic was likely driven partly by the increased weight of social media in decision-making. Not that the absence of social media in the early years of the 21st century helped the US government take the right decisions in the aftermath of 9/11; the invasion of Iraq was one of the greatest policy failures in a generation. Now it is likely the Covid lockdowns will rank alongside Iraq in the policy failure “hall of shame”. And from there, the important question is at what point do repeated policy failures start to take their toll? We know from Adam Smith’s remark that “there is a great deal of ruin in a nation.” But still…
I wasn’t familiar with Hanlon’s Razor: “Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.” This, I realise, is virtually the motto of Lockdown Sceptics and one of the reasons I’m sceptical about conspiracy theories.
Louis-Vincent’s analysis is great – worldly, cynical and wise. Worth reading in full.
Gary Lineker Takes a Pay Cut and Agrees to Tweet More Carefully – Then Fires Off Rude Tweet
I decided to have a poke at Gary Lineker, the Match of the Day presenter, when the newspapers reported he’d volunteered to take a 25% pay cut and agreed to be more careful in his use of Twitter. I sent the following tweet.
To which Gary replied:
To which I replied:
Couldn’t help noticing Gary’s reply to me got over 20,000 likes, while my reply to him got 120. But bitter? Moi? No. Of course not.
Stop Press: According to the Times, 250,000 fewer people bought TV licenses last year compared to the year before.
New NHS Tracing App – Now Even Worse
Our dedicated NHS tracing app correspondent – a well-informed techie – has sent us his latest update. One day, this app will be studied in the Kennedy School of Government as one of the biggest administrative cock-ups of all time
Christmas might be cancelled but as compensation Matt Hancock has the latest incarnation of the gift that keeps on giving – the NHS COVID-19 app. Like all the other failed contact-tracing apps around the world, this one tries to work out how close you are to other app users by the strength of a bluetooth signal. If the app reckons you have been within two metres of another app user for 15 minutes or more, regardless of circumstances, then it makes a note of an identifier broadcast by the other phone. This is the Apple/Google system which is entirely anonymous, so as the user you have the responsibility for telling the app if you are positive, in which case it uploads its anonymous identifier to Apple or Google’s cloud where other apps can see it and check against their own list of phones they were near and alert their users. Apple and Google handle all this and the NHS is not involved. But they would very much like to be so if you do receive an alert the app butts in and asks if you wouldn’t mind awfully contacting Public Health England to “complete a form about who you know you’ve been in contact with recently”. A form, not in the app.
As an aside for those involved in the mask debate, the app instructions say that tracking can be paused if the user is “wearing medical grade PPE, i.e. a surgical mask, in a health and care setting”. So not just a face covering at the shops then.
Exposure alerting is not all this app fails to do. Indeed, its big selling point is the QR code business check-in function. Alerting might be useless but this function is worse as it can lead to you breaking the law. It appears to be in support of the Government’s announcement on Sept 10th that businesses and venues are required by law to record contact details of all staff and visitors and store them for 21 days to be shared with NHS Test and Trace if requested. There are fixed penalties for organisations that don’t comply. The Government has provided a handy service which can create posters for your business or venue displaying a big QR code that can only be read by their app. The problem is as a venue owner if you only use the government’s app and posters you will be breaking the law because the app only knows which business you checked-in to and when, which is not enough to comply with the law. Even that data is not shared from the app to the venue owners who are required to collect your name, phone number and make a note of which staff were working there at the same time. So if you just put up the posters and ask everyone to use them, when NHS Test and Trace come calling you won’t have anything to give them and that is illegal from September 18th. Another winner from Matt Hancock and team.
Carl Heneghan Strikes Again
In a development that was reported almost nowhere, the Scottish Government announced yesterday that it was changing the way it counts Covid hospitalisations. Previously, it counted all patients who had tested positive for COVID-19 in its hospitalisations data, even if they’d made a complete recovery from Covid, left the hospital, resumed their normal life and were then readmitted for a completely different reason. Now, only patients who first test positive in their current hospital admission (or in the two weeks before admission) will be included in the figures.
There’s an explainer here from the Office of the Chief Statistician. He says the reason for the change is because the Office of the Chief Statistician carried out an audit of the 384 hospital patients who were designated as having Covid in the official data on August 26th and found that 87% of them were in hospital “for a condition unrelated to COVID-19”.
But is that the real reason? I suspect it had more to do with this September 2nd blog post by Carl Heneghan, Daniel Howdon and Jason Oke entitled, “Is Scotland overcounting the number of patients in hospital beds?” They pointed out that In England 7.7 per million of the population are supposedly in hospital with Covid, but in Scotland 46.8 per million are in a hospital bed with Covid – a rate that is nearly six times higher. They more or less nail the reason, as you’d expect.
This is similar to the problem with the PHE issue with deaths in England, which meant previously that everyone who has ever had COVID at any time must die with COVID too…
The problem matches the pattern of poor quality data whereby COVID analyses have overestimated the true extent of the problems. It is, therefore, essential that we have data that we can trust, data that is verifiable and reported in the same way across the devolved nations to permit comparisons.
Poor quality data! That must have stung the Chief Statistician (Roger Halliday). I expect someone in Wee Krankie’s office called him up and gave him a rocket. Can’t have the Scottish Government producing poor quality data, particularly when the hated English tidied up their own Covid data a few weeks ago – again, thanks to a Carl Heneghan blog post.
Keep it up Carl.
Round-Up
- “I will not be undertaking unconscious bias training – and call on my colleagues to take the same stand” – Great piece by Ben Bradley MP for Conservative Home
- “The Lamonby Case” – Thorough and well-researched article about Stephn Lamonby, the lecturer at Solent University who was fired for praising the Jews
- “Families ‘mingling’ would be breaking rule of six – home secretary” – Will the Bodysnatchers please give us the old Priti back? I don’t like the new one
- “Shopping in Sweden” – a nice video of what it’s like to go shopping in Sweden in their beautiful, Covid-free country. Btw, Sweden is allowing care home visits from October 1st
- “Victoria Doubles Contact Tracing Capacity With Purchase Of Second Fax Machine” – Amusing article in the Shovel, a satirical Australian magazine
- “Archbishop of Canterbury voices fears over impact of ‘rule of six’” – At last, Justin Welby says something sensible. I suppose a stopped clock is right twice a day…
- “Federal Judge Rules PA Governor’s COVID-19 Restrictions Unconstitutional” – A legal victory has been won against the Democratic Governor of Pennsylvania. Hooray!
- “Parliament must stand up to an executive bent on restricting us” – Solid stuff from Philip Johnston in the Telegraph
- “Unusual Features of the SARS-CoV-2 Genome Suggesting Sophisticated Laboratory Modification Rather Than Natural Evolution and Delineation of Its Probable Synthetic Route” – Shshshsh. Don’t mention this “conspiracy theory” on YouTube, Facebook or Twitter, even though the authors of this paper are research scientists
- “A tighter lockdown could be two weeks away” – Robert Peston delivers some bad news in the Spectator
- “I supported the lockdown – but the Rule of Six treats us like toddlers” – Julia Hartley-Brewer joins the growing ranks of sceptics
- “The cancel culture mob targeted these three professors. They all agree on one thing – don’t cave.” – Inspiring story about some brave professors who refused to abase themselves at the feet of the woke mob
Theme Tunes Suggested by Readers
Just one today: “Ain’t No Turning Back” by Prime Minister.
Love in the Time of Covid
We have created some Lockdown Sceptics Forums, including a dating forum called “Love in a Covid Climate” that has attracted a bit of attention. We’ve also 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.
Woke Gobbledegook
We’ve decided to create a permanent slot down here for woke gobbledegook. This latest one – from the University of Chicago, no less – is a doozy.
Statement from the Univerity of Chicago’s English Faculty (July 2020)
The English department at the University of Chicago believes that Black Lives Matter, and that the lives of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Tony McDade, and Rayshard Brooks matter, as do thousands of others named and unnamed who have been subject to police violence. As literary scholars, we attend to the histories, atmospheres, and scenes of anti-Black racism and racial violence in the United States and across the world. We are committed to the struggle of Black and Indigenous people, and all racialized and dispossessed people, against inequality and brutality.
For the 2020-2021 graduate admissions cycle, the University of Chicago English Department is accepting only applicants interested in working in and with Black Studies. We understand Black Studies to be a capacious intellectual project that spans a variety of methodological approaches, fields, geographical areas, languages, and time periods. For more information on faculty and current graduate students in this area, please visit our Black Studies page.
English as a discipline has a long history of providing aesthetic rationalizations for colonization, exploitation, extraction, and anti-Blackness. Our discipline is responsible for developing hierarchies of cultural production that have contributed directly to social and systemic determinations of whose lives matter and why. And while inroads have been made in terms of acknowledging the centrality of both individual literary works and collective histories of racialized and colonized people, there is still much to do as a discipline and as a department to build a more inclusive and equitable field for describing, studying, and teaching the relationship between aesthetics, representation, inequality, and power.
So does this mean every faculty member in the Chicago English department who is a white male will immediately resign his position to make room for a person of colour who can then teach Black Studies?
Didn’t think so.
One of the curious things about statements like this, in which middle-aged white men genuflect before the woke mob and engage in a sort of ritualised self-flagellation, is how similar they all are. At the height of the BLM madness, when university vice-chancellors were pumping out this gobbledegook by the bucket-load, I hawked an idea around to various media outlets which I thought was quite funny. I would create a website called “Plagiarism Watch” that purported to be maintained by a group of Wokesters that pointed out the similarity between the BLM solidarity statements issued by heads of universities and accuse them of plagiarism. I would run the statements through the plagiarism-detection software that’s used by universities to ferret out cheaters and, presumably, each would be flagged as blatant plagiarism. My hope was that after, say, the President of Princeton’s statement was identified as plagiarised by “Plagiarism Watch” – “Racism and the damage it does to people of color nevertheless persist at Princeton as in our society, sometimes by conscious intention but more often through unexamined assumptions and stereotypes, ignorance or insensitivity, and the systemic legacy of past decisions and policies… etc., etc.” – he would immediately issue a grovelling apology and then publish another 1,000 words of gobbledegook (no doubt written by the same beleaguered drudge in Princeton’s Office of Communications). The point, of course, isn’t that these statements are literally plagiarised – although some may be, I suppose. No, the reason they’re all the same is because they’re the product of group think. And because anyone saying anything remotely thoughtful or original about racism will immediately be targeted by a woke mob for being insufficiently pious. (“Just one knee? Why not two? Why not hurl yourself to the ground and rend your garments? How dare you, you racist bastard.”)
Needless to say, no one was prepared to commission this piece of mischief.
Please send Lockdown Sceptics any examples of woke gobbledegook you come across.
“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 17th to Oct 27th). 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 32,000).
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: We got a nice email from a non-masker yesterday.
I don’t wear masks and the natural contrarian within me makes me less likely to do so when it’s been mandated. So, throughout this whole debacle I’ve been quite staunch in upholding my right not to wear a mask. I’ve not made a big song and dance about it – I just simply go about my normal business, breathing the lovely fresh air Suffolk has to offer.
I’ve always been a bit worried about how I might react if challenged by a shopkeeper or fellow citizen. But wouldn’t you know it – I’ve never been challenged. I’ve been going about my normal life, doing the things I would normally do, being greeted the whole time with warmth and a sense of normality.
But actually, normality isn’t quite an accurate description. I’ve actually received more warm-heartedness from shop keepers, folks on the checkout, the chap at the builders merchants and the lady that runs the post office, than I had before this whole nonsense started. And I’m not wearing a mask the whole time.
The result is that I reciprocate this warmth, spark up conversation, and all at once it feels like a throwback to merry old England when the shopkeeper would greet you on first-name terms. Perhaps these folks on the coalface feel a rare sense of ease when seeing an un-muzzled face? Maybe it’s just my own experience, but going out maskless has been great for morale, and seemingly for the people I’ve come into contact with. I urge others to give it a go – spread a little joy.
Shameless Begging Bit
Thanks as always to those of you who made a donation in the past 24 hours to pay for the upkeep of this site. Doing these daily updates is hard work (although we have help from lots of people, mainly in the form of readers sending us stories and links). If you feel like donating, please click here. And if you want to flag up any stories or links we should include in future updates, email us here.
And Finally…
In this week’s London Calling podcast, James Delingpole and I indulge in the usual rants about the lockdown, the Wokesters and our flailing political leaders. At one point, James and I discuss what it’s like to have been effectively killed by an online outrage mob (as I was) and then to have resurfaced with renewed vigour (as I have) – like Obi-Wan Kenobi in Star Wars. I said to James, “We should come up with a name for these people” and he immeidately suggested “Obi-Wankers”. Hence the title of this week’s episode. Please do have a listen and don’t forget to subscribe.
Discussion
Comments
This week across the site:
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Today is a dark day for us sceptics. I feel my hope wearing thin, curfews, mandated tests, excessive masking now even rumours of glasses/goggles. I’m not sure how long I can keep going with this.
Carl is fantastic.
Nailing it.
A neighbour of mine tells me his father died recently – in his mid 80s, suddenly after appearing pretty healthy (he was still walking three or four miles every day. He was tested three times for Covid and all tests came back negative. But doctors still said ” It could be Covid-related pneumonia.” Well yes, theoretically, it could be. But it could equally be pneumonia related to any other number of pathogens.
Also – isn’t this the time of year when the flu vaccine is administered? There are numerous reports of aged people suffering sudden adverse reactions (ironically, including flu like symptoms).
This is an illustration of how ridiculous this nonsense has become. The clear fact is that the strong probability is that the pneumonia was not caused by Covid.
THURSDAY PAGE IS UP
https://dailysceptic.org/2020/09/17/latest-news-137/#comments
Terrorism is illegal in the UK.
Unless of course it’s done by the government.
Boris & his chum ‘Cock have killed more people in ONE DAY than the islamic terrorists have managed altogether. Let that sink in.
How long before the deaths are more than World War Two?
At what stage will the public realise that being ‘saved to death’ is not the answer?
Rage Against the Machine? You bet! The Government machine is literally butchering our people in plain sight while calmly, reasonably, and totally psychotically telling us that they are ‘saving’ us from covid.
When will our people wake up? Will they ever? Perhaps they deserve this?..
Absolutely, Arnie. Posted this from CPS website before:
Terrorism is the use or threat of action, both in and outside of the UK, designed to influence any international government organisation or to intimidate the public. It must also be for the purpose of advancing a political, religious, racial or ideological cause.
Examples include:
Totally on the money Sam. I’ve woken up angry today (as you can probably tell!). I’ve had enough. Time to take the fight back to the bad guys. My MP is next in line for some verbiage…
“I’ve woken up angry today”
Join the club. Better than days waking up in despair.
I reckon Sam’s extraction of this :
“creating a serious risk to the health or safety of the public or a section of the public”
… is right on the money as a definition of what the Spivs are doing.
“‘saved to death’ “
Good phrase, Arnie
Boris Johnson is a monster.
So is his sidekick Matt Hancock.
They act as if this is a zero-sum game saving us from dying from covid.
They actively sidestep parliamentary scrutiny to implement their deadly dictats.
This means that they are totally responsible for what is happening.
In my opinion they are murderers.
500 people a day dying from cancer.
180 from heart problems.
20 a day from suicide (up 100% this year, so far…)
Oh and 3 a day WITH not of covid.
I thought Blair, Cameron & May were bad, they were!! But Boris is a fucking MONSTER without a conscience.
this will go down in history as a massive own-goal. millions will die due to lockdowns. they will have to invent new maths to calculate the QALYs lost. Ground zero is Imperial College
‘Ground zero’ conjures up an image of a totally flattened & annihilated building. Not normally a nice thought in any way but strangely warming when it comes to Imperial College…
Imperial College needs replacing with a Peace Garden
Agreed. It’s as clear as anything that many elderly have effectively been cullled. And it continues- no proper healthcare, still isolation in care homes etc. Next it won’t be the elderly, and so on. I can’t believe that so many are so deluded and blind that they think all this nonsense is about protecting health. Trials for murder, crimes against humanity?
the UN are the problem, Trump is trying to fight his way out of what they are doing to the US, maybe Boris is treading water until he jumps in to follow.
Getting sentimental about Trump (= ‘Fart’) is no answer. He only seems less of an arsehole because others are bigger.
Is Carl Heneghan in front of a committee today? Is it televised or are there updates anywhere?
Yes at 2.30 I think. Schedule and option to watch is on Parliament TV.
https://www.parliamentlive.tv/Commons
thanks – i followed link and got tnhis https://parliamentlive.tv/Event/Index/52ee1eec-a2bf-403d-a27d-7bba077ebfcc which is link to the science and technology committee
That’s the one, they’ve been interrogating Ferguson, Vallance, Whitty et al since March.
“Ferguson, Vallance, Whitty et al”
as representatives of the Pharmaceutical Industry?
This disaster cannot be allowed to continue, enough is enough
Chris Whitty advising the government to have a two week lockdown. That’s how the last one started.
“It’s just two weeks to flatten the curve” yeah, we’ve all heard that shit before!
Ye 3 weeks last time turned in to 4 months
Health minister Edward Argar tells Sky News that the prime minister “doesn’t want to see another national lockdown”.https://news.sky.com/story/coronavirus-government-dismisses-claims-of-fresh-two-week-national-lockdown-12073792
Saying you don’t want to see one and that you’re not going to do one because it’s the wrong thing to do are two different things. I think what the PM is getting at is “please follow the rules so we don’t have to have one” so that when there is one it’s our fault. And also to appear like he’s on our side. He may not be overly competent, but I think he’s fairly good at manipulating people.
Why doesn’t one of those useless “journalists” ask Whitty “Well Mr Whitty let’s say we have a 2 week lockdown, and let’s concede it ‘works’, how do we then come out of it? Won’t things just go back to how they were?”. The only rational bases for lockdowns are 1) Give time to get critical care provision ready – already done or 2) To give you time to develop treatments/vaccines – takes too long, you can’t lock down properly for years. Ferguson said we’d need constant cycles of lockdown and open up until there was a vaccine.
You put it well – with surgical precision.
I was merely posting it to inform others of a Minister’s comment. Of course they could go ahead with it. Indeed it was on the cards when they opted for the Ferguson suppression plan.
It’s fascinating how the self-preening journos never ask the obvious question of Witless :
” What the f. are you for, given that you’ve got everything wrong?”
‘Whitty’ = Witless.
What a cupid Stunt!
it was hard work listening to the Today programme on R4 this morning. Lots of nonsense surrounding the new lock downs. Still worth wading through to hear the Carl Heneghan interview. Not sure whether to recommend just listening to the interview or listen to that and the other stuff to provide a context
Robinson started and ended with the other guy interviewed, a modeller so no more needs saying there. A member of Billy’s bought gang. Carl’s chance was very limited but he did get the main point off regarding the necessity of obtaining asymptomatic and symptomatic test results.
A very BBC interview involving a CCP Virus sceptic, let the Billy boy or girl dominate the interview.
Do you mean Billy Goat as they keep butting in?
only when they are from the wrong side, Andrew Marr is notorious for butting in all the time unless the interviewee is from the right side in which case they can spout off without any interruption .
I think they call this the BBC method
At what time was Mr Heneghan interviewed? – I can use the iPlayer to listen to him. Much thanks, Ned
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m000mk1y at 1:35
Thank you Kf99.
Serious question.
Are WE all wrong.
Have we picked the wrong side?
Is this really more serious than anyone of us appreciate?
whatever side Sweden is on is the correct one
I’ve actually questioned my sanity this week and whether I need to get some help to feel as comfortable with the plan as the majority of the public do.
I don’t think many people are happy with it. No-one I’ve spoken to is
I was thinking of the 72% or whatever in the poll about stricter lockdowns. I don’t think happy is the correct word, which is why I said comfortable. What I mean is, it seems most people believe in what they are told to do and that makes it easier. If I could train myself to believe it too, I would probably have a much easier time complying.
The polls are lies, propaganda to influence public opinion.
There is no honesty in this, we have got to accept that we are in a totalitarian society. You will not hear any truth now.
Then where are the deaths?
In 5 years time everybody will be claiming that they were lockdown sceptics.
exactly. part of the reason I write to my MP incessantly. When the hangings start, I will have an alibi!
Yes. They were no appeasers after March 1939.
and everybody in France was in the resistance
No and No.
We’re on the right side.
there is no actual strong evidence that covid-19 exists in the population anymore. I’m sure it does, but the % of positives out of the tests is towards the lower end of the governments own estimates for false positives. The precautionary principle would say back to normal until rates/hospital admissions/deaths are far higher than what false positives would imply.
New report claims 1.4 million children under 5 could die a year because of lockdowns. I know which side I am on and I am happy with it and know it will be proved right
NO
It’s pretty hard to see how as we have now seen the virus run through whole countries pretty much unhindered with nothing like the claimed death rate. But none of this changes the fundamental fact that all lockdowns do is massive collateral damage and delay the inevitable. Whatever the death rate is there isn’t much option but to take it on the chin.
And yet the “in” expert Ferguson, still claims his model is correct – while never declaring his financial interest in the whole matter.
Wrong in what sense? What this comes down to for me is that human life cannot be about nothing but delaying death for as long as possible. I believe that democracy is the least worst form of government and worth preserving. We are at risk of losing the things that make us human and allow us a degree of personal freedom – even a genuine second wave would not convince me that is a price worth paying.
The fact is that there is a trade-off. We have protected (maybe) the vulnerable and old that have co-morbidities and (maybe) managed to extend their lives.
On the other hand, restrictions (including a full lockdown) have caused:
Without a doubt the cure is worse than the disease. This is a massive case of government failure (ie: intervention by government which causes more damage than had they not).
Last, but not least, I don’t think humans have the power to stop the virus – there is a false sense of control by government (and others).
No…It’s not and No we are not wrong…Next
The only way to answer that is to look at the evidence and make up your own mind.
For me, this guy answered the question on 06 Feb
‘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… Read more »
My question would be – what constitutes ‘being wrong’? I.e. what would be the data required to confirm that a second wave had occurred? For me, I’d perhaps say at least a 7 day average for deaths over 100 and a total number of deaths of 5000 plus by March 2021? But whatever, if we are going to be ‘scientific’ – on both sides of the argument – we need a falsifiable hypothesis.
I would need to see a second wave of excess deaths ‘significantly’ above flu + normal excess winter mortality
Good to keep questioning though – defending your own ideas against the evidence is what the pro lockdowners do.
Keep in touch with the evidence and be prepared to adapt if it changes. It does seem that the cough has had its day… (barring a reasonable increase of icu demand and deaths related to covid19 competing with influenza and all the other nasties to help the extremely sick and frail to pass)
On 3 August the World Economic Forum suggested that “The COVID-19 pandemic will likely end up costing between $8.1 and $15.8 trillion globally.” The IMF suggested on 24 June that it would cost $12 trillion. By that, I assume they mean the cost of the response to the pandemic.
One then needs to think about the opportunity cost of that expenditure: what benefits did we forego by diverting that $8.1 to $15.8 trillion to the pandemic response?
for that money we could have cured cancer and had cities on Mars and the Moon
and I hear people saying ‘if we let people die, that will affect economies’. which is clearly untrue. even at 0.9% IFR (Ferguson et al), letting it rip would cost less than a trillion (world GDP 80 trillion) and even less when you consider the deaths are rarely of working age
For us to be proved wrong, you would have to 1) prove that lockdown actually saved lives (which you can’t do) and 2) demonstrate that the value of those lives saved actually exceeds all of the money spent, all of the economic destruction, all of the lives lost as a direct result of the response and all of the lives shortened by the knock on effects of all the above. Not to mention the less quantifiable impacts on quality of life, social cohesion and culture (and so on). Which you can’t do either.
https://www.stroudnewsandjournal.co.uk/news/national/18724955.huge-queues-lorries-dover-operation-stack-activated
Newsreader on the wireless just announced that lockdowns are imminent for Geordies. Talk of extra measures including curfews. The endgame approaches. Only shoot to kill policy for curfew breakers and Johnson will have gone full Nazi.
they seem to be going more extereme than even neils fergusons paper. he at least allowed infections to rise significantly before each new lockdown
Power is its own justification for our current Government.
50 parents at school everyday for drop off and pick up. only 2 wearing masks. most people seem to think its a load of bollox
Went to our local Turkish restaurant last night. No booking, no track and trace details asked for, no masks, waiting staff getting normally close to us to take plates, pour us beers, no gloves on. 100% normal. I think there’s a class and ethnic divide here. Us comfortably middle class British people (I am talking about myself really) have somewhat changed what we think of as “living” and now prioritise safety over fun, and get our fun in increasingly isolated, controlled ways, ways that are more compatible with lockdowns. I am generalising here, but I think cultural shifts have facilitated compliance.
in my experience its seems if you read the guardian and/or have a cushy public sector desk job then you are a lockdown fanatic
My daughter’s school varies widely. Today, some of the people that were wearing them yesterday weren’t, and vice versa. About as logical as this entire business!
I feel for you and I’m angry that this is happening. I echo the other advice given here – just take each day as it comes and do your bit with resisting this madness. The only thing we can do now is hope and pray that people will come to their senses and that our numbers grow.
What angers or bothers me the most is that, as a so called civilised democracy, we were supposed to have the checks and balances in place to prevent the situation we find ourselves in now, that is a goverment on authoritarian steroids, but all seem to have failed – parliament, the legal system, journalism ( essential to a democracy, to challenge a wayward government) respect for our Bill of Rights, the convoluted Human Rights Act, (which has safely preserved the rights of many criminals in the past), the Queen and the wit of many of the British people. Europe had had its despots in the past, but the UK, has always managed to stay the course on the road of civility – I refer to the last 2 or 3 centuries.
However, I did say ‘seem’ as I feel the tide is turning, and I trust that our ancient desire for freedom, for the majority of us, will make us push back – I think that at the moment many are still at the rabbit in the headlights stage, the surely our goverment would not do this logic, but the more irrational draconian moves they make, the realisation will dawn.
Like a bleedin zoo this morning with all the talk of camels.
I am picturing camels wearing sombreros
How I see this whole situation ending, courtesy of Harrison Ford.
Everyone must make a stand.
It’s over! Enough!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c5hr-SHJGyM
I was thinking about coups. We don’t ‘do’ coups in this country but I remember hearing once that in the darkest days of the 1970s (three-day working week etc.) the Army came quite close to an intervention. Are we getting to that point? Or would it require a lack of popular support for the measures (we’re not there yet) before such a thing were considered?
We have had a coup.most people just don’t realise it
You do have to wonder… Just seen Simon Dolan’s Twitter and apparently his case has been postponed for a month, because – get this – ONE of the government’s legal team is on holiday.
I am LIVID, so can only imagine how he feels…
I doubt this is the real reason – more likely they want to get the extension of the coronavirus laws through Parliament before the case… Or something like that anyway…
Here’s the link.
https://www.crowdjustice.com/case/lockdownlegalchallenge/?utm_source=sendinblue&utm_campaign=Update24092078onJointheLegalChallengetotheUKGovtLockdownSeptember172020&utm_medium=email
It is infuriating, but I think the Fascists are scared of Simon, I really do.
A time of national emergency, and the Government legal team is on holiday. Tells you all you need to know.
Another email to Geoffrey Cox coming up this morning.
Why Geoffrey Cox? he’s not Attorney General any more – it is Suella Braverman…
Yes, but he’s my MP (should have made clear), and only your own MP is required to deal with your correspondence. As a former AG he is well qualified to comment on this.
Despite everything, I’m sure Cox isn’t a stupid man. Ms Braveman, however, inspires no confidence.
Shame they weren’t on holiday when Gina Miller had her Brexit case.Anyone remember the haste in which that was seen
The dishonesty here is now naked for all to see.
Of course they are.Lord Sumption has raised the possibility that they are acting illegally by using the 1984 public heath act rather than the enabling act because there is more Parliamentary scrutiny built into the enabling act.
No right of assembly.Media in total support of government policy.House arrests and curfews.Ministers ruling by decree announced on social media.Parliament not sitting.Army used against the population.
No legal redress.
Right to travel abroad severely curtailed.
The social media announcements late in the evenings, of restrictions to come in force the following day, is one of the things that annoys me the most.
Not sure how Hancock has got away with this one, as he has already been rebuked by Sir Lindsay Hoyle for not telling Parliament of new restrictions first. Will be interesting to see if Sir Lindsay now does as he said he would, ie tabling an Urgent Question and thereby summoning Hancock to the House of Commons to answer…
Maybe the opposition will come from the speaker.Keir Starmer just wants more of the same
Empty words of fake outrage…Hanckock now runs the country…Boris is just a puppet.I give it a week before we have a full curfew across the country, no mixing of households, no freedom of assembly, covid Marshals everywhere..To think I fought of this country and this is what I get…My mood goes from about to explode with anger to suicidal.The fact that I suffer with Complex PTSD is not helping the matter either..
Surely, this needs to be challenged. The legal team were aware of the dates, and so any absences are to their loss.
Yes, and the person on holiday is one of ELEVEN so what’s the point of a team of eleven if the other 10 can’t pick up when one is unavailable.
I expect come October one of them will get a cough.
It looks like a coup has already taken place and the military is involved.
depends what you define as the darkest days of the 1970’s. The 3 day week, power cuts occurred under the Heath govt 70-74. Once Harold Wilson became PM again there were rumours of an army coup to remove him mainly due to rumours of him being too close to Moscow. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2006/mar/15/comment.labour1
Ah interesting, but I like the narrative of the country going to the dogs and a higher power needing to intervene. Right now, anything’s better than The Madness, even the Russians are preferable…
probably end up with a coup like they had in Zimbabwe a couple of years ago ie no difference
The Russians? I don’t think so.
Chris Mullen – an MP from the days when MPs actually had intelligence used this as the plot for a book “A very British Coup” (subsequently a tv series)
https://youtu.be/lXVY6rpwtfA
Pity the AB of C isn’t speaking out like this guy.
It’s all gonna be fine. There won’t be a forced vaccine because there won’t be a vaccine, the economy can’t sustain any more inactivity so we’ll have to get moving again and Sweden and others are back up and running. We’ll be the same again soon.
They’ve achieved what they wanted. They’ve download a legal surveillance system into the operating system of smart phones. Ironic isn’t it to call it a Smart Phone when it’s the dumbest thing you could ever have in your pocket. A nuclear powered radiation device that monitors your every word and tracks your every movement. The government now has the legal right to monitor you forever. Dump these things in the sea and get off the grid, or don’t, and be spied on. Use Cash, avoid Doctors as much as you can; don’t take almost any of their “medicine” and live like we used to before this modern dystopia of bullshit. Nothing about this modern world of phone holding Droogs is fun. The food is full of chemicals, don’t eat food with an “ingredients” list with words you can’t pronounce, exercise everyday and forget yourself and have a good time. And remember God wants you… Read more »
Good advice
Most people don’t take their own advice never mind anyone else’s but i try my best to ride my own road. In all my life this has been the worst year ever. Two friends dead, my mother on the way out (probably won’t see Christmas so i’ll have an extra seat at the table of 6) and this virus nonsense. The masks sent me into a spiral of depression i’m only now in the last few days emerging from. Off course i’ll never wear a mask or do anything they tell me i need do. I won’t cooperate with the state in any way whatsoever. I despise the state and all the things it does, i despise those who work for it without exception, even the good people like “lollipop ladies”. I wish only to be left alone to live my one and only life in this universe any way i see fit with one proviso, do no harm to others. Something it seems very few people are willing to do. Most can’t even conceive of such an attitude. Almost everyone thinks we need a state to do this, that and the next thing and because of that we now… Read more »
Well said Biker. Live your life the way you want you won’t get a second one!
Stand firm, Biker. Stand alongside us.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xhYJS80MgYA
I used to laugh at this, thinking it was a little absurd.
Not any more.
Sorry to hear about your Mother Biker. I hope she makes Christmas. I know what it’s like to be in that position. Makes you understand that every day is for living, not cowering away – and even worse attempting to coerce other people to cower away, all the while dressing it up as moral rectitude. Those people make me sick.
I have a sort of phobia against masks. I know it’s wrong of me, but I’m starting to detest, or at least regard with disdain, the people who wear them – i.e. just about everyone. That’s just one more of the insidious effects of this shitshow.
Been listening to Complete Control by the Clash again.
‘This is Joe Public speaking – I’m controlled in the body, I’m controlled in the mind.’
And the four bare loudspeakers on the cover – tells us where we are today.
Great advice, already have most of those in place. I always viewed the phone as a tracking device for the Mrs. Now it is the state for non criminals. Yes mine went in the Trent.
… mine went in the Trent
Love it! Sceptic of the Day.
Will goggles be the next imposition by the crazed lunatic formerly known as Hancock?
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-8739863/People-wear-eyeglasses-FIVE-TIMES-likely-diagnosed-COVID-19-general-public.html
It’s the same as “people who wear glasses earn more money”.
But only because more old people wear glasses and older people tend to earn more money by way of career progression
And really old people don’t wear glasses because they can’t afford them, trying to eke out an existence on a basic state pension.
Correlation is not causation.
I am not arguing that this ‘research ‘ has any value but to be fair they have made the step of proposing a testable mechanism. It would also go some way to explaining why rates of flu infection are not lower where masks are habitually worn.
Fauci suggested this a few months ago ,that transmission of the virus can go through the eyes.
I think there is good reason to believe that viruses can enter through the eyes. That is why it is a good idea to avoid rubbing your eyes which can reduce the chance of catching the common cold.
https://www.webmd.com/lung/news/20200526/can-you-catch-covid19-through-your-eyes
Just waiting for another ‘law’ calling for mandatory blindfolds in shops and on public transport. Nothing would surprise me anymore.
The WWI PH helmet perhaps? See link for pictures, it is really creepy
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/PH_helmet
There are a lot of nutters writing for the DM, in the early days of this madness, they said that smoking helped to ward off covid!!
Not so nutty, French medical researchers found that smokers lungs were protected from the virus.
What about contact lenses, I wonder? Am I magically protected, too?
Or is it a case of ‘two eyes bad, four eyes good’?
PS. Covid makes fewer passes
At folk that wear glasses.
Contact lens would most probably increase your chances of infection, as you have a foreign body in your eye which is breaching your body’s defence barriers.
I bet there is no correlation with c-lens though!
This is rubbish, downright lies!
Good morning everyone
I can only take 50% GOOD and 50% BAM today! Out for the day so that will be GOOD. Will check in this evening to check on the BAM – GOOD barometer.
this seems to go some way to explaining the madness https://americanpolicy.org/2020/08/26/global-poverty-act-is-back-is-bill-gates-the-worlds-richest-useful-idiot-2/
Someone in authority on Radio 4 this morning. Apparently the wrong people are going for tests. As it’s only 2% testing positive, that means 98% didn’t need the test. You should only go for a test if you definitely have Covid symptoms and not a cold.
But then what is the point of the test?? There’s no different treatment available, depending on the virus. Is anyone suggesting that, with a fever and a cough, if you test positive you need to isolate but if it’s negative you can go back to school? What is the point??
Yes, exactly that. If you test positive then you are expected to isolate for 2 weeks and so are your close contacts. Makes perfect sense for a universally life-threatening virus diagnosed with a reliable test. It’s a great response to an entirely different situation to the one we are actually in. The government have a limited number of ‘solutions’ available so must shape the ‘problem’ to fit and keep the narrative alive.
This trying to put asymptomatic people off tests sounds like the government are aware of the risks of false positives but (yet again) have their own unique (not honest) way of going about fixing things.
I wish I could believe they wanted to fix anything
I guess the point of tests is to monitor the progress of the virus, see if it increases significantly, and if it does then you have time to prepare your response (critical care, lockdowns). That presupposes that the virus is exceptional enough to warrant this, as we don’t do it for flu.
Morning all, just a reminder to listen to our last episode of ‘The Real Normal’
It’s all about context…
Check it out following the link below:
https://therealnormalpodcast.buzzsprout.com/
Episode 7 is out today/tomorrow!
Have Parliament and the media all been issued with D notices, too quiet about the real reason, which cannot be covid as the hospitalisations are no where near a bad flu year
Yep I am pretty sure something like this has been done.
Asked this back at the beginning of August when it started becoming noticeable that certain quotes and the way the legislation was introduced in Feb 2020 did not make sense and these that blew the complete scenario out of the water were not mentioned anywhere in MSM.
Creeping Curfew coming your way.
Pubs to close 10pm for 2 million in the North East.
Project endless misery must continue
Cryptoreligious miserablism as a means of showing the proles who’s boss.
As difficult for publicans to defy as it is for Bojo to justify – but that doesn’t matter to Bojo, and that’s the point.
.
It’s coming for the 6-8m in London of which I am one. I will be protesting
Yeah. It’s funny. There was a feeling in the air in that week just before lockdown was imposed. You just knew what they were going to do the afternoon before they did it (maybe it was just me, but I don’t think so). I’m getting the same feeling now.
I had the same feeling-odd when you consider I have never experienced a lockdown before in my life. Bear in mind there was advice in the previous week to avoid pubs and restaurants which sort of induced the mood of the inevitable.
Right now I’m getting the same feeling with one difference-if they impose a pub shut down at 10 it won’t make much difference where I am as by 10 most people have gone home.
Horray for Gallagher, saw the miserable old b___ Geldof slinking around town with just his eyes showing.
His video was taken off YouTube (BG) – anyone know how to find it? A thought – young people generally like a counter culture- will they choose LS as the new ‘woke’? My 19 year old daughter sent me a Don’t Be A Grass meme that’s doing the rounds on young social media ( her words!)
Oops NG’s podcast video
https://www.zerohedge.com/medical/nashville-authorities-concealed-evidence-hardly-any-covid-19-cases-contracted-bars-and
More lies ..
That bit is probably true bars restaurants general socialising are not big sources of the infection. Hospitals and care homes are but obviously that must be kept secret as the justification for project Endless Misery would be gone.
Yes – was a poor comment – meant to say more covers up etc ! I agree with the point around bars and restaurants
Your list fits perfectly with the Nazi demand fir a proof that you had no Jewish blood!