15,841 Cases Added to Sunday’s Daily Total Due to Technical Glitch
Even hard core sceptics might have experienced a tremor of doubt yesterday on seeing the daily total of new cases: 22,961. Is Witless and Unbalanced’s graph of doom going to turn out to be accurate? Er, no. The reason Sunday’s figure were so high is because 15,841 additional cases were added to the “daily” total, which, without them, would have been 7,120, which is almost exactly what they were seven days ago on September 29th (7,143).
So where did these extra 15,841 cases come from? Apparently, they are positives spread out over a seven-day period between September 25th and October 2nd but which were omitted from the daily totals due to a technical glitch. The Guardian has more.
Boris Johnson said earlier on Sunday that there was “a failure in the counting system which has now been rectified”. He told BBC One’s Andrew Marr Show it was a “computing issue” and all those who had a positive test had been notified.
While PHE said the technical issue did not affect people getting their test results, Test and Trace and PHE joint medical advisor Susan Hopkins, has said it resulted in a delay in cases being passed into the contact tracing system.
“All outstanding cases were immediately transferred to the contact tracing system by 1am on 3 October and a thorough public health risk assessment was undertaken to ensure outstanding cases were prioritised for contact tracing effectively.”
Michael Brodie, the interim chief executive at Public Health England, said the “technical issue” was identified overnight on Friday 2 October in the data load process that transfers COVID-19 positive lab results into reporting dashboards.
“After rapid investigation, we have identified that 15,841 cases between September 25th and October 2nd were not included in the reported daily COVID-19 cases. The majority of these cases occurred in most recent days. Every one of these cases received their Covid-19 test result as normal and all those who tested positive were advised to self-isolate. NHS Test and Trace and PHE have worked to quickly resolve the issue and transferred all outstanding cases immediately into the NHS Test and Trace contact tracing system.”
Just when you think you this Government’s handling of the crisis could not get any worse, Matt Hancock says, “Hold my beer.”
Stop Press: Robert Peston in the Spectator this morning has more on the cock-up:
The reason for the confidence-destroying lag was a glitch in two of Public Health England’s ‘legacy’ computer systems, which meant that data was not being transmitted properly. Or at least that is what a senior official tells me. The glitch has apparently now been fixed. But confusion has been sown and damage done.
Stop Reality: Lord Bethell, a Health Minister, has told the Conservative Party Conference that Britain will look back on the Government’s handling of the coronavirus crisis “with pride” and compared it to the 2012 London Olympics.
“Inhumane, degrading, inexplicable” – Amnesty International’s Verdict on Government’s Care Homes Policy
The Mail on Sunday ran a story yesterday about an Amnesty International report on the disastrous impact of the UK Government’s management of the coronavirus crisis on care homes. It could not be more damning.
It is an excoriating verdict that will, undoubtedly, give voice to the rage and anguish of thousands of families: the Government’s pandemic policies violated the fundamental human rights of vulnerable older people in care, a major report has concluded.
“Inexplicable” decisions were made that were “heedless at best”.
The measures exposed elderly residents to the virus and then, crucially, blocked them from receiving life-saving medical care. And ultimately this led to tens of thousands of deaths, according to the Amnesty International analysis, shared exclusively with the Mail on Sunday, ahead of publication.
The report will show, starkly, that Ministers “knew from the outset” that COVID-19 posed an exceptional danger to the 400,000 residents of UK care homes, many of whom are frail and live with multiple health conditions. But while claiming time and again that the need to protect them was at the very heart of policy, what actually happened was quite the opposite.
Homes were “overwhelmed” by infections and older people were subjected to “inhuman and degrading” treatment. The review paints the Government as “directly responsible” and lays bare a litany of failures and sinister edicts that resulted in tragedy.
The piece is worth reading in full.
One of the most interesting details in the report is that of the roughly 28,186 excess deaths recorded in care homes from March 2nd to June 12th, 18,562 were attributed to COVID-19, while the remaining 9,624 made no mention of “novel coronavirus” on the death certificate. Amnesty International says some of these deaths will have been due to undiagnosed Covid, but others will have been an indirect result of the Government’s attempts to “protect the NHS”.
The exact causes have not been revealed – yet figures show vastly fewer patients being treated for heart attacks, cancer, strokes and diabetes since the pandemic began. Dementia deaths – unrelated to Covid – have also surged by more than 50%.
Could this be ‘collateral damage’ of the decision to divert all resources and attention to tackling the virus?
As this newspaper has reported over the past five weeks, while pandemic restrictions eased across the UK, care homes remained in lockdown – barring families from being with their loved ones. It means many residents have been effectively isolated for almost eight months now. Hundreds of families have written to us, almost all telling harrowing tales of watching a husband, wife or parent slowly waste away and “give up” – starved of any human contact.
Amnesty International has had similar reports – and recognises the devastating impact on health of prolonged isolation, which has been well documented in medical literature. They attempted to collaborate with the Government, NHS England and Public Health England on their report, requesting information that has, thus far, remained hidden.
This includes details about how and why decisions were made to restrict care home residents’ access to NHS services during the pandemic and implement blanket “do not resuscitate” orders.
Importantly, they also asked for data in order to compare the death rates of older people in hospital with those in care homes.
This would give clearer pictures as to how many – had they been allowed treatment – might have survived. But at time of going to press, the official bodies had failed to provide any of this.
Amnesty concludes by calling for an independent public inquiry to begin ASAP, with legal powers to compel officials to produce documents and records that, to date, they’ve kept secret. Ministers, including Matt Hancock, would also be summoned to give evidence under oath and forced to justify their actions.
Excellent suggestion. You can read a summary of Amnesty’s report here and the full version here.
Dishy Rishi May Be Our Best Hope
Rishi Sunak has given an interview to Harry Cole and Matt Dathan in the Sun, confirming his reputation as the most sceptical member of the Cabinet when it comes to the lockdown.
[T]he Chancellor warned his boss, friend and neighbour he was not a robot and he would not be silenced in the fight against future economy-crippling lockdowns.He said that the response to the virus must be viewed in the round and not merely on case numbers.
And he warned that a further lockdown would cripple not just the economy but society, too.
Cementing his position as the leading hawk in the Cabinet against tougher clampdowns, Mr Sunak pleaded for ministers to strive for a return to normality in the face of the virus.
And with Mr Johnson warning of a “bumpy road ahead” through to the New Year, Mr Sunak sounded caution at extreme measures for the sake of the long-term future of the country.
He continued: “Lockdowns obviously have a very strong economic impact, but they have an impact on many other things.
“We have to look at this all in the round and beating coronavirus is important and minimising the harm that it causes is important.
“But there are other things that are important. Kids not being in school for months… if university students’ learning is impacted that’s not a good thing.
“People not showing up for medical appointments because they’re worried is not a good thing.
“And obviously the economic impact on people’s jobs and incomes and security is not a good thing.
“Having a difficult economy has an impact on both our ability to fund public services like the NHS but also on individual people’s long-term health outcomes.”
Worth reading in full.
Stop Press: Let’s hope Rishi’s backbone doesn’t weaken as Government documents leaked to the Guardian reveal that a new three-tier lockdown system is being planned for England, paving the way for harsher restrictions including the closure of pubs and a ban on all social contact outside of household groups.
Called the “COVID-19 Proposed Social Distancing Framework” and dated September 30th, it has not yet been signed off by No 10 and measures could still be watered down.
Alert level 3 – the most serious – contains tougher measures than any seen so far in local lockdowns since the start of the pandemic. They include:
– Closure of hospitality and leisure businesses.
– No social contact outside your household in any setting.
– Restrictions on overnight stays away from home.
– No organised non-professional sports permitted or other communal hobby groups and activities, such as social clubs in community centres.
– Places of worship can remain open.
– Schools are not mentioned in the draft. A government source said this was because Boris Johnson had made clear that classroom closures would be a last resort and the reopening of schools was considered within Whitehall to have been a relative success.Any attempts to impose more stringent measures are expected to provoke renewed anger among Conservative backbenchers, who are likely to demand a vote in parliament should they come into force.
Worth reading in full.
Prof Ferguson Even More Alarmist Than I Thought
A reader has written to clarify some things about Professor Neil Ferguson’s previous barmy predictions. It seems I understated his alarmism.
You wrote:
“Worth reminding people again that Professor Ferguson’s estimates of the impact of previous viral outbreaks have been almost comically inaccurate. In 2001, he predicted that foot and mouth disease could kill up to 50,000 people. It ended up killing less than 200. In 2005, he told the Guardian that up to 200 million people could die from bird flu. The final death toll from avian flu strain A/H5N1 was 440. And in 2009, a Government estimate based on one of Ferguson’s models estimated the likely death toll from swine flu at 65,000. In fact, it was 457.”
Correction:
In 2001, Ferguson was involved in “modelling” for Foot and Mouth disease. Because of that some extra seven million sheep and cattle were slaughtered that needn’t have been.
In 2002, Ferguson predicted that up to 50,000 people would die from variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, better known as “mad cow disease”, increasing to 150,000 if the epidemic expanded to include sheep. The reality is: “Since 1990, 178 people in the United Kingdom have died from vCJD, according to the National CJD Research & Surveillance Unit at the University of Edinburgh.” (2017)
In 2005, Ferguson claimed that up to 200 million people would be killed by bird-flu or H5N1. By early 2006, the WHO had only linked 78 deaths to the virus, out of 147 reported cases.
In 2009, Ferguson and his team at Imperial College advised the Government that swine flu or H1N1 would probably kill 65,000 people in the UK. In the end, swine flu claimed the lives of 457 people in the UK.
In 2020… well, the rest is hysteria.
If Lockdowns, Masks and Social Distancing Work, Why Haven’t Deaths From Flu and Pneumonia Declined?
A reader took a screen grab of the above ONS chart in the most recent episode of Andrew Neil’s show on Spectator TV comparing deaths from flu and pneumonia in 2020 with the five-year average. They were fractionally below at the beginning of the year and they’re fractionally below now, but have tracked the five-year average pretty consistently since January 1st. This begs the question: if the Government’s non-pharmaceutical interventions did little to stop transmission of flu and pneumonia, why should we think they’ve done anything to prevent the transmission of SARS-CoV-2?
The same point is illustrated by this graph, taken from a September 29th post on the Centre For Evidence-Based Medicine’s blog. It shows respiratory disease deaths continuing to trend under the previous 10 years.
Stop Press: A reader has calculated the daily hospital discharges of Covid patients and compiled a chart to illustrate this. There’s a caveat:
It’s not perfect, I had to take the deaths data from NHS England as the coronavirus.data.gov.uk deaths include deaths outside hospitals, and even then the results jumped around a bit – hence I’ve only plotted the 7-day averages on the graph, to smooth this out a bit.
But as I often see people saying why don’t the govt publish the recoveries figures, this might be the next best thing. Especially as on every single day I have data for, the average discharges figure has always been above the average deaths figure – in the current “second wave” you’re 6x as likely to be discharged as you are to die in hospital!
Lockdowns Had Little Effect on COVID-19 Spread in US States
There’s an interesting, if unsurprising, piece of statistical analysis in the National Review that concludes the “shut downs” in US states had no effect on transmission of the virus. Here’s the kernel of the argument.
If lockdowns really altered the course of this pandemic, then coronavirus case counts should have clearly dropped whenever and wherever lockdowns took place. The effect should have been obvious, though with a time lag. It takes time for new coronavirus infections to be officially counted, so we would expect the numbers to plummet as soon as the waiting time was over.
How long? New infections should drop on day one and be noticed about ten or eleven days from the beginning of the lockdown. By day six, the number of people with first symptoms of infection should plummet (six days is the average time for symptoms to appear). By day nine or ten, far fewer people would be heading to doctors with worsening symptoms. If COVID-19 tests were performed right away, we would expect the positives to drop clearly on day ten or eleven (assuming quick turnarounds on tests).
To judge from the evidence, the answer is clear: Mandated lockdowns had little effect on the spread of the coronavirus. The charts below show the daily case curves for the United States as a whole and for thirteen U.S. states. As in almost every country, we consistently see a steep climb as the virus spreads, followed by a transition (marked by the gray circles) to a flatter curve. At some point, the curves always slope downward, though this wasn’t obvious for all states until the summer.
The lockdowns can’t be the cause of these transitions. In the first place, the transition happened even in places without lockdown orders (see Iowa and Arkansas). And where there were lockdowns, the transitions tended to occur well before the lockdowns could have had any serious effect. The only possible exceptions are California, which on March 19 became the first state to officially lock down, and Connecticut, which followed four days later.
Even in these places, though, the downward transitions probably started before the lockdowns could have altered the curves. The reason is that a one-day turnaround for COVID-19 test results probably wasn’t met in either state. On March 30, the Los Angeles Times reported the turnaround time to be eight days. That would make the delay from infection to confirmation not the 10 we assumed, but more like 17 days (6 for symptoms to appear, 3 for them to develop, and 8 for test processing). In early April, the Hartford Courant reported similar problems with delayed test results in Connecticut.
What’s more, there’s no decisive drop on the dates when lockdowns should have changed the course of the curves. Instead, the curves gradually bend downward for reasons that predate the lockdowns, with no clear changes ten days later.
Lockdown partisans might say that the curves would have been higher after the ten-day mark without the lockdown. While we can’t redo history to prove them wrong, the point is that the sudden and dramatic changes we should see if they were right aren’t there. If we showed people these curves without any markings, they would not be able to discern when or even if lockdowns went into effect.
The conclusion:
The evidence suggests, then, that the sweeping, mandated lockdowns that followed voluntary responses exacted a great cost, with little effect on transmission.
Worth reading in full.
Stop Press: The WHO has just released data showing the last three pandemics were worse than the present one. Jim Hoft has the full story in the Gateway Pundit. Bottom line: The WHO estimates that 750,000,000 people have had the coronavirus. With one million global deaths, that puts the mortality rate at 0.13%, the same as seasonal flu.
Downing Street Cancels Halloween
Downing Street has threatened to fine parents of trick-or-treating children if they gather in groups of more than six. The Evening Standard has more.
A spokesman for the Prime Minister told a briefing of Westminster journalists that the rule of six was “clear” and that it applied to children as well as adults.
He also said they were asking children not to meet in groups of six or more when trick or treating. It means parents face fines of up to £200 if their children are caught in large groups going door-to-door on Halloween.
However, millions of people across the UK are already under – or coming under – tighter lockdown rules including bans on different households mixing.
Asked who would be fined if groups of more than six children met in the street, he said: “We’ve set out the enforcement around the restrictions. We set that out clearly.
“We are asking the public to abide by the rule of six and it’s a matter for the police to enforce the rules.
“It’s correct, parents will be fined if children meet in more than groups of six children.”
Once again, Boris sounds like he’s reading from a script written by his enemies. What happened to the fun-loving libertarian Tory I used to know? As Julie Burchill writes in the Telegraph: “It’s like Falstaff tried to become Henry V and ended up as Hamlet, bumbling about on the battlements, trying to keep everybody happy and thus getting on the wick of one and all.”
Round-Up
- “It’s Grim Up North” – Mine and James Delingpole’s latest London Calling podcast
- “Following the evidence for hospital admissions” – Piece for the Spectator by Carl Heneghan and Tom Jefferson putting rising hospital admissions into context
- “NPHET recommends Level 5 restrictions for entire country” – Ireland’s National Health Public Emergency Team has recommended that “Level 5” restrictions are imposed for four weeks, the most severe level there is, following 364 more cases yesterday (and no new deaths)
- “Dr Martin Feeley and Professor Samuel McConkey in studio” – Watch two Irish public health experts debate the effectiveness of the lockdown and further restrictions
- “More than 1,000 UK pubs plead for government help after dire Friday trading following 10pm curfew” – More than 1,000 UK pubs have signed an open letter to Rishi Sunak pleading for a rethink of the 10pm curfew
- “Planet Normal” – In the latest Telegraph podcast, Allison Pearson and Liam Halligan talk to a whistleblowing doctor about the revolving door between NHS executives and influential consulting and outsourcing firms who are doing very well out of the ‘crisis’
- “Military will help distribute Covid-19 vaccine, says Hancock” – Let’s hope the word “distribute” in that headline isn’t a euphemism
- “URGENT UPDATE: Societal Damage from Bad Science, not the Virus? Why are they doing this?” – Latest YouTube video by Ivor Cummins
- “Beat Covid Without a Vaccine” – The Wall St Journal says home testing and Covid passports could contain any further outbreaks
- “Corona False Alarm?” – Review of the new book by Dr Karina Reiss and Dr Sucharit Bakdi. You can order it on Kindle here
- “G-A-Y nightclub owner launches legal challenge against 10pm COVID-19 curfew” – Best of luck to him
- “Spectator Out Loud: Douglas Murray, Sam Leith, Melissa Kite and Toby Young” – Listen to me and others reading out our latest Spectator pieces
- “We can’t work from home forever” – Good piece by Kevin McCullagh in Spiked. Without face-to-face interactions, productivity, innovation and workplace culture will wither away
- “How To “Talk Covid” and the End of the Pandemic?” – Omar S. Khan’s latest blog post
- “Next year should spell new leader for the Tories” – Clare Foges in the Times says that every PM runs out of steam and for Boris that moment has almost arrived
- “Lockdown sceptic Richard Madeley: Covid-19 press conferences are ‘naked media manipulation’” – Another good rant from Richard Madeley on Kevin O’Sullivan’s show on TalkRADIO yesterday
- “COVID-19 emergency measures and the impending authoritarian pandemic” – Academic paper warning that the authoritarian measures introduced to control the spread of the virus could last for a long time
- “This BBC interview showed just how much Boris Johnson has changed” – Michael Deacon, the Telegraph‘s sketch writer, is unconvinced by Boris’s claim to be firing on all cylinders on the Andrew Marr Show yesterday
- “The greatest power we have is to refuse to vote for people who insult us – so save democracy and vote for my None Of The Below Party” – Peter Hitchens’s column in yesterday’s Mail on Sunday
- “Life as a Uni fresher in lockdown – it’s like living in ‘UK’s most expensive prison’” – Anonymous student writes in the Telegraph
- “A Saturday night out in Newcastle” – Encouraging signs of a rebellion brewing in the North East
- “Undetected breast cancer warning for thousands of women” – According to BBC News, 30,000 women missed out on mammograms between March and July
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 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.
Update: Some of you have asked how to link to particular stories on Lockdown Sceptics. The answer used to be to first click on “Latest News”, then click on the links that came up beside the headline of each story. But we’ve changed that so the link now comes up beside the headline whether you’ve clicked on “Latest News” or you’re just on the Lockdown Sceptics home page. Please do share the stories with your friends and on social media.
Woke Gobbledegook
We’ve decided to create a permanent slot down here for woke gobbledegook – and pay tribute to those who are doing their best to expose the woke cult as a barmy, authoritarian, hard Left movement with its roots in Marxism.
Yesterday brought news of an unlikely ally in this fight – actor Rupert Everett. He launched into a tirade against the wokesters at the Cheltenham Literary Festival yesterday, comparing them to the Stasi. The Mail has more.
Everett, 61, who found fame playing a gay public school pupil in the 1984 drama Another Country, said: “We’re in such a weird new world, a kind of Stasi it feels like to me, and if you don’t reflect exactly the right attitude, you risk everything just being destroyed for you by this judgmental, sanctimonious, intransigent, intractable, invisible cauldron of hags around in the virtual world.”
A useful reminder that not all luvvies have been captured by the cult. Could Everett be a potential recruit for Laurence Fox’s Reclaim Party?
Stop Press: Douglas Murray urges us to fight back against Critical Race Theory in his latest Telegraph column.
“Mask Exempt” Lanyards
We’ve created a one-stop shop 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 (takes a while to arrive). 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. And, finally, if you feel obliged to wear a mask but want to signal your disapproval of having to do so, you can get a “sexy world” mask with the Swedish flag on it 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.
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 reader has written to us praising her “amazing” grandson.
My amazing almost-12 year-old grandson is the only child who will not wear a mask at his new primary school, pleading exemption for his mild asthma! Hats off to him for his courage and conviction and I’m at least grateful that the school are allowing him to be exempt – although in the first two weeks of term they had four assemblies on the importance of mask-wearing!
Samaritans
If you are struggling to cope, please call Samaritans for free on 116 123 (UK and ROI), email jo@samaritans.org or visit the Samaritans website to find details of your nearest branch. Samaritans is available round the clock, every single day of the year, providing a safe place for anyone struggling to cope, whoever they are, however they feel, whatever life has done to them.
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…
Matt Stone and Trey Parker, the geniuses behind South Park, have produced a “Pandemic Special” that was broadcast last week. Sixty minutes of eviscerating cynicism about the massive over-reaction to the virus, from the government on down. You can watch the trailer here and Eric Cartman’s social distancing song here. No news at present about how to watch it in the UK.
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The problem now is that the country has become institutionalised. The more restrictions people get the more they like it. It gives meaning to their lives. They are all little soldiers fighting the Covid battle. If you wear a mask you’re not only saving lives you are seen to be saving lives…just when you’re out shopping. Normal people have never been able to attain such a perception of virtue and power so easily before. You can now help to win a war just by staying at home and watching Netflix.
The novelty has to wear off at some point soon, e.g. now the weather is rubbish and sitting out in the garden is no longer an option
My thoughts too. Things have to get much worse before many people will wake up. There are many who know it’s all a nonsense, but they are just shrugging their shoulders and saying oh well it’s just the rules for now. But when it really hurts- bad weather, darkness and rain, nothing to look forward to to get through the Winter months, job losses, no medical treatment for themselves or someone they know, etc… then perhaps they will stop just shrugging their shoulders, wake up a bit more and comply less.
Agree. Not to mention realising that social distancing and masks do bugger all and are causing the demise of the high street and various sectors such as hospitality, entertainment, retail and heritage.
Agree it is starting my barber who speaks to a lot of his cute.ers confirms this.
Wait till the queuing starts!
Already started. Had to queue outside my local post office this afternoon. There was a cold wind and it was drizzling. I got an elderly man to get in front of me in the queue. No way was I going to have him standing out there for ages. The government seems to want to kill people off by having them stand outside in the cold and the rain.
Every little helps.
Ups the number of new coughs.
And you have to pay for heating all day…
when furlough stops and they lose their jobs
I think it will dawn on them. I still don’t know anyone who has had COVID never mind died but I know one person who has died of cancer after his treatment was suspended and three whose condition has worsened as a result of treatment being delayed including one who now has a terminal prognosis. I also know several people who have lost their jobs. I’m sure as more and more people see themselves or their loved ones become collateral damage in Boris’s war on COVID people will start to push back. Sadly most people will need to suffer directly before they wake up.
Personally I know loads who think they’ve had covid, and probably have had it (including myself). Most had this in early spring. But I’m not personally aware of anyone who’s had anything worse than a week in bed sweating, and most (inc myself) have had something about as a mild as a regular cold (but no nasal effects, all throat so more likely covid than a normal cold)
I don’t get out and about much but I sometimes wonder about all this. Today an urgent vet visit and petrol top up, both unmasked.
Neither the vet nor petrol station attendants were remotely bothered though they were masked. I get the impression they feel they have to comply with government guidelines but aren’t bothered if I don’t . Nobody really believes this Covid madness.
Zombies do. The ones you see wearing masks in their cars. Or on a breezy beach. Or, I imagine, in bed – nauseating notion.
Hopefully that would keep them out of the gene pool!
or riding their bicycles with a mask but no helmet…
My brother in law ( unmasked ) was challenged by a friend in Waitrose who told him she would wear a mask until she died if it kept her safe. Obviously oblivious to the narcissism implicit in her attitude. I think that is the real plague we are seeing the effects of.
The consequences are too stark.
It may feel that way for some now but they are actually creating a lot of problems for themselves on both levels by not questioning the narrative.
They either end up being slaves to the cabal, or they suffer serious mental stress when certain cards begin to fall. All that virue bollocks for nowt.
The cabal doesn’t want them, that’s one of the main purposes for the vaccines.
Have been on a couple of coach trips in the last week – the only ones this year – and found them both quite depressing.
Whilst unmasked, most of the not very many other passengers were, some for the entire outing of 12 hours plus.
But the worst and most disconcerting was being asked to supply our details just to get a drink or something to eat somewhere during our first trip. I just lied about everything, and gave false details, something I would never have ever done before.
Being continually exhorted to download the T&T app, and then scan the ever-present QR code in every premises is really quite unpleasant. Yet so many seemed happy to comply.
Even in the open air, on the coast, I saw solitary runners wearing masks as they jogged along the prom. Same true for cyclists. In the wind and the rain! Almost unbelievable. But nothing is, anymore.
The same was true for our second trip to an historic home yesterday, although masks were less evident, which made things seem more ‘normal’.
Except for the café at the house. Same level of T&T compliance enforced – lied again – but the atmosphere was awful; guided to your seat by masked, visored and gloved staff; little to choose from; hot food served on paper plates, wrapped in foil; drink in a paper cup; plastic cutlery, all of which we had to take off a tray as they wouldn’t put it on the table.
A purely functional experience as we needed a drink and a bite to eat, with no choice of going elsewhere, which would undoubtedly be the same. Ironically, for all the ‘hygiene’ that was going on, dogs were allowed in the eating area (which I don’t mind), which isn’t usual these days!
So am not tempted to go out to eat anywhere with these restrictions, which we like to do quite often in a few of the more rural pubs locally. But no longer. Nor even to my ‘local’ under these conditions. Which I very much regret as I’ve tried to support them as best I could, but any form of social life is impossible to actually enjoy now.
At well past my mid-60s, I do not appreciate being dictated to, patronised, told how to behave, what hours I can keep, and be possibly be ‘interned’ by the government’s surveillance and imprison app.
If some, actual evidence that any of the these, in my opinion frankly nonsensical, restrictions, had any effect whatsoever, it might be a different matter.
But there isn’t any hard evidence at all, just knee-jerk, ill-thought-out, irrational and contradictory restrictions that are slowly, but surely, suffocating us all. Social and economic ‘death’ will surely follow at this rate of progress, Covid or no Covid.
I just bail out now from anywhere with the “rules” – sod them. I’m not handing over money for a reduced service, giving over my details to be T&T’d, by staff in hazmat, penned and herded, and surrounded by naps. Utterly joyless. I realise I have do others things now. I’ve rediscovered the joy of my flask and cool bag or rucksack and I take off now into the great outdoors. Will be doing that in the winter, getting out my nature books and all that. Gotta make your life the best it can be in these idiotic times.
To be honest, Helena, a flask, spotter books and country walks sound blissful and much nicer than most other pastimes, even under normal circumstances.
Country walks are great, but that’s all that will left and then of course before too long they’ll be trying to enforce mask wearing at all times outside of the home.
Gtec, unless the ‘rules’ have changed you are under NO obligation to provide personal details. Gov.uk states that it is opt-in. Any establishment asking (or telling) you to do so does not know the rules and regulations (and I’m not even sure there are any actual laws in place either).
DavidC
As far as I understand it, whilst it is ‘voluntary’ to give your personal details, premises are now under a legal obligation to collect your information, not just ask for it, under pain of penalty.
So, if you refuse to give your details, they could be fined, so they deny you entry.
Which can be difficult when you’re with someone else. So I lie, which I really detest doing, but that is what the government has done to me, to us all. Bastards.
I Just checked on the government website.it says specifically you are to be refused entry if you refuse to give your details over unless you have a mental health issue that prevents you from doing so.thats the only exemption I could see.false details however can only be challenged if they have a suspicion they are false..love minnie m ouse
I have such a mental health issue, I’m sane and therefore allergic to tyranny. perhaps we could try announcing that to any track and traitors standing at doors.
You tolerated far more than I can. I’ve stopped going anywhere that requires that sort of thing. A visit to the post office is all the dystopia I can take in one day. And I keep my money until the government and businesses learn to appreciate it again.
It’s Soviet Russia all over again. Civilised modern countries don’t treat the people like this. People can’t see it though.
At times now, I find myself wondering whether there is any point in soldering with such a grim existence and only the prospect of a genocidal vaccine to look forward to. But it’s very clear that they want us dead, so I will keep going to the bitter end, if only to spite the evil bastards, that comprise the UK government.
Don’t give up. There’s still plenty of simple pleasures out there and lots of rational thinking people.
Case in point, my kids have started riding ponies and we got our at the start of lockdown. Shows started up again in July time and in fairness to the horsey types, they seemingly couldn’t give a toss about distancing or masks. I’m really enjoying it
As a horsewoman myself I find we are split between gung ho sceptics like me and complete bedwetters. My horse is on a yard where another owner is so paranoid she wears gloves and a muzzle at all times and won’t even go in the barn if someone else is in there. The irony is she’s a bold rider across country and her horse is a complete nutter! Clearly has a real issue calculating relative risk!
Glad you keep your cool. I couldn’t put up with her.
Thanks.
From UnHerd
Freddie Sayers talks to eminent epidemiologists Dr Sunetra Gupta, Dr Jay Bhattacharya and Dr. Martin Kulldorff, who met in Massachusetts to sign a declaration calling for a different global response to the pandemic.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rz_Z7Gf1aRE
https://unherd.com/2020/10/covid-experts-there-is-another-way/
youtube com watch?v=rz_Z7Gf1aRE
unherd com/ 2020/10/covid-experts-there-is-another-way/
Chin up James..isn’t the darkest hour the one before dawn?
Nope. It’s not.
The video and declaration needs to disseminated as widely as possible. Towards the end of the video the rational and strength of their proposals becomes abundantly clear.
it will end as everything is cyclical and its just about timing
The soviet Union collapsed because it was bust. We are collapsing in to a totalitarian state for the same reason.
They can’t win but its not knowing how long this will go on for that is the problem. We must resist
Thanks for expressing your point so well. I agree entirely. I also worry about the droves who seem to revel in what they see as having their very own bit-part in a disaster movie.
I refuse to use the pejorative term, L**kd**n, as I am not a US convict, but all the time I hear the term being bandied around cheerfully like they were talking about a new fashion; it’s even frequently used as a verb!
Every day I feel I’m doing my bit for liberty just by going into shops and travelling on a bus without a mask – I don’t find it easy. Whatever else it is a mask is no symbol of courage.
It’s the equivalent of refusing to do the Hitler salute.
Eventually, we will be vindicated.
Stockholm syndrome.
Hang in there
Second…
Fourth…
(Repost) Here’s another poster, this time with the simple and easy-to-repeat slogan: “Get a life, bin the mask”.
The underlying message I’m aiming at is that there is no scientific evidence that wearing a mask will protect you against viruses, but there’s plenty of evidence that wearing a mask will do you harm. Therefore, you can extend your life by not wearing a mask. I have no idea if it will resonant with the general public, but I’ve stuck one in my car window anyway.
I initially considered adding some kind of justification to the poster, but I decided that leaving it as just “Get a life” would allow the reader to fill in their own meaning of life, be it family, friends, having a job, freedom to choose, sovereignty over their own body, and so on.
Make them think of what has been taken from them and perhaps they will resist.
Available here, free for any purpose.
We need these slogans put onto car stickers. Any takers?
You can buy the “bin the mask” slogan as stickers on Redbubble.
The price is a bit of a piss-take, but I haven’t found anywhere cheaper to post my designs.
If anyone has any suggestions for an online print service with good prices that will allow me to create an online shop then I’ll get right on it.
Be prepared to have your windows smashed in by some ‘do-gooder’. Seriously. We are the minority.
Good point. See that neighbour everyone suspects of snitching? Put it on her car.
That’s why I have bought a hoodie. It will make a good souvenir of this lunacy, and until then anyone is welcome to “remonstrate” with me; but any physical touching will attract a lawfully-robust response.
You only have ONE hoodie with an anti-lockdown print on it? I’m busy replacing all the items in my wardrobe which no longer fit with anti-lockdown slogan bearing ones.
No not on car stickers unless you want your car keyed by zealots. We need sheets of stickers with facts and key messages that you can subtly stick everywhere. That tactic heirs well fit extinction rebellion etc. You can even stick them on NHS and PHE propaganda posters.
Terrific poster!
Great stuff!!!
Manchester Evening News: Manchester nightclub owner launches legal challenge to government’s 10pm curfew.
https://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/whats-on/music-nightlife-news/manchester-nightclub-owner-launches-legal-19050075
Here’s a nauseating, woke, virtue-signalling article from the BBC, written as though it’s aimed at children, but apparently intended to be read by adults.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/resources/idt-876f42ae-5e44-41c0-ba2d-d6fd537aadfe
Read that this morning. In a way it backs up the point that the Covid-19 ‘pandemic’ is nowhere near as severe as the real pandemics our ancestors had to deal with. This article is a really embarrassing indictment on how cowardly humanity has become.
Have been listening to podcasts about past pandemics including the Justinian, Black Death (plagues) and Spanish Flu (podcasts recorded way before all this hysteria) what we are are experiencing is utterly inconsequential in comparison. If a survivor from 1351 could jump in a time machine and arrive today they’d be saying “call that a pandemic”. You wonder what we would have done with something serious. Perhaps the BBC News headlines would have read ,” UK Government to euthanize population to beat Krona Virus. Also read that pandemics were were previously only regarded as pandemics if the victims are from the younger age group.
Jasmine is not diverse enough .. No Asians amongst her ancestors. Someone at the BBC should be cancelled for this
With thanks to Prof Steven Riley of Imperial College London and the World Health Organization for background advice on previous pandemics and their impact. Says it all really.
Pandemics end when excess deaths return to normal. Regardless of anything else.
And guess what. We’ve been at normal since summer
Warning: Grab a sick bucket before opening!
https://unherd.com/2020/10/covid-experts-there-is-another-way/?tl_inbound=1&tl_groups%5B0%5D=18743&tl_period_type=3
I posted this earlier under yesterday’s article. It bears repeating and this is a video of very sensible epidemiologists not called Ferguson
Playing Devil’s Advocate here:
In the new abnormal that has been established in recent years, if 52% of scientists* said ‘This virus could decimate the population unless we lockdown society’ and 48% said ‘It’s probably not much worse than a severe flu; we should carry on as normal’, wasn’t that a clear instruction from the scientific community for the government to panic?
* not counting those who either felt they didn’t know enough about it to express an opinion, or weren’t given the opportunity.
I think we all know, it’s the scientists that have the government’s ear that are the problem – as they were involved in the initial decision making. As for the ethics of groups of scientists making decisions on behalf of others in their best interests, that is a different discussion altogether. For now, I’m happy to concentrate my ire and fury at those in power as they are controlling the narrative (see Foucoult)
In my opinion, the real problem is that nobody seems to be able to distinguish between science and scientists.
The scientific method was created because human reasoning is deeply flawed. We have evolved to survive: thinking is slow and expensive, so rules of thumb have kept us (our rather, our genes) alive. But those rules of thumb trip us up, so we needed a mechanism to prune out faulty thinking. As thus the scientific method was born.
If people stopped deifying individual scientists and just did some sodding science, we wouldn’t be in this mess.
But instead, we defer to the opinions of well-known scientists, as though their fame somehow makes them better at science. Even the best can err. Richard Dawkins is a good example of somebody I respected greatly who recently epically shit the bed on Twitter over lockdown.
Dawkins Remain position revealed how deeply elitist and anti-democratic he is. He expressed the view that we should never have had the Referendum because only someone which a Phd in Economics was capable of making a judgement on the issue.
Spot on! They key to the current mess is to apply scientific method, i.e. evidenced-based and open to challenge. The way that Prof Gupta and others have been ignored because they are not part of the coterie of insiders currently sitting on SAGE. It is also a concern that the scientists involved appear to have little practical knowledge or experience of infection control (more of an environmental health issue than computer-based epidemiology). From a science and engineering perspective the output of a computer model is no more than an opinion until validated against real-world test data. That testing needs to be on a consistent and clearly documented basis no the Orwellian practice currently being exhibited where cases (deaths) have morphed into cases (positive tests). And in the case of positive tests no informed discussion and presentation of results taking into account the potential prevalence of false positives from community-based PCR tests.
Didn’t I read somewhere on this site that 32 out of 34 Sage advisors are beholden to Bill Gates?
https://gbdeclaration.org/The Great Barrington Declaration
Dr Kulldorff,Harvard, Dr Gupta, Oxford, Dr Bhattacharya, Stanford
As infectious disease epidemiologists and public health scientists we have grave concerns about the damaging physical and mental health impacts of the prevailing COVID-19 policies, and recommend an approach we call Focused Protection.
I realised at least 10 years ago that Richard Dawkins is an arrogant, opinionated idiot!
IMO it’s an almost irrelevant distinction now. The scientific method has now been broken. Almost all scientific endeavour today is driven by money or power. Falsifiability and reproducibility are no longer part of the process. Karl Popper would turn in his grave.
More here: https://unherd.com/2018/02/flawed-science-concern-us/
he is an atheist like all the toher marxists, his bedfellows
Science isn’t a democracy. It is not a matter of votes, but of evidence.
Is it? It definitely SHOULD be a matter of evidence!
Science has given way to ‘the scientific consensus’ or, as it’s often truncated, ‘the science’.
I think we all know, it’s not the scientists making the decisions.
Blaming them lets the politicians off the hook – and lets the public off the hook for not only failing to demand responsible government but, when it suits their agenda, actively baying for government to act irresponsibly.
We reap what we sow. The roots of what’s happening now go back a long way but responsible government went out of the window four years ago, cheered on by many people who are appalled at what’s happening now. (Leaving the EU might well have been a good idea – personally I don’t care one way or the other – and it might well have genuinely been the will of the people. But anyone with any concern at all for good government should have recognised that treating a narrow margin in a binary vote as a clear instruction from the public was grossly irresponsible.)
the people who have the government’s ear are not real scientists, they are civil servants.
only Ferguson pushed for lockdown with his ridiculous projections. He is not a scientist but a mathematical modeller. Those on the SAGE committee many have received funding from Gates or are associated with GSK but even they did not push for lockdown according to the minutes.
Ferguson’s model was neither peer reviewed nor published and it is NOT the scientific method to rely on an unpublished model
They are lying when they say they are following science. They are NOT!
One of the most creative-aggressive posts I’ve seen on here for a while!
Thank you, Alethea – high praise!
You forgot to ask the most important question: “How many of those scientists are bought off in a hundred different ways?”
Almost all of them. It’s almost all advocacy work now, AKA policy-based evidence making.
Not really
For a start they are paid not it panic
Secondly they need to consider the good of the country in the round
Thirdly the evidence that the actions taken would likely lead to a better outcome than doing what normally would have been done in the past was and is thin and it was likely that the risks outweighed the potential benefits
I appreciate the irony, Julian.
Interesting observation working in the out of hours over the weekend . I telephoned two patients both of which described symptoms which were significant and potentially life threatening. I said I would like to see one myself to assess ,the other I said needed to go straight to A and E .
Both said they couldn’t do that as they had ” covid ” symptoms and had tests booked for tomorrow.. Whitless and Unballanced claim the NHS is open , the problem is the hysteria generated by Prof Doom and Gloom informs people otherwise.
That’s 2 more casualties to add to the list.
As I’m early on here – and following up on previous request a while ago for advice for my friend trying to get her stoma bag reversed (since March). All routes suggested her – PALS, GP duty of care exhausted and non- productive or helpful. Answer phone to department at hospital and no one has returned her call.
Separate letter to consultant/department. Standard letter back (and I paraphrase) ‘because of pandemic all services are assessed on clinical need for years to come and unless you are emergency you won’t be seen until you are dead’
So any further suggestions from here? The answerphone is a real barrier. A&E?
Try this organisation:
https://www.colostomyuk.org/
Thanks Wendyk
Isn’t A & E appointment only now?
If you have symptoms which are serious eg chest pain , or symptoms suggestive of a stroke please ring 999 . Suggesting you should book an appointment for such problems is not helpful .
It’s not Carrie’s idea. It’s a real thing I’m afraid
Emergencies occur by appointment?
If either died, would it be murder, manslaughter or suicide?
Rishi should resign citing collective ministerial responsibility of they bring this traffic light shite in.
His first best option – if he is ambitious for the top job – is to resign this week.
Agree – start vocally opposing the restrictions. The first one out of him and Starmer to do it, will be the next PM
I listened to his speech on Sky. It sounded as though he was a Conservative, and certainly completely at odds with both the content and tone of Johnson and Hancock. He is running out of time to protect his ‘clean skin’. Surely he must know this?
He doesn’t strike me as a stupid man.
If he sticks around much longer he will be indelibly tainted.
But if he resigns in protest?? I think he has to be careful in picking his moment – and that will be luck as much as judgement. Most ministers who resign on a point of principle disappear.
Having said that, I’m not sure Johnson could survive for long a high-profile resignation.
And having said that, I’m not prepared to trust the Conservative Party again. Like all the mainstream parties, I think it’s rotten.
Indelibly tainted? Wasn’t Gordon Brown chancellor all through Blair’s Iraq war? He still got a turn at the controls.
Whatever happens how, Labour will win in 2024. The Tories will take a long time to come back from this, whatever they do.
Yes, but Brown really was already damaged goods when he became PM – tainted as it were.
Re 2024 (or before?) election – I just don’t know. But I do think the current situation is potentially existential for the Conservative party.
Agreed but i can’t see either of them doing it
Probably Sir Kneelalot has dug himself in too deep.
Sunak might have created an opening though.
Indeed it is. If a Chancellor resigns, any Prime Minister’s days are numbered. We all know what happened to a certain PM in 1990 after her deputy resigned and made a speech in the Commons…
Nigel Lawson? She survived that, although weakened (hence Major compelling her into the ERM).
Surely it was the cumulative weight of Cabinet opinion against her which did for her, and Howe’s speech brought it all to a head. Even then maybe she could have survived, a bit longer at least, if she’d taken that first ballot seriously enough.
I have no faith in Rishi, given that he is ex-Goldman Sachs.
Good point.
That makes no more sense than saying ‘I have no faith in him, given that he’s brown’
It just happens to be a more socially acceptable thing to say.
I have no faith in him because he’s already magicked-up hundreds of billions of pounds and will doubtless do some more of that when the economic collapse translates into a financial collapse.
He’s been fully on board with all this so far, just being the good cop to Bozo/Poppycock’s bad cops. I wouldn’t get your hopes up.
Exactly, and then there’s this (posted by ‘leggy’ and others just before today’s page came up):
This is another lovely bit of legislation going through at the moment. Short story, we’ll have to abide by criminal law, but agents of the state won’t. I love this bit:
https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-9012/
“It would introduce a power in the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 to authorise conduct by officials and agents of the security and intelligence services, law enforcement, and certain other public authorities, which would otherwise constitute criminality.”
This short Bill raises “one of the most profound issues which can face a democratic society governed by the rule of law”, in the words of the Investigatory Powers Tribunal. It would introduce a power in the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 to authorise conduct by officials and agents of the security and intelligence services, law enforcement, and certain other public authorities, which would otherwise constitute criminality.
That it places no specific limitations on the type of criminal activity that may be authorised
By contrast with recent legislation governing the use of other investigatory powers, authorisations are given internally, without judicial approval
The Bill would limit redress for victims by preventing civil claims for injury or other harm
So just about anyone in any form of government or the Establishment, can break the law! It’s makes you want to puke up!
And yet, the proles and sheep are expected, under pain of state-sanctioned punishment, to abide by the law of the land to the letter: Don’t wear a face nappy – £200 fine. Serve a takeaway order at four minutes past 10 – £1000 fine. Meet seven people £can’t remember fine.
It’s also pretty chilling to see which Government bodies they intend this to apply to:
My own thought is that this is might be how they intend to get round the ‘Crimes against Humanity’ court case…????
We maybe need to make sure their lawyers are aware of this so they look out for other countries rewriting law in their favour?
I wrote on yesterday’s page that they could abolish courts, but I’m not sure they plan to do that just yet (too obvious) but by merely exempting themselves from any laws, they can just continue with their plans, knowing there are zero consequences for themselves..
The irony was huge of brokenshire introducing the 2nd reading directly after the ghoul hancock had just been answering questions from the same dispatch box. There had been a three minute break to disinfect the dispatch box after hancock – not a joke actual.
It’s nothing new. Peter Wright wrote about this in his book “Spycatcher” way back in 1987. For some reason it is a quote that has stayed with me all this time. The only thing the Act does is regularise the behaviour.
“For five years we bugged and burgled our way across London at the State’s behest, while pompous bowler-hatted Civil Servants in Whitehall pretended to look the other way”
2nd reading today. No info: https://services.parliament.uk/Bills/2019-21/coverthumanintelligencesourcescriminalconduct.html
100% agree however this is politics – he could turn on a sixpence and most wouldn’t notice.
To be fair, he has threatened to resign multiple times when the govt proposed another lockdown. He may be the reason why we don’t have a second full lockdown yet.
Build. Britain. Better.
Hope it’s better than this…
2022 Johnson reviews his Build Back Better programme and rejoices that a house has been built.
well he’s doing a good job of “Buggering. Britain. Bigtime.”
Supermarket prompt
Are you on commission for Weight Watchers?
Oh, thank you for making me laugh out loud.
This is wrong. His estimate for deaths over 80 years from vCJD was between 50 (that’s fifty, not fifty thousand) and 150,000 as a 95% confidence interval, and to quote the paper
It turned out to be 177 over 20 years, which is, obviously, consistent with both the wider and the narrower estimate. Of course the media reported the more exciting “up to” figure rather than “as low as 50”. I agree that an estimate covering some four orders of magnitude would in general be better expressed as “we don’t know”.
From Nature, 10 January 2002
Is there any meaningful difference between saying “between 50 and 150,000” and saying “search me, guv. Blowed if I know.”?
Not what was said. He said that was his 95% confidence limit. His central estimates were 100-1000.
OK, so more tightly defined, not much more meaningful, (in that the top of the range is still 100x the bottom of the range).
Last week I submitted my budgets for the parts of the business I run for 2021. They contain contributions from our operations in over 20 countries. Every one of those countries is currently experiencing highly volatile economic conditions (I wonder why) and every one of the clients in my portfolio are themselves trading in very difficult conditions and have very little ability to confidently predict how 2021 will go.
If I submitted a range where the top estimate was 100x the lower estimate, I would be fired. If I did get away with doing that and next year, I performed near the bottom end of that estimate, I would be fired, if I claimed that there was a possibility that I might actually do 1,500 x as well as I though I might, then I had better be pretty bloody confident of that number, because if I didn’t come close to it, I would be fired.
Er, 100-1000 is a factor of 10. A factor of 10 over 80 years is a cumulative error of about 3% a year. Even a factor of 100 over 80 years is 6% a year. Would you be fired if you predicted your budget next year with 3% variation, and if after 20 years you came in within those limits?
I see the report publication is dated 2002. I haven’t got time to check in detail, but I’m guessing he could have extrapolated from existing case figures, adjusted his assumptions accordingly, run some thousands of lines of code, and come up with answers that fit the extrapolated case numbers.
I misread. But given that my budgets are annual and you’re still talking about a 10x difference, then yes, I would be fired. At the very least, if it became apparent that my expectations were significantly out of line with reality, I would be expected to recalculate them, not to seize rate them.
You missed out the bit about a 10x spread over 80 years being 3% spread a year?
There’s a massive difference. By citing 150k he knew he would grab attention, and hence it was an attempt to gain influence. He’s made a career out of that sort of stuff.
But of course, he had no idea what the deaths would be.
Discussed on here yesterday: of course, RP is strictly correct to point out that Ferguson should be judged on what he actually said. OK. But let us look in detail at what he actually said, judge his motivations, and judge the man accordingly. When looked at in this light, I believe the case against him become immeasurably more damning.
… and by not citing his confidence limits he would have been criticised for. missing out on an important part of his results, not to mention being pilloried by the media for concealing it.
As I said, his central estimates were 100-1000 over 80 years, and it’s 178 over 20 years. Not too bad really.
Fair point. I haven’t seen the actual report or (perhaps more pertinently his assumptions), so can’t comment directly.
By criticising him for headline figures the attacks on him can seem shallow and personal, which to mind mind risk missing the mark.
His actions over the last few months will now be the subject of minute scrutiny. He will have no hiding place now.
I believe he is a deeply manipulative individual who has every interest in personal advancement and very little in science. Subjective at this point I know, but he will find it hard to avoid the truth now (e.g. witness Sue Denim’s assessment of his model on this site).
Were I him (thank God I’m not), I am sure I’d prefer the ridicule over a few headline figures to what – I assume – is coming his way.
The BSE report is here
Just read the abstract. Quote:
Well grounded mathematical and statistical models are therefore essential to integrate the limited and disparate data, to explore uncertainty, and to define data-collection priorities.
Well that is about the absolute diametric opposite to what has happened with covid.
So the case against him re covid thereby gets worse. As I say, in the end the truth will be all the more damining.
Saying that models are essential for one thing does not preclude them being useful for another.
I’m not saying that models aren’t useful – essential even. I couldn’t do the disease spread calculations in my head, simple as they are even for me to do on a spreadsheet.
The crux here is:
integrate the limited and disparate data, to explore uncertainty, and to define data-collection priorities.
As far as I can tell, this has not been done in the covid analysis – witness Hancock’s ludicrous statement in the Commons last week that letting the virus rip, as they term it, would cause hundreds of thousands of deaths.
One of my main criticisms of Hancock et al. is that they appear to have learnt nothing since last March – they are still stuck in the narrative of the 16 March Imperial Paper.
Even if Hancock doesn’t know any better, Ferguson should (and I believe does, but that’s another story).
Couldn’t agree more.
I think it goes to the heart of what’s gone wrong, and it’s being largely ignored.
When Neil Ferguson suggested that in a worst case scenario 500,000 people might die of covid19, did he really mean they might die over the next twenty years? I wish he’d said so.
No, that wasn’t the question on the table. In fact, the question was essentially “could the NHS cope in a do-nothing scenario” and the answer was “No”. The 500,000 figure was in some sense icing on the cake. However, for what it’s worth, his model gave the bulk of the deaths happening over a period of 6 weeks, hence the collapse of the NHS. (And to be fair, mine disagrees with that, giving around 12 weeks)
Ferguson has received major funding from major pro-vaccine organisations. Should he really be given such a key role in the decision making process? But then Whitty and Vallance are also compromised.
The maths is one thing but how you present it is another. A few weeks ago he was out and about with “grim warnings” about another 80,000 deaths (or some such figure) from second wave Covid.
I agree. There’s a pattern here. You could call it “sexing up the dossier” if you like. You could call it accentuating the negative. You could call it attention-seeking. That the gatekeepers, Whitty and Vallance, have allowed him to grandstand in this way is indefensible. But ultimately the government has revealed its shallowness by swallowing the whole thing hook, line and sinker.
Yep, in my view this goes to the heart of what has gone wrong. Certainly it is an area the inquiry should pay much attention to.
Yes and predict that the weather on Christmas day 2020 will be between -30 and +40C with 0 – 300mm of rain and 0 – 2000mm snow
I’m right but it’s not useful is it
… and your central estimate?
But bear in mind that for the rest of your life, people will now assiduously repeat the canard that you predicted that the temperature on Christmas Day would be up to 40C: and lucky if the remember to say “up to”.
To be safe you need to allow for negative amounts of rain and snow, just in case something really weird happens.
so that is basically any value between “nothing” and “lots and lots” . I could come up with that.
Yawn
Best comment so far!
My take from this and your later comment on bird flu, is that Ferguson needs to be a lot more careful over what he says.
Ferguson is a university academic – he sits in an ivory tower, you could say. His models, though, have a huge impact on the real world, which he is largely immune to.
He should not just issue academic papers, he needs to be able to communicate them accurately to people who are not mathematically inclined. He needs to ensure that his work is accurately reported in the press etc. He cannot just proclaim his work from on high and take no responsibility to how it is then reported.
Totally right. And in his role he shouldn’t be receiving funds from organisations that have an interest in there being a global viral health crisis.
I don’t know the man and maybe I’m doing him an injustice, but I really don’t think Neil Ferguson can be said ever to have worked disinterestedly in the best interests of the people of Britain. He seems to like causing havoc.
Yes. Havoc, and putting himself at the centre of events.
The AAPS site has a superb and well presented summary of the evidence about masks:
https://aapsonline.org/mask-facts/
This is wrong.
From Nature, 08 September 2005 (my emphasis)
So if avian flu had become human transmissible, then … . But it didn’t and 200 million people didn’t die. Which is good,
So essentially, had this been written:..
In 2005, Ferguson claimed that up to 200 million people could be killed by bird-flu or H5N1. By early 2006, the WHO had only linked 78 deaths to the virus, out of 147 reported cases.
It would be factually correct.
Have you got nothing better to do than try to defend Ferguson?
Factually correct, perhaps. Would you agree it gave a misleading impression?
Yes, thanks, correcting mis-statements on blogs like this is only a hobby.
Sometimes amidst your laudable analytical analysis,there can seem a smidgeon of condecension.. maybe ?
Maybe. This is a fairly robust forum, and I assume the people here are capable of taking as much as they dish out.
Are you denying his receipt of funds from interested parties has compromised him? Or do you have no problem with that.
Excellent post today Toby! A couple of comments.
I trust Amnesty International’s report into care home deaths is just the beginning of a slew of reports about to emerge about the “epidemic”. I’m glad that an influential group is calling for an enquiry with teeth, ie interviews under oath (even better under caution, but one step at a time).
Clare Foges may well believe that the time for Boris to go has “almost arrived”, but the time for him to go is now. The damage this appalling man has caused will take years to repair, especially the psychological damage to so many people and the economic damage done to the country as a whole.
When it comes to new restrictions, the time has come for ordinary people to refuse to follow them. Civil disobedience is now the only way forward.
And by the way, the next London protest is scheduled for Saturday, 17th October.
https://www.standupx.info
Click on events or scroll down.
I thought it was 24th Oct?
This is wrong.
This was explicitly a Reasonable Worst Case scenario, which, as I spent much of yesterday explaining, is explicitly not a prediction. It is the worst case that could reasonably be expected to happen, used as a planning tool to decide whether there are resources in place to deal with it.
From the Commons Science and Technology Committee (NRA is National Risk Assessment)
Reasonable worst case scenario
75. The second stage of the NRA process is assessing risks and their impacts. Risks are assessed using available historical, statistical and scientific data. Where possible, the assessment should take account of probable developments over the next five years.[75] Impacts are assessed against five main criteria:
76. The assessment leads to the development of a “reasonable worst case scenario” for every risk. The reasonable worst case scenario is “designed to exclude theoretically possible scenarios which have so little probability of occurring that planning for them would be likely to lead to disproportionate use of resources.”[77] The Government stated that:
I agree with this comment. I’m a bit surprised that Toby Young – who is normally quite measured in his arguments – continues to repeat the nonsense about Ferguson’s ‘predictions’.
Someone somewhere is assiduously briefing against Ferguson, would be my guess.
Not necessary. He undermined his own arguments back in March!
I was referring rather to the way these misleading allegations are repeated, almost verbatim, time after time. Frankly, I think it’s poor journalism to simply repeat them when a few minutes online enabled me to find the original reports.
As a rule of thumb, when extreme claims like this are published.in this way, especially by those who are predisposed not to accept the results of the work, they are likely to turn out to be at best distorted and sometimes actually just false.
In what way?
Tell us what exactly he has got wrong.
The whole country is being stitched up, and you’re worried about one adulterous charlatan being subject to a little darning?
This is the problem with the “reasonable worst case scenario” It is perceived by the non-technical people, the policy makers, as a “likely” outcome. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, the Modellers have to take responsibility for that, they can’t just hide behind the correctness of their maths. They also fail to highlight that the use of the term “reasonable” is a value judgement not an equation.
So far none of Fergusons forecasts have been remotely validated by factual outcomes so by what criteria can we judge whether he’s actually any good at it over anyone else?
Actually, Ferguson’s central estimates for vCJD have turned out quite well.
But your wider points are worth discussing. There is indeed a disconnect between policymakers and modellers. I don’t think we solve it by stopping modelling, but by getting better at getting both sides together.
Mathematical modellers certainly have professional responsibilities, about which I’m not going to comment off-the-cuff, since it’s in some sense my day job. But there comes a point where policy-makers have to take the responsibility for their policies and politicians have to take responsibility for their actions.
I think the problem as you point out is that if the action appears to be taken on the extreme end without looking at the more central case.
So if due weight had been put on the extreme end – as per the 2001 Foot and Mouth paper – that implementation would be worse than lives saved, then the central one could be used.
Because that’s the problem with politicians going after the extreme case – the cure is worse than the disease
It would also fit with the idea of building contingency rather than panicking.
The problem is Ferguson is not really good at selling the central case. He appears to at least be mentioning the extreme case without context.
But then maybe it’s just that fear sells
But there comes a point where policy-makers have to take the responsibility for their policies and politicians have to take responsibility for their actions.
That’s the crux of it. Ferguson (much as I dislike him) must not be a scapegoat for political failures.
Richard, I’m sorry but in the discussion yesterday, my main concern – that RWC must be informed by ‘evidence’ – was not countered with a convincing argument. I presented a specific example where I used evidence to undermine comprehensively a highly stylised econometric model used in real-life merger cases. I am neither a statistician nor a modeler but I do have extensive analytical experience in several settings. In terms of what you have linked to, I think later paragraphs are also important:
83. An independent review of the UK response to the 2009 influenza pandemic, chaired by Dame Deirdre Hine, noted that “there was some unease about how reasonable the ‘reasonable worst case’ scenarios were”. The review also stated that “there was general agreement that the term was unhelpful” because it implied that the scenario was likely to occur.
84. We asked the GCSA whether reasonable worst case scenarios were evidence-based and Sir John responded:
To the extent it is partially evidence based, it is quite difficult to come in any particular scenario to what is a reasonable worst case because in fact the very word “reasonable” implies there is something that is going beyond what would be pure analytic judgment.
In other words, a ‘guess’, dressed up as a model!
No need to apologise. I don’t think I’ve ever suggested that there is no need for evidence in forming a RWC, or that RWCs should be immune from challenge by evidence. In this particular case, the evidence available was not complete and not consistent, and SAGE had to take a view. Whether that view was right, or at least, reasonable, at the time is something we have the luxury of discussing at length and in hindsight.
I quite agree, as you might expect, with the paragraphs you quote, but entirely dispute that anything that is not “analytic judgement” is a “guess”. In fact, I rather think the example from your own experience shows that.
No problem. I think the key point here is that no one individual has a monopoly on good ideas and no one methodology can address all questions posed. Yet, the whole response to the pandemic was and still is driven in its entirety by one team and one model.
This is one of the difficult issues at the intersection of science and politics. In political life, decisions have to be taken, often under time pressure, and they have to go one way or the other. (Oversimplifying of course). Science as an enterprise is in some sense always provisional (a lot of the things we “knew” in my O-level science lessons are now “wrong”) and scientists usually prefer to have time to consider the matter.
So there’s always a tension, and when opinion on “the science” is 60-40, someone has to make a call. One the one hand there’s the Scylla of indecision and on the other the Charybdis of groupthink. If anyone has a magic bullet for that, please let us know!
Following on from that, there’s a common confusion between giving scientific advice and doing science. “Doing science” in the current context would mean formulating a testable hypothesis, such as “The NHS can cope with mitigation and suppression but not with do-nothing” You might then propose to perform some sort of randomised control experiment, where you divide the country, and London, into three tightly demarcated zones, in each of which you try the three main policies: laissez-faire (a la Brazil), social measures (a la Sweden), and draconian lockdown (a la Scotland). For optimal results people should be assigned randomly to the three parts, ideally “blind” so they don’t know which part of the country they’re in. At the end of six months you count up the number of dead bodies, count the number of days the NHS was in effective operation and assess whether or not your hypothesis was confirmed or falsified by the experiment. There you are, an answer completely in accordance with the scientific method.
Except that you don’t, because it’s grossly unethical, it’s practically, legally and politically impossible, and it’s not even close to answering the question as asked. It is in fact completely useless.
AND YET having seen that this reasonable worst case scenario was nowhere at all near the truth and having seen the resulting publicity the doom number received (as compared to his other scenarios) and the massive amounts of money then wasted by governments in buying vaccines for something that turned out to be barely a sniffle, he STILL actively sought publicity for his similarly massively-over low worst case scenario for SARS-CoV 2.
To an extent, I agree with you that the obsession with Ferguson’s modelling is a distraction and an irrelevance, Because a 6-month old theoretical mathematical model has no relevance in the context of significant real world data. Except that this worst case scenario is still being used by the media and the government to overstate the danger posed and keep everyone scared, is still being used as a justification for having imposed the lockdown in terms of fictional lives saved, is still being used to justify the continuation of restrictive measures and lockdown-by-any-other-name and – almost as importantly – is still being pimped out to the media as realistic by none other than Ferguson himself.
With respect, defending Ferguson on the basis that reasonable worst case scenarios are a necessary tool, that his scenarios were sufficiently caveated that he can’t be show to be an outright liar, while true, also completely misses the point that he actively participated – and continues to participate – in the misinterpretation of these numbers as prophetic.
Good post. I think your second paragraph gets to the very heart of the problem of allowing style and process to over-ride evidence and substance.
Can’t edit anymore. Clearly I did not mean “over low”
That’s the key – it’s not that he and his team modelled a range including the more extreme. It’s that he doesn’t walk it back or directly caveat and say, the extreme case is just that – most likely an artefact of modelling.
Knowing the power he’s in, he really should be more careful. Of course if all this was just modelling, there would be enough procedures in place to never let the extreme dictate policy. But we don’t have these checks and balances.
Ferguson is just small part of this though. It appears that ICL will just model at whatever stage they can. It’s how these are relied upon appears to be the issue. And no lesson has been learned from Foot and Mouth.
The RWC was for a scenario (“do-nothing”) which was not implemented. What do you mean by “the truth” for a scenario that never happened? Do you, by any chance, mean some other number that you have derived from some other model? Or do you really claim to know what would actually have happened in that hypothetical scsnario, and if so, how?
You’re either failing to address my main point or deliberately avoiding it.
Nonetheless, no, I don’t have an alternative model, obviously and nor am I interested in one if it exists. As it happens, Levitt proposed an alternative model, which turns out to have had an output far closer to reality, but he was ignored. This doesn’t matter so very much anymore though, because we don’t need a theoretical model to describe what has already happened. It can now be shown fairly conclusively that The IFR Ferguson used as an input was wrong. It is becoming established fact that the assumption that there was zero pre-existing immunity was wrong. It has been repeatedly shown that lockdown measures above and beyond basic “keep some distance,” “wash your hands,” “stay home if you’re sick” had little-to-no effect. The study of US states above the line today is not the first such study I’ve seen (though in some ways, it’s one of the most interesting because the territories being compared are the most directly culturally and demographically comparable”.
So I cannot demonstrate that in a theoretical world where the response of the population was to change absolutely nothing, half a million people wouldn’t have died. But I can say that: 1) the scenario is implausible; 2) the inputs are (charitably) questionable; and 3) though we have no way to conclusively prove that the output was wrong, we do at least have enough evidence to give serious doubt.
So again, without questioning the value of a reasonable worst case scenario as a tool for informing decision making, or impugning Ferguson’s mathematical ability, nor his skill as a designer of models, this still leaves the question: why did he feel the need actively to promote the results of his RWC scenario and to seek out media attention for it? Why does he still feel the need to seek out media attention and promote the idea that decisions made on the back of the RWC were right because they saved 450,000 lives? I would cheerfully forget Ferguson’s existence and would be pleased to pretend he wasn’t there if we happened to be at the same drinks party, if his faulty analysis weren’t still being used to terrify the public, including by him, directly, and if his predictions weren’t still being used to justify restrictions that would make such a party illegal.
He is a self-publicist and a lobbyist more than he is an advisor and an epidemiologist. He should be a minor footnote, but he has chosen to be an actor in one of the most catastrophic episodes in history.
Do, please feel free to continue justifying his maths and his intentions, but you cannot justify his actions.
I don’t propose to judge his actions. As I’ve said before, I think he should be judged on the basis of what he has said and done, rather than on the basis of things he has demonstrably not said or done.
Ferguson knows how politicians and the media have treated his “reasonable worst case” in the past, so why isn’t he more careful in how he presents his data? Similarly Vallance and Witty endlessly caveated their “worst case” but they must have known how the media would react. They only showed one chart of projected cases in their press conference – they knew how the media would treat that one chart (no matter how many times they said it was not a prediction).
This thread is now past dead, but anyway… in that case I can’t understand your own motivation or your thrust (unless it’s to defend mathematics in principle). I do judge him on the basis of what he’s said and done and I don’t judge him on the basis of whether or not his model was credible in retrospect. As I’ve said, his fault was not in doing his job to the best of his ability (and you are a better judge of those abilities than I) but in overstepping his job and trying to become a public figure, terrifying the population and over influencing public policy in the process. I haven’t seen you disagree with me, so I can only assume that you agree with me.
Please don’t keep on giving the thumbs down to Richard’s posts. He is trying to present a balanced view and gauge the strength of our enemies’ arguments. If we just stick our fingers in our ears and shriek, we’re no better than our enemies are,
Yes, spot on. If we make outlandish, unfair and ill-judged accusations they will eventually miss their mark and our case will be weakened.
I suspect RP likes provoking discussions like this in part because they stimulate his own thought processes, a way of thinking through a problem as it were.
I’ve not seen anything he has written which merits a downvote (except for one of his comments on one of my own posts when he first appeared here, which I didn’t downvote …)
Spot on indeed! And thanks to everyone who has discussed things in a civil and helpful way.
Oh, so you agree that one of your early replies to one of my posts weeks ago was worthy of a downvote!
(Only joking you know.)
Agree.
From An independent review of the UK response to the 2009 influenza pandemic by Dame Deirdre Hine.
The use and release of planning assumptions has been brought to my attention. There was some unease about how reasonable the ‘reasonable worst-case’ scenarios were. Also, the public release of planning assumptions, although necessary for emergency planners and those in public health organisations, caused confusion as they were immediately taken to be predictions rather than planning figures. There is recognition from many interviewees that these should be dealt with differently in the future.
Sounds good to me.
In 2005, Ferguson claimed that up to 200 million people would be killed by bird-flu or H5N1.
NO – he didn’t.
In 2002, Ferguson predicted that up to 50,000 people would die from variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, better known as “mad cow disease”,
He presented a range of scenarios. One of which was a death toll of just 50.
Professor Gupta also presented a range of scenarios when she suggested that one plausible scenario was that over 50% of the UK population had been infected with SARS-CoV-2 virus in March 2020. It was highly unlikely but possible.
Any chance this blog could stick to the facts?
Doesn’t matter about the detail – Ferguson is an arse
So how big does the range of the scenarios have to be before the modelling is next to useless?
the modelling suggests that anything can happen, and when it does the model was correct
As I explained above, the “central estimate” was 100-1000 over 80 years. So far, at 177 after 20 years, that’s not too bad.
OK, so what was Ferguson’s original “central estimate” for Covid?
I don’t know, because this was a Reasonable Worst Case, not a prediction.
Hang on, are you saying that he didn’t provide the same kind of response to Covid as he had previously done to CJD?
Why not? Because an upper estimate and a lower estimate are surely not enough on their own. You would also want to know what he thought was most likely to actually happen. That would presumably be what you are calling his “central estimate”.
Are you saying he didn’t provide one?
If you read the famous Report 9 you’ll see it provides lots of ranges for lots of scenarios. However, I’m confining myself to the Reasonable Worst Case, as adopted at SAGE 11 on 27 February. I presume it is based on the same model as Report 9, but that’s not relevant because almost any simple model provides similar figures. The RWC would be the largest reasonably likely figure.
Your defence of Ferguson’s stats on CJD is pretty reasonable, I would say. He provided a “central estimate” which was basically right.
You can’t just take his upper limit extreme estimate on its own. Fair enough.
So where is the equivalent for his stats on Covid? I have no intention of wading through “Report 9”!
No, there is no confidence interval for the “unmitigated” scenario in Report 9.
Thanks. Although in that case I can’t see how it could have been of much use.
I don’t particularly like the man, but if this is to be considered a serious blog it needs to deal in evidence not misinformed tittle tattle.
Fair enough, and the answer to my question?
Sorry – I responded to the wrong person.
Models inevitably need to use assumptions. Initially these assumptions may be very uncertain. However, as more data becomes available, the assumptions become more certain and the most likely scenarios begin to emerge.
Ferguson’s actual model is largely irrelevant. Most epidemiologists would come up with results similar to Ferguson’s if they used the same assumptions.
For the March model Ferguson assumed
100% Susceptible population
Large degree of homogeneity
0.9% Fatality rate.
There were not unreasonable assumptions at the time.
He made the same assumptions about Foot and Mouth – that it would spread equally amongst different animals – which it doesn’t and was known not to do.
The trouble however isn’t this. It’s that the models are used first as the basis of policy rather than used to supplement. So a risk-based approach using contingency and most importantly – accurate determination of what’s going on – followed by modelling as you go along.
Then you can tune your models.
The 0.9% fatality rate if considering total population just hasn’t been seen. You’ve pointed out the IFR has been up to 1% with SARS, but in terms of the whole system we just haven’t seen that level of deaths. Even with the Diamond Princess.
The real question then is why did no-one question this? Why were politicians focussed on models first even though this was the issue with Foot and Mouth.
And maybe the modellers are advised to not put these thoughts forward either? So it could be a philosophical issue going on here.
Why were politicians focussed on models …
Because models are a great way of abrogating responsibility.
A model full of uncertain assumptions will end up creating rubbish predictions, garbage in garbage out.
Yes, but after Sue Denim’s evaluation of the actual code it appears that perfectly good assumptions could have been inputted and the results would still have been garbage.
100% Susceptible population
Large degree of homogeneity
0.9% Fatality rate.
RP added yesterday the assumptions of R0 = 2.8 and infectious for 5 days. At those parameters the disease spreads fast, and given that each infected person is infectious before they know they have the disease, it is essentially uncontrollable (without an absolutely draconian lockdown, the likes of which we have not seen).
But by February the disease was out and about and couldn’t be contained. At R0 = 2.8, infectious for 5 days, 100% susceptible, 0.9% IFR, the bodies would have been piling high in China long before. But they weren’t. Time therefore to revisit the assumptions. R0 and 5 days had been observed; they were probably close to correct. That leaves IFR and susceptibility. It was clear early on that those assumptions could not be correct.
I agree.
This is exactly the problem – regardless of the accuracy or otherwise of the models, the variance in possible outcomes make them impossible to use for any effective policy decisions.
It’s all very well Ferguson saying that modelling comes up with a range of death totals based on various scenarios if the government, whether with his persuasion or not, follow the worst case scenario especially if this is the most unlikely scenario.
Which it seems it is.
And what is even worse. When it became apparent months ago that the chosen scenario and model was nothing like the empirical data indicated they didnt change the model. They changed the data to fit.
I don’t know what you mean by “follow the RWC scenario”. The question was whether in the do-nothing scenario the NHS could cope with the Reasonable Worst Case. The answer was No, it coudn’t, and that answer, I think, is probably correct even in hindsight. So, the decision was taken not to do-nothing, ie to do something. What that something might be was not dictated by the RWC.
If you’re interested in facts, I would suggest directing your ire against the government, its advisors and the mainstream media, who are misrepresenting facts on a daily basis.
Moreover these are misrepresentations that are causing non-Covid deaths and devastation on a daily basis, whereas anything relating to Ferguson merely further discredits a totally discredited man.
So he predicted a death toll from CJD of between 50 and 50,000?
How was that useful?
… with a central estimate of 100-1000 which turns out to be pretty well correct. The planning message is: yes the NHS can cope with vCJD as part of normal business, as indeed it has.
It seems to me that our government has succeeded in convincing vast swathes of the electorate that this is their War.
Here in Birmingham I routinely see children wandering alone outside with masks on. Countless people driving in their cars with masks on. Visible disdain for non-compliers as if we are somehow deserters.
It’s all extremely depressing.
Indeed. We might like to think the tide is turning but I’m not really seeing it.
Quite, realism is much better for us than false optimism. Things are STILL getting WORSE, not better.
No sign of the latter now, and the majority are either too brainwashed or lazy to care. The elites must be absolutely pissing themselves with laughter.
More people in London wearing masks. Some putting on masks to walk into cafe and sit at table 15ft from entrance, take it off when sitting and then go maskless up to counter to order. I truly despair.
I think people now think you need a mask just to enter a shop. Works like a magic key. Once inside, it;s unnecessary.
Given the recent tales about the Gestapo at supermarket doors, I can understand how they could come to this conclusion.
I see this every day — what are they thinking – That covid is on one side of the cafe but not the other —- I Sadly saw a family of 8 all walking along the street – all wearing masks – The children being approx 4, 6, 8 —. Quite heavy duty masks too..It was a sad sight … When they got their coffee they. Took their masks of and exposed themselves to all the maskless people on that side of the 12ft shop. Pathetic really. ………
Seems worse that disdain to me. It reminds me of how “the intruders” are regarded by a dreamer’s subconscious in the film Inception.
Feels more like The Matrix for me, with those sorts as Agents.
Until there are mass job losses and Christmas is hindered (Relaxing the rules for one day will make the govt lose all remaining control), no real measure of the population will resist.
Excellent replacement for my car rear window message
Watch ..Profitees of Fear 2009
Swine flu outbreak ..global pandemic 2009… FALSE ALARM !
https://vimeo.com/463800252
This is an english language subtitled version of the Germany documentary film ‘Profiteure der Angst’, produced by ARTE and originally broadcast on mainstream TV Nov 2009.
Just posted a follow-up FOI to the DHSC asking them how their previous answer justifies what is happening today:
“I received a FOI request answer from yourselves Reference FOI-1240596 and it stated that a positive PCR test means nothing medically.
The actual quote: “SARS-CoV-2 RNA means the RNA is present in that sample at that point in time. It does not mean that the patient has the novel coronavirus (COVID-19).”
It also linked to a document that in conclusion stated that the PCR tests being used are unreliable, had high false positive rates, could not be verified against an actual confirmed case of covid-19 and had not been verified in a medical or hospital setting.
So basically as admitted by the DHSC answer Reference FOI-1240596 you are using tests that are “unreliable” to say the least, have no reference standard to double check the accuracy against and that have results that means nothing medically.
PCR tests are also, as admitted by there inventors, not a diagnostic tool nor test and should not be used as such in any circumstances.
My questions are:
1 – based on the above statements how can a positive PCR tests be termed as a “case” medically by the DHSC?
2 – based on the above statements how can positive PCR tests be used as a justification for national and/or local lockdowns and other general restrictions?
3 – based on the above statement show can positive PCR tests be used as a justification for enforced self-isolation of individuals tested “positive”?
4 – based on the above statement show can a positive PCR tests be used as a justification for quarantining travellers on their return to the country?
5 – please supply the official document(s) and guidance that DHSC has supplied to local Councils etc that justify local lockdowns and isolation of segments of the population based on an unreliable test that does not mean the person is infected with anything, that has high false positive rates and no independent verification the results are correct?
6 – please supply the official document(s) and guidance that DHSC has that allow the PCR tests to be sued as a diagnostic tool/test that is outwith it’s intended use by it’s inventors.
I look forward to receiving your replies.”
Will let you know what their eventual answer is.
Great! It will be interesting to see how they reply, or if they deem your question too controversial..
Glad you’re on our side, Awkward Git.
Lord yes! Imagine being at the receiving end of this irrepressible intransigent intelligence…
Have you thought of sending copies of that FOI to the media, AG?
I do not, of course, mean the MSM.
Simon Dolan has passed them to his lawyers plus to UK Column et al.
Good Man.
Could you parachute yourself into Westminster followed by Holyrood and Cardiff and Belfast for an AG led Q and A session?
‘Twould be a wonder to behold.
I want to emulate Guy Fawkes.
But depending on your religion (which is the bit most people have forgotten) he is either a hero or villain if you are Protestant or Catholic.
I’m a (non-practicing, non baptised) Catholic so he’s on ten hero side if I remember history correctly.
Many say GF is the last man to enter Parliament with honest intentions, whichever side of the divide we stand!
Or recently Tony Benn or Enoch Powell – don’t agree with much of their politics or beliefs but at least they were honest and stood by their beliefs (right or wrong) which in my book counts for nearly everything.
Amen to that!
AG, It also linked to a document that in conclusion stated that the PCR tests being used are unreliable, had high false positive rates, could not be verified against an actual confirmed case of covid-19 and had not been verified in a medical or hospital setting.
Can you post the link to that document please?
“Even hard core sceptics might have experienced a tremor of doubt yesterday on seeing the daily total of new cases: 22,961.”
Naaah. Not even a single whisker trembled. I have no interest in the number of cases.
I shook all over. With laughter.
According to the official tally, yesterday saw 1 (one) fatality across the UK
I have an interest in ‘cases’ in the proper use of the term.
I have no interest, or at best only a passing interest, in +ve PCR results.
I wish Toby would be a little more careful with his choice of words here.
Me too.
TOBY, THEY’RE NOT EFFIN’ CASES ! THEY ARE POSITIVE TESTS FROM A TESTING MECHANISM OF HIGHLY DUBIOUS ACCURACY !
Repeatedly referring to ‘cases’ does Handcock’s job for him.
Yet they are mixing with groups of their friends at school. So the virus can tell the difference between a school playground and standing outside someone’s front door.
Fantastic content today, you’ve made this mathematician very happy. Assumptions stated up front along with excellent visualisations and context. Prof Doom could learn a thing or two!
The shape of the pandemic curves seem to be further evidence that correlates with what the chap at Tel Aviv University modelled some months back. I’m particularly taken with the US data, clearly indicating lockdowns aren’t a significant factor in pandemic progression.
I’ve been giving some thought to approximating prevalence in the UK currently, I realise this isn’t testable and some gross estimates might have to suffice… but is anyone aware of any suitable methods? I can bad calculate from inferred herd immunity, but again it’s a gross estimate.
Anyway, great stuff once again and keep up the good fight everyone.
Classic mission creep in action in one of today’s Round Up articles:
“The Wall St Journal says home testing and Covid passports could contain any further outbreaks”
Unacceptable. But the reality is that our everyday lives have been so warped by the insanity that the vast majority will accept, and in most cases wholeheartedly embrace, anything. Selling this as the “new normal” worked. It is exactly that.
The brutal bottom line for me is that I am permanently excluded from society. So be it.
I think you’ll be fine, Richard.
Me too Richard! But luckily I’m in the winter of my middle age… so won’t be around to pick up the pieces….
Not from our society you’re not!
Another miracle, viruses can read passports!
Yes, that headline flashed up warning lights for me too.
It’s the only time of year I’ll be wearing a mask. I’ll be going round in one of those Covid masks. “Trick or Cough.” I’ll make a mint.
The report from AI is very important as it validates what many of us have been saying all along. There was NO EPIDEMIOLOGICAL EVENT of historical proportions but there was MASSIVE ADMINISTRATIVE EUTHANASIA of the elderly that was created by policy directives and mismanagement. We can argue then as to who should be held responsible and what indictments should ensue but make no mistake this blows the lid off of the fabrication that this “novel virus” created a “global pandemic” which necessitated the closing down of society.
Further, the well-documented (here and elsewhere) devastating impacts of these lockdowns should now (should have been anyways) be seen in the light of massive government mismanagement (at best) and negligence and multiple legal inquiries need to begin which will undoubtedly prove that there was extensive collusion and corruption from the WHO on down.
There also needs to be investigations and indictments into the media’s role in amplifying this manufactured crisis. Imagine if from the start we were being told that the “Covid deaths” were mainly from 80+ elderly folks who were already in very poor health who were primarily residents of squalid nursing homes and that these most fragile people were victims of neglect and profiteers. What would the ensuing public response have looked like.
I have no doubt in my mind that those in the boardrooms of major media networks made very direct decisions on withholding that information and creating a false narrative to create hysteria. That was done in order to create public support for the draconian policies that have been destroying lives. Those are crimes.
Not according to this piece of legislation currently sailing through Parliament:
https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-9012/
The Department of Health and Social Care is one of the state agencies covered that can conduct “authorised criminal activities“.
“Notwithstanding widespread acceptance of the operational necessity of authorising criminal conduct on the part of covert human intelligence sources, there are some controversial features of the regime that the Bill would provide for. These include:
Just posted this below – my worry is that this will be used to get round the Crimes against Humanity court case..
Basically there will be no one to sue because they will have exempted themselves from any form of punishment..
How far has it got in Parliament? Can we make sure the likes of Talk Radio, Hitchens and others pick it up?
Law cannot be applied retrospectively.
Good news if true..
Yes, all that could possibly come into force on the day the Act is passed. It does NOT cover crimes committed BEFORE the Act becomes Law. And the acts against humanity are most definitely not included under the heading of “criminal conduct on the part of covert human intelligence sources”. What the government and its agencies has done appears perfectly overt to me. Kind of the opposite from covert!
Furthermore, this does not authorise those working for the State to commit criminal acts, but rather those who are their contacts. Again, not quite the same thing as you suggest.
My worry is that the World Bank, WHO and WEF must surely have anticipated pushback and court cases, and thought about how to get round them????
They are not short of money and they also have Gates and his billions with which to fight any court cases that are brought..
Remember the MacDonalds trial?
They have their hubris against them.
I emailed my MP about this today.
His reply:
Dear XXX,
Thank you very much for your email on this Bill.
I have noted your points and concerns on this. I will bear these in mind when discussing this with colleagues.
Thank you again for contacting me.
Kind regards,
YYY
Oh well, I’ve done my bit!
The whole of the last 5 months have been about spinning this shit out as long as possible because the moment things go back to normal (or close to normal), the day of reckoning arrives. That is plain.
El Presidente Sturgeon at it again.
Do as I say etc.
It’s basically going to happen, no “could” about it.
Bint of a woman.
https://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/politics/nicola-sturgeon-warns-scots-further-22794581
https://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/politics/scottish-football-chief-claims-country-22793484
A few are speaking out though;attempting to challenge the Sturgeon Hypnosis Syndrome.
The article says: “But despite a range of local lockdowns being imposed across the country in recent months, the number of new Covid cases continues to rise.”
Seems insane then to impose yet more of the same?
You bash your head against the mantelpiece.
You head hurts.
So you bash it again, harder.
Simples.
& the fear porn continues,
Long COVID this time.
https://uk.yahoo.com/style/health-expert-warns-long-covid-160347154.html
Copied from one of the worst websites for fear porn, but I expect the BBC to follow closely behind.
They never called it ‘long pneumonia’ though did they?
It’s impossible to say exactly how quickly you’ll recover, but here’s an idea of what to expect:
Pneumonia can be a serious illness that takes weeks or months to recover from
1 weekyour fever should be gone
4 weeksyour chest will feel better and you’ll produce less mucus
6 weeksyou’ll cough less and find it easier to breathe
3 monthsmost of your symptoms should be gone, though you may still feel tired
6 monthsyou should feel back to normal
https://www.blf.org.uk/support-for-you/pneumonia/recovery
It takes 12 months to fully recover from being intubated/ventilated.
Most victims are middle-aged women. (How many of these were ventilated?)
Probably went back to work/mum duties after minimal convalescence.
“Long Covid” was found to be most common in those of working age, with a median age of 45 among those afflicted, and cases rare in those above the age of 65 and below the age of 18. Women were more likely than men to be affected.
Recovery times:
Influenza 4 weeks.
Glandular fever 12 months.
Shingles can take several months.
and to all those who suffered from ME but were told to ‘get a grip’ by doctors who did not believe them.
Happened to me, many years ago: dismissive consultant physician. Fortunately I had a sympathetic GP at the time.
Hippie flu…
Damn right it is! They should try 25+ years of periodic “post viral” symptoms. Anyone trying that one on me might just get the short shrift (k*cked out of them). Sorry, but it makes me blood boil. . . .
Yes. I’ve had ME since the 1980s pandemic.
Don’t mention Simon Weasely in my viscinity!
Daily Telegraph:
Prof Spector, Professor of Genetic Epidemiology at King’s College London, said their research had found that the effects of the virus lingered for a long time in significant numbers of people.
Researchers from King’s and health-science company ZOE tracked data from more than 4 million people.
They found that 1 in 10 sufferers had symptoms of “long Covid” for a month, with 1 in 50 still suffering at least three months later.
Spector yet again!!
Maybe not everybody’s cup of tea, but always good to listen to as many different voices as possible and decide for ourselves which are the most honest/trustworthy….
Dr. Christiane Northrup Discusses The Covid-19 Vaccine
https://m.youtube.com/watch?feature=youtu.be&v=_E7u7giY2nc
Even flagship Sweden’s health authority is saying restrictions for at least another year:
https://omni.se/carlson-restriktionerna-blir-kvar-atminstone-ett-ar/a/nAaa9d (In Swedish, you’ll need a translator)
Also reiterating the option of local lockdowns. As if things couldn’t get any more depressing.
Hardly depressing. The restrictions again;
People “should keep their distance and not move outside with mild symptoms, to reduce congestion and to work from home. We will continue with what has been successful”.
It’s much less than over here but still a sign that governments don’t want this to end.
I was in Sweden last month and, trust me, you really wouldn’t know there were any restrictions in place.
It’s flu season. That’s just common sense.
No, they don’t mention local lockdowns; he writes that they could limit public transport in areas with high spread (doesn’t say how?) or that (more worrying) not going to shops unless buying food…
Let’s see what Tegnell says at the next press conference..
Which is actually about the same as the first national lockdown in the UK. Leave your house once a day only for exercise or purchasing essential goods.
But they are nonetheless going ahead with gatherings of 500, hopefully..
For now, our gatherings of 30 didn’t last long.
There were several other reasons too, Richard.
Crimes against HUMANITY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kr04gHbP5MQ
Must watch if you haven’t already
The lawsuits will be coming out soon from every angle and these evil fuckers will pay for what they have done the last 6 months. Fraud, human rights, manslaughter. You name it and they’ll be done for it.
Don’t give up people. It won’t start in this country but it will be a very quick domino effect.
The way things are going we are going to be leading the world in Covid authoritarianism, and will be facing the longest path back to salvation.
Not if you see the bill currently being rushed through Parliament – see earlier in this thread…
There are a good few heading their way already.
See this though: https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-9012/
There won’t be anyone to bring a case against because they will all be exempt from prosecution.
Maybe this is the reason for delaying Simon Dolan’s case????
I think you’re right. When the crunch comes it will be big, big, big.
Yet more proof PCR tests are not fit for purpose, and no-one should be counting so called ‘cases’ ……this time courtesy of DM. (actually, if the only purpose of a PCR test is to promote locking people in, then they are fit for purpose!)
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8805591/Italy-coronavirus-Britons-quarantine-two-months-fear-mental-health.html#comments
Why would anyone decide it was a good idea to travel Europe in the midst of a plandemic?
They’re just kids but why didn’t their parents suggest they wait till next year?
Err, because they’re lockdown sceptics ?
People have families is the most obvious reason to travel, irrespective of what mad governments say.
Dido Harding… in days gone by she could have been in a Harry Enfield sketch, maybe Tim “nice” but Dim`s other half.
She’s the rather hopeless girl who would be delegated to put the lacrosse sticks back in the locker after a game, but would lose one or two on the way.
Before I get banned from this comment section, I am currently in an argument with a bed wetting pansy. I hate the Edinburgh live rag, however, the comment boiled my piss, so I have retaliated.
Please look & tell me if I’m wrong in what I am saying to the bed wetter.
Scroll or click on the comments part.
Thank you.
https://www.edinburghlive.co.uk/news/edinburgh-news/coronavirus-scotland-lockdowns-not-best-19046521#comments-section
Spot on. Well said. I’ll be interested to see if your comment is deleted.
My current comment is awaiting moderation.
My first reply has been mysteriously deleted??
no – it is there. the one from around 7pm .. but you have to click to see it
Aaahh…I didn’t see that. Thank you for pointing that out to me
As a reminder to all, all local newspapers have BBC paid-for reporters embedded with them spreading the BBC gospel on Covid and other matters.
The Edinburgh rag has 4 of them.
Local press tells lies
I wasn’t aware of this. It is quite troubling that the BBC have this level of influence over ‘independent’ newspapers.
yes – there is another link to a pdf that shows exactly where all 130 or so of them are. nominally they are supposed to be the link between the local councils and the local press, I think i would be happier if they did football.
Local newspapers aren’t independent. They are all part of the Reach group and all but their truly local stories are identical.
MustNotGetBanned is you? Two replies there I can see. You’re not wrong. Government was harsh to get people onside the way they have, we have to be equally harsh.
Yes, that is me.
I think it will take a lot to get banned from this site – we’re a very open lot and Toby doesn’t seem to have any rules.
We seem to enjoy the arguments at times.
I am half Scottish, dad’s family from Edinburgh.
For all that side of the family’s big talk they were just that, all talk, no action and a bunch of druggies, permanently unemployed and “it was the english’s fault” SNP muppets and nuggets. The city was full of down and outs shooting up and ooh aye the noo plastic jocks pretending to be something they weren’t with a big chip about the english on their shoulders.
Gave up visiting over 25 years ago and never been back and never regretted it.
My brother and SiL moved to Scotland 35 years ago.
They think Mad Nic is doing a wonderful job!
An increase in the number of infections is not a bad thing if the vast majority of those who contract Covid-19 experience only a mild illness or indeed remain asymptomatic. It all helps to build ‘herd immunity’ (nothing wrong with that term). The important parameters are the number of people falling seriously ill and the number of people dying of the disease. If you look at the government’s own website, you’ll see that there is no second wave in respect of serious illness or fatalities but merely a ripple, which is entirely to be expected. Rishi Sunak seems to be the only member of the government who is able to get things in proportion.
The problem is the cycle rate for PCR with the fact that it is Pillar 2 (private company) testing. The companies have an incentive to keep testing.
The recent link on this site about the CDC guidelines in the past and that 24 to 30 (max) is considered the range for testing. 30 has about 3% FPR. We are seeing 40 to 45.
It is highly likely that not one test in the UK actually identified SARS-Cov-2. We were just measuring noise.
Does anyone have any official that says we are using 40+ amplification cycles?
I’m putting together an analysis of the government’s figures and I could do with some citations.
I’m hoping to create a live analysis tool that will automatically suck up the government figures and spit out the non-bullshit version.
For example, using yesterday’s government testing figures, I plotted positive tests as a percentage of administered tests (using a seven-day rolling average), and the result was basically a horizontal line sitting below 2%.
The hockey-stick graphs that the government trots out are the worst kind of manipulation. Who cares about the “cumulative number of tests”? All that tells us is how much public money has been transferred into the pockets of the Pillar 2 shareholders.
May help?
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7369599/
Low numbers of viral cuktures being developed
https://www.cebm.net/covid-19/infectious-positive-pcr-test-result-covid-19/
I cannot read pdfs:
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://www.idexx.com/files/realpcr-technical-guide.pdf&ved=2ahUKEwjchqCM6p3sAhXJ-6QKHRUKDZIQFjADegQIBRAB&usg=AOvVaw2OPOkWBOhi-Akthh7EZxRj
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://www.who.int/docs/default-source/coronaviruse/whoinhouseassays.pdf%3Fsfvrsn%3Dde3a76aa_2&ved=2ahUKEwjchqCM6p3sAhXJ-6QKHRUKDZIQFjAEegQICxAC&usg=AOvVaw2Eeb125KV-n2K9xeWT_EFv
Thanks! Those look like really interesting documents. I’ll read them properly when I’ve had some sleep. A full day spent on this website always leaves me emotionally drained.
It was on a tweet on Simon Dolan’s twitter a few weeks ago – paperwork for the test performed stated 45 cycles.
45 is ridiculous!
Until all this bulshit started I considered myself to be pretty much a supporter of left wing politics but since Coronabollocks I’ve been reading a lot of right wing/conservative writers who seem to have a better understanding of what liberty really is. Here is an extract from an article by Douglas Murray who, I confess, I would not have entertained before now such was my bigotry/antipathy towards the right (now abated.) Ironically given its focus (it’s about cancel culture) it was published in January this year but is even more pertinent now:
‘In particular, I’ve been considering two haunting observations made by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn at the outset of The Gulag Archipelago. The first is the question of why people did not resist more when they were taken away in the night. Why did they not scream, tear up the earth, scratch the eyes of the men who had come to take them? And — if they had to leave their home – why didn’t they make sure that the people who had come into their home bore the scars of having done so for the rest of their days? Why did the captured even tip-toe down the stairs, as they were asked to do by their captors, in order not to disturb their neighbours?
The answer to this lies in a question. As Solzhenitsyn puts it: “At what exact point, then, should one resist? When one’s belt is taken away? When one is ordered to face into a corner?” In part, the reason nobody resists is the same one we learned from Communism’s evil twin: if people have no conception of what is about to happen to them, then they will do whatever they think is needed to keep themselves alive to the next stage.
….
Solzhenitsyn’s second question-observation is even more haunting: why did people not intervene more to stop their friends, family or simply fellow-citizens from being taken away? In some ways, this is the more disturbing observation. We may grant that people have the best perspective on their own fate and will know best what might save themselves. But when people see women being plucked off the pavement by agents of the state, why do they continue walking?
…
It was, says Solzhenitsyn, because the people “didn’t love freedom enough. And even more — we had no awareness of the real situation.” ‘
You have made me cry.
Douglas Murray is great – his stuff is on Spiked, the Spectator and elsewhere. He gets interviewed quite a bit – loads of YouTube videos to find. Really honest and straight talking.
I’ve got both of his books and I read his every article.
Brexit is essentially worthless in a NWO…as well the government know..
Did anyone vote for Brexit because they thought the UN and the WHO would do a much better job than the EU?
There will be no spark. The masses are gone.
Brexit has been memory-holed. We must appease the omnipotent devil of Covid, all hail The Science (TM).
Like the people nearby when this young woman was tasered, arrested and handcuffed for not wearing a mask, whilst sitting outside in the fresh air nowhere near anyone else. No one questioned it. They let it happen because “those are the rules.”
When about when the rules are illogical, onerous, unnecessary and increase infringe upon normal everyday behaviour?
Boris and Hancock have joined Blair, Brown and May in my personal hatred for the damage done to this country. I’m not sure now who is worse.
Blair. Banned smoking in pubs. The cunt’s cunt.
I’ve always considered myself a Libertarian liberal, with a slight leaning to the left except in areas of personal freedom/big government where I’ve never liked the cut of their gib.
This year has pushed me – and I suspect a lot of people – to the Libertarian right. Certainly on social issues and small government.
I actually had the horrific realisation that if I was American I would now vote Trump, which a year ago would have been the last thing I ever would have thought I’d find myself thinking.
He’s an awful human being, but the damage he would do would last only four more years. A win for the fanatical left would lead to the polarisation of society for at least a generation and the end of liberal democracy as we know it.
There is a war on now, make no mistake, and during a war you sometimes have to get into bed with people and parties you normally wouldn’t give the time of day to.
I concur with that, even the Trump bit (which horrifies me too)
The South Park special looks good. Is Cartman the one to save us?
He couldn’t save us from PC Principal.
I’m looking forward to watching it.
Don’t give them the satisfaction, stick around to fight. You have plenty of solidarity here
The following was posted in the comments section on Conservative Woman today by cerberus:
“Prof Dr Antony P Mueller at the Mises Institute writes:
From Lockdowns to “The Great Reset”
The lockdown in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic has accelerated the implementation of long-held plans to establish a so-called new world order. Under the auspices of the World Economic Forum (WEF), global policymakers are advocating for a “Great Reset” with the intent of creating a global technocracy. It is not by coincidence that on October 18, 2019, in New York City the WEF participated in “Event 201” at the “high-level” pandemic exercise organized by the John Hopkins Center for Health Security.
This coming technocracy involves close cooperation between the heads of the digital industry and of governments. With programs such as guaranteed minimum income and healthcare for all, the new kind of governance combines strict societal control with the promise of comprehensive social justice.
The truth, however, is that this new world order of digital tyranny comes with a comprehensive social credit system. The People’s Republic of China is the pioneer of this method of surveillance and control of individuals, corporations, and sociopolitical entities.
For the individual, one’s identity is reduced to an app or chip that registers almost any personal activity. In order to gain a few individual rights, and be it only to travel to a certain place, a person must balance such apparent privileges with his submission to a web of regulations that define in detail what is “good behavior” and deemed as beneficial to humankind and the environment. For example, during a pandemic, this sort of control would extend from the obligation of wearing a mask and practicing social distancing to having specific vaccinations in order to apply for a job or to travel.
It is, in short, a type of social engineering which is the opposite of a spontaneous order or of development. Like the mechanical engineer with a machine, the social engineer—or technocrat—treats society as an object. Different from the brutal suppressions by the totalitarianism of earlier times, the modern social engineer will try to make the social machine work on its own according to the design. For this purpose, the social engineer must apply the laws of society the way the mechanical engineer follows the laws of nature. Behavioral theory has reached a stage of knowledge that makes the dreams of social engineering possible. The machinations of social engineering operate not through brute force, but subtly by nudge.
Under the order envisioned by the Great Reset, the advancement of technology is not meant to serve the improvement of the conditions of the people but to submit the individual to the tyranny of a technocratic state. “The experts know better” is the justification.
The Agenda
The plan for an overhaul of the world is the brainchild of an elite group of businessmen, politicians, and their intellectual entourage that used to meet in Davos, Switzerland, in January each year. Brought into existence in 1971, the World Economic Forum has become a megaglobal event since then. More than three thousand leaders from all over the world attended the meeting in 2020.
Under the guidance of the WEF, the agenda of the Great Reset says that the completion of the current industrial transformation requires a thorough overhaul of the economy, politics, and society. Such a comprehensive transformation requires the alteration of human behavior, and thus “transhumanism” is part of the program.
The Great Reset will be the theme of the fifty-first meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos in 2021. Its agenda is the commitment to move the world economy toward “a more fair, sustainable and resilient future.” The program calls for “a new social contract” that is centered on racial equality, social justice, and the protection of nature. Climate change requires us “to decarbonize the economy” and to bring human thinking and behavior “into harmony with nature.” The aim is to build “more equal, inclusive and sustainable economies.” This new world order must be “urgently” implemented, the promotors of the WEF claim, and they point out that the pandemic “has laid bare the unsustainability of our system,” which lacks “social cohesion.”
The WEF’s great reset project is social engineering at the highest level. Advocates of the reset contend that the UN failed to establish order in the world and could not advance forcefully its agenda of sustainable development—known as Agenda 2030—because of its bureaucratic, slow, and contradictory way of working. In contrast, the actions of the organizational committee of the World Economic Forum are swift and smart. When a consensus has been formed, it can be implemented by the global elite all over the world.
https://mises.org/wire/lockdowns-great-reset
Hopefully a lot of people there will read it and WAKE UP!
Nobody will read it except for those already aware of it.
Hopefully Toby will read it.
This plan sounds like a socialist w-dream…
David Icke has been cracking on about this for years…and years…
David Icke thought that the opening ceremony Olympics 2012 and the latest rugby world cup were satanic rituals. Since I knew many artists involved in the former I’m going to say you’re speaking out of your arse David, haemorrhoids an’ all. This is the sort of bollocks that gives sceptics a bad name https://archive.org/details/2012-london-games-predictive-programming-1
You gonna explain why it’s bollocks ?
Look up their website (WEF). Not theory but fact. So off your high horse and look around, my friend, before it’s too late. And it has nothing to do with anti-Semitism (which is clearly abhorrent) so can give that old chestnut a rest.
Mises article continued:
“Social Engineering
The ideology of the World Economic Forum is neither left nor right, nor progressive or conservative, it is also not fascist or communist, but outright technocratic. As such, it includes many elements of earlier collectivist ideologies.
In recent decades, the consensus has emerged at the annual Davos meetings that the world needs a revolution, and that reforms have taken too long. The members of the WEF envision a profound upheaval at short notice. The time span should be so brief that most people will hardly realize that a revolution is going on. The change must be so swift and dramatic that those who recognize that a revolution is happening do not have the time to mobilize against it.
The basic idea of the Great Reset is the same principle that guided the radical transformations from the French to the Russian and Chinese Revolutions. It is the idea of constructivist rationalism incorporated in the state. But projects like the Great Reset leave unanswered the question of who rules the state. The state itself does not rule. It is an instrument of power. It is not the abstract state that decides, but the leaders of specific political parties and of certain social groups.
Earlier totalitarian regimes needed mass executions and concentration camps to maintain their power. Now, with the help of new technologies, it is believed, dissenters can easily be identified and marginalized. The nonconformists will be silenced by disqualifying divergent opinions as morally despicable.
The 2020 lockdowns possibly offer a preview of how this system works. The lockdown worked as if it had been orchestrated—and perhaps it was. As if following a single command, the leaders of big and small nations—and of different stages of economic development—implemented almost identical measures. Not only did many governments act in unison, they also applied these measures with little regard for the horrific consequences of a global lockdown.
Months of economic stillstand have destroyed the economic basis of millions of families. Together with social distancing, the lockdown has produced a mass of people unable to care for themselves. First, governments destroyed the livelihood, then the politicians showed up as the savior. The demand for social assistance is no longer limited to specific groups, but has become a need of the masses.
Once, war was the health of the state. Now it is fear of disease. What lies ahead is not the apparent coziness of a benevolent comprehensive welfare state with a guaranteed minimum income and healthcare and education for all. The lockdown and its consequences have brought a foretaste of what is to come: a permanent state of fear, strict behavioral control, massive loss of jobs, and growing dependence on the state.
With the measures taken in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic, a big step to reset the global economy has been made. Without popular resistance, the end of the pandemic will not mean the end of the lockdown and social distancing. At the moment, however, the opponents of the new world order of digital tyranny still have access to the media and platforms to dissent. Yet the time is running out. The perpetrators of the new world order have smelled blood. Declaring the coronavirus a pandemic has come in handy to promote the agenda of their Great Reset. Only massive opposition can slow down and finally stop the extension of the power grip of the tyrannical technocracy that is on the rise.”
https://mises.org/wire/lockdowns-great-reset
“Now, with the help of new technologies, it is believed, dissenters can easily be identified and marginalized. The nonconformists will be silenced by disqualifying divergent opinions as morally despicable.”
We have already crossed this threshold in the public mind. All that remains is the digital book burning, where websites like this are permanently removed. Once all avenues of resistance have been eliminated, and dissidents physically removed, then the rest will naturally follow.
My opinions have been considered morally despicable for decades. Fuck ’em.
I nearly lost it this morning: weekly walk with pal who ‘listens to Nicola’ and ‘follows the rules’ : usual coffee abandoned as she is no longer prepared to take the risk-either of being snitched on by one of the ‘new normal’ curtain twitchers, or, even more bizarrely,since she is in ‘a bubble’ with her daughter and grand daughters, the rules don’t allow for harmless refreshments with someone-(me)- not from her household,whom she has been meeting for many months ,without any potentially lethal consequences
Despite my assurances that I would be more than prepared to take the rap, should the Covid Cops materialise, she was adamant.
Having swallowed my mounting exasperation, I then relayed the ugly story of the hapless 10 year old, whose recent birthday party gathering resulted in a visit from the very same Covid Cops, these the cops who steadfastly ignore any and very complaint about local drug dealing.
When I opined that we seem to be living in a police state, with eager snitching beavers everywhere,as shown by the frankly disproportionate and sinister warning issued by Scotland’s finest to this little 10 year old’s family, she merely said that the mother should have known better.
What a dreadful attitude this is; censorious self righteousness and a total lack of any wish to question this outlandish encroachment on normal customs, solely for the sake of ‘stopping the spread’!
I questioned The Rule of Six; why not ten, eight or the square root of minus one?
‘Well they must have their reasons’ was the answer.
This from a well educated woman with a close and loving family.
It makes me despair as I cannot see this avid, cultish , barmy adherence to the rules abating any time soon.
Now I can understand all too well how the Stasi, the Gestapo and the Milice achieved such rapid success.
This lamentable society of ours is in thrall to a deep seated irrational slavishness and it does not bode well for the future.
Akin to Stockholm Syndrome isn’t it?
Absolutely!
So why are we all so resistant to it? Genuine question.
How many people were sceptical of the government and media well before CV19 appeared??
I was certainly sceptical about the Johnson/Cummings government. Lying has always been a big part of their strategy. As for the media and anything on social media, I was checking sources and digging deeper well before covid.
I’ve been sceptical of the UK government since the Weapons of Mass Destruction lies back at the turn of this century. Even before then I enjoyed a healthy diet of Bill Hicks back in the 90s.
I also regard all social media as loathsome, don’t watch any entertainment that incorporates adverts, and only get my news from the website versions of the MSM (as well as from independent sources).
However, I think the main reason for my resistance to propaganda is my ever-enquiring mind, my relentless curiosity and my contempt for lies and hypocrisy.
Since the early 90s, so getting on for 30 years of scepticism. I knew I was in a minority, but this shitshow has brought home to me just how brain dead the majority of my fellow citizens are, and how distant from them I am.
In 1998 I moved to Cincinnati and once a week went to the arts cinema on 1/2 price night. There watched Oliver Stone Docu JFK. This sent me into a frenzy of research and I have not stopped since.
For me it’s not watching or listening to or reading mainstream media. The more lurid the claim or headline, the less likely I am to believe it. The less data or evidence to support it, the less likely I am to believe it.
My trigger for this is, like Mr Dee, the “weapons of mass destruction” prior to the Iraq War. Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me.
My trigger was the pointless tank on the runway at Gatwick.
I’ve always been generally sceptical of authority. But that was reinforced with my GCSE History coursework on the War on Terror. It wasn’t on just the events but also the public perception as shaped by the media, and that analysis has stuck with me ever since. It’s like when you can understand horror theatrics, they’re not scary anymore.
I’m a Marxist. Groucho type. And grouchy. If I see an unthinking consensus, I tend towards disagreement on principle, and have to look at the evidence and ask ‘Why?’. Had the complaint since childhood, (so they said) always resisting being told what to do.
On balance, I find I can rightly say ‘Told you’ more often than ‘Sorry’.
I think we might be related. Both my grandfathers were born in the UK so it’s possible! I will follow a rule that makes sense, but if it doesn’t and I’m being forced to comply I resist. Have been this way since I was a kid, much to my parents’ chagrin. I call out hypocrisy wherever I see it and trust my logic and rationality, as well as my intuition. Maybe all of us on this forum were born with a well-developed BS detector.
Me too. Was told I wasn’t being made a prefect at school because of my “iconoclastic tendencies” (ie only follows rules if they make sense to me, otherwise kick up a merry stink). Argued with teachers continually from age of about 10. Never really got in trouble as I worked hard and had good grades, but never really fit in either.
Same here: the only member of the Upper 6th not to be made a prefect.
However, only 3 of us passed all our O levels previously, one being the head girl, one the very superior maths wizard and me!
Started as I’ve since gone on.
Voted Leave and now a Sceptic.
I became sceptical in the early 1990s when I turned 30. The bias in the BBC’s output was starting to become obvious to me. The “Tory Sleaze” campaign in the media – fevourishly pursued by the BBC – confirmed my scepticism of the BBC.
Blair’s government and their lies and dishonesty turned me sceptical of politicians (a few of the early labour lies off the top of my head include cigarette advertising & Formula 1 / Hinduja Brothers passports / Mandelson mortgage / Mrs Blair’s Bristol flats purchased by a blind trust / David Kelly / Iraq war dossier et al).
I discovered blogs in the early 2000s; a few early ones that I can remember from around 2005 include Iain Dale’s Diary, Guido Fawkes, Wattsupwith that, Tim Worstall, EUreferendum, Samizdata, Winston Smith, David Copperfield and Devil’s Kitchen. I enjoyed reading blogs and their ability to inform, amuse and encourage debate. The better ones provided links to sources (such as Toby’s blog does now) – and ever since their emergence, I have abandoned print versions of newspapers and rarely listen to the TV & radio news.
Did you ever read Captain Ranty’s blog? He was brilliant.I was already awake but he really peeled the covers back I still don’t believe he died. I had a hunch back then that someone had had a word and scared him off posting any more.
I’ve been sceptical of the establishment since Blair invaded Iraq on the basis of no evidence. I have since divorced myself as far as possible from any reliance on the State, either today or in the future. They will fail us all.
I have always mistrusted authority. I try to keep well under the radar and never give my real name or phone number for anything apart from the essential stuff. In fact I think only my bank, private dentist and my workplace have it. I’m not on the electoral roll and I don’t have an NHS death-doctor.
I didn’t go to school till I was nine as my health was so poor. I think that encouraged me not to bow to peer pressure as I wasn’t subjected to it at an early age.
Me. Years ago. Over forty if my memory serves me right. Three day week?
Anyone with half a brain. Next …
I’m afraid I am avoiding all friends of that type. To be honest I find it difficult to understand why I am friends with people who it turns out have a completely different value system to me. Perhaps ask yourself if “I met you now for the first time would I want to see you again?” Trying to hang on to a friend through the vicissitudes of life is very hard. Our attitudes may diverge. Sometimes you have to let them go and accept that the friendship has had its time.
Very true, but I’m already virtually completely isolated here,so for the moment, I’m agreeing to disagree,but it may not last.
What really winds me up, is the selective annoyance: last week the same friend was complaining about the suspension of GP services having questioned her surgery’s receptionist extensively about how the staff had passed the time since the house arrests started,while now,she is all about sticking to these arcane and ridiculous rules.
I’ve even been dumped by a mobile hairdresser, for having the effrontery to opine that ‘Sturgeon is making political capital out of this; she very obviously is.
Having received a generous tip-cash in hand-she departed,never to be seen again.
Generally I would agree but this is actually more painful for us as we are in the minority. Maybe Wendy needs support from her friend as much or more than the other way round? I’m sick of sheep making everything all about them from Brexit to Covid. They manage to turn everything into an example of either their perpetual victimhood or moral superiority. As they say: with friends like that..!
Like you I have found most of my (ever diminishing circle of) friends performing all manner of mental gymnastics to justify their own enslavement. The other day I raised the topic of the rushed vaccine to be deployed by the military. Blank stares all round, with one of them whimpering a pathetic: “Oh, it’ll probably work out alright”. At this point I have to give them all up as lost.
You can see the mental shutters coming down, as they continue to believe what it suits them to believe.
It’s like an investment: “I trust our leader-(Sturgeon)- implicitly, and my life hasn’t been wrecked; why should I listen to the protestations of a friend who seems to think she knows more than the experts?
If I start to question the narrative, as my pal does, my investment will have been in vain and I can’t have that.
In any case, I’m being careful and considerate and doing my bit to stop the spread”.
This will be a very hard nut to crack, all the more so given the slavish loyalty to Sturgeon.
Are there any prominent sceptics in Scotland?
It seems Holyrood is effectively a presidential system. But with only one candidate for the job. All the parties seem to agree with her on covid measures.
https://www.thinkscotland.org/thinkpolitics/articles.html?read_full=14260
Linda Holt is one of the few; see above.
George Galloway rants and provokes, but he’s more set on establishing the Alliance for Unity candidates for next year’s election-if it takes place that is.
“This from a well educated woman”
Evidently not. You were mistaken!
The thing is Rick, they are well educated, but as I wrote on another comment here, it’s like a chosen investment which they cannot afford to see fail; so, they cannot risk listening to the objections and questions from a troublesome sceptic like me.
If we look around, many of the most avid adherents are graduates and are scaring themselves shitless, not least because they can afford to, being home owners with no mortgage to worry about and secure retirement incomes.
I’m a retired graduate, but a poor bolshy member of the Sceptic Squad.
One thing I have learned is that “educated” does not always, or possibly even often, equal “intelligent”. The two are very different things.
There are some very well educated people who are unable to reason. Being able to learn and understand other people’s ideas doesn’t mean you can necessarily think for yourself.
Cannot ‘like’ this for obvious reasons. I meet with the same drones and have similar conversations. Know the immense frustration of being up close with this hateful blinkered anto compassionate view of the world.
Have thunbed up, thanks for writing.
You need to sack her, else you’re going to get sucked in. ‘First they came for the (choose your scapegoat) and I did not protest because I was not that scapegoat….’ Look what is happening in Victoria, Australia, don’t humour her.
“First they came for Icke’s supporters”.
He’s been predicting events such as Victoria for 30 odd years.
You’re not alone,despite your anguish. Stay with us,let your anger keep you going.
Telegraph has reported Covid vaccine ‘would start’ with most vulnerable, says Boris Johnson
So what is the Government’s policy?
Johnson’s statement seem ambiguous to me, I suspect it is the latter (per Ellwood’s desire) and he’s being deliberately vague, but would be useful for their policy to be clarified.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2020/10/05/boris-johnson-margaret-ferrier-jobseekers-scheme-brexit-latest/
If the bloody things actually work, then we won’t need to vaccinate everyone.
I don
t see any need to vaccinate anyone, seeing as theres a 99.97% survival rate anywayAssuming there is a policy, and if there is one, it will be the same next week. Or tomorrow.
Giving an untested vaccine to the most vulnerable sounds like an uncontrolled experiment.
It sounds like genocide to me.
You’re both right — it’s an uncontrolled, genocidal experiment.
If their policy on care homes (as Toby reported today) is anything to go by, I don’t think they care about that.
what could possibly go wrong?
Generally speaking, officials know a lot more on any given subject than their political masters. Even if said official isn’t even involved.
Right, so this Kate Bingham seems like she should know what’s going on, and her statement doesn’t seem unreasonable to me. And if this is actually true, then I can sleep better as it would mean they are probably not going down the whole ID2020 road and all that
However, Johnson’s statement is ambiguous, he has niether confirmed nor denied her statement is correct.
Maybe he’s just an idiot, or maybe he thinks telling people the vaccine won’t be available to everyone will be unpopular (so what’s he going to do about that) or maybe he (or someone else) has some nefarious plan.
I agree. Kate Bingham’s statement made me feel a whole lot better this morning when I read that. If it is true, why can’t they make this more widely known, then it might stop people worrying about compulsory vaccines and having o have jabs in return for certain liberties?
I think the charitable explanation would be that our concerns are a minority interest, and since the Government seems to have convinced the bulk of the population that they’ll die if they get a whiff of corona, they would be panicked if they heard the vaccine was restricted. In which case, they have dug themselves into an almighty hole that I can’t see how they are going to get themselves out of.
Or they are evil bastards planning to jab us all, all along, just letting the plan unveil slowly.
Well – I’m ‘vulnerable’ and I don’t want an undertested snake-oil in my system, thanks very much – because I’m ‘vulnerable’!
I would assume if it’s the first option, then you’d have a choice, same as for flu vaccine. If it’s the second option, then none of us have any right to refuse and we’re all stuffed.
I were to assume the government was being sane and rational, and had no agenda (bear with me here), you would expect them to be a bit ambiguous.
We don’t know yet how safe this vaccine is likely to be. IF it is incredibly safe, and was low cost, you could indeed roll it out to everyone. Quite why you would bother, given the cost of the vaccine and the mild symptoms in the vast majority, is a different question.
If however there is a degree of risk attached to the vaccine, then you would only administer it if the the risk of harm to the patient was lower than that of the disease. So maybe in the very elderly. But you would need data to show it worked in this notoriously difficult to immunize population.
So if it were me in charge, I would be making this very clear: that who exactly a vaccine is suitable for will depend on the risk/benefit profile in different groups of people. Quite why they don’t think the public will understand this message is not clear to me. It seems obvious. But nothing they have done to date makes sense, so I am not that surprised.
Don’t normally, but thinking of getting the house set up to ‘welcome’ (heheheee…) trick or treaters. Mainly just out of spite towards this bullshit, though halloween is a fun time of year. Love me a skull or two.
This was also posted by a user of Conservative Woman in the comments section:
“Why has the government banned antibody testing? Convinced I’d had Covid quite badly late last year I had a blood test done at a local pharmacy, which showed positive for Covid19 IgG and IgM antibodies. When my son, who had been quite ill, and my husband, who’d had very mild symptoms, went to get tested, they were told that all private pharmacies, including Bupa, had been forced to stop and if they didn’t stop they’d be shut down. When we contacted the National Pharmaceutical Council we were told that the government were afraid that if we found we’d had it, we’d stop wearing the masks.
Many people (especially students back at uni – Chinese students returning after summer break?) had been ill around late autumn (government claims Covid began in February), and it’s my belief that this virus had already swept through the country before the lockdown. Why don’t they want us to know? Are they so determined to roll out their mass-vaccination program that they’re prepared to see the country go to hell in a hand-cart?”
Does anyone else have any information about antibody testing??
A neighbour received took part in testing out a home test kit to see if she had CV19. As it gave a very quick result, i.e. in minutes, it couldn’t have been a PCR test….
My calf’s school notified us recently that they were obtaining an antigen testing machine that could be used to test pupils who were exhibiting “symptoms” (subject to parental consent).
I don’t know anything more about it though: I was too busy telling them to get fucked to take down any details.
If I find anything out, I’ll post it.
Interestingly, I was told yesterday that staff in a Chinese restaurant (likely of Cantonese origin) were wearing face masks last December. Nobody really though much of it at the time, but as the restaurant was close to university buildings, that now seems significant.
Anecdotally I know quite a few people who swear blind they had Covid way before March.
I got “it” (for some value of it) on March 10. Given that I hadn’t been to China, somebody had to have given to me.
My mother too thinks she may have had it in February.
My colleague was very ill over New Year, I had it beginning of march, I know a special needs teacher at our local college whose whole class had a sore throat for days beginning of march and they suspect covid.
Another person who had a chest infection which took 3 rounds of antibiotics.
I am convinced that it or something similar was around 12 months ago. We saw a large number of people with persistent cough with a mild fever. My wife and I had a persistent cough lasting 6 weeks. I had an antibody test through work earlier this year and it came back negative; however, this wouldn’t rule out that I had had the virus last October as it was more than three months later that I had the test; it also wouldn’t rule out an infection as my immune system would have been capable of supressing it in any case.
As said (above) – this is absolutely normal, and likely not anything particularly new. Just illustrates that Covid is one of many such viruses.
I believe my husband and I had it in early December after being in a vehicle with my sister and her SO who were hacking away. Hubby hasn’t had a cough in the 40 years I’ve known him, so when we both came down with dry coughs that lasted for a month we marvelled at how strange this illness was and like nothing we’d ever experienced. I’ve had plenty of coughs, but always productive and nothing like that dry cough. We were exhausted, but we were in the midst of moving so chalked it up to moving and the cough that wouldn’t go away. I always wonder if we’d had the same illness during Covid panic whether we would have experienced it differently (i.e., as more severe and scary than it was). My MA is in the history of psychology and I’ve done a lot of work on “hysteria” as it pertains to the lived experience of illness. The mind-body connection is very powerful and we can definitely make ourselves sicker if we are in a panic.
my ex is convinced she had it in November … she had a different and really bad chest and cough for longer than usual. Note our daughter was at York uni which had original chinese student infections.
I am sure i had something in february – again unusual cough and chest
The problem is that every symptom under the sun can be attributed to ‘Covid’ – it’s that sort of mythical beast.
Way before autumn/winter 2019, there were various cold viruses going around that produced nasty, long-lasting coughs and other symptoms.
Such bugs can be very nasty – but we name them as a ‘cold’ – and move on
One of my daughters, my husband and mother all had it (we think) back last year in late November/early December.
I’ve felt perfectly healthy with no symptoms of anything since around February of last year, so I’m worried I might be suffering from Long Covid.
Surely everyone should be tested to see if they already have the antibodies before they are given the (scarce) vaccine? Too rational? Not that I want the barely tested vaccine anyway…
Losing a pet is devastating and the hopeless frustration at the current situation has made many, including myself, contemplate suicide. But when the mood passes I’m so glad I didnt. Ultimately life is precious and if look can look for the things that make it so. Go for a walk, listen to music whatever you find pleasure in. Take a break from all news and covid talk. As a Christian I’ve been reading the Psalms and so many verses have reflected exactly how I feel..
Talk to God, or a sympathetic friend, or the Samaritans or even us. Don’t give in, fight on, claim life.
Government non entity 1. “Boss, you know you said you wanted some made up figures to scare the the public into thinking there was a second wave coming”
Government non entity 2 ” Yep, so we could get the Act through and keep everyone locked up”
GNE 1 “You said it would be a good diversion from all the people we killed in the death camps”
GNE 2 “Spot on, unless of course you want to spend Christmas Day in the Scrubs licking a fucking Magnum ice cream”
GNE1 “Well they fucked it up”
GNE 2 “What?”
GNE 1 “You know you said keep some back for the third wave thing after Christmas”
GNE 2 “Yeah”
GNE 1 “Well some fucking idiot at PHE pressed the wrong button and added them over the weekend”
GNE 2 “You mean there was a glitch”
GNE 1 ” What’s a glitch?”
GNE 2 “Fuck knows, just tell them, or I’ll have you back sweeping the floors at your family’s shite IT company”
“I often see people saying why don’t the govt publish the recoveries figures”
Yes, but the problem with this is defining “recovery”.
People who have recovered from Covid19 will continue to give positive PCR test results for the SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes Covid19, long after the disease and the infection has passed.
It has been widely reported that at the moment there are three young men in an Italian quarantine centre who had covid19 symptoms about two months ago and who then tested positive for the SARS-CoV-2 virus, who are not being allowed home because their PCR test results keep coming back positive.
As they will. Because the PCR test is picking up viral fragments from the men’s old infection as Carl Heneghan and others have suggested it would.
If this is openly acknowledged – that the PCR test is not a reliable measure of “live” viral infection – then the “casedemic” will be over, because the current figures being publicised each day in the UK are PCR positive tests.
My guess that this is why they are being so cagey about recoveries here in the UK.
I follow your reasoning, but why do other countries not follow the same pattern?
I’m not sure what you mean?
The situation in the UK is particular to us and dependent on government policy. The governments of other countries have different views on how to deal with this.
My current view is that they want to ensure that people continue to regard covid19 as a serious threat and positive PCR test results are helping them to do that.
That is also my view of why they are not keen to investigate the false positive rate as in doing so they would have to reduce the “case” numbers and this will damage their argument for continued restrictions.
I mean that pretty well every country in the world publishes daily or weekly figures for recoveries.’ Here, it seems, nobody ever recovers. It’s just one long, long Covid.
Those recoveries are just maths. They guess unless you have died, the majority have recovered after 7-10 days and they add the reported infections from 7-10 days before minus deaths in that period to “recovered”.
Of course. And this also links to the obfuscation about what are actually SARS-CoV-2 infections, as opposed to some other agent. Because, again, untangling that one would similarly reduce the ‘threat’ as so-called ‘Covid’ illness and deaths diminished to their real, inconsequential, level.
There’s an important battle raging in Ireland today. This follows the leaked announcement last night from NPHET (Public health team) of the recommendation to move to level 5 which is close to full lockdown. It appears that the recommendation was not discussed with the Government before it was passed to the media. The announcement from NPHET was made on the day that the CMO Tony Holohan returned from compassionate leave. Government leaders are meeting with NPHET today and will decide what to do next.
As with the UK and elsewhere it’s a question of who is actually running the country, Government or Medical Advisors. NPHET in Ireland is constantly being lobbied by COVID-elimination zealots who think that Ireland could be like New Zealand or even the Faroe Islands!
Many questions are being asked by TDs (MPs) and business leaders about how it is possible to introduce a 5 level plan only 3 weeks ago where the level for each country is supposed to be determined by “the data” and then immediately jump to level 5 for the whole country.
The outcome of this is likely to be decisive in terms of how much public support is maintained going forward.
I think that in Ireland and everywhere else that it is governments that are running their respective countries.
What is more difficult to assess is the level of influence that outside organisations and individuals are having on governments.
So while certain “medical advisors” are not running the country, they may be exerting a great deal of influence on government and on the direction that government policy is taking.
It’s worth bearing in mind also that politicians are aware that they could be held responsible if things go wrong, so they may themselves sometimes be keen to downplay their responsibility and overstate the influence of outsiders.
The situation now is worse than in Mar/Apr at the height of the pandemic, when there were no masks in shops, no masks on public transport , no draconian penalties, no intrusive track-and-trace, and a clear reason for the lockdown and therefore a hope that it would be over at some point. Now, I do not see a way out of this. The government induced hysteria in the public and now they are trapped by that hysteria into carrying on and on and on with suppressing false positives until a vaccine is forced upon us.
And the worst part is that the majority have just allowed all this.
yes, because they want it, because they have been scared. It’s a circle of fear.
There is a way out but it takes work and effort. I get dismayed at the number of people here who are ready to give up. One person says we’re buggered, another agrees and then half the posters are infected (sic). If you don’t think you can win then you won’t fight. Would have been a useless attitude against Hitler.
Agree with you 100% Bella. Things appear to be getting worse because Westminster is losing its grip on the situation, which has not necessarily gone the government’s way.
ok, well said. and in fact Toby has deliberately made this place upbeat, and shows us possible green shoots from time to time. Maybe the truth takes a long time to trickle down into the populous, and when it does things should look better. How’s that?
More testing, more panic, more measures, and so on. TES’ lemming cycle.
Yes, April, may and June was a test and the masses failed or passed whatever way you look at it, more restrictions are the prize
“The situation now is worse than in Mar/Apr”
Undoubtedly. The government at that point could have begun an honourable retreat from a concern that was originally justified by all the shit that was flying about.
That they chose not to do so is significant – so we had an extended lockdown (far beyond any possible justification provided by curve-flattening) way beyond the point when actual infection was well on a downward slope.
The rest is history – with mask wearing ramped up on the basis of both pre-hoc and post-hoc evidence illustrating their ineffectiveness, pubs opening up with no adverse effects – and then being hamstrung again. Then we move into the era of blather about ‘R’ numbers and PCR fakery to continue ramping up anxiety long after any ‘event’ had disappeared. Then there’s the vaccine scandal ….
That history just leads one ineluctably (and many of us relatively reluctantly) down the road to joining up the dots and finding a pattern of willful intent, rather than just cock-up.
There is a way out – keep fighting, keep questioning and make a real nuisance of yourself.
Politicians etc cannot keep it up forever as they only think short term to next election and buckle if enough pressure is put on them.
We just have to put on more pressure than their paymasters, just got to find the key that unlocks to all whether that is bribery, threats, fear or treason..
Huge rise in cases – 20,000 or more – because of a technical error. But no suggestion that deaths relating to those so called “cases” have not been reported. So the inevitable conclusion is that this disease is even less deadly than we thought.
Deaths are irrelevant now, it’s all about cOvId ZeRo now cause New Zealand once did it.
Did they do it? How would one know?
They ruthlessly persecute suspected cases. With savage lockdowns for all. The there’s a pause until the next case is detected. And so ad infinitum.
Actually that is not strictly true. They have just added the “missing” data to the weekend totals.
They could have just as easily – and it would have been far more honest – to have adjusted the apparently underreported totals for each day last week retrospectively.
But doing that wouldn’t have got them their juicy headline.
The glitch is supposedly due to “large” file sizes, so as death rates are very low there shouldn’t be any problem with the reporting of them.
Not sure got my point. Reporting of deaths is by a different route and while the Covid connections may be exaggerated on certification, the deaths themselves are reliable. So if cases have gone up dramatically, the death rate has gone down dramatically. In other words, good news.
I’m not sure they are really interested in good news though.
I think their intention is probably to enhance and maintain public anxiety in order to ensure that enough popular support remains for restrictions until a vaccine arrives.
Which I expect they have been promised for the spring.
I am very sorry you are feeling so sad. Losing a pet is terrible. And all the isolation is crushing. But, we all agree with you that it’s awful and we all look forward with you for normality to return.
Talking to myself to copy here..
Dr Rainer Fuellmich’s crimes against humanity video outline of the case for class actionhas been given extensive coverage on UK Column today. Alex Thompson does a good job of reducing it down for central point discussion. LSs had emailed the UKC the video link.
Also Tobias Ellwood was emailed by a UKC viewer sounding to be of a similarly well informed and articulate nature as MR A Git. Ellwood’s reply is remarkabl for its low quailty feeble utterance. A guilty man might reply with similar diversion and derision.
Also the often forgotten but outstanding Mike Robinson says “hello” to 77 brigade.
Basics
right now
Reply to Basics
I missed an tiny but important detail. In the Ellwood email exchange on UKC today Ellwood explicitly writes that vaccines will not be mandatory, they will be voluntary. His precise wording is seen on screen.
well I guess that
s one less thing to worry about then. So will I still be able to travel without thisvoluntary` vaccine?Voluntary means forced/coerced compliance to me. Until proved otherwise.
I know of two people who have found that masks are causing facial or neck spots and cysts, and have sought medical treatment. Have others heard of similar effects? If so, we are probably talking about millions being affected this way. These might be manageable conditions but they are probably an indication there could be far more serious ailments caused through pathogen build-up behind masks. Modern masks aren’t like the loose cotton cloths of old. They are creating a much more sealed environment around the mouth and nose.
I have seen one patient with impetigo across the bridge of their nose, just where the mask fitted.
Yes at my teenagers college many of the youngsters are plagued with spot breakouts on the lower half of the face. Does not take a genius or medic to guess why?
You wait until winter really kicks in and the chest and throat infections escalate.
If people want to spend the rest of their lives with serious rashes on their face, they are welcome to it.
Dermatitis, general spottiness, overheating of facial are, trapped moisture, stress caused by discomfort, poor communication.
And dry eyes. There is also mounting concern about the long term effects of inadvertent particulate inhalation.
Masks to stop the spread of a respiratory virus lead to inflammation of bronchi and alveoli.
Welcome to the Through the Looking Glass world of stopping the spread:
‘Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.’
As the Red Queen said
Dry eyes leading to ulceration if the cornea?
as mentioned on here weeks ago, one of the assistants at my Aldi got a bad rash on his cheeks and around his mouth from their compulsory staff mast wearing .. He had to get dermatological treatment
Last American Vagabond talks about this issue, if you’ve got a spare 3 hours.
https://www.thelastamericanvagabond.com/leader-of-operation-warp-speed-adamant-about-implantable-biosensors-world-bank-slips-up-again/
Article on adverse mask effects:
https://eu.usatoday.com/story/news/health/2020/09/11/reports-cracked-teeth-other-tooth-problems-up-amid-covid-19-stress/5761843002/
Twitter feed on adverse mask effects (warning – these images are grim):
https://twitter.com/vos_bruno/status/1310541019465822208?s=11
The more I learn about mask-wearing, the more I’m confident that I can truthfully say I’m exempt due to a fear of acquiring adverse health conditions caused by mask-wearing (as are 100% of us on this planet).
Those images are gross! With the one young lady you can see the rash is exactly where the mask would be on her face so there’s no way that isn’t for real.
I had a robust conversation with a real mask fanatic the other day.
I ended up asking him if his obvious nasal congestion was caused by the all day mask wearing. He answered ” no I’ve had this for a few months now, not sure what it is, but can’t seem to get rid of it? “.
At the risk of being accused of spamming, I’d like to highlight this interview posted previously by DocRC. It’s a new initiative trying to highlight the errors in the whole lockdown approach to covid and suggesting that it’s absolutely not too late to change to a more sensible and traditional approach to handling a virus of this kind. The participants have impeccable credentials, the interviewer is the generally very good Freddy Sayers, and there’s a link to sign up to their declaration, which I think should be used by anyone at LS.
Covid experts: there is another way
Sign up to the Great Barrington Declaration
Signed
It’s difficult to see how anyone posting here could object to it, tbh. Only perhaps in not going far enough in some areas, but that’s imo making the best the enemy of the good.
Agreed; they do veer on the side of caution, but looking at the assembled expertise, I would guess that they’ve decided that softly, softly might succeed where a more forceful call to arms might fail.
We can but hope.
I think they are probably correct in that. It certainly renders scepticism absolutely respectable, if it gets traction. And because these, as far as I’m aware, are figures of broadly leftwing political sympathies (certainly Gupta and Kulldorff, not sure about Bhattacharya), they cannot be dismissed and delegitimised as “right wing” by the mostly leftist mainstream.
This is great. Sunetra Gupta is quietly working away in her usual understated way. She talks such sense, if only the BBC would allow her to have her say.
Agree about Gupta, I’m not a fan of her politics (nor she of mine, I don’t doubt), but she has consistently talked sense on this, her area of expertise. Ironically, you’d think in normal times she’d be the BBC hierarchy’s favourite – female, minority, soft leftist. But it seems the need to push panic has overridden their usual pc dogmatism in this case.
The govt may well be trying to keep the fear levels high with the massive spike in cases due to the ‘technical glitch’, but I see it as another crack in the dam. It just highlights how badly the government has handled this situation, how threadbare its authority truly is, and how it is destroying trust between itself and the populace. The government has no idea what it’s doing or what the rules are. In this way, I hope that any further restrictions it may try to introduce will be met with widespread derision or just ignored. If the government can’t even sort an Excel spreadsheet, then why should we listen to anything it says about lockdowns?
Just been to the local butchers, asked where y mask was, said I was exempt. Asked to see my lanyard, said that I didn’t need it. Bought what I needed to buy, no further hassle. Went to post office, not a word said.
Serious question: If a judicial review of the current regulations and the 2020 act comes to fruition, would the act and the regulations be suspended subject to the outcome of the review?
Probably not.
No need to dress children up as demons for Hallowe’en. We have real demons everywhere.
Crimes against Humaity.
I know this has been posted before but, given its significance Toby seems to be silent on it? (apologies if I’m wrong)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kr04gHbP5MQ&ab_channel=Dr.ReinerFuellmich
It’s great video keep sharing it!
Is Devi Sridhar on the turn??
From the DT:
It came as a leading scientist said lockdowns were not the best way to tackle Covid flare-ups.
Prof Devi Sridhar, chairwoman of Global Public Health at the University of Edinburgh, said voluntary compliance with clear messages about avoiding crowds, wearing face coverings, and staying outside as much as possible were more effective.
She told the same programme that international research comparing different countries’ response to the pandemic showed that “suppression does not have to mean lockdown.”
“I think perhaps one of the mistakes has been to think the only way to suppress this virus is through lockdowns which have major economic consequences as well as for general society,” she said.
Have a few pennies finally dropped? Still doing the mask up nonsense though.
But note the word “voluntary”
Face coverings don’t work. With all the evidence out there the government ignores sound science and continues pushing the Masks Lie.
Agree on the masks, but it’s a million times better than anything that’s come out of her mouth so far, and at least she’s advocating voluntary compliance.
Wonder what Sturgeon will think?!
Bella, the science didn’t push masks. National and international lobby groups did. Check out
https://www.masks4all.org.uk/
One of the founders of this sick and perverted ‘organisation’ is
“A digital activist using her background in digital marketing to campaign for real societal and political change”
Who the fuck is she speaking on behalf of?! If these people want to change society, then they should enter politics and get elected, instead of skulking in the shadows like the bunch of gutless cowards that they so clearly are.
Anything can be pushed with The Science (TM).
I wrote them a sweary email, it didn’t make any difference. I didn’t get a reply either.
Basically it’s arse-covering time…
Due to a technical glitch theyve found some more cases they didn’t know they had? Pull the other one Boris!
https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2020/10/05/boris-johnsons-crumbling-regime-is-caught-in-a-death-spiral/
Or The Panic Funnel (from scuba diving).
If masks are effective, why have case numbers risen again since wearing masks has become more commonplace and mandated?
If severe lockdowns are effective, why can we not see a strong or even some consistent correlation between falling rates of infections, hospitalisations and deaths in areas subjected to lockdown?
Why do so many people still believe that covid-19’s mortality rate (infection or case-based) is several factors higher than the data appears to show?
Why do so many people still think that the percentage of the population needed for herd-immunity to impact infections is 60% of the population or more?
Why do a sizeable minority of people still believe that 20% of all covid-19 sufferers require hospital treatment?
Why are those of us who remain sceptical about whether lockdowns work continually described as wanting to ‘let the virus rip’ when that’s hardly ever the sceptical position?
Why, if the lethality and ‘unprecedented’ threat posed by covid-19 is so great to the point that it would be self-evident to anyone, does it require propaganda and censorship to keep the perception of threat so high?
There are many more why and if style questions all of us could and should ask, but the depressing fact is, there’s very little evidence of enough people asking questions and accepting answers.
There’s a famous quote about free speech which dates from a US Supreme court case in 1919 in which Justice Holmes Jr wrote the opinion: “falsely shouting fire in a theatre and causing a panic” was not protected free speech.
It just feels to me that all of us are in the theatre, some of us can’t feel any heat, can’t see any flames nor sense any smoke and that we’re trying to say either: There is no fire, or, the fire is under control, but our speech is being restricted. Meanwhile, those people panicking and shouting ‘Fire! Fire!’ appear to be be completely free to do so without any checks or balances.
Great questions. This could be the basis for a hard-hitting one-page handout.
I would add another one: “Why have the vast majority of the population acquiesced so feebly to the removal of their freedoms on the basis of such weak evidence?“
Sadly, I imagine 50% of readers would stop at the word acquiesced.
We somehow need to distil the argument down to something like the passenger safety instruction card you find in the seat pocket when you fly.
with cute cartoon bunnies and fairies on it
Agreed with all of you. Without disappearing up my own Rumsfeldian arsehole I would say the following:
We know that some of the people don’t get it because they are scared and whilst they may understand the logic of these points, either their personal circumstances or those close to them makes them super-cautious given the fear that was deliberately caused.
We also know that some people don’t get it because the virus and reaction to it plays into an existing agenda. That covers a whole heap of people with varying banal and nefarious purposes, from political oppositions, state actors seeking discord, health campaigners, modelers and including those who wish to see it used to bring about changes in environmental impact, consumption, lifestyle and even accelerate concepts such as universal basic incomes.
There are those who benefit from the reaction and fear, amongst which we know there to be vaccine manufacturers, PPE manufacturers, Tech companies and a great many people fed up with their commutes into London and other cities and towns on overcrowded trains and congested roads who are not inconvenienced in the slightest by lockdowns either economically or socially and who benefit from more time at home and less expenses.
Then there are those who simply aren’t very bright who say things like, well the government wouldn’t take these measures and act like this if it wasn’t really necessary.
But there are still another group who we don’t know why they don’t or won’t get it. These are the unknown unknowns.
I’ve taken to asking people how the lockdown is affecting them and the people they care about and making it personal. It makes it easier to tacitly or explicitly imply that the reason they are so accepting of the situation is that they are not impacted by it in any great form and that they actually don’t care about other people. Even better if you can inject the strong whiff of hypocrisy into it and force them to justify why their opinion shouldn’t be discounted.
We could quote a number of these logical inconsistencies.
… but people just don’t get it.
Or don’t want to get it!
But actually, of course don’t get it in that sense as well! Quod erat …
Answer: “Blah, blah, not following the rules.”
Please sign:
https://gbdeclaration.org/
Signed.
I watched Dr. Jayanta Bhattacharya, Dr. Martin Kulldorff, and Michael Levitt in a roundatabe event with Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and all were excellent.
The video can be watched here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6P3SkTBfGzU
There’s a text version here: https://rationalground.com/governor-desantis-roundtable-experts-advocate-for-normal-life-for-young-people/
It’s a long watch/read, but well worth it; these guys really know their stuff. I was also impressed by the Governer, too; really well briefed and knew his stuff.
Signed. But had huge issues trying to solve the horrible Captcha, not sure how many screens of hydrants and buses I had to check…
It seems that PHE and/or T&T were using an Excel spreadsheet to record test results.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/2020/10/05/excel-error-led-16000-missing-coronavirus-cases/
An Excel spreadsheet! FFS!
Hang on a minute! The spreadsheet was probably far more transparent and less garbage-ridden than the sort of model written by the Imperial lot.
The problem is in the data.
Actually – a lot of us are using simple spreadsheets to uncover the falsity of the government numbers and narratives.
But a spreadsheet in the hands of the inept can be subject to nasty errors writ large. I worked with US government statisticians in the 90s and uncovered one spreadsheet that still gives me nightmares. It looked fine until you checked the formulas. Huge mess.
But Rick, I’m sure you’re one of the ept, not the inept!
Ooohh, sums it up, not an SQL database but an excel spreadsheet. Lots of room for (deliberate) error and manipulation
I know absolutely nothing about excel having lived my entire life first learning to avoid excel spread sheets and then employing those skills professionally ever after. Dilligent CPD has been kept up at regular intervals.
How easy is it to port between SQL and Microsoft excel? Would a port leave and residual traces? I am thinking of any possibility that PHE were not using excel ‘live’.
It’s easy enough to connect Excel to an SQL database so that you can suck data directly into Excel, and it’s also similarly easy to copy-paste the data out of (say) a web-based query tool. It’s probably unlikely that there are traces of the source left, but if anyone can post a link to a candidate spreadsheet, I can pull it apart. I’m a 25-year veteran of Excel development and I love that shit.
Getting the data into the spreadsheet is generally not too much of an issue. The problem is what happens next. Usually, some jackass decides that the format needs some work, or that some other queries need to be added, and pretty soon you end up with an incoherent mass of stuff all squidged together into a single workbook.
Generally little or no attempt is made to perform a detailed cross-check the figures, and so you end up with logical errors between the tables. Add to that the very real chance of copy-paste errors and it’s easy to see how things like dropping 16,000 records on the floor can happen.
And if you are merging multiple data sources together using Excel, the opportunities for cock-up are enormous.
I was writing my post in reply to Basics just as yours popped up, Mabel, so I abandoned mine, as you have said exactly what I was typing.
I’ve seen the damage done by people using programs they really shouldn’t get anywhere near in a professional setting, unless they are fully trained; Excel is one of them.
Thanks also!
Really helpful insight to understanding better excel-gate. Thanks.
A friend of mine has been involved in identifying the source of the ‘glitch’. This does indeed seem to be the reason (given that he’s an independent cyber security expert, and among the best at that, this also means that a not insignificant amount of money has been wasted, because his time’s not cheap and they didn’t need his skills to work this one out).
Remind me of the cost of development of this system.
Three planning exercises since 2018 for anyone who might like to look at the relatiinship between the preparedness exercises and the actual compare. Wiki for ease of reference only, not accuracy.
Clade X was a 2018 pandemic modelling exercise by Johns Hopkins University’s Center for Health Security, named after the hypothetical infective agent.[1][2] In the simulation, the hypothetical pandemic resulted in 900 million simulated deaths.[3]
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clade_X
Crimson Contagion was a joint exercise conducted from January to August 2019, in which numerous national, state and local, private and public organizations in the US participated, in order to test the capacity of the federal government and twelve states to respond to a severe pandemic of influenza originating in China.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crimson_Contagion
The Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security in partnership with the World Economic Forum and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation hosted Event 201,[29] a high-level pandemic tabletop exercise on October 18, 2019, in New York, NY. The exercise illustrated areas where public/private partnerships will be necessary during the response to a severe coronavirus pandemic in order to diminish large-scale economic and societal consequences.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johns_Hopkins_Center_for_Health_Security#Event_201
This thing about only vaccinating the vulnerable – this will come as a huge shock to many of the worried well. They were banking on getting a nice, comforting jab in the arm so that they could finally feel safe to go back to the office or the shops. How will they manage without it? Will there be a black market in hugely expensive private jabs?
It also seems to me to be an enormous admission that a) the virus isn’t at all serious for most and b) the untested jab might have horrible side effects that only justify its use in those who are actually vulnerable to the virus.
Doesn’t this blow the whole lockdown-until-we-all-get-the-vaccine strategy out of the water?
No, because sadly the exhortations to the unvaccinated young to continue to social distance, mask and avoid living lives will continue.
But once the vulnerable are vaccinated, they’re supposedly protected and everyone can resume normal life again because they don’t need to worry about ‘killing granny’. There should be no need for anyone without the vaccine to continue with restrictions.
No. First it’ll just be the vulnerable, but it’ll be soon gradually expanded on the ‘precuationary principle’ because “it’s already given to the vulnerable”- just like the masks.
Ah, the nonsense about vaccinating the vulnerable! The vast majority of the vulnerable are elderly and suffer from immuno-senescence , in other words their immune systems are also old and don’t work very well. They therefore do not mount an effective immune response to vaccines. Influenza vaccines are only about 50% effective in a good year and if there is ever a SARS-CoV-2 vaccine it will be the same. The only sane strategy is that proposed by Gupta et al in the Great Barrington declaration.
Exactly, which is why the whole vaccination strategy falls down without the young being immune – and if not through vaccination, it must be through natural methods i.e. catching the disease.
No, isn’t the whole premise of the lockdowns and social distancing is to avoid killing off granny?
I don’t think even the government is pretending that young people are at risk from this virus.
Neither Boris or Handjob will kill their grannies as they’ve already sold theirs
Every now and again they bleat about us all being equally vulnerable etc. Certainly I know plenty of people in their 30s and 40s who seem to feel that way.
I thought they had been told not to download it?
The first step on the road to the mainstream breakthrough we need? Sign it!
The Great Barrington Declaration
As infectious disease epidemiologists and public health scientists we have grave concerns about the damaging physical and mental health impacts of the prevailing COVID-19 policies, and recommend an approach we call Focused Protection.
Coming from both the left and right, and around the world, we have devoted our careers to protecting people. Current lockdown policies are producing devastating effects on short and long-term public health. The results (to name a few) include lower childhood vaccination rates, worsening cardiovascular disease outcomes, fewer cancer screenings and deteriorating mental health – leading to greater excess mortality in years to come, with the working class and younger members of society carrying the heaviest burden. Keeping students out of school is a grave injustice.
Keeping these measures in place until a vaccine is available will cause irreparable damage, with the underprivileged disproportionately harmed.
Fortunately, our understanding of the virus is growing. We know that vulnerability to death from COVID-19 is more than a thousand-fold higher in the old and infirm than the young. Indeed, for children, COVID-19 is less dangerous than many other harms, including influenza.
As immunity builds in the population, the risk of infection to all – including the vulnerable – falls. We know that all populations will eventually reach herd immunity – i.e. the point at which the rate of new infections is stable – and that this can be assisted by (but is not dependent upon) a vaccine. Our goal should therefore be to minimize mortality and social harm until we reach herd immunity.
The most compassionate approach that balances the risks and benefits of reaching herd immunity, is to allow those who are at minimal risk of death to live their lives normally to build up immunity to the virus through natural infection, while better protecting those who are at highest risk. We call this Focused Protection.
Adopting measures to protect the vulnerable should be the central aim of public health responses to COVID-19. By way of example, nursing homes should use staff with acquired immunity and perform frequent PCR testing of other staff and all visitors. Staff rotation should be minimized. Retired people living at home should have groceries and other essentials delivered to their home. When possible, they should meet family members outside rather than inside. A comprehensive and detailed list of measures, including approaches to multi-generational households, can be implemented, and is well within the scope and capability of public health professionals.
Those who are not vulnerable should immediately be allowed to resume life as normal. Simple hygiene measures, such as hand washing and staying home when sick should be practiced by everyone to reduce the herd immunity threshold. Schools and universities should be open for in-person teaching. Extracurricular activities, such as sports, should be resumed. Young low-risk adults should work normally, rather than from home. Restaurants and other businesses should open. Arts, music, sport and other cultural activities should resume. People who are more at risk may participate if they wish, while society as a whole enjoys the protection conferred upon the vulnerable by those who have built up herd immunity.
On October 4, 2020, this declaration was authored and signed in Great Barrington, United States, by:
Dr. Martin Kulldorff, professor of medicine at Harvard University, a biostatistician, and epidemiologist with expertise in detecting and monitoring of infectious disease outbreaks and vaccine safety evaluations.
Dr. Sunetra Gupta, professor at Oxford University, an epidemiologist with expertise in immunology, vaccine development, and mathematical modeling of infectious diseases.
Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, professor at Stanford University Medical School, a physician, epidemiologist, health economist, and public health policy expert focusing on infectious diseases and vulnerable populations.
SIGN THE DECLARATION
It’s difficult to see how anyone posting here could object to this, tbh. Only perhaps in not going far enough in some areas, but that’s imo making the best the enemy of the good.
yeah, they need to sort out PCR testing first
Done, thanks for sharing!
However, I think I would rather include something that would allow the retired the option of shielding, home deliveries etc., rather than presuming they cannot make up their own minds or take the risk of seeing families indoors in winter
I think that’s very much their intent, which they have included in the declaration by writing: “People who are more at risk may participate if they wish”.
I signed.
Have just received an email in response to my emails RE: the university shambles stating that the Universities Minister (Michelle Donelan) is being questioned by the Education Committee tomorrow, and that she may be questioned on this issue.
Farmers are putting turkeys on crash diets so they are a more suitable size for othe ‘downsized’ Christmas lunch.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/coronavirus-farmers-downsize-turkeys-for-rule-of-six-christmas-5bfj68z37?utm_medium=email&utm_source=CampaignMonitor_Editorial&utm_campaign=LNCH%20%2020201005%20%20Sizewell%20%20SM+CID_6b34bd2ca645249ed68105db97fe65a6
Or you could just have plenty of leftovers.
I’m not sure I want to put the meat of a starved bird anywhere near my mouth, so perhaps it’s time for duck, pork, swan …
You just couldn’t make this shit up, could you?
Clownworld™
You need the leftovers to make a nice turkey, veg and bread sauce pie for the 27th Dec.
Really tasty.
i thought they would now be trying to genetically engineer a turkey/beetle cross so that with the new maximum of 6 for christmas dinner everyone gets a leg
I have just sent a letter to Keir Starmer. (Not really sure why, just because I knew what his line would be about the T&T missed contacts. Probably has done a lot of people who would have been identified as positive who weren’t a favour)
For anyone interested, it’s copied below. Or just go to the next post for something more interesting!
Dear Keir Starmer
I have tried writing to my MP Theresa May but she has ignored my last three emails.
I don’t have a “political home”, thank goodness, as the people whose opinions and actions I have previously trusted seem to be all at sea.
There is actually a chance now, for you as leader of the Opposition, to make a stand. I haven’t listened to the news since this morning but I am fairly certain that you will be taking the Govt to task about the story of the day – that the T&T system failed to trace the contacts of 16,000 positive Coronavirus tests. Just step back from this for a minute; forget your need to point score against Boris Johnson and ponder the implications of what has been happening. I cannot believe that you are not aware of the facts about PCR-tests and the number of false positives they yield. Think of the impact of all these false positive tests on individual lives (never mind the skewing of the statistics and the promotion of alarm and fear).
https://www.thelancet.com/action/showPdf?pii=S2213-2600%2820%2930453-7
The above is a link to an article about the harm of these false positive tests on our society. It is written by three doctors and appears in The Lancet. You cannot get more mainstream than The Lancet, I would have thought. It is a sorry state of affairs when three members of the medical profession are warning about the negative effects of the false positives on health, society and the economy. It should be the Govt, or given their ineptitude and total lack of any clarity of thought, the Opposition, who point out the flaws in the current testing fiasco. How can a policy, which is wreaking disaster on the lives and livelihoods of so many people, be based on such a flawed construct? There are so many scientists who have warned about this and the dangers of the wider picture of other Governments’ policies, largely, it would appear, on deaf ears. For example,Professor Carl Heneghan, Professor Sunetra Gupta, Karol Sikoras, Dr John Lee, Dr Mike Yeadon, Professor Michael Levitt (Nobel prize winner), Professor John Ioaniddis… the list goes on.
There has been so much misinformation on the mainstream media, in a form of “camera obscura”, people trying to tell the truth have been censored and labelled as giving misinformation, citing their belief in conspiracy theories to undermine them and cover the truth. I am not a scientist and I don’t know for sure what lies and truths are being circulated at this time. But I have been reading articles (many scholarly and scientific, to the best of my ability) for the last seven months and the evidence I have found most consistent and compelling has come from the above list of scientists/doctors.
Boris Johnson and Matthew Hancock chose to rely on the modelling of Ferguson –I have heard it said, by scientists, that no serious scientist believes in his model – and a glance at his track record should not inspire any confidence in his judgement at all. You, as leader of the Opposition, could get on the phone to any of the widening number of scientists who dissent from the Govt’s policy and, using your experience in considering evidence as a lawyer, form an opinion on what should now be done. Look at the graphs for the outcomes of lockdown worldwide; look at the figures of other health problems – now and likely to happen in the future –and as a break from graphs and figures, read some of the heart-rending stories of those who have been turned away from the NHS either for treatment or to be present when their relatives have died. If the “second wave” is going to be so bad, why, for example, has Scotland decommissioned its own equivalent to the Nightingale Hospital (at vast expense)?
Where is the evidence of harm to children and young people from the virus Sars-Cov-2? I won’t repeat the statistics of relative harms because they have been bandied about even on mainstream media. Young people’s opportunities have been grotesquely sacrificed for an illness which won’t affect them.
Poorer people are going to be more adversely affected by the plummet in employment than their better off counterparts.
To be continued above
PART TWO
a
Please – consider the latest information about the vaccine, which so many people believe is going to be their salvation. Is it Vallance’s financial interest in GSK which is stopping those in power from telling the truth to ordinary people? How many members of the Govt, and other MPs, have such financial interests? I have read articles and listened to programmes about vaccines and those who are in the front line of manufacture are clear that it isn’t “the silver bullet”. No-one is yet sure it will be effective, or if it is, what the rate of efficacy will be. An article in Forbes https://www.forbes.com/sites/williamhaseltine/2020/09/23/covid-19-vaccine-protocols-reveal-that-trials-are-designed-to-succeed/#67a2c3c05247) pointed out that the “endpoint” for the vaccines currently being trialled is not to prevent infection, nor to prevent death or serious illness
So the vaccine will essentially be a placebo, which is fine as the disease is very dangerous but why not use a real placebo that can do no harm?
Isn’t very dangerous not is
need edit function
Please remember the oxford AZ vaccine is being trialled on some of the poorest and most destitute peoole in the world. Black lives do matter…
https://youtu.be/kJ0F3mgabBE
Something to keep in mind as the west awaits this magic silver bullet to ‘freedom’ poor areas of South African (very low covid19 death rates in the world) has been selected and used for trialling the Oxford vaccine. Please watch the video for a clear understanding.
Good that you mentioned children/the young.
Currently no-one under 25 has died in Scotland.
In England: 21 deaths under age 19; 17 of whom had at least 1 co-morbidity.
From 34 mins
Watch this excellent summary of CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY (Dr R. Füllmich Stiftung Corona Ausschuss) on UK Column News today
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FU0h71lktVw
Part 3 sorry
This factor was referred to again in an article in the FT (https://on.ft.com/3d5KEoY). The Govt is spending billions of pounds on these vaccines and my view is that if ordinary people realised it was not going to prevent infections, they would not think it was money well spent. This is another example of misinformation, with massive consequences. If there is no effective vaccine, what do you propose we do? There has to be a way of managing to live with this virus without destroying our society. After all, you can be certain there will be more viruses around the corner.
I know that you and your party are hampered by the public opinion surrounding all these issues; people have been deliberately scared by the Govt into compliance (see SAGE meeting minutes, March). What is needed is a re-education of people which will involve admissions that what has been the narrative to-date has been based on a lot of misinformation/mistakes/lies, call them what you will. This is an opportunity to take a firm stand against the Govt and start to try to save this country; we are running out of time.
Please do not respond to this letter (I can read The Guardian or listen to the BBC news if I want to hear the narrative confirmed and my views refuted) . If you spend any time considering its contents, please just read the articles and follow up on the various points raised, especially the question of PCR-testing, which is not even controversial within the current scientific thinking.
Yours sincerely
They are already saying a vaccine that is 50% EFFECTIVE will be acceptable.
If it were 50% effective it would be better than most seasonal flu vaccines. I know, because I spent a day back in March looking up the efficacy rates for all of them since 2009. Thing is with this one (read that Forbes article) they are not even thinking it will stop infection FFS! Or prevent death or severe illness!
Just a small comment, but when I saw the vaccine success factors in the Forbes article last week and posted about it here, I was concerned that we’d never get out of this situation. I’ve somewhat changed my mind. Much like the flu vaccine, it won’t really make much difference and the fact that it doesn’t prevent death, hospitalisation or serious illness in many people doesn’t matter.
The point is, it’s a vaccine and once they have it, there is little to no excuse as to why life can’t return to normal. Bring out your useless vaccines is my new cry. Bring them out and let the people fool themselves that everything is now ok.
But they intend to make it compulsory by excluding people from work and travel if they do not get jabbed…
Also Gates has form when it comes to adding things to vaccines to sterilise people..
Excellent letter, but will probably fall on deaf ears.
For political expediency Starmer is sitting tight whilst Boris & co continue to cause chaos thinking it will be a cakewalk into office.
Problem is, does he really think he will be competing against Boris at the next election? Not a chance. The Tories will oust him at the first opportunity, probably as early as next year.
I know. I watched/listened to youtube bit on the Crimes against Humanity this morning and it got me fired up. Had to write something to someone. Theresa May is ignoring me so thought I’d try the other lot. Ha ha.
Kier seamer is a waste of space and another establishment stooge – look at his record as Head of the CPS.
Refused to prosecute Jimmy Saville.
Refused to prosecute the grooming gangs.
Reward was a chance at PM as Labour leader.
So the traffic light system being considered, level 3 is a full lockdown as in march.
Lock down enough local areas it becomes a full national lockdown without calling it one.
I mean most of northern england is under some sort of lock down , northern england is a vast area yet they are calling it local .
They are truly insane if they intend to basically lock down the whole country under the cloak of calling it local
.hanging is to good for the bastards running this country. Who are intent on destroying millions of peoples lives for today ,10 deaths out of a true population of 70 million plus.
I genuinely believe that any nationwide ‘level 3 lockdown’ would be hugely unpopular if introduced. I think more and more people are beginning to see through the scaremongering figures – the T&T cockup which led to 20k cases in one day gives off an air of incompetence and suggests the government has absolutely no idea what it is doing (which it doesn’t), so it loses all authority and that makes it much less likely that people will obey future restrictions. Why should we listen to these people if they can’t even manage a spreadsheet which cost ten billion quid of taxpayers’ money?
The new traffic light with green meaning masks, curfews, limit of 6 – that is apprently the normal green life.
There is a leaked document which fleshes out more on the subject.
This tweet gives a link to a bbc.co.uk download. The UK Column covered this document today.
https://twitter.com/UK_National/status/1313032973609046017?s=20
The worst (and incredible) thing is that the lowest level – green – still includes the rule of 6 etc. There is no restriction-free level at all…
I know shocking
ESSENTIAL VIEWING : Dr. Reiner Fuellmich describes International Lawyers basis for their bringing a case for Crimes Against Humanity, based on cov19 being uses as false justification for lockdowns/other authoritarian interference: the video likely to be will be removed from youtube as any contrary message to the WHO/Gates narrative are usually removed:
https://youtu.be/kr04gHbP5MQ
My brother in law has downloaded it – I warned him it might disappear
Do you have a link to the saved version.
No – but BIL will have it if required! I’m rubbish with computers but he is ace
Relax, it’s on Brand New Tube now:
https://brandnewtube.com/watch/must-watch-dr-reiner-fuellmich_Cygf8vJdLkwyA6c.html
I believe it’s on bitchute if it is ‘disappeared’ from Youtube..
.
Proof there is no exit strategy, because there is no exit.
Think of it as a flower in the wilderness.
I went on the stroke association website to see what it said about mask wearing. It does mention that some people can be exempt, but there is a section which tells you how to put a mask on with one hand!. I luckily have use of both my hands after my stroke but they can stick their advice where the sun don’t shine. I had a woman glaring at me over her muzzle in a shop this morning, I glared back and she quickly turned away. I’m still waiting for a member of the public to actually say something to me, it will be a way for me to (verbally) rid myself of some pent up anger.
I’m so glad I didn’t have my stroke this year. I probably would have killed myself (although tying knots were problematical…..
) joking aside, wouldn’t have coped without my wife, I would’ve stopped eating.
Everybody behind this are all cunts and the deserve to die for the untold misery, pain, loss and the lives lost.
I’ve only been challenged once, in hospital, waited for my lung function test. I gave him both barrels, I felt great and, hopefully, he’ll think again.
I’ve never been challenged over not wearing a mask. I’m now a bit worried, I know I’m getting on a bit, but do they think I look so ill that I’ll keel over in a mask? Or it could be invisible old woman syndrome.
Me too! But I think I look too fierce to be tackled!
I was surprised by the furious reaction to the notion that the proposed vaccine would be expected to protect people rather than eliminate infection. I would have thought this would actually be welcome to the majority of readers here, so let me explain why.
A vaccine might do some or all of the following
(1) ensure that the subject will not catch the disease
(2) ensure that the subject will not pass on the disease
(3) ensure that the subject will not die or suffer serious effects from the disease
(I use “ensure” to mean “make it very likely”).
The object of the entire exercise is ultimately (3): we want people not to be seriously or fatally affected. We really don’t mind so very much if everyone gets a nasty cough for a day or two, that’s pretty close to complete success in this sort of situation.
Now lots of people posting here have balked at the notion that the vaccine will be expected only to (3) but not (1) or (2). Obviously for many people (3) is achieved by (1), and indeed, probably the effect of a successful vaccine would be largely by that route.
Now suppose that type (3) is on offer, as I believe is intended. It will be offered to those most needing protection, NHS workers, the over 50s and the vulnerable. But it is clearly up to any individual to choose to balance the risks of their own personal protection against the risks of taking a relatively untested vaccine. It is clearly a matter of personal choice.
On the other hand suppose that type (2) is on offer. Then the protection for the vulnerable comes from achieving herd immunity in the population at large and there is an argument that it is a public duty to be vaccinated, like it or not, for the common good. And if sufficiently many people refuse to take it up for the common good, there is an arguable case for compulsion.
So case (2) is the case with the argument for compulsion, and case (3) is the case with the argument for personal choice. So, which is the case that people contributing to these columns favour?
I’d say (3) is the least of evils. Plus it would also allow us to achieve herd immunity if the uptake is large enough. Speaking for myself – though we won’t really know until the winter is over – I suspect the disease itself has already mutated down to a level where (3) is not really necessary.
…except that Giesecke (who knows his stuff) reckons that any vaccine will not work on the people who would (in theory) need it most, ie the vulnerable..
By the way it looks like the Irish took no notice of what Giesecke and others recommended at the meeting of their Covid committee the other week?
I doubt if we’ll be getting a vaccine at all. We don’t have a good track record in developing vaccines for coronaviruses.
But they are planning on mass vaccinating people in Glamorgan in the next few months – presumably with an unlicensed vaccine..
They’re vaccinating the people in Glamorgan for Scrapie, not Covid.
Scrapie is a sheep disease, isn’t it? How very appropriate.
None of the above. No vaccine at all thank you very much. Especially not one that has been supposedly developed in less than a year.
3 looks best to me – and only if the subject is informed and consents
2 is possibly irrelevant if all the vulnerable peeps have the choice of 3
The majority here are wary of “maybe – might be” arguments.
some might also be very wary of anything to do with any big pHARMa company or vaccine
Best reach for a gun when you hear the words ‘common good’ in this sort of context rather than in a philosophy text.
“common good” the two most insidious words that will NOT be going away any day soon.
One further thought – who, without ulterior motives, would recommend any vaccine for this sort of moderate and completely usual virus?
Or even ask people which option they would favour ?
I think the point is that if you read the Forbes article (and FT which tacitly makes the same point) then none of the above will be achieved. I don’t want a vaccine or think that it is necessary for this disease, but people who want it (who don’t read this stuff) think it is going to stop infection and they will then be SAFE and resume normal life. Or worst case, stop them getting really ill and dying, which it looks as if it won’t. Therefore vaccine is both a con and extreme waste of money; AND it has been a false light at the end of the tunnel AND some people are making a lot of money out of it.
That is why, I presume, some people seem angry. Speaking for myself, I’m a bit relieved. They are less likely to be able to force people to have something so ineffective. (I hope)
I commented on the Forbes article, and so in case you didn’t see that …
That seems to me a misleading way of putting it. As to the purpose of the trials. I suppose that we might agree that the ultimate goal of any intervention (behavioural, drugs or vaccines) is to reduce as far as possible (and balancing benefits with costs) illness and death caused by this virus. A good way of doing this is by reducing infections, and in particular bringing the rate of infection down to the point where it does not spread in the population, and this is what behavioural measures are intended to do. It is therefore reasonable to make a goal of a vaccine that it should prevent the subject from becoming ill if they encounter the disease. It is also reasonable to make it a goal that it should make the subject non-infectious. But these are different, and the first is more important.
So I looked at one of the trial documents. Under primary objective number 1 we find
and
So the vaccination is deemed to have failed if the patient develops any symptom of Covid. In other words the criterion for success is that it should prevent any symptoms, even those as minor as those of the common cold. That sounds to me like we want from a vaccine: that it reduces the seriousness of the disease to less than that of the common cold.
The idea that a vaccine should be compulsory to prevent the catching of a common cold is just plain silly.
Those most at risk from common cold viruses are immunocompromised, for one reason or another, so vaccination will not protect them
A covid 19 vaccine preventing others from passing on that disease will not protect the vulnerable from the 160 (recognised) rhinoviruses and various other unrecognised viruses.
Nevertheless a BCG vaccine to give protection to those still inclined to hide behind the sofa is, I believe, the most likely face saving (until the public inquiry, and you know Amnesty don’t give up…) solution for this utterly butterly useless government to get itself out of the self inflicted in panic mire
https://www.news-medical.net/news/20200819/Routine-BCG-immunization-in-infancy-and-COVID-19-containment-in-Japan.aspx
Indeed, so just as well that isn’t being suggested then, isn’t it? Yes, yes, I know, you’re making the rhetorical point that this virus either is the common cold (which is, er, a minority opinion) or no worse than the common cold (which isn’t borne out by the evidence) or as hard as find a vaccine for as the common cold (which isn’t completely wrong).
You’re defining “immuncompromised” to mean “had an immune system that did not protect them from the virus”, I presume, in which case it’s tautologically true. If you’re using the word in its usual sense, it’s not correct. Some vaccines are considered useful for those immunocompromised in the usual sense: not yet possible to tell whether any Covid vaccine might be one of then.
The key words in your response:
‘…are considered useful…..’
Not very reassuring………particularly without references…..
You also underestimate the threat that the common cold poses, far greater than that of influenza, to precisely those most vulnerable to covid 19.
Hmmmm…..
‘Unexpectedly Higher Morbidity and Mortality of Hospitalized Elderly Patients Associated with Rhinovirus Compared with Influenza Virus Respiratory Tract Infection’
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5343795/
And the overwhelming evidence is that covid 19 is exactly like a common cold virus for the vast majority of cases
Even the Chief Medical Officer said something similar to that….
NHS guidelines Guide to vaccinations for the immunosuppressed patient
NHS guidelines……
As I say, not very reassuring……
‘Vaccine safety, efficacy and potential benefit are critically dependent upon the nature and degree of immunodeficiency in an individual patient. Not all immunodeficiencies are alike, and broad recommendations for the vaccination of immunocompromised persons may not be universally applicable. The risks and benefits of vaccination should be considered in the context of the specificity and magnitude of the immune deficits within the individual patient.’
https://primaryimmune.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/Immunization-Of-The-Immunocompromised-Host.pdf
Vaccinating the elderly and infirm against covid 19, vulnerable as they are to hundreds of other viruses, is just plain silly.
Even a BCG vaccination is quite likely to be lethal to many of them
Quite so, which is why it’s important to distinguish between those who are immunosuppressed or immunocompromised, and those who due to age or other conditions, have an immune system that is somewhat below par, and not to confuse the one with the other.
Yes….and a good idea to know their names so that you can address them correctly but very silly to vaccinate them against one out of at least 160 viruses to which they are extremely vulnerable.
That is why the BCG trials are concentrating on health workers, for whom, let it be said, flu vaccinations have always been optional……
I personally don’t agree with compulsion and certainly not in this case and believe it would be very much the thin end of the wedge for liberty. I’m no expert on vaccines but my impression is that anything developed for Coronavirus is unlikely to get anywhere near satisfying any of the three conditions to a degree that would justify compulsion anyway.
Hancock has just said in HoC ‘to make us all safe’. That seems to me to be 1 and 2, given that prior to saying this he was boasting about the benefits of dexamethasone, ‘discovered’ by his NHS, in preventing 3.
How does a vaccine ensure that an individual does “not pass on the disease”?
I don’t know how, not being an expert. What I’m referring is that a vaccinated individual, after being exposed to the virus, should not then pass it on.
However given the poor efficacy rate of something like the flu virus (only 15% in 2018/2019 for eg) I think you can safely assume that the efficacy rate for something as rushed through as this one will not be very high. So the reality is, a great many will still catch and pass the virus on despite a vaccine. The best thing is, as the proper Scientists are saying (Gupta et al) is to let the non vulnerable lead a normal life and catch it. Offer some help and protection to those who are at risk. It will benefit everyone in the long term as the virus will then become milder and less harmful (which has already happened).
I am not answering the question as such however, why push a vaccine for something that is not harmful for the vast majority of people and then mainly in a tiny minority who are of a certain poor health status? Might it be because it’s making a lot of $s for someone? There are ways of improving your immune system naturally to avoid this and other viruses and there are treatments should you succumb- either natural or medical- although these are being censored and suppressed. And then of course there is the issue of long term safety studies completely lacking for this vaccine. Whether a vaccine is developed or not. fundamentally it should be a matter of individual choice.
Again, completely missing the point.
There is zero – ZERO – justification for mass vaccination.
Inescapable, if brutal, logic.
But there is also a moral question here. Should (2) be mandated to individuals who are not at significant risk from the disease, but who may be (or who perceive themselves to be) at risk from the vaccine, in order to protect other individuals who are at risk?
In the vast history of Common Law this has probably been answered somewhere. I don’t know; but I’m guessing the answer is No. And my overwhelming feeling is No.
In which case a vaccine achieving only (2) should be developed in the open knowledge that it will not be mandated.
Not really. There is the trivial solution which is don’t take a vaccine at all. The arguments are predicated on assertions about taking a vaccine.
Argument 3 is about balancing risks against taking an untested vaccine which is a false dichotomy. Why should these be the only options?
Why does a vaccine need to be developed and taken at all?
Why does a vaccine need to be developed and taken at all?
For someone in good health, then ok.
But if you are in a high-risk group, or likely to be in one soon, wouldn’t the risks of a vaccine be worth considering? (Unmandated of course.)
Only because you have been told about it. But I see what Richard is talking about now. He’s saying: Look the current path the government is taking is one with a vaccine because they cannot countenance a Do Nothing approach and get back to normal. And if there is pushback they’ll just keep locking down and causing more harm. How do we play the game with the least harm?
It’s a sad state of affairs
Yes, it’s a complete mess, and our politicians are failing badly on all fronts.
I think RP likes playing a sort of devil’s advocate on here, putting up ideas to test his own thought processes. Fair enough.
I’m not sure I understand what you mean about the vaccine development. Surely there are (many) people for whom covid presents a high risk of serious disease, or even death, who might benefit from a vaccine which provided (3) in RP’s original post above?
*(3): ensure that the subject will not die or suffer serious effects from the disease
There are many conditions that people die off but if you didn’t hear about Covid-19 why would you take it? You would need to be “pre-qualified” as the marketing theory goes.
You could just as easily say take some pills instead. There are already conditions baked in that will caues bias. I guess the issue is what happens if there isn’t a large takeup in the vaccine?
what happens if there isn’t a large takeup in the vaccine?
I guess that if the vaccine does (3) then it doesn’t matter – personal choice for vulnerable people, or even non-vulnerable people if they are so inclined.
If a safe version of (3) (jab, pills, spray or whatever) could be developed then it seems to me that this would benefit mankind (leaving aside the cost, pain of lockdowns etc).
Sure, it’s been heavily marketed (if that’s the right word). And whether it’s worth the candle (i.e. the money could have been put towards other medical causes) is another matter.
The common good argument for vaccination is one which is not often properly addressed, partly because proponents of vaccination in general are reluctant to admit that there is a rather small risk of harm, even serious harm, to those vaccinated. If you’re a parent asked to take even the smallest of risks of serious harm to your child for the common good, it’s very tempting to pass. It’s a sort of Tragedy of the Commons. Each individual acts rationally by passing on the vaccination, because herd immunity will stop the disease spreading to them: but if everyone acts rationally in their own interest, there’s no herd immunity and everyone is worse off.
Bit like deciding whether or not to join a union at work.
I have small children by the way, and am already making those calculations – i.e. almost no risk to them from covid, and an as yet unquantifiable by definite risk from the vaccine. I think I know which way I’m leaning.
A good comparison, although a vaccine doesn’t automatically enrol you in the Labour Party.
although a vaccine doesn’t automatically enrol you in the Labour Party
You never know what they might be putting in it …
When you play Russian Roulette for the common good, is that a worthy choice?
The risk of an untested vaccine could be something quite horrible as opposed to not really bad at all from Covid-19.
So case (2) is only the argument for compulsion from people not thinking fully about risks.
The clear argument is DO NOTHING – which you often don’t like Richard
I agree that “Do nothing” is always the first option on the paper. The fact that HMG has chosen to see “the” vaccine as their only viable exit strategy does not make it correct, of course. But in that context, do nothing on the vaccine, combined with the lockdown-until-vaccine-arrives policy leads to a conclusion not palatable to those commenting here, namely, lockdown for ever or until the virus disappears or until natural herd immunity arrives. Now herd immunity is indeed a logically viable strategy, and one can estimate the costs and benefits of it. It seems that politicians were badly frightened by it early on and haven’t recovered from that. Which is odd, because vaccination is just herd immunity by artificial means.
I see what you’re getting at now Richard. The Do Nothing scenario is not being heard, so what is the best way to get through the problem without harming people.
Always voluntary in that case. But it still is a case of putting a pistol in someone’s hand that never asked for it.
Thank you for your contribution, now, off you fuck.
That’s rude. Richard’ approach is rational, and we need clarity on this all-important issue if we’re not to be permanently sidelined as ‘anti-vaxxers’.
Perhaps you’ve never heard of any previous cock-ups perpetrated by the pharmaceutical and medical industries? Factor VIII and Thalidomide are just amongst the best known, but far from being the only ones.
Yes, as it happens I do remember those. If you want a vaccine, where are you going to go to get it?
I don’t want a vaccine.
I don’t understand how (1) ‘ensure that the subject will not catch the disease’ really differs from (3) won’t get very ill or die. Vaccination can’t prevent infection, can only prevent serious illness or death as a result of that infection, I thought?
SV48 pisses off the vaxxers greatly
If this all ended now, then just think of the all the investigations that would be launched into all that has happened over the last nine months.
This reason alone guarantees that there is no going back. Too much has been invested.
It is onward – to whatever awaits.
This won’t last for ever. Chin up.
Mr Rose – your optimism is infectious.
I hope so, we’ve all been a bit depressed of late…
And yes, I *do* believe things will get better.
I feel slightly more optimistic today – not difficult – because of watching the Crimes against Humanity youtube video. If anyone can make inroads into this, the Germans can (although note the bias, clue is in my surname)
Agreed. Hard not to feel very optimistic after watching Dr Reiner Fuellmich.
It just depressed me on how right he is, yet how few will listen.
You only need the judges to listen
Of course. Legal actions are springing up all around the world now. It’s only a matter of time.
Germany is a special case among countries whose civil law is based on tort, in that a significant proportion of the population can remember a totalitarian system being in place until 1990. This makes a big difference.
Be interesting to see what happens with Dolan’s appeal too! The more the merrier!
“If anyone can make inroads into this, the Germans can”
That feels like something a German might have said once before. Possibly while holding a map
Their demos get 1.5 million on the streets. More sense than the British it seems.
All the post-9/11 “emergency” measures are still in place after nearly 20 years. Same with the income tax after 200+ years. Once these things come in, they don’t go away.
Terrorism is still a threat, hence the extra checks for flying. You’d prefer the alternative perhaps? Besides, these emergency measures do not infringe your liberties anything like lockdown measures do. This shitshow will not last.
Terrorism – brought to you by the same good folk who brought you the covid overreaction.
Most serious analysts consider states to be the only significant terrorist ‘actors’ these days.
I think you deserve a big LOL for that.
And the Welsh government have gone even more completely insane.
Welsh quarantine considered for English ‘hotspots’:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-politics-54420708
Plus ‘Rolling lockdowns’ will become norm in Wales:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-54416536
Of course that ‘cunning plan’ won’t cause utter chaos.
Sturgeon’s been desperate to do this for ages; keep the English out, etc.
All four of the governments need to be replaced.
… with a block of that cheese that tests positive.
Did you get that three county walk in?
They can go fuck themselves. Me and the missus (in Neath – Port Talbot) break the regs going to our local Tesco, which is 5 miles from us, in Powys! Missus is up with the daughter and grand kids in the Midlands, back in a couple of days. We have a holiday cottage in Pembrokeshire which we will continue to visit. They will have to use force to stop us travelling.
Will be delighted to see you in Pembs!
Regarding the leaked document about the three levels that the government is planning. Level one, for businesses, says that they have to close between 10 p.m. and 5 a.m. but that deliveries can continue after 10 p.m. Isn’t that exactly what occurred at Bim’s Burgers? The order was taken before 10 p.m. (paid for at 9:59 p.m.) but the food was delivered to the customer at 10:04 p.m.(albeit he/she was waiting in the shop for the food to be delvered to him/her).
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2020/oct/04/what-are-the-three-tiers-local-coronavirus-lockdown-england
Is this the law (or guidance?) now? If it is then Bim’s Burgers has a definite case to appeal the ridiculous £1,000 fine it received.
DavidC
This:
Says it all really!
And I’ve just watched a socially distanced funeral posted on Simon Dolan’s Twitter, where the officials made people move their chairs away when they tried to comfort the widow (?)… totally heartbreaking…
People who are very ill through age or other with very week immune systems should not be included in these stats – and I speak as someone who hopes to get old one day and die when its then end of my life – and full of morphine
London doesn’t even count as ‘south of England’. For these purposes, inside the M25 should be treated like a foreign enclave.
Top 20 Areas (MSOAs) Responsible for Recent Rises in Cases
..are all Universities, where there are lots of unwitting students being compelled to take tests.
Looking at movements in the previous 4 weeks compared to 4 weeks prior, 4,397 cases were generated by university testing in the last 4 weeks, compared to 376 in 4 weeks prior to that. These numbers are just the tip of the iceberg – a small subset from Liverpool, Leeds, Manchester and Newcastle universities.
If I was in charge of generating higher volumes of cases for Whitty and Vallance etc, then I’d definitely see universities as a great source of false positives where mass testing can be done in a very short period of time for minimal cost. As a bonus, many students will have already had it (viral remnants), and many will have a cold (symptoms!).
Shame on the government for using these additional cases to scare the populace and prop up the fear machine. Q. Will they repeat this testing in southern universities in the coming weeks ? A. You bet they will.
My southern university thinks that soon, “more students and staff will test positive”. I read that as being desperate to start mass swabbing.
Really enjoy your posts. Have you got a source for the above. Thanks.
Thanks Ceriain –
Data I used is in the excel files linked in ‘Cases by Local Area in England’ here
https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/cases
Funnily enough Universities just got reported on by The Sun, though unfortunately not with the cynicism I would expect from such an important bastion of investigative journalism.
There is one gem of a sentence though…
“Around 770 people are infected with the virus at the uni in Newcastle-upon-Tyne – although just ten per cent are showing Covid symptoms”
This probably means 77 students have a common cold, not unusual at the start of Uni!
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/12849878/sheffield-university-coronavirus-outbreak/
Thanks. That is what I use.
It was the “MSOA” bit that threw me; I thought you’d found something new. (blushes)
I have 2 kids at universities, lots of friends have tested positive, one ended up in hospital, diagnosed as a panic attack.
Lots also seem to have usual Fresher’s flu but test positive for coronavirus. I rather doubt any are ill with it.
Cheese will test positive at 45 cycles.
I’ll bear that in mind if the Army visits me and I am invited to do a voluntary test – I’ve got a lovely piece of Stilton in the fridge.
DavidC
Fresh cheese?
Original Twitter post here.
thats serious stuff.. it is his advice not to smoke that they put on fag packets in USA.. And that tweet was February when everyone was still saying masks are useless for the public . shame it has been ignored
Now that I’ve figured out how to convert a document to an image – here is my effort (Thanks Mabel and Victoria)
You will note that I have minimal design skills but I offer this as a sample for a style of leaflet that could be handed out at masking zones (shopping centres, transport etc).
I’ve kept the content short and factual – it is from the WHO web site. The aim is to undermine the state’s narrative. More could be produced on different themes e.g. death rates, FPRs (tricky), “long Covid” vs long Flue etc.oo
I really have to do one too. I think anything you can hand out has got to be a good thing. You will quickly get some feed back, some of it might be good. You can change your leaflet later on. Plan for it to be A5 size, four on an A4 page, get it photocopied somewhere, go for a black and white design, cheaper to photocopy, easier to read, make a headline that will get people to take it from you.
I am going to my dentist ( Fortress) to see the hygienist and the dentist soon but before I will be allowed through the moat,minefields and machine gun nest,I have got to fill in (on-line of course) a 36 part questionnaire.
Over the 10 plus years I have been with this practice, I must have filled in 10 or 12 forms asking exactly the same questions over and over again but of course now there are more and more questions involving “you know what”
When I go to “said” dentist, I hope my nerve holds and I tell them that I am a sceptic and you know, part of me is hoping that they “chuck me out”; at least I will be spared from this madness if only from my dentist.
PS: I was only offered a “check-up” because I am in a dental insurance plan for which I pay £20 a month for 2 hygienist sessions and 2 check-ups.
My wife who isn’t in this plan doesn’t know when she will have her next check-up.
And these people, brainwashed by this government say that us sceptics are “in denial”
I think my dentist was a sceptic – seemed to agree with what I said. They know!
There seems to be no consistency across the country in both dental and medical care now. My dentist is super sceptical and I’ve already had a check up, filling and broken tooth repair. My husband is having extensive bridge work done by another dentist at the practice. All we had before the appointments was a quick, friendly chat with a receptionist about the ‘safety’ processes they’ve put in place.
I would ask why they acting as they are and whose guidance they are following.
Thanks for that suggestion.
My dentist was openly sceptical. They opened back in July, for routine checks and cleaning. Charged extra for PPE for the jetwash option but other than that at least they are serving their patients.
‘Amnesty concludes by calling for an independent public inquiry to begin ASAP, with legal powers to compel officials to produce documents and records that, to date, they’ve kept secret. Ministers, including Matt Hancock, would also be summoned to give evidence under oath and forced to justify their actions.’
Let us hope Amnesty get more response from the government than all of us on this site who have only been calling for a public inquiry since the minor common cold coronavirus epidemic ended in June.
Ahem, some of us have been calling for a plenary Royal Commission. Though the point is moot.
The PCR test is ineffective and unreliable. It is not a test any responsible person would use as a basis for making policy. There is, however, an effective and reliable test: viral culture. So why is the government using an ineffective and unreliable test when it could be using an effective and reliable test? That is not a rhetorical question. I would like to see the question put to government ministers and their advisors, especially Johnson and Hancock, and Whitty and Valance.
Put in an FOI to DHSC asking exactly that this afternoon.
I think the answer is you can culture a virus but then how do you know what virus you have grown? You’d have to sequence the RNA which I fear brings us full circle to the “gold standard” of fake tests, yes, you’ve guessed it folks, the PCR test!
Could it be because the virus has not been isolated and purified? That’s just a guess as I have no scientific knowledge but maybe someone who better understands can weigh in.
As far as I know – that is the case.
… it’s all Mystic Meg stuff.
In all the material I’ve read the only comments about it I’ve seen are that none of Koch’s four postulates have been fulfilled. Alex Thomson made a comment (referring to one of the four) in UK Column today.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FU0h71lktVw
Also, regarding the PCR test I’ve seen nothing about what specific fragment or fragments the PCR is amplifying.
DavidC
Here is an excerpt from the evidence gathering sitting of the German Ausschuss .. with English subtitles
The Problem of trying to determine SARS-CoV-2 infections using PCR Tests
https://vimeo.com/443416775
Oh. Cases are not doubling. No problem, here is 20 odd thousand cases that I found on an excell spreadsheet. No problem there. Project fear back in full force.
There is no concern that someone might well have already counted some of these numbers, that it’s not going to be just one person filling in the sheet at lunch time, That it’s inconceivable that 150 cases would be missed, let alone 15,000 +
It just gets worse and worse and worse. Day in day out.
It’s not enough to use an iffy PRC test to keep a casedemic going, we now find additional cases on an excell sheet !
On the bright side, they can’t even cook the numbers. Once they’re spread over the correct days (see Worldometers, who’ve done the hard work here), we *still* don’t have a doubling. :o))
Good point. And reassuring.
Problem is that wider people will see the headline and be bricking their pants for no good reason. Government won’t bother too much about correcting that.
That’s very true. And of course it was reported as the 20+ thousand cases. Few would read beyond the headline. Truly a disgusting government and media…
Pretty much called it as I saw it last night: They miraculously find some tests “down the back of the sofa” that makes it look like the numbers fit the curve presented by Beavis and Butthead.
Nick, the Guardian got what the figures for the f*cked up days should be. I expect Worldometers might ‘re-correct’ their figures.
They’ve been pretty good so far.
Oh, totally agree. Not knocking them at all, or you, sir.
Didn’t think you were. Have a rhino hide anyway. You need one going against the flow on Guido Fawke’s site, lol.
Last week I booked a holiday to Turkey. The day after, news came that the Turkish Government were only counting as “cases” those people who tested positive and were symptomatic. On Thursday Grant Shapps added Turkey to the naughty step. Who’d have thought their Dictator (Erdogan) was much more sensible than ours!
I had to cancel Turkey (and get a refund) as I can’t afford to quarantine for 2 weeks but have now booked a week in Rhodes. As I’m pretty sure Shapps is monitoring my computer I expect Greece to lose it’s travel corridor with the UK on Thursday!!
Sure he’s not just using a dartboard? lol
Good luck!
yes, so FFS don’t book a holiday in Gib!
Is any country actually still on the safe list ? And how can we take the piss with a safe list of 20 cases per 100,000 when our (alleged) cases exceed that ?
I hope you find a spot for a nice holiday by the way, escaping this chaos will do you good
There are rumours of an announcement on airport testing over the next few days- probably a rabbit out of the hat moment in Johnson’s speech to the virtual Tory Conference. Then for £150 I can get one of those terribly accurate RT-PCR tests on my way back through Heathrow at the very reasonable cost of £150!
I think i read that you need a followup test 5 days after for another £150, so will be £300 – and will only reduce the quarantine period by a few days (4 maybe if i recall)? Not much of a cost benefit imho.
But I hope you get to go away – i was in greece last month and did a world of good for the soul! I’m looking for another getaway but the world is shrinking by the day of places to go. Maybe Italy???
Rumour is that Italy will be next for the chop…..
If Offlands is still around, I really think he should be looking at hiring a plane – a sceptic special – to take us all somewhere sunny and normal.
He’s got a new nom de guerre (begins with S but can’t remember what it is) and now uses a VPN and anonymous e-mail to stop being spied on.
He’s called Sarigan now.
Thanks AG. I guess his business really did tank then, poor fellow.
Business not completely tanked yet but the outlook is bleak, hence looking at other ideas and markets.
Always used vpn and protonmail. Just thought a change of name wasn’t a bad idea. Sarigan is a very remote uninhabited island in the Pacific. Would give anything to be there right now!
great idea – mask free, groups more than 6 – great marketing idea and will have lots of customers!!
Actually what would be stopping someone to charter a plane and hire an entire hotel and set their own rules within reason…
I am with a change of name!
I have actually been looking at alternative ideas as there are fuck all holidays to sell! Looking at ideas like private travel, remote locations far away from the madness etc. We now have destinations with any measures. Also speaking to lawyers about a class action and if they think there is a case, will crowd fund through the industry.
If you ever take an interest in riding holidays, I’m your customer for any horse anywhere.
Bugger! You could have taken The Great Fabricator with you back to whence his ancestors came.
This travel quarantine is total nonsense – pure theatre. Maybe it inhibits the import of sanity.
It’s quite telling that they let slip when defending their Turkey decision that not counting asymptomatic cases is against WHO advice.
. . . and, of course, “asymptomatic case” is a contradiction in terms, ie there’s no such thing. . .
Say what you like about Mr Trump……….
The division in outcome could not be more clear
Either Mr Trump is having, or is about to have, a very serious illness. After all, he is very much within the high risk age group, and overweight
Or
He will emerge from medical care after the normal period of duration of severe common cold symptoms
I know where my money is
there’s fcuk all wrong with the fat git, he got a false positive and now he’s milking it
Take it you failed the nursing course on your bedside manner?
You may very well be right….but that is also exactly what the world needs to see…..the complete b*llsh*t surrounding this whole confected gravy train
I’m actually a trump supporter – well with about 50% of the trumpy stuff
might be 30%
Stolen from a Guido post.
https://twitter.com/JeremyNLowe62/status/1313112694757756928
Took a trip on Stockholm trams, metro and boat today
Mask wearing at maybe 1 or 2% – like it was in the UK before it was made compulsory
That’s the level of belief when people make an informed, free choice
Thanks for these insights, Julian. It’s important that we get a good picture of what is happening in the main comparator for the UK that didn’t go stupid.
Were the Swedes all completely different to us as the zealots claim?
I’ve only been here a couple of days
Carrie would know more
I believe a lot still work from home and travel and go out less
The city seems less busy than one would expect, but lively enough
The difference is that the people who are out seem fearless, don’t swerve and don’t distance, and the people staying away are doing so voluntarily
What you write is true, but the less going-out part is partly due to limits on the numbers allowed. No concerts or anything happening now that it is too cold to hold them outside!
Restaurants and cafes where I live are all well-visited. Public transport (well, buses in my case) are somewhat problematic as the drivers are not letting them get full to capacity, meaning a bus might not stop for you because the driver has decided it is ‘full’…and they are not running extra buses since the bus company lost money when fewer people were using them earlier in the year and over the summer. Means I have to allow extra time for journeys, or travel at less busy times, which can be a bit of a pain.
As far as masks are concerned it seems to be non-Swedes that are wearing them, plus some elderly who I suspect are venturing out for the first time in months and are scared..
Never had anyone swerve out of my way, but people do stand on the spots/lines in shops and there are a few people (mostly older) who will sometimes call you out if you don’t…
I don’t know what public transport in Stockholm is like in “normal” times but today it was busy-ish but far from full and I would guess from the high frequency of the services, the service is as normal so probably any loss of capacity is balanced by lower usage.
I saw a few bits or marker tape for keeping distance in queues, which were generally observed, but otherwise there were many occasions where I was waiting for someone to move before I went past them (I’m on holiday and not in a hurry) and a local squeezed past all of us, with millimeters to spare.
Are theatres and cinemas open?
Agree that non-Swedes and vulnerable-looking over-represented among mask wearers.
The hotel I am staying in has a health club attached to it which is open to members as well as guests – hotel staff tell me that usage by members is well down on normal levels, so there seems reluctance from some to get back to normal. That may change when outdoor workouts become less appealing, just as I suspect it will in the UK as winter comes.
Don’t think theatres are open due to the max 50 people rule – but will likely open if the government agree to Tegnell’s suggestion that 500 is ok.
Cinemas – there is one here in Uppsala that re-opened a while back with maximum of 50 per showing; not sure how that is going as I don’t often pass it..
I go to a gym attached to a physiotherapist’s clinic and the gym there was closed for ages (high average age of clients and quite a small space). They have recently re-opened, but you have to book sessions in advance so that it does not get overcrowded. Everyone can book a maximum of 2 sessions a week.
In other words, a more or less sensible degree of voluntary caution?
Please fellow sceptics – never refer to it as the “vaccine” but always and only as the “EXPERIMENTAL vaccine”
Can I not refer to it as sheep dip?
Nicking that!
Sheeple dip.
Dominic Lawson finally writes something worthwhile on lockdown (see image).
Rod Liddle still MIA.
Here’s image.
Wrong target when so broad and he could be being very selective in presenting a target. If by public sector he means people like Whitty then I see the conclusion. If he is aiming his anger at an Administrator on less than £20k a year in London, of which there are thousands, then he is totally wrong.
And the argument about pensions is ridiculous. You won’t be underpaid in your career and then be rich with your pension no matter how much you spin it. And the old classic pension scheme was first eroded nearly 20 years ago and now it no longer exists. Many civil servants now pay the same if not more for pensions than some private sector employees.
One problem is that a lot of the upper tier of public servants are from wealthy backgrounds, they are not at work for the wages in the first place. They are in it for the honours, networking and self opportunity. These people I do have an issue with and if they are the target then the article is bang on.
I disagree on your first point… that £20K administrator has likely got a job for life, a better pension than most and no need to ever demonstrate that their salary is merited as a function of return on investment.
Compare that person to a £20K Costa manager or a £20K theatre usher, or a builder or a callcentre worker.
Interesting debate. Perhaps the real problem is that companies like Costa (as named) should be compelled to increase the terms and conditions of employees rather than equalise everyone to a lower common denominator, such as no pensions for anyone or 1% across the board. I found this interesting, https://www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/explainers/civil-service-pay
Seems in some cases I am widely out at £20k per year. MoJ are paying Administrative staff 15,500 ! Incredible.
When Costa were owned by Whitbread, they offered a pretty good package and were a good company to work for.
But unlike the public sector, Costa’s owners cannot ignore reality of reduced footfall, reduced turnover and reduced profits. How long do you imagine it’s going to be before Costa are shutting stores and laying people off because some of their stores actually lose money?
If they were compelled to offer better terms, do you think more stores or less would be impacted, and more employees or less would be shed?
Yes – he’s following the family tendency to get things wrong. Big time.
Taken apart, it’s the usual small-brain undiscriminating resentment stuff from a hypocrite with a silver spoon.
I thought Liddle was turning – someone posted something vaguely promising from him the other day
Yes, he was good on Talk Radio, though I think he had been drinking!
Ha ha. I’m not fussy – whatever gets you there!
Just had a surprise on the e-mail, International Criminal Court has replied which is more than I thought they would:
“Dear Sir, Madam
The Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court acknowledges receipt of your documents/letter.
This communication has been duly entered in the Communications Register of the Office. We will give consideration to this communication, as appropriate, in accordance with the provisions of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court.
Please note this acknowledgement letter does not mean an investigation has been opened, nor that an investigation will be opened by the Office of the Prosecutor.
As soon as a decision is reached, we will inform you, in writing, and provide you with reasons for this decision. ”
Will post any further correspondence.
Don’t think I knew you had written to them, but well done!
Even jf this is the standard response, it is a response. Well done, AG.
https://www.rte.ie/news/coronavirus/2020/1005/1169441-coronavirus-ireland/
So Ireland isn’t going full lockdown again (not yet anyway!) however, the rest of the country will likely be joining Dublin and Donegal in Level 3:
https://www.gov.ie/en/publication/ad569-level-3/
Shame in a way. I think they pulled back because they were scared of the reaction. Ireland seems to be much more sceptical than the UK in general, and having many relatives and friends there I know that they are generally much less deferential to politicians and authority figures. They see them all as being – to varying degrees – corrupt liars. Charlie Haughey and the church abuse scandal being two examples that. Recently the ‘gathering’ in County Mayo reinforced the perception. Anyway, I think the Irish people were ready to say a big ‘fuck you’ had they gone ahead, which would have been great to see. It is encouraging that the politicos are at least realising there is a turn in the tide.
Half of me was hoping that they went to Level 5 nationwide as I think it would have killed lockdown.
A little rebellion there then amongst politicians against “the science”! Uplifting to read.
Giesecke was one of 4 experts that participated via video link in the Irish Covid committee meeting – doesn’t sound like they listened to him though..
I remember in march the government said track and trace only worked wen the numbers were low.
Impossible to T and T 1000s of so called positives.
Yet now track and trace is going to get us back to normal ffs
Stop all this testing most people dont even know they have it .
Mass testing just means more lockdowns cant people see that.
are all those 1000s of T&T people still employed ringing round people to ask/request/force them to self-isolate?? As a cost of 10Billion or so. It seems to have gone quiet on this aspect.
Money being spent everywhere. I’ve noticed they have a team hanging around the Apple and Google Play store review pages for the app.
Apple store reviews all getting a personal reply; Google only occasionally.
I was wondering about that.
When Trump said ‘so stop testing’ back in April or May he was the devil incarnate – he doesn’t say much that I like but he was spot on with that one.
In 2019, the WHO decisively rejected the idea of wide and unfocused T & T as a waste of space.
UnHerd
Freddie Sayers talks to eminent epidemiologists Dr Sunetra Gupta, Dr Jay Bhattacharya and Dr. Martin Kulldorff, who met in Massachusetts to sign a declaration calling for a different global response to the pandemic.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rz_Z7Gf1aRE
https://unherd.com/2020/10/covid-experts-there-is-another-way/
They don’t seem to be against the great reset though, do they?
Just been to Waitrose, not challenged, but the only person “free”.
Saddest thing I saw was a disabled man in a wheelchair with a fc on. He obviously cannot put it on himself. I was tempted to speak to his carer, but I guess they are “protecting” him from breathing in any virus.
“Carer”. I’d have to challenge that.
Now don’t get me wrong, I think Mr. Young’s doing an excellent job with this web-paper, but sometimes I do have to stop and wonder. Re ‘Is Dishy Rishi our best hope?’, of course he bloody isn’t, except in the sense that drinking your own piss represents your best hope of survival on a desert island.
As Chancellor, Sunak is simply doing his job by making the right noises about the economy, much like that weaselly turd Hancock is doing his job by pretending to care about the nation’s health. I’m sure Sunak will be allowed to have the economy reopened, but you will only be allowed to partake in it if you wear a mask all the time, hand over your track-and-trace details to every business you enter and can prove you’ve tested negative within the past two weeks. Most people will go along with that, so as far as they’re concerned ‘Dishy Rishi’* will have done his job.
We can expect to pay through our nose for it with taxes, too.
*Note to lazy tabloid journalists: no British politician has ever been dishy, ever. Sleazy, yes, but never dishy.
I take all your points, but wonder what/who you think we could pin our hopes to?
Well that’s the $64,000 question isn’t it. Now that the Government doesn’t have to bother with getting Parliament to vote on new laws and just governs by decree, who has any power or influence over them to change course?
No one in the cabinet at all. Perhaps a small smattering of old guard backbenchers who have expressed scepticism, like Desmond Swayne or Edward Leigh, but generally I would say that pinning hope on anyone in the government is hopelessly misguided. I know his name is poison to some, but if Farage returns to politics with an anti-lockdown stance he might do a Hancock and turn ripples into waves, but in a good way.
I’m pinning my hopes on public protests growing insurmountably large, though it may take months. Other than that, I don’t feel optimistic.
Farage popped up a couple of weeks ago or so to re-brand the Brexit party as anti-lockdown, but heard nothing since.
He’s another Johnson – a ‘Me’ narcissist. Not a principled politician.
I agree.There is no help coming from Parliament.
The only thing that will wake the masses is the coming economic disaster.Then all bets are off.We will be in uncharted territory
Ourselves.
I’m sure you are right, but realistically the best we can hope for in the very short term is for whoever takes over, if the PM does indeed quit, is not a zero covid fanatic, which gives room for a gradual climbdown from where they are now.
I do object to casual phrases like “another lockdown would be damaging” being thrown in. We are in bloody lockdown, and have been since March. The lockdown never ended, just evolved (and arguably is more sinister and invasive now than in March, when at least everyone agreed we were being significantly restricted because it was more obvious).
I can see the rule of six and the “curfews” being got rid of, and maybe spectator sport opening up a bit, but I can’t see masks and track and trace being got rid of, not for a very long time.
“We are in bloody lockdown, and have been since March.”
Exactly. In my perception, things have got worse – not better.
Sunak, I think is quoted somewhere as saying, “we’ve got to stop living in fear”, which might be taken as a veiled dig at current government policy, which seems to be to keep people feeling scared for as long as possible.
And the “eat our to help out” scheme was his idea and apparently a great success.
So he might prove to be a good replacement for Johnson, but until it happens, we won’t really know.
My itchy left bollock would be a good replacement for Doris! I’ve been quite impressed by Sunak all along – he could well be a skinny Churchill that the country needs – sooner rather than later though
Eat out to help out was blamed for the new rise in cases though?
What rise?
Another reason for him to be be opposed to Johnson.
I should have written ‘cases’ not cases!!!
Well – I fail to see anything but unnecessary nonsense in the ‘eat out’ stuff. As the legendary Irishman said : “I wouldn’t start from here if I were you”.
… but it’s all about debating the difference between being in shit above your nose or just above your mouth.
I want to be out of the shit altogether.
Point of order. Cameron’s face had the shape and the albedo of a silver serving dish. Ipso facto, Dave was dishy.
He’s also ex Goldman Sachs, which immediately puts me off him..
I am sure he has been ‘chosen’ because he ticks the diversity box and is easy on the eye…
Fishy
As someone pointed out, the only respectable thing for any politician to do now is resign their position otherwise they will be deemed to have known about the fraud and did nothing
Yes. I’m still waiting for my MP to respond to the my request that she voted against the Covid Act renewal. I gave enough succinct information as to why.
From https://twitter.com/Anshul__K/status/1313106473770266625?s=20
There were ten more COVID-19 associated deaths reported, in English hospitals, today:
Age Breakdown –
0 – 19: 0
20 – 39: 0
40 – 59: 0
60 – 79: 6
80+: 4
Regional Breakdown –
East: 0
London: 1
Midlands: 2
North East And Yorks: 4
North West: 3
South East: 0
South West: 0
—
In Scotland there were 0 deatgs reported, the government point out this may be due to Register Offices being closed at weekends.
https://www.gov.scot/publications/coronavirus-covid-19-daily-data-for-scotland/
218 people with Covid19 infections are in hospital. This is c40-50 less than the number which prevailed for months during Spring and Summer by ‘lazy’ book keeping. The SG were caught fiddling the data in August and so ‘reset’ the counter to 48 infections in hospital. Therefore in loose terms you may say the ‘second wave’ to date has seen 160-170 people hospitalised with C19 infections.
I do not have a handle on how many have died during this Autumn phase. Nor an indication of the age of those who have sadly died.
There is no “second wave”. It’s a ripple at best.
60 odd million pop – those numbers above are not even a plip which is a tiny plop.
A line graph shows it very much in sync. with what happens every year at this time.
Don’t think it matters how small the numbers are, or even if they go to zero. They even had the nerve to say suicidal thoughts are a symptom of Covid, they will keep mis-recording any deaths they can get away with. The more people who become terminally ill due to not receiving NHS treatment the more unhealthy and susceptible people will become to illnesses.
Boris seems to have been tasked with driving the UK economy of a cliff so we can have a ‘great reset’ and authoritarian technocratic control.
Homicidal thoughts are a symptom of Covid scepticism, I’m afraid.
Long-ing Covid – longing to bash their cretinous heads in.
I think the north west has just taken it upon itself to ‘go Sweden’. Let Pfeffel sweat the figures.
We are trying
My town in Northern Ireland is under local lockdown. The stats:
Population: 140,000
Cases last 4 weeks: 1300
Deaths since January: 21
Age 80+ deaths: 18
Age 50+ deaths: 3
Age 50- deaths: 0
All deaths but one occurred up to end of April
Nobody has died since May.
Age expectancy in Northern Ireland is 78
Stay Safe over there!
Visit to corner shop this morning. Quiet, so just muzzle-free me and one other bemuzzled customer. I said hello and flashed him a smile.
I told the bemuzzled shop owner I was sorry she’s had to lose her face and did she know that the guideline was to wear a face covering only if unable to maintain a “reasonable” distance from customers. I pointed out that if we’d gone out for lunch together, we’d actually be sitting much nearer to each other.
She said she knew the regulations but thought some of the customers wanted it.
Sigh!
Well, she’s right to the extent she’s thought about it, but the mistake she’s making is to think that everyone either wants her to wear one, or is indifferent. It’s a complete failure of empathy.
”There’s a second wave of Covid. How do I get my dad to rein in his social life?
Eleanor Margolis
No matter how many articles on coronavirus I force him to read, he never seems quite scared enough”
A delightful story in the guardian, that even the guardian btl commentators found extreme. Apparently two daughters are concerned that father – who obeys all the covid rules – is not scared enough and what advice on how to scare him out of going to the occasional dinner party with friends. Apparently our generations complacency is because we never lived through 9/11 and the 2008 financial crash, and nothing bad ever happened before then ( such as oil crisis, Vietnam war, Northern Ireland, Olympic massacres, Chernobyl, prior pandemics, etc etc) it is well worth the read just to realize how hopelessly pathetic some people are – even by guardian standards….
Parents can be cruel to children and children can be cruel to parents
It’s a natural tendency but you can’t and shouldn’t try to live other people’s lives for them – there’s far too much of that going on right now
Every parent deserves the children they end up with.
Maybe that’s why Northern Ireland seems so compliant. Almost a whole generation has lived without large scale violence.
He seems too mild mannered.
My old university chaplain lived through the Blitz as a school boy in London. He is, if it were possible, more hard line in lockdown scepticism than I am – certainly his language turns bluer.
…friends and family to varying degrees are either all onboard…
We’re your friends and ‘family’, and we’re not onboard with any of it. There are hundreds, if not thousands, of us. We’re all of us with you.
Electric vehicles will need ten Hinckley points
best comment: “So that’s what the lockdowns are for, softening us up for permanent travel restrictions and home working.”
The point being that if there was even a rumour of restrictions in car charging (a cold windless winter period for example), everyone would rush to plug in their cars at that moment. The grid would be overloaded and it would be one hell of a “lockdown”
Personally I object to linking lockdown lunacy to green energy. People have been trying to talk down solar and wind energy for the last 20 years without success. Solar and wind are now the cheapest sources of electrical energy. The issue of storage, to ensure that we can get through cloudy, windless conditions are being addressed and gradually resolved. Green energy is about a brightnand better future tgat will benefit the whole of humanity. Lockdown lunacy is a dark, regressive phenomenon.
You might fine Michael Moore’s recent expose on the Green con “Planet of the Humans” illuminating. (Yes, that is the liberal, Trump hating Michael Moore)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zk11vI-7czE
Watch it and have your eyes opened!
I share James Delingpole’s deep revulsion of electric windmills. Vast swathes of the Scottish lowlands have been covered in these hideous things.
God forbid this wretched technology ever becomes as extensive here in England.
Nuclear energy is now cheap and safe.
And wind turbines ‘mince’ birds
They do!
… but, to keep a perspective, are a minor threat to birds compared with wider anthropogenic environmental damage.
I’ve watched it happen over a nearly 50 years in a part of the Hebrides that I know well. No other explanation works.
Office towers and apartment blocks with reflective glass kill far more birds than wind turbines! Look it up.
too right. well not so cheap if we get the edf/chinese ones but Rolls Royce SMRs (small modular reactors) will cheap and clean . And as to dangers, the number of deaths due to nuclear accidents is minute . Chernobyl was communist negligence, Fukushima was earthquake/Tsunami. It is like comparing covid deaths with normal respiratory /flu deaths
They aren’t cheap (need gas/coal backup for one) and more importantly they aren’t despatchable. Doesn’t matter if all the energy needs are met one windy morning if it can’t be sent on demand.
They have less energy density than coal and diesel. If greens were really green we would be moving to nuclear salt reactors as well as modern fission ones.
You can spread the risk by making smaller reactors so you don’t get a cataclysmic meltdown.
Agree, and if you haven’t seen it already, I strongly recommend that film I just gave a link to!
Here again:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zk11vI-7czE
Read Agenda 21 which is now Agenda 2030 -read what it means, not what the flowery language says.
it’s all in there.
I agree, I’ve got a family member who is a prominent Prof of climate change at a large uni – and I always say – why take the risk!! – fossil fuels are finite – use renewables (unintended consequences considered) and save the fossils for aeroplanes, where there is, as yet, no green alternative – simples
Except solar and wind are not despatchable. Think the Philae lander on Rosetta. Didn’t turn to the sun enough and was lost for 90 odd days
bla bla bla – fossils are finite – the problem will be solved by engineers and scientists – that is simply reality
doesn’t take a scientist to work out that fossil fuels aren’t unlimited
The only way forward is to be pragmatic. CCGT is the only solution. Fully dispatchable, proven technology, requires no subsidy and would provide the bridge for the next 20 years in as clean a way as possible until the leap in battery storage technology to make renewables a fully viable solution. From Mr TT.
that sounds like a posh name for chp – I was involved in such a project at iggesund paperboard in cumbria 20 years ago – and I believe in fracking for gas as a 2 decade measure until we develop new long term energy sources (and insulate our homes properly)
CHP works where you have a balanced need for heat and electric power. CCGT units are used in CHP power stations when the heat can sometimes be diverted for use in the industrial process eg. chemical plant. Or alternatively, the heat can be diverted through the heat recovery steam turbine. It’s not something though that can be used to generally power an entire economy, but as a 10-20% mix perhaps. (Mr TT)
iggesund used the wet steam for paper processing
Family in Sweden use the heat bi-product from paper processing to heat their homes – v efficient
In the UK heat bi-product used to grow tomatoes and stuff
I use the bi-product of the internal combustion engine to keep me warm while driving
but fossil fuels are finite – solutions are needed – and not far off – but not for air travel!! – save the fossils for getting around the world
simples
Of course there is – airships. Things would be a tad slower, mind.
Whatever the issues, it’s another (proper) debate, and shouldn’t be confused with the shit-show fraud.
The only thing useful thing that lockdown has done is, actually, to prove the dire effect of the internal combustion engine on the atmosphere. Which is a problem – but not for now.
I think you will find that despite the almost zero road and air traffic during the lockdown,it didn’t make that much difference to air quality in London.
Things are worse now because of the insane cycle lanes that are being put everywhere.
The hostility to the internal combustion engine and aviation is a form of snobbery directed to the common people
no solar and wind are not the cheapest sources. They are heavily subsidised by strike prices far and above the wholesale prices of electricity. Remove the subsidies and no one will build new windfarms. See this for example
And bulk storage is a myth. even in the foreseeable future batteries may be able to cover hours at the most of lost wind generation. Not days.
Plus also have you factored in the additional electricity that will be used when we have to replace tens of millions of gas boilers with electric heating .
I think this discussion at least shows lockdown sceptics would like to get back to addressing serious issues of economic and social policy rather than having to do battle with the absurdities of lockdown lunacy and its completely unnecessary acts of national self harm.
Don’t forget all the local substations need upgraded and increased in number, the wiring to your house will need upgraded and so on.
Really good engineering report and study on all this a few years ago in eluding input from about the only bit of government that works the national grid and was submitted to government but ignored and/or binned.
And don’t get a smart meter – has already been admitted they can be used to throttle down usage !! Easier and cheaper than building the extra capacity needed
Message received today from Conservative Party:
“Conservatives believe in the importance of community and belonging.
We believe in personal responsibility and pragmatism.
We believe in the nobility of work and free enterprise.
And we believe in the unbreakable bond of union that unites the four nations of our United Kingdom.
Our values are old and true and have withstood tests of strife, of terror, and even war.
And they are timeless because they are a wisdom earnred over generations of members.“
Anyone believe this anymore?
Translation:
“Lie.
Lie.
Lie.
Lie.
Lie.
Lie.“
It’s not even laughable anymore, is it?
Detailed translation:
“Conservatives believe in the importance of destroying all community and belonging.
We believe in authoritarian control over every aspect of the individual’s life.
We believe in bribing the workforce with meagre state handouts in order that they acquiesce to our dictatorship.
And we believe in the unbreakable bond of union that unites the four nations of our United Kingdom to the diktats of the UN, WHO, WEF and our numerous multi-billionaire financiers.
Our values are new and false.
And they will be timeless because resistance to the Great Reset is futile.“
Can we send that to them as a reply?
Adding Bill Gates to the list of billionaires, so they know we have noticed…
There was a time when I might have used such hypocritical crap as an advertisment for Labour.
I now can’t.
We need new parties.
100%accurate translation.
The fake “Conservative” party doesn’t believe in anything.
Doublespeak.
Now that must be a joke. That reputation is gone – permanently.
12000 + cases today good proves lockdowns dont work..
Let’s face it – PCR test positives prove absolutely NOTHING – they just make a statistical noise (even if it works in our direction).
This ‘Crimes against Humanity’ video has to be the most important thing I have seen since the start of the crisis. An excellent summary of the ‘story so far’ and the promise of the perpetrators getting their come-uppance.
Send it to your MP and anyone else you can think of.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kr04gHbP5MQ
The German inquiry has ignored the political representatives.
One has spoken out against the criminality and corruption for which are are now clearly complicit.
A green MP (opposition) turned whistle blower reported his experience to the Ausschuss. He argued with his party that more perspectives needed to be considered and reported that ONLY ONE expert advised the German Bundestag concerning Corona measures: CHRISTIAN DROSTEN.
https://twitter.com/simondolan/status/1313154314509189120
‘UPDATE
Today the Judge agreed with us and ordered that the hearing date for our Injunction be held ASAP.Could be as early as next Wed.
Govt have until this Friday to file evidence.
All papers will be up on the site in next 24 hrs
Please share’
Progress is being made! Go Dolan
great stuff, bring it on!
Well done Simon and team. Go Dolan!
Go go go!
Let’s hope the Judge discovers a pair! Never quite understood how Gina Miller got the Courts to hear her cases so quickly but when our liberties are taken away they don’t seem terribly concerned!
and all those ‘human rights’ lawyers seem to have disappeared into a rabbit hole when our rights are being eroded!
Amnesty International are far too late to the party
They’ve all been useless. And quite frankly still are.
E.g Have they criticised the Melbourne regime yet? Not that I’ve heard.
The goings on in Melbourne are the worst events of my lifetime.
Brilliant news.
great news
My spirits have lifted
It sounds from Dolan’s tweet like the judge only made that decision today – so the government’s lawyers have not got long to get their stuff together and file their case… Hopefully that lack of time will work in our favour
Good news. But the courts’ recent brexit record does not give me hope.
I’ve just listened to the Unherd interview with 3 scientists that Sir P posted above/below earlier(inc. my hero prof Gupta)…
The world would be a much better place if this trio were the WHO!!!!!
a worthwhile listen…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rz_Z7Gf1aRE
Hancock is smirking sniggering and cocky as he is asked about excel spread sheets. In commons live now.
He’s number 1 on the ”punch a twat” list
I haven’t seen his behaviour so far out as right now. He is outlandish in his arrogance and comfort. The questioning back benchers are dumbed so far down as to not pose any challenge what so ever.
1st on list completely.
Did you see the little fit he threw when an MP asked about availability of testing in his area? Hancock merely replied in an angry voice ‘I wont have this divisiveness’ and sat down!
Speaker should have made him stand up and answer.
Yes, he is afforded far too much respect from MPs in general.
Exactly!
Here’s the clip of Hancock’s petulance last week, if anyone missed it: https://twitter.com/TanDhesi/status/1311674709503860736
Note he does not even bother to answer the perfectly reasonable question he had been asked..
Thank you. He is on the high side of egotist.
Fist pumps from him as guy from stoke said they have loosened lockdown. Just in corner of screen.
The whole debate is layed upon a layer of PCR lies and bullshit. Each MP is standing on a PCR trap door that will collapse as soon as PCR is outed publicly.
I wish you were right, Basics – but PCR has already been ‘outed’.
You know what I mean. Outed in the sense of unlatching those trap doors.
My guess is that he simply cannot believe how easy it has been to get away with it all so far. This was highlighted with his ludicrous “hundreds of thousands of deaths” comment – he can say anything and not be challenged.
I fear you’re right – the way people just suck up the nonsense encourages them to go further and further.
But everything he says in the House is recorded in Hansard…
Hopefully Dolan’s lawyers are using the lies from Hansard in their case!
Give me 1 minute alone with him.
Oh no – back of the queue!
Can the rest of us watch?
Numbers 2 – 100 as well
Hancock is very sure about himself isn’t he? It says much about someone the way they speak to their opponents. He has a Messiah complex, and his attitude to women is apparent in his response to Stella Creasy, as it was several months ago to Rosena Allin-Kahn. Would be no point in being subtle with him – a knee in the privates would be required!
If you can find them…
If only a death could be linked to this mistake. Just one clear link would do it. He’d be gone.
Can I suggest an improvement and throw in a bit of gender stereotyping as well? Stiletto heel in the privates!
I felt from the start the politicians were enjoying this a bit too much.
To have the whole nation hanging on your every word,bossing people about,ruling lives with a flourish of the pen.Pliant media and populace.
This is what they dreamed of their whole lives
I think our most respected leader will relax the rule of 6 for the Christmas week. Even he must fear how far he can push any goodwill he might have from the “Great British Public”. I mean can you imagine the police breaking up a family meal on Christmas Day just as they tuck in to the turkey (INSERT PIGS IN BLANKETS JOKE HERE)? Plus he’d love the kudos of “saving” Christmas.
He doesn’t give a shit. The majority of the country will be under alert Level 3 lockdown (i.e. no social contact outside your household) throughout December.
I think it will go either way. He’ll either ease the restrictions or go harder, no mixing of households at all.
The rules will not apply to his family, so whatever happens to everyone else is of no consequence.
I saw a joke elsewhere that on Christmas Day say you’re holding a funeral for the turkey and have 30 people attending! Seems perfectly reasonable to me
I agree that they are going to have to relax the restrictions for christmas otherwise will be massive issues – imagine saying to granny that can’t come for xmas day as too many people – it would be absurd.
Did it starve to death?
Since when did absurdity put these cretins off?
There should be no restrictions now.
Of course they will relax restrictions on Christmas Day. And they will expect to be thanked for it.
Well it’s no bloody good “allowing” people to celebrate Christmas if you wait until the last minute to announce it. People have to plan where they’re going to be, organise transport, accommodation, food – especially turkeys, booze, prezzies and all the rest of it in advance.
Maybe he can check Hancock’s corona-calendar and check where it’s planned to be in December.
That’s exactly what will happen, just like the quarantines. Twitter announcement 10:30pm Christmas Eve probably.
I hope they don’t – the best thing about Xmas day is that the roads are empty.
I very much doubt it will be his call, to be honest. If he lasts beyond this month I will be surprised. Once we get past Oct 15, if there is a trade deal with the EU, job done (for some in the party). If no trade deal, job done (for others in the party). He then has no further use. Economy is on life support, and we will be hearing more about his private life (Tom Bower’s book). Tap on the shoulder time.
I hope you are right – agree he is done just whether they try and prop him up for a bit longer. Certainly timing of Bower’s book seems to have been to allow the 15th October to come and go.
“Beware the ides of October”?
Cultural joke for you there.
Yes. Haha.
The sands of time are running out for Johnson. The knives are being sharpened. Speculating here, but I suspect Johnson going was part of the deal over the amendment last week.
Very possible. He has no purpose now, and the longer he stays in place, the worse it gets for the party, if not the country.
Even Johnson is forced out, would anyone else stop this?
No, not unless forced by the courts…Rishis is an ex banker and just as dangerous. There’s no one left I would trust – remember Gates and Big Pharma are pulling the strings..
I like the cut of your jib, madam.
No chance of goodwill surviving to Christmas. This shitshow will (I hope!!) be over by then, or very close to it.
Probably the “new” PM is hoping to take over in time to save Christmas and be seen as a hero…. Whoever they are they will have been complicit in all of this and don’t deserve any kudos.
If things do not start getting back to normal very soon having 7 people in your house will be the last of our worries.
Economic collapse is on the cards followed by hyper inflation
I doubt we’ll still have Rule of Six by then. It will be full lockdown no doubt, or Level 3 for 90% of the country. Those in the Shetlands and Isle of Wight can still have Christmas, but no one else.
https://uk.yahoo.com/news/will-boris-johnson-impose-a-second-national-lockdown-113621308.html
“Case numbers, hospitalisations and of course, deaths, are rising and the R value has stayed stubbornly above 1, meaning the pandemic continues to grow across the country”
Some on here have been predicting this second lockdown for ages, so wouldn’t be surprised.
One of the links in the article is this:
https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/coronavirus-hospital-admissions-rising_uk_5f74a876c5b66377b27c152f
It shows ICU/HDU admission rates on a graph, which indeed show a sharp rise between 13th September and 20th September for the 65 plus age groups.
The x axis however shows the admission rate per 100,000 and the highest point on the line for the 75-84 age group is 0.8
Can you statisticians on here please explain to me what this rate means?
Is it:
0.8 of a person per 100,000 people. ie less than one person per 100,000
or 0.8% of 100,000=800
or O.8 of 100,000=80,000 (unlikely I know)
There is a massive difference between the three possibilities. For many of us, statistics is a foreign language (and therefore we are much easier to fool)
Thank you.
8 people per million. Hardly the plague is it.
Thank you leggy, that’s how I saw it too. The line for over 65s does show a steep gradient but when you read the small print, it puts the whole graph into perspective.
You might argue it’s a plague of good health. If you were that way minded.
Yes – that’s it.
The video embedded in this article contains this classic:
“With the new restrictions & darker, colder weather, it could be difficult to remain upbeat.”
Whoever put this together needs to be hanging from a tree.
Note the latest egregious lie from the BBC (it gets worse and worse) – that the latest PCR track and trace f.up means that people didn’t know that they ‘had been in touch with people who had Covid‘.
‘You couldn’t make it up?’ Ooooh yes you could!
I have to read this sometimes to be able to laugh out loud – as I did to this – thanks RickH!
That’s it Rick! The new three part slogan:
Make. It. Up.
Oh, hang on, that’s what they’ve been doing all along.
On the news:X thousands have been exposed to Covid and are unaware.
So????
If they are OK, what’s the problem?
That’s too logical a question, silly!
They actually haven’t been ‘exposed to Covid’ – which is an illness, not an RNA fragment.
LONG COVID!!!!!!
Even if you never had Covid symptoms, you can still get it, didn’t you know.
Hi
Here’s the latest version of my graph of doom with the “found” data conveniently following the exact curve the wasn’t “predicted”.
https://www.covid19assembly.org/post/actual-cases-vs-example-scenario
Can I ask about yesterday’s ‘spires of doom’, have they been trimmed (given a hair cut) or toppled into the previous days. Apologies I haven’t kept up with the upshot of ‘case-dump-gate’.
Where have yesterday’s spires gone?
Thanks Lockdown Truth.
Worldometer shows them spread over a number of days which I assume is all correct. The one single lump was not very scientific! Mind you they’re probably all false positives so it hardly matters!
Thanks. I like to know about things when spures/towers just crumble. I wondered if theys fallen into their own footprint.
Spread them about a bit, jobs a goodun.
The value in your graph is the overlay. The casedump messed with your/everybodies tracking – curious how that happens. I am fairly certain Dunkirk as ellwood drifted in wasn’t hobbled by poor administration.
Good work thanks.
Guardian were given corrections by PHE.
Thats it sort in my mind now thank you Ceriain.
How depressing is the clip on Carl’s video?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aMf9z4I33iw&t=0s
A grieving widow not able to be comforted in her grief. No, no, it’s not worth it.
Such is the mentality that is all-pervasive in authoritarian societies. The state must be obeyed in all circumstances, without question and regardless of the consequences.
Can anyone seriously doubt that we have already crossed this threshold?
I think that clip is on Simon Dolan’s Twitter as well.. heartbreaking..
We need to keep these sorts of videos for when it is over and the truth starts coming out.
There needs to be a Covid version of “de-Nazification” where the public learns what they did to real people by just going along with narrative. There needs to be as much effort put into that as was put into the scare strategies of the media this year.
Never let them forget.
Have you seen the first film records of Belsen when the British troops liberated the camp?
Our atrocities may not be in the same league ( yet), but they will be remembered. Oh yes.
My grandad helped liberate one of the camps – he’d have been furious about lockdown, very anti strongman government, understandably.
We should crowd fund a video advert on all social media with snippets of the horrors enacted in the name of prevention. Not now, when people are too invested in their beliefs, but in six months when the doubt has really set in.
Make people aware of what they did let them see the faces of the people they hurt.
Yes, starting with ‘3 weeks to flatten the curve’…
That’s a brilliant idea. Are you able to create a video? Or Toby – how about it? I’ll contribute.
I’ve said this elsewhere, but if that geezer had done that in the area I grew up in, he’d be picking up his teeth.
This will only stop when people stop letting themselves be treated this way.
What the fuck are these people doing on Excel spreadsheets, don’t they have an a proper SQL database for this, which would generate the reports? Is fucking stone age computing they are doing.
Precisely. I just checked Excel and even 2013 has over a million rows and nearly 16.5 thousand columns giving over 17 billion cells. How exactly have they run out of room on a worksheet?
Perhaps they have been trying to keep the details of all tests that have been administered in a single workbook. With 23.5 million tests, you’d need to horizontally shard the data over at least 24 worksheets for it fit.
Because it will be full of repeated data and text shite like “This is the figure that Karen on floor 27 gave us” and “Not sure about this one”.
To be fair, these are pretty typical rookie errors and are to be expected. EXCEPT WHEN YOU ARE RUNNING A FUCKING COUNTRY.
I know, it does give me some hope actually. We are dealing with absolute muppets here.
When I saw that the error was due to running out of columns in the worksheet, I can only assume that they are using .xls format (Excel 2003) which has a maximum of 256 columns.
Excel 2007 and above (.xlsx format) has a maximum of 16,384 columns.
the NHS spreadsheets on the coronavirus site are all the 2016 or greater, but maybe the testing sites are using earlier versions. But what ever they do this should all be going traight into an Oracle or MS SQL database and only then exported to Excel for sharing on the website. They are all a fucking joke, its like how much did they spend on the NHS computerisation was it like 7 billion, so they could just do stuff on Excel and save it on memory sticks for sharing.
It wouldn’t surprise me if the NHS are using a legacy ERP system which only exports data in .xls format.
Raw data > SSDT > SQL > SSAS > Power BI.
£12Bn world beating excel spread sheets – he sniggered just now at the dispatch box when asked how he could claim world beating TnT.
It bugs me immensely how cocky the arsehole is!
Free advertising for microsoft isn’t it. Cynical, unlikely, but a factor in this grand charade.
They probably use Capita or DXC for their IT. If they requested a SQL database in March, they’ll be getting it any day now, but it’ll be configured wrong.
‘King of the World’ multiple choice quiz
So you want to be King of the Known World?
Think you’ve got what it takes?
Q.1 You are already a national premier and you catch a cold
Do you:
A. Carry on working flat out for several days, end up in hospital, then wipe out the national economy so 65 million people all feel as bad as you do?
B. Go straight to hospital, then feel so well you drive around waving at everyone, like a good leader should?
C. Call Richard and Judy?
D. Send your health minister to the Tower for a good torturing on the rack?
Correct! You have the right answer! You are King of the World!
(Of course, all the answers are correct in somebody’s world.)
Well I currently approve of sending the health minister to the tower for a few hours on the rack. Even better if Richard and Judy can join him…
Then you are also King of the Unknown World.
Enjoy!
Finally someone recognises who I am.
Ah no, be nice to Richard – he’s on our side!
He’s a daytime tv presenter… that’s justification enough.
To be fair Richard Madeley is a sceptic.
And all collaborators
Richard Madeley is one of our best sceptics at the moment.Check him out on youtube on talk radio .
The EXPERIMENTAL vaccine, when available, might do more harm than good…
We now know that the experimental vaccine that they plan to inject us all with will have been deemed effective in its trials so long as it merely reduces symptoms (not prevents deaths or stops infection). So vaccinated people who get the virus will no longer feel ill and go to bed as they otherwise would have (out of circulation), but will instead feel OK and run around in society infection many other people! …brilliant (not) !!!!
But its OK – vaccine companies, Gates, and conflicted government advisors and ministers will still get their “rewards”
https://www.spiked-online.com/2020/10/05/we-cannot-ignore-the-harms-of-lockdown/
In case anyone hasn’t seen this.
GPs are waking up
About time!
Unfortunately not that many going by my GP’s surgery
Would you happen to be THE Wendy K of that parish?
Fear most the unmasked 7th man who dares to wander after 10pm.
Matt Hancock appeared before the Health Committee to explain that the testing shortages problem would take weeks to resolve. That was four weeks ago. Have I missed something? Is it sorted yet?
All these problems are smoke and mirrors to divert our attention from what is really happening, ie nothing much at all.
Have we seen this addition to the coronavirus act? https://thewallwillfall.org/2020/10/05/removal-of-form-5-cremation-certificate-for-deaths-relating-to-covid-19-under-the-coronavirus-act/amp/?s=09
More cover-ups..
Mr Simon Dolan
https://twitter.com/simondolan/status/1313150980687527938?s=20
“For some time now @yougov have been putting out fraudulent poll results
Sue me @YouGov if you contend this.”
@YouGov · 1h
By 49% to 36% Britons oppose the idea of lifting coronavirus restrictions for Christmas day. All age groups are more likely to oppose than support the idea
https://yougov.co.uk/topics/travel/survey-results/daily/2020/10/05/2762d/2?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=daily_questions&utm_campaign=question_2
—-
You may like to donate to Simon Dolan’s crowd legal funder he deserves all the support he can get.
U r right u gov are not to e trusted
Good old Simon.
Yougov will have seen that Simon is not averse to taking people to court, so hopefully the 77th will stop rigging the polls now..
i came to the same conclusion about the perpetrators of the apparently fake polls.
My younger son has just sent me this message:Cinema has survived 2 world wars,Television, Video recorders, Internet streaming services and now they are to be finished off by a virus that has killed 0.01% of the world population and WE are the ones who are dismissed as ignorant idiots.
It’s not as much as 0.01%
I guessed as much.
I have booked 5 cinema visits for October and 1 (so far) for Nov. Seen some of the films before (Withnail, High Window) but I want my local independent to keep going.
Yes, we have got an independent cinema ( The Regal,Tenbury Wells, Worcestershire) 8 miles from us, which has survived 2 major floods in the last few years which puts it in good stead to resist this “man made”panic that so- called “experts” have bought us to.
PS:It’s also a live venue, Rich Hall is appearing soon (Sold out)
Apologies if this has already been posted.
https://twitter.com/darrengrimes_/status/1313112496316837888
I’m reminded of the first line from the first record release, ‘Fear of Drowning’, by a band called British Sea Power:
‘Oh Jesus Fucking Christ oh God No’.
They must have been particularly middle-class, because where I grew up, that member of staff would have been getting his jaw x-rayed about now.
Agreed.How do people put up with this
Yep. They had those handy chairs in their hands too …
Although this will likely be a cause/effect conundrum, this, sadly, might have reasonably been predicted as a consequence of lockdown. God bless the four young people who have died:
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8806397/Pictured-Newcastle-student-18-died-drugs-related-death.html
What a sad waste of young lives
Boris, Hancock et al are responsible, if not directly, certainly indirectly. This needs to be remembered on judgment day.
I’ll say it again TT, they are criminals and they should be prosecuted.
I won’t hold my breath though, as a la Blair and the Dodgy Dossier,the mud won’t stick.
https://thecritic.co.uk/issues/october-2020/womxn-and-non-womxn/
For a bit of light relief folks, here are Titania’s latest musings on trans-inclusive language.
As a member of the 46XX portion of humanity, I’m starting to feel additionally excluded, both as a sceptic and a cis- female person.
Very funny. I thought it was serious until the second or third sentence.
Great, so I can now ask how to pronounce it, without reprisal. After all, their mask will protect me.
Brilliant!
Although I’m against any type of lockdown , a full lockdown might be a good thing as it could bring things to a head as the population starts to get angry, dont believe y gov polls most people are against a full lockdown , it needs to come to a head so we can start breaking out.of this.
Agree – it has to get worse for it to get better. If there is a ‘circuit break’ lockdown announced for October half term, that might be it, for ever. Start November with a new strategy, new scientific advisers, and no Boris, Hancock, Cummings and Gove. Possible.
Ye agree it might be a way out and what you say has been mentioned before.
It’s a dangerous gamble but increasingly I am beginning to take this position. The problem is once we are back in full lockdown it won’t be lifted for 6 months. Over to the people.
The problem is once we are back in full lockdown it won’t be lifted for 6 months.
Exactly. No lockdowns. For any reason.
Unfortunately I don’t trust the people.
The cracks in the narrative are beginning to show. This will not last. They will lose.
Very dangerous, especially with the intro of this three tier system.
As we know, the government are controlling and manipulating the “case” numbers and the public have been brainwashed into accepting that these “cases” are significant by the media.
Any area that starts showing evidence of pushback will probably start seeing “case” numbers rise so the government can implement level 3 measures. From what i’ve understood, these measures will resemble something like the fascist state of Victoria, Australia.
And of course, the dissenters will once again be blamed for the increase of “cases” by not following the rules, a la Chairman Dan, “Protesting is selfish, protesting is stupid and protesting is dangerous“. Catch 22.
No thanks. It didn’t do that the first time.
I am dubious. All the signs are that the populace – or a good majority – will suck up any Scary Fairy story that they are fed
I thought I was an accelerationist, but this would like setting fire to your house to get the wasp out of it.
To me the WHO estimate of 10% global infection is big news given the resultant IFR being virtually identical to flu. I suppose they are saying Covid is far more infectious therefore more dangerous? I have yet to see any evidence of this being the case, have I missed something?
To be clear I put little value on anything the WHO says, but given their sway in the global narrative, to me it’s significant.
Well – I’ve seen no evidence of the extreme infectiousness of SARS-CoV-2 beyond that of most viral infections. Like much – it’s just asserted.
…and the assertions tend to emerge from biased sources.
If it was that much more infections, wouldn’t more than 10% have had it by now? What percentage of the world’s population have had flu this year? No one knows because no one cares, but I’d be willing to bet it’s more than 10% (and in fact I’d be willing to bet that more than 10% have been exposed to SARS-CoV-2, but that’s another matter).
And why is the UK experiencing 10 times or so more flu deaths than covid deaths? Either flu is actually more deadly than covid (unlikely), or is in fact more infectious because masks, lockdowns etc are preventing the spread of covid but not flu hence the higher rate of flu deaths.
Proves masks and social distancing don’t work!
I think I’ve read somewhere that flu affects up to a billion people each year, so the WHO estimate of 750 million people infected after almost a year is nothing out of the ordinary in terms of infectiousness.
Just *love* this tweet:
https://twitter.com/ScottyKBF/status/1313026728638459904
For those unable to access Twitter:
@ScottyKBF
Incredibly nervous about what?
There will be no reckoning, there will be no-one held accountable.
I think this one is too big to get out of, even for them.
We have to hope!
I understand the cynicism Aidan, but the longer this goes on, the harder it will be to dodge the consequences. The care home scandal, the avoidable deaths from other causes, the trashing of the economy, the lost jobs, cooking of data, abuse of people via “nudge” etc, incessant mindfucks, rule by diktat, abuse of protestors by the authorities acting under political orders, ridiculously-inflated fines imposed by fixed penalty and not by a court, destruction of civil liberties and rights on a scale never seen before…
And if Dolan wins his case, that will really open the floodgates!
I do admire your optimism, but I have zero faith that anyone will ever be held to account for this, any more than they were for the Iraq war, the death of Dr David Kelly and the 45-minutes dossier.
The idea that they’ll never get away with it because a couple of hundred internet bampots won’t let it happen is risible, I’m afraid.
Those with the credentials to make a case against the government will be smeared, blackmailed or bribed until they play nice or go away.
The difference this time is that it directly affects the lives and livelihoods of all of us. The Iraq War, though a bestial and unforgiveable crime against humanity, was in a far away place.
All the universtiy towns in the north have had loads of cases, how come the same hasnt happened in Oxford/Cambridge/Reading etc etc? Some difference in the test processing as only Exeter south of Birmingham as a high count ?? That is very striking
if cases involved people being ill then then there probably aren’t loads of cases
Lockdown comes first, testing follows to justify the action.
Not all universities have started mass testing yet, give them time.
Its a scandal!! #NorthernCasesMatter
You will tend to get more northern students at northern universities, so it may be partly herd immunity HOWEVER quite a few of the outbreaks are at the PARTY universities. I can remember years ago looking around at the universities with the best social lives! Hence Manchester MET is having a far larger problem than the university of Manchester (I went to the crappy one)
Well, given the news yesterday about the ‘selectivity’ of lockdowns, Oxford, Cambridge, Reading et al are probably all in Conservative constituencies!
DavidC
Oxford is largely a Labour constituency, with some parts Lib Dem. Anti Tory and anti conservative in the main.
Cambridge hasn’t been Tory in forever. Currently Labour. Has been LibDem in the not too distant past, I believe.
They are not cases. They are positive PCR test results.
A covid-19 case has symptoms.
They are not even infections.
The PCR test does not detect live virus. It detects genetic material. In this case it is being inferred that this genetic material is specific to the SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes Covid-19, but even if the genetic material detected can be said to have it’s origins in this specific virus, that doesn’t mean that the virus is still “alive” and nor does it mean that it is even intact.
Not sure about Reading. Oxford, Cambridge and London universities went back later (my elder son’s first week is this week). Suspect, given the London/SE link in these universities returning students had the virus in February/March – mine certainly did. Freshers also predominantly London/SE based, so again, likely already had the virus. The virus is now circulating in the northern universities, where, of course, they are concentrating testing. Most (up to 90%) are asymptomatic – likely dead virus being detected in many cases. Many will be kids who have travelled up there from homes in the SE?
My eldest is in Reading went back on the 18th, been partying hard since, in her last year and in halls. No mass testing or anybody ill that she has seen. One confirmed “case” is all she has heard about. I agree all them are SE based so have had it. Be interesting to see how the next couple of weeks pan out.
Oxford and Cambridge have only just got back and are divided into colleges so these huge residences don’t exist there. In the South testing capacity is limited which may have an effect.
You may find that universities which are heavily dependent on revenue from foreign students are massaging their numbers with a different motivation to those who are building a case for a government bailout as plan A.
Oxbridge term doesn’t start till second week in October.
Cambridge, at least, is imposing weekly tests. I assume Oxford will be similar.
Do all those students know that will record their DNA?
Oxford and Cambridge students usually start later. Mist only just arrive to their student accommodation.
I think they’re planning to join up the local mockdowns, starting from the Southwest and creeping upwards to the Midlands as it spreads downwards from the north.
Just my theory.
https://gbdeclaration.org/
I expect it may have been posted before, but it needs signing widely.
Way too moderate for me really, but it’s a start.
“The Great Barrington Declaration”
https://gbdeclaration.org/
Too moderate? We don’t have to keep you away from detergent and fertiliser do we?
I’m not happy with their use of should for oldies, rather than offering them informed choice.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/10/04/time-parents-stand-against-scandalous-treatment-schoolchildren/
School report in comments from above article:
My wife’s secondary state, has a written policy of masks being the choice of staff and students.
Within 3 days of opening, the head was observed screaming at 3 13 year old girls for not wearing masks in corridors, other teachers doing the same.
Unmasked children are forced to wait in hallways and classrooms for masked little lambs to pass first (caste system) the teachers are wearing enough PPE to enter a radiation zone, the staff room has been limited to 5 people sitting at a time, there are over 100 teachers.
My wife refuses to wear a mask, and behaves normally, the children love her for it, management came and tried to twice bully, and guilt her into wearing one, when she stated it is scientific nonsense they provide any protection, and that they do harm to the wearer citing appropriate information to back it up, it was stated as ‘political objection’
She threatened resignation, management promptly retreated and put tape on the floor around her desk, maths teachers are like gold dust around here.
She is the only teacher not wearing a mask.
She deserves a medal and a hug.
Maybe she needs to show the school the films about the 3 German kids who have died from wearing masks…?
Hi guys, on this cold rainy evening why not cheer yourself up byu listening to our 1984 Special Episode Podcast…it’ll make you laugh and cry!
https://therealnormalpodcast.buzzsprout.com/
Missed you! Where’ve you been?
Back now mate!
If not posted already, it sounds as though PHE pointing at Deloitte for the “error”
https://twitter.com/ruskin147/status/1313127412377497605
Of course they are. That’s where you get value for money from hiring a consultancy firm. They’re there to be blamed when things go wrong.
Like scientists?
At one time in history, the comparison would have seemed absurd, but today not so much.
Given how convenient the weekend’s inflated figures are, does this really look like a mistake?
This is getting serious.
Can anybody estimate the cost of a second lockdown lasting from start of November to the end of January to the nearest £100Billion!!!
Can anybody also work out the cost of using the most reliable Covid test regardless of cost to re-test positive people TWICE. Assuming we retest all proposed people in October.
Thanks
At least £500 billion if you include loss of Xmas trading.
Plus the rest of the year – GDP through the floor.
GDP = Gone Domestic Product.
Remember part of the World Economic Forum ‘Great Reset’ is to move away from GDP to alternative ‘environmentally friendly measures’. It seems the UK is getting ahead of the game by crashing the economy.
You could try squeezing some data out of the Office for Budget Responsibility’s Coronavirus analysis, but it’s so out of date as to be close to useless.
In July, they came up with a downside scenario wherein public sector net borrowing would be £391 billion for 2020-21. The website doesn’t seem to offer much in the way of detail to back this up, but perhaps that was just my impatience at trying to find anything.
(My calf used the £391 billion figure when she drew her Scamdemic picture for her school’s art exhibition.)
I love that drawing!
As I said a 2nd lockdown might not be a bad thing as things need to come to shead so we can break out of this.
A second lockdown would be far worse than the first economically. Most of the businesses that have managed to survive thus far could never survive another. A 2 week “circuit breaker” might be tolerable. A 3 month lockdown would leave a wasteland. The cost is incalculable.
wouldn’t surprise me if they go for a 2 week circuit breaker at the beginning of January. Not a lot of economic behaviour takes place at this time as everybody is skint after Christmas. Not entirely convinced it would work.
Early January is already the most depressing time of the year, can you imagine how awful this would be?
I know. Sometimes I go into a Wetherspoons at this time of year. I always end up feeling more miserable than when I went in!
The last one didn’t work, this one isn’t working, so no reason to suppose the next will work either.
Biggest two weeks in the travel industry. We usually do 25% of our annual turnover in January.
I thought they were going for two weeks at the end of this month?
If we actually did have a winter lockdown and continuation of the madness until spring, then the financial cost will be the last of our worries. This either ends soon and I’m optimistic it will, or it will take a turn for the worse.
Which economist wrote these words?
Seen from the standpoint not only of the legitimacy of private property and the rights of its citizens, but also of the first principle of the common destination of goods, we can then say that each country also belongs to the foreigner, inasmuch as a territory’s goods must not be denied to a needy person coming from elsewhere.
Adam Smith?
Ricardo?
I’m afraid it was Pope Francis:
https://www.breitbart.com/national-security/2020/10/05/pope-francis-each-country-also-belongs-to-the-foreigner/
As a Catholic I refuse to call that creature Pope. If only John Paul II was still among us.
I’m also a Catholic – very lapsed, but you never really leave – and agree. John Paul II was loved and respected.
well i’ll have half the vatican wealth and property in that case as i’m more needy than those fellas in cassocks!!
He’s gone all global reset…
Even if it was an economist it would have been someone like Piketty or Keynes, not a free-marketeer.
That is so embarrassing.
Funny how these slimy, hypocritical socialist arsewits always seem to manage to hang on to plenty of money for themselves or their own institutions, despite preaching the urgent moral need for other people to hand over theirs.
It’s crystal clear by now that this government has been rumbled by the youngsters.
From there, it is but a small step to the law brought into complete disrepute
And heavy handedness translating into serious disorderly pushback
And with numbers like these from the other side of the Atlantic, frankly, who can blame them!
Canary in the coal mine they would call it.
Yet, academia remains stupidly hysterical.
That table says it all. There’ll be a similar one for UK universities. Anyone seen it?
That is the most compelling piece of data I’ve yet seen on this site.
If you have children or other relatives at university here – please show them this and get them to show their friends!!!
Where did you find this gem? Please make sure it gets to Toby, Ivor Cummins, Alistair Haimes, Carl Heneghan, Mike Yeadon and all at Talk Radio…
Scott Atlas has commented on this, not sure if he compiled
Who’s to say that those extra 16,000 tests aren’t a fcuk up in themselves? Someone accidentally copied and pasted a load of results and they’ve been double counted? I truly believe that’s the level of incompetence that we are facing. Has anyone actually checked?
Carl Heneghan if you’re out there – please do.
“Who’s to say that those extra 16,000 tests aren’t a fcuk up”
By definition they are – it’s the nature of random PCR testing.
Does anyone know what amplification is used these days in the U.K.? I wondered if they’d upped the amplification because they weren’t satisfied with the number of positive results?
Our local pharmacy advertised private PCR tests on our neighborhood group and when I asked how many cycles they used they didn’t want to tell.
Of course they didn’t. I’d hound them for that info, it seems to be gold dust
That’s worryingly interesting!
In my naivety I had stupidly assumed that they would be doing something sensible like having a form front end to a MySQL database or similar to guarantee integrity of data entry. The use of a spreadsheet instead of a database to capture data entry like this is an “abuse” of spreadsheets and it boils my fucking piss that this sort of nonsense continues.
It could be related to the labs. In my recent work with the largest public transport body we had so many disjointed regional managers gathering data on legacy systems that we just got them to upload spreadsheets to a portal which would scan for errors then upload them to a SQL database to run analytics on.
Sounds too sensible!
Fucking amateurs!!!
Trump to the rescue!
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/trump-tweets-he-leaving-walter-reed-hospital-monday-evening
Can’t wait for the presser, and the MSM meltdown.
“I feel better than I did 20 years ago”
Legend
Don’t be afraid of Covid. That right there should have been said 6 months ago
Fucking great news ! Wish our politicians had some balls like him
He needs to get on the blower to his fellow New Yorker (Boris) and tell him that COVID is a nothing burger.
He’s just instructed the declassification of another load of documents.. I know that in some of what went on the British security services were involved so likely some people in the UK are a bit nervous. Tobias Elwood is one of those implicated…
Do you think he will do a live press conference? He would just get accused of spreading Covid to everyone there…
The MSM were criticising him for putting his driver and security at risk yesterday (so his mask was not protecting them in the car then, haha!)
If not today, tomorrow, I expect he will do a live press conference – he’s itching to go.
As I understand it, he wasn’t putting anyone at risk – ‘the beast’ has a sealed compartment, so the President cannot be got to easily if the adjacent security guard and the driver is disabled. He is effectively in a cell inside the car.
I am not familiar with the vehicles he usually uses, but people who are say that the one used yesterday did not have the usual security features and therefore it was likely a double in the car!!!
Hang in there, this too will pass. Consider another pet, not as a replacement but as a tribute to the last one.So many pets need loving homes. My best friend as well as my cleaner deserted me during the lockdown and I was devastated. I have a new cleaner and am making new friends. My cats keep me sane
I now think the COVID zealots fall firmly into one of the following camps and no longer care about whether its actually a threat:-
I think a lot of them are revelling in watching the world burn.
I would add to this list that many of them are puritanical, misanthropic psychopaths.
I have an ex-colleague who told me a few weeks ago that he enjoyed Lockdown because he hates being around people.
People like that are, to put it lightly, weird.
Do you really think so, given what this whole business has taught us about a great many of our fellow Brits? I’ll certainly never look at our society quite the same again.
One thing all this has not been is boring. It’s been revelation after revelation every day as to the true nature of people and institutions.
That’s the point. It IS a revelation – in all its aspects.
I feel similarly. I loved living in the city, people watching, and feeling that city energy. Now that the images of masked sheeple are embedded in my brain I not only no longer want to live in the city, but also have no desire to be around other people. It has left such a bad taste in my mouth that even if the virus miraculously disappears by the spring, I’m not sure I want to live in the city ever again (trying to sell, but with all the “cases” and new restrictions the market has gone quiet).
I hear what you’re saying… I do.
He’s Italian. Weirdness recognises no borders.
I am anti-social like this, but I cannot bear what this and all the other regulations are doing to our society, hence my presence here.
At least your colleague is being honest, if nothing else.
Fine if you want to choose to be a hermit. This is no choice.
I think lots of us have just become more choosy about who we interact with. I won’t get together with anyone who can’t behave normally, so I still see my family and most friends. The difference is that I have no desire to walk around the city and be confronted with masked people or to go to a restaurant and be surveilled and served by a masked and gloved server. So not a hermit, per se, just very particular about social interactions now.
Me too!
It will be a challenge to rebuild relationships with anyone who has been pro-lockdown and pro-mask after all this…
Exactly!
I’m a bit of a recluse but I bitterly resent lockdown. It’s not all about me and I want other people being more sociable than I am, that’s how life should be. If I don’t go out it should be because I choose not to, not because I can’t.
One of my blog buddies said the same!
Puritanical, misanthropic psychopaths is the one I’m running with…
Also add to that people who love working from home in their little bubble, spending more time with their hobbies and thinking they’re financially secure, ignorant of the coming economic armageddon. These same people tend to frequent the Guardian/FT comment boards self-righteously preaching nonsense about how we all need to permanently work from home, and to hell with all the little sandwich shops, restaurants, hairdressers, pubs, and gyms and business in city centres who rely on office workers’ lunchtime and after-work trade.
They are too dense to realise that It will eventually affect them too. Be a shock when house prices dip, taxes go up and it dawns that as there are fewer tax payers they are it!
Oh yes, my former workplace was full of these types, a special arrogance of the public sector. Time to teach them who actually pays their wages.
Sorry – but these lazy typifications based on narrow personal prejudices undermine the chance of this site being taken seriously – with the chance that any reader will write off contributors with equally sloppy characterisations.
Takes more perseverance than that to deserve a place in our ranks.
So to sum up, you tick all four boxes?
Its good news for all the little sandwich shops, restaurants, hairdressers, pubs, and gyms and business in the suburbs where people working from home live, though. Seeing it already on my little High Street.
My dad falls into three of the four categories (everything except not liking millenials). He also has a DB (civil service) pension.
Puritans?
So that would be old, teetotal public sector workers then?
https://twitter.com/shingomadmen/status/1311904647527895040?s=20
Strange strange man, but a good message. Maybe this is what he was sent to us for!
The Democrats and all their supporters will be absolutely fuming. They will claim that Trump faked it to help his election campaign.
They already have. I know at least Michael Moore has.
Hilarious. And they call us conspiracy theorists!
That’s the funniest thing I’ve read all day! You and my dog are almost guaranteed to get a laugh out of me every day.
Trump feels fitter than several butcher’s dogs!
Exactly, he’s put the opposition in a damned if they don’t, damned if they do situation. It’ll be interesting to see this one play out!
I don’t like to speak ill of folk, but, in my opinion, Michael Moore is a dick.
And somewhat more obese than the President!
Feels better than he felt 20 years ago.
Wow, those drugs sure are magic!
The Donaldinator – 1/2 man, 1/2 drugs.
He’s baaaacckkkk! And CNN is not happy!
There’s good value in the betting markets just now if you’re interested in putting a few quid on the Trumpenführer.
Dr Reiner Fuellmich.
Crimes Against Humanity.
Just coming up for half a million views in 2 days… not bad, but if you throw in the 380k+ views of the German language video he release on the same day then the video is starting to tickle a million views in two days. That’s okay.
There’s a reason why it’s being watched – it is superb.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kr04gHbP5MQ
Brandnewtube and bitchute views not included in my calculations!
Massive Lockdown Justification efforts in NW England continue
Comparing NHS Surveillance reports week on week it looks like they have been doing > 10 times more swab tests a week in the NW than in SE/London/SW. I counted nearly half a million in the NW alone in the last week. Did not look at NE.
This must also mean they tested over a hundred thousand unwitting NW students as well..given the results…hence adding weight to the Daily Telegraphs rampant desire to see student towns locked down even further.
Anyway, given this regional MIX anomaly shift is it any wonder they are locking everyone down in the NW as cases will obviously be massively higher than in the SE/SW/London.
Perhaps these are Labour voting areas and they just take them for gullible idiots? Perhaps not but is this regional test targeting common knowledge or is it worth someone trying to pull out the actual regional numbers?
Also, at first glance, at least from surveillance report numbers (as opposed to graphs) the overall positivity rates were similar in NW to SE/SW (around 2.5%) I have no idea why and it makes little sense on the face of it. It contradicts some detail in their surveillance report too…making me think the volumes tested might be lagging behind the results by a couple of weeks or so and skewing the data. Has anyone else considered the potential impact of a reporting lag in tested volumes vs positive cases?
Definitely considered it but don’t know how to investigate it.
Apparently one student tested positive at uni in the NE but was also recorded in Cumbria. 2 results for the price of one!
not sure if this has been posted – apparently the HoC will vote tomorrow on the rule of 6 – could be interesting …
https://www.express.co.uk/news/politics/1343965/boris-johnson-coronavirus-rule-of-six-house-of-commons-vote-tory-party-rebellion
I would love to see the vote against it, but, after last weeks vote (or rather lack of voting, with the exception of a small number of MP’s) I am not going to hold my breath.
The majority of them are dirty, slimy bastards who cannot be trusted anymore.
Yes, we are thinking they might increase it, but they could just as likely reduce it.. rule of 3?
A rule of 3 would be a serious invitation to the sheeple to break all the rules.
The Untrustables
is your MP one?
lies, no replies and uturns
Can see that as a youtube film poster with a parliamentary hash up of the past 8 months.
There is not a single trustworthy MP.
You have to have some serious darkness in your past or your soul to want to become an MP.
Write to your MP anyway. Mine was my second email today – and he already replied to the first.
Thanks for this. I just wrote to my MP – again!
They will reduce it to the rule of one and everybody will have to take a selfie of themselves every 25 minutes to show they are alone or risk a £1000 fine.
Nothing would surprise me now!
Been watching this ivor Cummins chap today…very good. What’s the reasoning for v low German numbers throughout this whole thing ?
More honest testing and efficient tracing?
Autopsies to establish the actual cause of death.
I also don’t think they count deaths with co-morbidities.
Sensible lot.
Yes, they do.
Oh okay. I must be thinking of somewhere else.
“Professor Klaus Püschel, head of forensic medicine in Hamburg, explains about Covid19: “This virus influences our lives in a completely excessive way. This is disproportionate to the danger posed by the virus. And the astronomical economic damage now being caused is not commensurate with the danger posed by the virus. I am convinced that the Corona mortality rate will not even show up as a peak in annual mortality.” In Hamburg, for example, “not a single person who was not previously ill” had died of the virus: “All those we have examined so far had cancer, a chronic lung disease, were heavy smokers or severely obese, suffered from diabetes or had a cardiovascular disease. The virus was the last straw that broke the camel’s back, so to speak. “Covid-19 is a fatal disease only in exceptional cases, but in most cases it is a predominantly harmless viral infection.””
https://swprs.org/facts-about-covid19-archive/
Only Püschel in Hamburg conducted autopsies – against recommendations. They pretty much all had co-morbidities
Thank God for Puschel and all the other medics who have had the courage to defy orders and obey their conscience.
The Germans also have some very advanced epidemiologists, who came up with a blinding insight in March and April – ie. they didn’t move thousands of patients from hospitals to care homes.
The Germans are geeky like that.
At no point was Germany really ‘locked down’. Dure, businesses were closed. along with hospitality etc, but at no time were there any restrictions placed on leaving the house and going outside in the beutiful sunny weather.
I remember very early on they were saying they could’ve had substantially the same outcome by simply stopping football matches and closing nightclubs for a short while.
There are still many restrictions that’s why people are protesting there.
I have friends in Germany and they can’t believe how difficult it is for us to get a dental or GP appointment in the UK.
A National Health Service that no longer represents any of the three words that make up its name. And a Health Secretary in England who has no medical background.
I sensed a huge shift in the mood online today and I think opposition to lockdowns is only going to grow from now on.
The mood in Scotland has definitely changed when it comes to Krankie. One of the tabloids ran a story where lawyers were openly criticising her decisions and the Twitter replies have gone from sickening support of every word she said back in April to pretty vociferous criticism now.
I’m certain she’ll look to postpone the election in May as she’s losing support every day and has some pretty tough times ahead with the Salmond enquiry and the care homes scandal.
I’ll never understand the popularity of Wee Jimmie Krank. Good news if it’s fading though.
I read a German “lockdown” announcement telling people they were not under house arrest and to be sure to go for walks annd get fresh air to stay healthy.
There seems to be a correlation of strong flu seasons in the previous year and the COVID-19 trajectory of a country. Germany had a strong season last year, most other European countries had a mild one. Most of those susceptible have passed away before this hit.
It was the same for much of Scandinavia though not Sweden, for some reason. Ivor Cummins explains this well, I think
I had a horrible suspicion the effects might have been localised!
The north-west of England and Yorkshire and the Humber have been particularly badly affected by this ‘glitch’, with the consequences being that many thousands of potentially infectious people could have been spreading the virus unwittingly because they had not been contacted by the track and trace system. (Spectator)
Suspicion confirmed!
As someone from the north west I think we’ve took it upon ourselves to adopt the Swedish model. I don’t know anyone sticking to the rules.
Me neither, everyone is just cracking on.
I’m pretty sure a lot of the core UK audience for that South Park special will have seen it by now. I know I have.
They are normally a lot harsher but were clearly trying to straddle some sort of line. I liked the continued references to chin diapers
How? I’d love to see it
Available on NowTV apparently. I’ve yet to check.
Oh. Ugh. I do still have a subscription, but only because I keep forgetting to cancel it after game of thrones finished.
Boris Johnson has announced that Britain’s most vulnerable people will be prioritised when a vaccine for coronavirus is rolled out amid fears that less than half of the population will receive one (Daily Telegraph)
Fears? That word cheered me right up!
“After you. No, I insist”
Well he can start with himself then.
So time to kill off another swathe of the population…?
And the word from this ‘vulnerable’ person – is : F. Off. No undertested snake-oil for me.
The Scotsman
Insight: The Scots who are living with nightmare of ‘long Covid’
Michael Hollingworth has been talking to me for less than a minute before he has to stop to catch his breath. That’s what life is like for him six months after he caught Covid-19. Constantly breathless, constantly exhausted. No stamina, no concentration. A struggle to find the right words, or remember basic instructions.
By Dani Garavelli
“My wife is writing something down for me in case I forget,” he says at one point. He hallucinates too. “I see bugs that aren’t there,” he says.
https://www.scotsman.com/health/coronavirus/insight-scots-who-are-living-nightmare-long-covid-2992086
this journalist is notourious for her entanglement in the strange case of Alex Salmond. So it is interesting to me she is writing on the subject of long covid. Long covid makes you hallucinate and see bugs that aren’t there…
sounds more like psychosis or delerium to me…I work in mental health as an approved mental health professional…there are may issues that could be causing it such as a delerium that lingers when some people have had UTIs (water infections)…they can affect someone for some time.
Sounds like the dude saying he’s sick is trying for a long term sickness benefit claim. I’d say without doubt he’s a lying scrounging waster.
Post viral syndrome.
A few people get this with many of the respiratory viruses
You mean not long covid? I mean we are talking brand new distinct ailment of halucinations etc. here. Some quack has diagnosed him allegedly. FUBAR.
Totally agree. As a GP of 26 years, been seeing post viral fatigue throughout my working life. Can’t truly believe this is any different (yet to see anyone presenting with “long-Covid”) but it is being pushed in the BMJ as something different (but the BMA is very pro- lockdown, masks etc)
I really appreciate what you say. It seems highly unlikely it’s possible to diagnose long covid distinctly other that the symptoms occured after a positive lab test for covid.
I’m waiting for the next flood to be blamed on ‘Covid’
Yes then it will be followed by the locusts and then the frogs
I’m currently suffering from long COVID. It’s been going on for about the last seven months. The symptoms being that there is f£&k all to do and I’m bored as f£&k!
Trump: “you like apples, how dya like them apples? “
Out of interest, is anyone doing a documentary about the lockdown? Interviewing people who couldn’t see loved ones die, families who have lost their businesses, homes? Students and pupils whose education has been destroyed? Families of suicide victims?
I think there would be a market for some human stories about the lockdown once the truth comes out. The price of lockdown vs what it achieved.
Depends on the outcome I guess. Should the society come to its senses, there will be documentaries for decades about this time.
Indeed. Now is the time to be filming it I guess is what I’m saying.
I don’t think there’s now much doubt what the outcome will be.
Which way do you think this will end up? Optimists and pessimists are split 50/50 here.
Oh heck…I just don’t know, I swing from optimism to despair every five minutes. I simply don’t know…
I think there will be more than one end. The government will declare an end at a point where it can do so without losing face.
At that point most of the public will still think they did the right thing.
Then the impact of lockdown will start to bite. Economic disaster, together with increasing stories of personal suffering, cancer deaths, deaths in the developing world, loss of cultural gems etc will start to raise questions.
People, once the fear has passed, will start to ask questions and the truth will come out.
People like us have a huge part to play in the de-Covidisation to come, which is why I asked about a documentary.
But there will be a reckoning. It’s too big to stay hidden this time. Swine Flu was found out, but no one cared. They will this time.
That’s a really balanced position, and probably more realistic than most of my supremely pessimistic positions.
Just to add – if there is one being made I am more than happy to help with it. I was a journalist for 15 years; working on national newspapers and for the BBC.
Can offer help with research, interviews etc – wouldn’t want payment.
I have some experience with voiceovers..
Someone here the other day used the example of the decision to go to war in 1914 as the last comparably disastrous government action. I can’t disagree, but to use the analogy, when I was a kid in the 70s and 80s and really up until the ‘90s (do we thank Blackadder?) there was no general acceptance that the First World War was an unmitigated and futile disaster. I hope we don’t have to wait that long, but we might.
At least the decision in 1914, although catastrophic, did make some logical sense within the context of the delicate balance of power alliances in Europe at the time. In many ways Europe has never fully recovered, even to this day.
An explicable bad decision that became impossible to back out of without losing too much face and which led to disastrous repercussions that lasted for decades.
Thank God history never repeats itself, eh?
History is weird.
https://news.sky.com/story/a-ii-ii-18-franz-ferdinands-prophetic-number-plate-11551176
Weird doesn’t do this justice. I only found out about this recently.
Check corbett report excellent excellent ww1 series an epic series. Extras too with contributors.
Yes, isn’t it great how the lessons of history always inform us to take the wisest course of action in our enlightened era….sorry, that was me from another timeline.
WWI was deliberately begun by the British. The few at the top abused democracy in parliament exactly like they’re doing now.
Look at the work of these guys: https://firstworldwarhiddenhistory.wordpress.com//?s=grey&search=Go
Yes, Anna Brees has proven there is interest.
Her YouTube channel has several hundred personal testimonies that are well worth a watch. Moving, inspiring and heartfelt, from all walks of life.
A job for Anna Brees – although to be fair, she has already provided a platform for people to tell their own stories..
British library is doing something with the BBC called Covid Chronicles. I’ve heard quite a few and they come across as being uncritical of the lockdown
I mean an actual one. Not a propaganda video. One that will show the ordinary German… I mean the unquestioning public why they should have been more careful in following orders.
Back in the day BBC produced an excellent documentary series The Nazis: A Warning From History very much along these lines. Well worth watching, and from the perspective of today absolutely chilling to see we are making similar mistakes all over again.
Surely that should be required viewing by everyone who thinks the circumstances in which we find ourselves has any relevance to a virus infection.
The most revealing material was the testimony of how inhumane actions were justified in the minds of those who perpetrated or supported them e.g. 1) Local volunteers who assisted the SS Einzatgruppen in their murderous ethnic cleansing actions on the Eastern front or 2) Ordinary German citizens who were at best indifferent towards the SA Kristallnacht pogrom in 1938.
Is it in their online archive I wonder?
For something like that they would have to be actively screening participants. No way would they have someone on there saying lockdown is bullshit and PCR testing a fraud.
The British library is being ‘decolonised’ so I doubt anything they produce will be impartial!
If so, I would be very happy to contribute my experiences as a student.
Also, I’d happily offer my small tale of working within government and falling out of love with my employer over this.
What would be your main pain point? Out of interest
There already has been the Plandemic movie, although this had appeal to a certain audience. I’m looking forward to what will become of the Perspectives on a Pandemic series of interviews. Personally, I think this could have a really powerful effect if put into a film format, especially given that most of the expert opinion ( which has largely been proven right ) was given to the world at the height of the hysteria.
I’m working on a piece, looking at the growth of pseudo science and the increased labelling of “conspiracy theorists”, using the “pandemic” as a backdrop.
There is also a film being made, which Toby linked to a few weeks back. Don’t have the link to hand.
Thought Simon Dolan was also making a film? Mind you I can understand that the court cases are taking up most of his time at the moment!
Members of German inquiry team are making a film
Toby’s friend is.
It used to be said of the press that they enjoyed “power without responsibility – the privilege of the harlot through the ages”.
This should now be applied to epidemiologists.
Definitely to NHS administrators.
Text from my sister today, saying that she had been denied being able to go into her 5 year old (yes, 5!) daughter’s hospital appointment with her today. Not even allowed to sit in the waiting room with her. Apparently other people there in a caring capacity also not allowed in. The safeguarding issues aside, where is the justification for making a scared 5 year old go into her appointment by herself? Fucking shameful! Made me mad just reading it, so my sister was, rightfully, bloody livid! Little kiddies suffering because of grown adults’ selfish, irrational fear. Covid really has brought out the worst kind of selfish, virtue-signalling behaviour in people.
Sounds illegal to me. How can you exercise PR from a different room?
Probably right. Not sure if she went in with her or not in the end, but she has initiated a formal complaint anyway. Suggested she write to her MP and the local rag too.
Name the NHS Trust, it won’t identify the hospital.
Consider making a fitness to practice complaint to both the GMC and NMC if the names of the clinicians are known.
Rather like the official at the funeral disrupting grieving relatives trying to comfort each other by telling them to get back to their correct socially distanced positions. Let no one forget the names of these people. They should be serving custodial sentences.
In a truly civilised society, avoiding loss of life does not trump defending human dignity. Why else would we put our armed forces in harms way to fight for our way of life. Our forebears who suffered so much to defend this country including laying down their lives would be disgusted at how utterly spineless we’ve become.
Thank you David, very well put. Sums up exactly how I feel, but have not been able to put it as succinctly as your first sentence.
What a bloody disgrace !,poor little soul,I bet she was terrified.How can someone that young be expected to deal with a hospital appointment alone ?,it is daunting enough for most adults.
The people that are imposing things like this are not human,they are so cold and devoid of feeling,they are sociopaths.I am really starting to think some kind of mass brainwashing or hypnotism has taken place that thankfully some of us did not succumb to,I just don’t know how to explain the cruel behaviour of so many people that a year ago wouldn’t have dreamed of doing the things they are doing now
There will be a reckoning.
When you remotely criticise the NHS (or even suggest improvements) to people who have have received poor treatment they tend to react either like you have insulted their religion / or blame lack of government funding. There are plenty of people who deserve criticism over Covid, and not just the managers. Can’t see it happening tho.
Your sister should raise a safeguarding issue immediately with the hospital trust, tell your sister to insist that she goes in with her daughter, if they still refuse she must then ask for the names of the safeguarding nurse and doctor and ask to speak to them immediately. The legal ramifications for the clinicians and the trust are huge.
A five year old is not considered to have capacity under the mental capacity act of 2005. A child of 5 cannot consent or decline any sort of medical procedure or treatment (other than perhaps a plaster on a cut), that can only be given by someone with parental responsibility. In the ED that I used to work in the minimum age that could be seen without a parent was 11, although I never actually saw that happen.
You absolutely must do this. They need to feel some heat.
I just asked her, and they did let her in after she kicked off. But she has still complained. How dare they even suggest it though.
There will be many who are accepting although realising it’s wrong. Good for her she got her complaint in, it may help others.
It is fucking sick after any fashion to think compassionate care involves separating a child from their parent in such a way.
NHS if you are doing this, you down tools and walk out. You stand for what is right and live the life of an upright human. Not a sniveling little shit weasel full of confusion and regret.
One day some parent will have had enough and go all Travis Bickle on them. I will have sympathy with that.
and many months of frustration will erupt and someone will get beaten to death with a chair.
That’s disgraceful. My local hospital bent the rules as I’m disabled to allow my friend to wait with me as I was anxious. A parent should most certainly be allowed with a child.
The whole medical profession (I’m sure there are exceptions) have been a complete disgrace since March. I can’t believe they have done this. They have ONE job FFS!
“We were just following the guidelines”
In a study conducted by Imperial College London, experts claimed the infection rate in England had dropped to 1.1.
Although case numbers remained high, the research stated the rate of second-hand infection could be much lower than the Government’s estimate of between 1.3-1.6.
(From the Express. Sorry no link)
Pin the tail on the R again.
On the aRs. Of the donkey. Yeah.
Nice one!
‘Imperial College’ and ‘experts’ in the same sentence usually sets off my BS alert.
Tomorrow R will probably be 1000. They’ll find a load of data in someone’s bottom drawer that they forgot to input into their model or something.
You are not alone, there are people in a similar situation as you.
Channel your energy into something positive – get a new pet, be among nature, get a coffee and people watch.
All the best!!
Percentages are my own reckoning here.
5% (if that) Scared to nearly death
70% too confused so follow
5% absolutely should know better
17% hating every second
3% not complying
The population in my part of the world as at 5/10.
Surprised at the 17%, if that many are opposed then how come there hasn’t been more resistance?
I always heard 30% was the magic number for change?
I think with 30% we could rapidly bring the whole house of cards down.
Not able to effectively mobilise. No figure heads – takes a special something to be a Wat Tyler.
I think possibly a consequence of socially distancing, usual confirming dicussions to know we as individuals are on the right track have effectively been stolen by socially closing society.
17 percent are also compliant with masking – hate filled masks you might say.
That 5% scared seems very low as a general estimate.
That 5% is where I began. I do think very few are super scared. The really sorrowful people I have a lot of empathy for because you can see they are haunted by a tangible fear that is real to them.
Most folk 70% are laughing joking, complaining, nipping here, having a smoke there – basically not at all cinducting themselves with fear. These people encompass the zealots who are oh so angry at you and I for not following their rules, those people are living very comfortably thank you compared to the 5%.
Think back to how many wore masks before they were compulsory in shops. It was no more than 5%.
Off the back of sharing the table below on student “cases” in the US with a friend, I’ve just had an interesting WhatsApp communication that gives me cause for hope. I’ve asked if I can share an anonymised version, and won’t unless the answer is yes, but will if I can.
Suffice it to say that there may be light at the end of the tunnel before Christmas.
You tease
I don’t mean to. The problem is, the very act of posting it on here may itself cause a problem. I’ve just had a “please don’t share” reply, so won’t, I’m afraid. I… erm.. wish I hadn’t posted in the first place, but was excited (actually, I spent 10 minutes transcribing the whole thing to post before I realised I should check).
I’ll add – it’s within the bounds of the positive speculation we’ve seen here recently.
You do realise you’ll be downticked to treble digits if you’re winding us up…
I would wear it as a badge of pride.
But if it turns out to be bollocks then I’ll apologise, even though you don’t know what it is yet!
I won’t press :o))
As we say here, live in Hope, die in Caergwrle…
didn’t know that was a saying but i lol’d
Nice to hear that saying here.
During the first week of the March lockdown my stepdaughter and I trekked from Wrexham to Hope Mountain, on a glorious spring day. It was kinda symbolic. Saw the sea from the top, and I remember wondering when I’d see it again.
cool
I get your drift!
I’m not sure I do – any hints?
Maybe SD’s action?
Ah – good news!
This is very frustrating!
Ooh do tell if you can!
I know there’s still two hours left of the 5th October, but I predicted of the End of Lockdown for today. Oh well, I might get a job on the SAGE committee because they’re so good at predictions too…
which year was your prediction 2025 maybe???
It’s in black and white, was for this year. No ducking out of it…
Do you remember that wonderful Beyond the Fringe sketch?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z3nRjlK3jfY
I’m afraid the tin foil hatters have been on point since March. They predicted all kinds of fear to manufacture a second wave lockdown. Whether we want to admit it or now they are onto something.
It wasn’t difficult. Toby’s mate James Delingpole mentioned insider rumours of a second national lockdown in October (for no other reason than purely to justify the first) on one of their podcasts way back in July.
As did that Madrid doctor interviewed on Spanish TV who said as far as he had heard aware they were gonna a problem to justify a lock down again in September, low and behold what did Spain do…
Absolutely, there were other leaks that predicted a second national lockdown for Spain. Not happened yet, still local lockdowns only, but increasing in intensity.
Sadly I fear you’re right.
As Jimmy Goldsmith was reported to have said (it was likely to have been ‘borrowed’ from Benjamin Graham) when asked why he was such a successful investor, replied, ‘by always being too early’!
Let’s hope I’m only out by weeks, rather than months…
Me too!
You should have said that it would be between 1st January and 31st December ovrr the next ten years with a 95% confidence interval – then, like Prof Ferguson, you would be “right”.
Surely as it was a prediction and not really a ‘prediction’ you can get away with it. Just add some days to October until you get the result you want
All need to be ready for fact deaths will go up soon by sheer fact that they’re now testing so many people and thus finding so many ‘cases’ that it goes without saying at least _some_ of the 7-9k cases they’re now claiming per day are gonna die within 28 days.
Once they start mass testing old folks home as autumn/winter roles in then they’re into a ‘winner’ in terms of self fulfilling prophecy, given the reliability of tests and ability of it to pick up non infectious and false positives amongst some genuine ones they’re absolutely guaranteed a load of normal winter deaths of the frail and elderly that they can chalk up to covid if they test enough of them.
everyone give your elderly vit D to stop them getting flu
The difference this time is that there will be a lot more heat on what they are doing.
In addition, we will soon be seeing, if we are not aleady, increased cancer mortality due to postponed operations and lack of testing. Many of these unfortunate people will also test positive.
My cleaner was telling me about her friend whose breast lump was diagnosed as a cyst over the phone. She’s now has terminal cancer.
My mum has a friend who has just been told she has 2 months to live – pancreatic cancer discovered too late…
I know of one tragic case, a friend of a work colleague, who died suddenly of undiagnosed cancer last Sunday. A totally unnecessary evil.
A point I’ve been making to anyone who will listen for a few weeks now:
‘Flu deaths have been around 10 times the level of Covid deaths for some weeks now, and deaths from respiratory diseases (Covid and ‘flu/pneumonia combined) are exactly as we would normally expect for the time of year.
Firstly, if the restrictions work, why are all of these people still catching ‘flu?
Secondly, people who are vulnerable to Covid are the same people who are vulnerable to flu, and we have a reduced susceptible population because of what happened in the spring. It might seem on the face of it that having both around and active at the same time will lead to Armageddon, but people don’t die twice. My guess is, we will see a completely normal winter in terms of deaths from respiratory diseases.
Agreed, but would just add that Covid susceptible are just a subset of Flu susceptible
Agree – but they’ll be chalking up the normal deaths to covid thanks to the testing, ignoring the context of numbers Vs normal and using it to justify more restrictions and longer lockdowns.
Yes, I get the point. But I was just thinking today that it’s striking that the hospitalisation numbers and more so death numbers don’t seem to be going up as much as the pillar 2 positive test proportions or even the ONS prevalence figures. You would reasonably assume that the number of people being admitted to hospital following a positive test/and then testing positive once admitted would go up roughly in line with the proportion of positive tests in the community and you would reasonably assume that the number of people dying in hospital following a positive test would roughly follow the same trend. I don’t mean that +ves lead to deaths, I mean that you might expect a similar proportion of the very sick or the dying to be +ve as the rest of the population. That doesn’t seem to be happening.
But the pillar 2 positive tests are meaningless!
It’s hard even to get people here to recognise this.
A positive PCR test result is not evidence of a current infection by “live” virus!
You miss my point. The pillar 2 tests are meaningless, but everyone admitted to hospital is subjected to a PCR test and everyone who may die in hospital has also been tested. Probably several times if they have ‘flu like symptoms and came back negative the first time.
If the apparent prevalence in the community is increasing significantly faster than the apparent prevalence of hospital admissions, then it says at least as much about the comparative quality of testing in pillar 2 versus pillar 1 as it does about the prevalence of the disease and – given that we know that a +ve means you are a Covid hospitalisation/death – suggests a far lower actual mortality rate than even the very low current figures might suggest.
You miss my point.
Sigh, quite possibly. I’m sorry, but with respect, I cannot understand the point you are trying to make here. It is late and I am tired.
There is no comparison to be drawn between pillar1 and pillar2.
Because:
The PCR test results for pillar 2 (random testing in the community) ARE MEANINGLESS.
The only people who should be tested for this virus are people who are displaying symptoms.
Well, to be clear, the point I’m making is:
– given that we know that everyone admitted to hospital is tested with a PCR test for SARS-CoV-2
– given that we know that anyone with ‘flu-like symptoms who is seriously ill in hospital is tested multiple times with a PCR test for SARS-CoV-2
– given that we know that anyone who tests +ve on admission counts as a Covid admission, regardless of the reason for admission
– given that we know anyone who has tested +ve and subsequently dies counts as a Covid death, regardless of the cause of death
Shouldn’t we be seeing hospitalisation numbers and death numbers increasing in line with national prevalence, regardless of how many people are actually being hospitalised _with_ or dying _of_ the virus?
You recall the back and forth early in the outbreak that truly scared the shit out of the public – that the IFR was at 3-6% rate? Well, all these tests adding up, dodgy and true, mean this number is plummeting, to a level well below the fatality rate of the flu.
But the spin doesn’t spin this good news out of this.
Oh yes, I know. See below.
Hence why they have invented a new disease, that only affects public sector “workers”, called long covid.
You make some good points here, but this:
people who are vulnerable to Covid are the same people who are vulnerable to flu
is not true, matt!
Flu affects people of all ages, while covid is much more age specific.
The flu virus and the SARS-CoV-2 virus are completely different beasts. The only thing they have in common is that they affect the respiratory system and thus cause those affected to display similar symptoms as the body tries to deal with them.
Children can be very sick, hospitalised, critical from ‘flu, but deaths are rare. Mercifully, children don’t get sick from this virus. Otherwise the categories are the same.
Yes, exactly. That’s what I said. (Face palm!)
This would have happened already. These cases you are talking about are people who have quite possibly been infected during March and April. You are talking millions here who may have these fragments of SARS-CoV-2. Many may even have just been given contaminated results when we know there are cases where a group are given 100% false positives. See NFL. There are even a huge amount of false negatives associated with these tests so many more have had it and seen no negative effects.
These hospitalisations are people who are presenting for anything and tested positive. Until you get clear data on full reasons for presenting to hospital then I feel these numbers are just reflecting the beginning of wthe winter squeeze. Add to this a huge amount of people are get to G positives from in hospital infection.
Deaths suffer from the same issues. Excess deaths for this time of year are at normal levels for now and CV-19 deaths a bumping along at low levels.
This is exactly what is going on. The only numbers we can have some faith in are ‘all cause mortality’ and excess deaths. 2020 wont be anything remarkable and 2021 will probably cancel out any small excess this year.
Yes if you test everyone and get 5% false positives that would be 71 deaths per day that have nothing to do with Covid.
They can`t die twice,
https://gbdeclaration.org/The Great Barrington Declaration
Dr Kulldorff,Harvard, Dr Gupta, Oxford, Dr Bhattacharya, Stanford
As infectious disease epidemiologists and public health scientists we have grave concerns about the damaging physical and mental health impacts of the prevailing COVID-19 policies, and recommend an approach we call Focused Protection.
The focused protection bit sounds somewhat draconian for us oldies!
I don’t think it is compulsory!
Not so much ‘draconian’ as a bit nannyish.
I’ll take my own risks, thank you very much.
You are reading too much into that!
There is no suggestion that – what? – the over 70s will be classified as vulnerable and effectively imprisoned.
I think this refers to genuinely vulnerable people, which presumably you and cheezy are not.
The sorts of people in care homes. Which should be protected. Would you prefer that they were neglected?
And I would also think that this would be voluntary and not forced on people.
These people may have some chance of influence. Sinetra Gupta is against lockdowns.
Turn your nose up at it if you want, but I think that any serious opposition to this government and it’s policies should be supported.
No – I’m not reading too much into it, or ‘turning up my nose’ : it is you who are constructing a web of assumption around what I am saying, which is not to denigrate the polite way forward that is outlined, but to point out its well-meaning flaws.
I quote what raised my eyebrow. :
“Retired people living at home should have groceries and other essentials delivered to their home. When possible, they should meet family members outside rather than inside. “
..is indeed nannyish. As said – we can assess our own risks, and those that need assistance will be grateful for it. But let’s get the horse back in front of the cart, and not be grateful for any well-meaning diplomatic partiality : we need the full normality of how we have dealt with infections every year until this monstrous political invasion.
What the f. that has to do with preferring the ‘neglect’ of those in Care Homes – I really don’t know
And, obviously I can’t speak for Cheezila – but I do actually tick the boxes for ‘vulnerable’ on several fronts – which is why I’m a bit impatient to get rid of these constrictions in order to live a life. I don’t have time for anyone – even this respected crowd – reinforcing the idea that this virus requires ‘special measures’ such as ‘meeting family members outside’…. to which the polite answer is ‘Piss Off’.
You’re right, of course, Rick. It should be your choice and your own cost/benefit analysis that makes the decision. But an in-principle agreement that the whole world shouldn’t be locked down is a step forward and this makes provision for personal choice and makes no statements about depriving anyone of personal choice. “Should” is the word. It makes a nice change from “must”.
The key to this aspect of the declaration is in the final paragraph, imo (bold added):
“Those who are not vulnerable should immediately be allowed to resume life as normal. Simple hygiene measures, such as hand washing and staying home when sick should be practiced by everyone to reduce the herd immunity threshold. Schools and universities should be open for in-person teaching. Extracurricular activities, such as sports, should be resumed. Young low-risk adults should work normally, rather than from home. Restaurants and other businesses should open. Arts, music, sport and other cultural activities should resume. People who are more at risk may participate if they wish, while society as a whole enjoys the protection conferred upon the vulnerable by those who have built up herd immunity.”
It’s a great, and possibly a very important declaration, imo. I’ve signed it, and passed to as many people as I can, and i know at least one of the doctors I’ve passed it to has signed it.
I’ve also signed and I agree. I’ve passed to doctors in my family (though not all) as well.
For what it’s worth, I think this group will win out in the next couple of months.
Should can easily preclude choice, which was my point.
I take it to mean the really old / vulnerable i.e. don’t cycle staff across multiple care homes, split up care homes to make them smaller, pay staff more so they can stay on site where appropriate. But it’d be opt-in – old / vulnerable people should still have the freedom to see relatives after they have been given an honest understanding of the real risk.
Focused Protection is what Britain did for the soldiers trapped at Dunkirk. Churchill didn’t surrender the whole country to Hitler just because a few were at risk.
Hancock a criminal but Jon Ashworth of Labour. What a useless empty suit. Have to quote his attack on Hancock in the commons as it has managed to squeeze about 5 bullshit items into a couple of sentences.
“Thousands of people blissfully unaware they’ve been exposed to Covid (not sick then?). Potentially spreading this deadly virus (as deadly as the flu) at a time when hospital admissions are increasing (for Covid? OK then) and we are in the midst of a second wave (a casedemic).”
Absolutely frigging useless.
This data issue tells us this:
1. PCR testing is a disaster for mass screening and now criminal.
2. Track and trace is pointless
3. There is serious fraud going on and it’s bleeding the tax payer dry
The “dodgy dossier” is going to look more like a Post It note when this is over!
I honestly believe there will be politicians going to jail. Not next week but the fraud is becoming too difficult to hold back. Hopeful maybe, but I feel that it’s so blatant a wave will become a tsunami
I totally agree. Starmer’s Labour is f.ing useless, and the fruit of the Blair years is now ripening. Just when the Party needs a backbone and intelligence, we are getting pole-climbers and children.
That sort of crap is beyond useless – it’s dangerous, deceptive rubbish. “We are in the midst of a second wave.” FFS!
If he believes it, he is to stupid even to be cleaning the bogs in the HoC.
Don’t insult the cleaners! They’ll have far more common sense than that stupid twat.
Not insulting cleaners – just saying he would struggle with even that task.
Yes, at least they can recognise a pile of shit for what it is, whereas Starmer would describe it as a golden opportunity.
Absolutely, Ashworth is a useless empty suit.
You have to remember though what motivates these people.
Votes.
As soon as he starts to think that these attitudes will cost him a substantial number of votes he will change his tune.
At the moment pathetic nobodies like him are probably kidding themselves that the majority approve of these sorts of attitudes.
They are probably reading the yougov polls, which I don’t think are representative of public opinion.
As soon as he starts to think that these attitudes will cost him a substantial number of votes he will change his tune.
Good point! I might change the MP that I often write to ……
The problem with making stupid laws. Stupid people take them seriously:
Shocking moment staff member at crematorium interrupts the service to shout at man who moved his chair closer to his mother to comfort her at his father’s funeral
Looks like a meat head, just there as a threat, who would do that at a funeral, only someone without a brain. More of a danger to society than Covid
I’d love to see what would happen to that evil covid marshall when he tries doing that to a crowd of mourners who feel like getting equally agrressive back.
Comment just posted on the story (not by me):
I want to shake this guy’s hand.
Sod the handshake. He deserves a hug!
Love it. Go on the attack, and don’t give these pricks an inch. Acceptance of the masks is the gateway to everything else.
Bravo!
My MP just replied to my email asking him to vote against the Rule of 6 tomorrow.
Here’s his reply. Read it and weep!
Dear XXX
Thank you for your email. I am afraid I disagree with you on this.
Sadly due to the growing number of cases, hospitalisation and deaths these measures have had to be brought forward. Locally while I fought hard to get us out of local restrictions last time, the data has got significantly worse and there is no sign of the situation improving in the short term. Last week’s figures show 39 covid patients in our two hospitals, up 33% from the previous week, with 11 of them under 60. We have had two recent deaths as well.
The majority of people support the new measures and if anything want the Government to go further – https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/articles-reports/2020/09/23/brits-support-new-lockdown-rules-many-think-they-d This matches the emails I get from my constituents. Most people want to help protect themselves, their families and their communities.
Kind regards,
YYY
Wretch.
The majority don’t support these measures though. Those who participate in Yougov polls are not a representative sample of people in the UK.
I totally agree with you.
Unfortunately, if our MPs base their decisions on YouGov polls, we are truly doomed.
Well, I can’t make up my mind whether that comment is melodramatic or defeatist cheezilla.
I think life will go on regardless.
Peter Hitchens made a very good comment last week after the vote:
In general you have to make a point until long after you are sick of saying it, before most people even realise you are saying it at all. Dissent is slow. Be patient and angry at the same time.
Melodramatic – I hope!
I am definitely not a defeatist – and thanks for the arsekick!
33% , That number keeps popping up for some reason…. Hmmm
Not again!
I received much the same reply from the same MP. He only looks at YouGov.
Oh well, at least we tried – and at least he takes the trouble to respond promptly!
I will give him that. He does reply properly.
\Why don’t you name them?
Jason McCartney. Bless his cotton socks.
At least he takes the trouble to turn up in the HoC and speak up for his constituents. Pity he’s such a prat!
I’ve never had cause to consider this before, but the idea of voting for anyone called Jason is just a complete non-starter for me.
And how many empty beds are there in said two hospitals I wonder, cleared for the second wave that exists only in the minds of MPs and the media bubble whores who frame their reality?
Keep going idiots, bring in a second national lockdown immediately.
Oh they get their opinion from You Gov… how reassuring!
I got a totally crap reply from my MP on Saturday for that last letter I wrote. A letter, it said thank you for your email….ffs
The rest of it was just a load of form letter bollocks, using the same paragraphs that Mrs2-6 got in her reply.
Useless useless useless muppet. She is living in La La land.
Useless.
Well, keep making them press the buttons and earning their £80k+ per year.
Can you ask him if he’s keeping track of the weekly figures for influenza? And if not, why not?
Logically if he thinks that a 33% rise including “two recent deaths” is a cause for restrictions then I presume he also supports these type of measures for flu – which of course would be indefinite. And if not, why not? I thought this was all about saving lives?
I just wonder if all the missed positive tests were students, I bet there’s not a flicker of an uptick in hospitalisations.
Someone confirmed this further down I think, or I read it on Twitter somewhere… I lose track.
Hilarious watching all the news channels spitting feathers over Trump. They know he has completely stumped them and their doom laden rhetoric. He will come out swinging now and target all of them. The media, the Democratic state leaders who went for hard lockdown to no beneficial effect, and Biden of course. Interviewed Michael Cohen who was like a raging madman. Sooooo funny to watch them lose their shit as they lose control of the narrative.
Trump has called the bluff of the Covid Cult (and by extension the Democrats) with this. Might just turn out to be the single greatest action of his Presidency.
There is a mumur in The Force isn’t there.
If you mean the man himself then there are definitely some things that are odd.. like some of the reflections on the table where he was signing (blank) pieces of paper..
If, as is rumoured, this is the time when he intends to take down the deep state, then for his own personal safety it would make sense to go under cover for a while…
I mean the spidey sense is saying something more than man leaves hospital has happened. There’s a sense something larger, better, different has happened in this saga.
By contrast boris’s todo was as dull as dish water. Before, during and after.
Even the most hardcore Democrats in the US are beginning to realise now – even with Covid, Trump still did more on the campaign trail this last week than ‘who’s basement is that?’ Biden….
Not that it really matters, of course it’s just empty theatre, but I understand that Trump’s performance in the first debate against Biden was utterly insipid. Even sick Trump should have been able to crucify his demented opponent on every talking point. Perhaps it was all part of the “I’m about to be tested positive” charade. If so, it was an act of political genius which I wholeheartedly support. We forget that this man has played tough and dirty all his life.
Trump Derangement Syndrome in full swing now. Get the popcorn!
Tuesday morning papers… Trump in Long Covid Shocker! You read it here first.
Popcorn could become the next loo roll!
Ssoooop f**king loving it! For now
Lots of his staff ‘testing positive’ – looks like they could have been ‘infected’ deliberately? But this means they can all quarantine for 10 days, which right now is actually advantageous – genius!
He should present data showing the rates of asymptomatic positives in the White House staff. Which I bet is close to 100%.
Yet non of those large numbers of Washington Staff are in hospital.
I am no Trump fan but watching him stick two fingers up at anyone who thinks these measures are justified by this positivetestdemic is glorious.
It is a pleasure listening to the word soup of the filling journalist on sky. Covid hot zone, humilation, superspreading, on and on. So biased and as she continues the more she reveals skys bias.
Banjo Joe must know his campaign is over.
The man’s a very stable genius.
Sky News Papers review(?) Clare Fox as pundit – puts it across that a vaccine is not going to save the day even if one is invented because viruses don’t work like that. Really quite impressed by such a comment. It will be repeated through the night – so long as Trump gets out of hospital quickly.
She also said Wales are talking seriously about making the vaccine mandatory – she went on then to say the idea of a vaccine saviour is not right.
It does seem the vaccine narrative was pushed way too hard last week and is now being steadily rolled back.
Not a clever idea to decide to use unlicensed vaccines, especially when other countries won’t be using the same vaccine until it is licensed. Makes it all too clear that the UK are being used as guinea pigs, which makes it harder for them to make the case for it being mandatory…
I don’t think the “Ambush” and “Triumph” truth drop did the government any favours. It will be interesting to see if the West Midlands does indeed get the vaccine en masse next month.
I was interested to know how a vaccine that has to be stored at -70 degrees can be injected??? (ie the Ambush vaccine)
Drakeford can vaccinate me when I’m dead. Not before.
To save Mr Dee from Covid, it was regrettably necessary to kill Mr Dee.
That wall street journal article has a damn creepy idea. I’d rather have a mandatoy vaccine than be forcibly quarantined at home, have to carry “your papers” and get regularly tested. And trust me, I don’t support mandatory vaccines, pisses of too many people and damages public trust in (what little of) the medical profession (which still has any credibility). The way out of this panicdemic is to stop caring, then have a voluntary vaccine (double safety for the voluntariness being that anyone who gets vaccinated gets no proof of having it, so no-one else can make a demand on anyone to have it) if one ever can be developed. But pervasive tracking, quarantine, forced testing, that is intolerable.
Does anyone think this is a good slogan to make use of:
Trump is old and obese, yet he recovered fine from covid-19. You will too! Now stop worrying and take back your life.
Has anyone seen the:
Great Barrington Declaration
Sunetra Gupta is onboard with it, as are other top scientists.
Who among us is up for making that the only public health law.rule which we will obey.
It’s that, or an eterntiy of lockdowns.
BTW, does anyone think that the computer glitch and such might have been deliberate not accidental. Government trying to play funny with the counting so as to fiddle its way to meeting Witless and Unbalanced’s “not a prediction”.
Approx 1,300 comments at the moment on the bbc website about the possibility of greater scottish restrictions. Approx 8+ to 1 against the current rambling nonsense from sturgeon. So where is the scottish majority supporting all this? Me thinks the closet lockdown sceptics are beginning to speak out. About time. As much as it pains me, let it blossom, let it grow nicola by continuing as is….A critical turning point led by the people is my only remaining hope for this grand madness.
Agreed. It increasingly looks like the only way enough people are going to be shocked into seeing this for what it really is. How twisted has our reality become when the best solution for ending this insanity is….more lockdown.
Now it would just me nice if anyone in parliament would show some dissent. But no we are fast becoming the most left wing virtue signalling Parliament on earth. State spending to save “just one life” is a win win for all involved!
Just as an aside, is anyone else battling against bedwetters on any other forums? I’ve seen some names on here on comments in the DT and maybe a few other places, but there are definitely forums on the web which are veritable rivers of urine flowing out and through pyjamas and winceyette nighties.
Where are the worst offenders? Perhaps we need to organise a campaign of information away from the echo chamber on here? We can do so reasonably but in volume.
I used to, once. But it took so much time and my comments kept getting deletd before many bedwetters were forced to see them. If we’re going to take back the hotbeds of bedwetting we’ll need to work on timing and coordination, so that if our posts in bedwetter locations get dissappeared they’ll have already been widely read beforehand.
I assume everyone is doing a bit. Taking from here and placing there.
I hope so too, but it’s difficult at times. For a start, the odds are stacked given the ofcom guidelines and the sheer volume of panicky bedwetters means most forums are full of people likely to be sympathetic and even supportive of some lockdown scepticism but they don’t seem to want to stick their heads out of the trench.
I was looking at the covid discussion thread on digitalspy.com today and it’s so full of bedwetters it’s quite frankly ridiculous. Many of them post multiple times a day. There was a discussion about mask wearing where one of them opined that there wasn’t a single study that proved mask wearing to be ineffective and then posted 4 links to studies which apparently do show that mask wearing is effective.
2 of the studies were based on computer simulations but the conclusions were hardly compelling, 1 wasn’t based on any study but the fact that other countries were doing it and made the resounding scientific point that no one asked for a randomised control trial to prove sneezing into your elbow was effective whilst the other study was just about people catching covid allegedly from a choir practice in the US in March and really didn’t have anything to do with masks.
Here’s the primary conclusion from one of the studies posted:
Although masks will reduce droplet transmission, we should not ignore that several droplets will be transmitted away from the mask. The use of a mask will not provide complete prevention from airborne droplet transmission. The above is particularly important for both indoor and outdoor environments. As Dbouk and Drikakis3 showed, respiratory droplets can be transmitted to several meters away from the subject due to wind conditions. Therefore, social distancing remains essential when facing an evolving pandemic.
Hardly compelling is it?
But none of it seems to prevent people from backing their arguments with so-called evidence that is nothing of the sort.
Are they bedwetters or trolls?
I spend most of my time calling people on the DM sheep and bedwetters. I know I shouldn’t resort to name calling but it’s hard not to.
I appreciate your service!
Yep – been battling all day with a bedwetter who is getting loads of likes the more she scaremongers. I was beginning to think I had her on the canvas when the newly-found positives caused the graph to move in the Whitty/Vallance direction. Oh, hell.
Forget bedwetters over Covid – look at this! https://twitter.com/simondolan/status/1313191562319454210
Sainsbury’s marketing the ‘slave look’ as part of the launch of the DVD for ’12 years a slave’
Cue a meltdown…
Are we entering the Twilight zone?
They don’t like being called eugenicist, child-killer, Nazi cunts.
But that’s what they are.
Is it weird to say this, but as someone who had always been taught to hate Trump I’ve started to almost like him. His american patriotism is hilariously over-the-top, the structure of his phrasing is abysmal, his vocabulary is almost non-existent, and yet he is talking so much more sense than British politicians (Desmond Swayne excepted ofcourse) or any leaders in Europe except those excellent Swedes.
What we really need is lots of pictures of those people who have tested positive, putting themselves through really good workouts – in self-isolation of course.
You know – maybe setting a personal best for their deadlift, squat or benchpress.
That’d be hilarious.
Trump should produce a covid workout video for the elderly and post it to the bbc who clearly hate him as per their usual bullshit impartial news on him this evening.
I would pay top dollar for such a video.
I was cycling 15 miles a day when had “it”, I got a bit sweaty.
No we just need them to say: “Trump went to a photoshoot while testing pisitive AND being symptomatic, so I can do whatever I like, especially if I’m asymptomatic”
My MP voted against extending the ridiculous Coronavirus bill. I was so shocked I had to sit down and have another glass of wine.
Our leaders talk some absolute bollocks about ‘lockdown’, the Wuhan lab flu and most associated issues, but for sheer insanity, these pronouncements from Johnson about wind-generated electricity are in a class of their own.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2020/oct/05/boris-johnson-to-unveil-plan-to-power-all-uk-homes-with-wind-by-2030
Mr Johnson, what happens when the wind stops blowing for a while?
Ah, but Johnson has it on good authority from Neil Ferguson that wind never stops blowing, his model says so.
He said “It was offshore wind that puffed the sails of Drake and Raleigh and Nelson, and propelled this country to commercial greatness.”!
Clever old Boris, Fwaaaah Fwaaaaaah!
Fuck me, that XR wench of his has really warped his mind. There are no feasible replacements for oil and gas without a catastrophic reduction in living standards to pre-Industrial Revolution levels….ah, but that is the plan, so maybe it makes sense after all.
then he will start talking … all that hot air should turn many windmills .
seriously, they have to switch on all the gas and diesel generators that they have to provide and keep on standby for when the sun dont shine and the wind dont blow
Doctors at the press conference are taking their masks off to speak, putting masks in pockets and then taking the mask out to put on again.
Poseurs!
Very depressing stuff from UK column today. We need to hear it but boy-oh-boy it’s scary. How do we stop the Johnson juggernaut? Can’t write to my MP any more for he’s such a wet. All he does is regurgitate the government narrative, useless. Birmingham has plans to do mass vaccinations as early as next month. All councils will likely have similar plans says UK Column. I fear before too long people like me i.e. no test, no app. no vaccine will only leave the house to meet their maker! Rather that than live their planned servile style of life. Meantime keep talking, keep thinking, find stuff to enjoy, smile and laugh.
“Birmingham has plans to do mass vaccinations as early as next month.”
I very much doubt that. Which vaccine? As far as I know, other than the dodgy Russian one, none are anywhere near the point where they can be rolled out.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-birmingham-54375643
The harder and faster the government pushes, the weaker their position becomes.
The UK Column deserve a lot of credit for being on top of this from day one. Many times I have dropped legislation changes into conversations with colleagues to which they have responded: “Don’t be silly, they would never do that”, followed very quickly by excerpts from the government’s own documents provided by Brian Gerrish, Mike Robinson et al.
The Sun is reporting that the NHS in Scotland have been informed that a Scottish “circuit breaker” is to come into force on Friday at 7pm and to last for 2 weeks. Scottish mid-term holiday starts on Friday at 3pm. Pubs, restaurants and hotels to close (except for residential stays at hotels), a travel restriction to apply (5 miles from home or up to 30 miles, to be confirmed). Hairdressers and beauticians to close. Not clear about non essential retail. People to stay at home, presumably we’ll get out for food shopping and exercise. Dentist Leitch says that 14 day circuit breaker will “buy” us 28 days escape from the advance of the dreaded virus. Devi Shrider saying it’s a pointless exercise without a closed (!) border and “mass testing”.
Bring it on. Over to the Scottish people to tell Sturgeon where to get off.
Guess they’d better close the border then. Oh dear.
If only we had a big beautiful wall.
Sturgeon’s Wall. Has a nice ring to it. Will require a slight invasion of England to cut costs by leveraging the work of the Roman Empire.
Draw a line from The Wash to the Bristol channel and build it there.
OY!
We can only hope that’s when the wheels come off. And Johnson always follows sturgeon, so that’s more wheels coming off.
Maybe Sturgeon can go all the way and expel all English super-spreaders. English refugees camps in Carlisle, imagine that.
It’s very silly. But I can’t help but thing that sturgeon is lying in bed and fantasising about it as we speak.
She sleeps in a coffin.
I’m sure she likes being punished behind closed doors/lids.
I heard the wuhan bat was a distant cousin
She’s descended from a pangolin.
Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus
·
14h
It’s well-deserved,
@devisridhar
! You’ve been an incredible voice of science, solutions and solidarity in the #COVID19 response. Thank you for all your incredible work to improve people’s health and lives. Together!
Quote Tweet
Prof. Devi Sridhar
@devisridhar
· 2 Oct
What an honour to be profiled by @TheLancet – Happy Friday everyone Raising handsSun with rays(& Scotland response has little to do with me & more to do with strong local public health teams & clear leadership). twitter.com/EricTopol/stat…
Fucking demon. File under ignore until the trials.
Vomit, vomit, vomit!
My God, some “top” Scottish lawyers (eg advocate Niall McLuskey) are coming out in defence of civil liberties against the 2 week circuit breaker. Where you been boys?
Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus
·
2h
Thank you Chris Whitty,
@CMO_England, and @JulianWTO_UN, Flag of United Kingdom Ambassador, for your continuous, strong support to global health and @WHO. Together! #EBSpecial
Today England’s Chief Medical Officer welcomed the steps taken so far by the World Health Organization to initiate a review into the international health response to COVID-19.
The UK will do everything it can to support an independent, impartial and comprehensive review.
https://twitter.com/DrTedros/status/1313219683739471872?s=20
I’m not giving this piece of shit the satisfaction of a click. Writing his own political obituary.
Agreed, and Sturgeon to lockdown Scotland again in an act of complete political desperation.
Furious comments in The Sun under the circuit breaker article. If she does do this, I think the timing could be crucial: yet another suspension of normal activities, to last until just 7 days before the furlough ends.
This could finally do for her, as businesses will have lost even more custom during the 2 week ‘circuit breaker’, only to confront the ending of the bail outs from Westminster.
Cue, mass redundancies, which she won’t be able to spin as another SNP triumph.
She must go, for the sake of this increasingly miserable rancorous country.
It is bizarre, but I am hoping Sturgeon does this, and then Johnson follows suit days after. I am certain that this will be their death knell.
You can bet that more positive cases will then be dredged up from nowhere to justify a further two week extension to ensure full lockdown is in place when furlough ends. This I suspect has been the main goal all along as a means to minimise civil unrest, but this time it will backfire.
https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2020/10/05/boris-johnsons-crumbling-regime-is-caught-in-a-death-spiral/
Delingpole sums it up: ‘O brave new world…..’
Harsh but fair assessment by Delingpole,imo.
In the latest London Calling (linked above), Delingpole encouragingly says:
“I heard the other day that 80% of the Parliamentary party, of the Conservatives, are agin what the government is doing, the coronavirus insanity. OK, well, in that case, where is the rebellion?”
This is just after pointing out the idiocy of the “Conservative” Party (principally Sayyid Javid) devising draconian internet speech control laws. This seems likely to be the usual stupidity of “Conservatives” drawing up authoritarian rules that they think will please the authoritarian wing of their party, seemingly too stupid to understand that, just like all the other times, these will be captured by the pc leftists who infest government and the bureaucracy and will be used to punish, not kiddy porn, drug promotion and terrorist causes, but to protect the usual pc nonsense from criticism, and crack down on any remaining vestiges of traditionalist, conservative and patriotic speech and thought.
80% of Tory MPs against the government yet 330 of them vote for an extension to the Coronavirus Act just doesn’t stack up.
Depends what you mean by “against the government”. I suspect it means they are grumbling about the nonsense, but not prepared to come out in open rebellion yet. That’s not unusual for “Conservative” Party MPs, tbh.
In practice it means the government needs to up its game and chalk up some “wins” pdq, or they are going to get open rebellion, and once that starts it’s downhill all the way.
Yes the most effective opposition to a Tory government, especially one with a large majority, invariably ends up being its own backbenchers.
They can’t all be myopic fools. It must be widely known that Johnson is dead in the water, and cannot survive much longer. Plus they are making a pig’s ear of Brexit which will only pour further fuel on the economic holocaust.
I think a big part of the problem is that they genuinely believe the panic has popular support. Perhaps it does, though I suspect a lot of it is biased Yougov etc polls and activist-stuffed postbags.
Anyway, even though they know the current policy is heading for ever deeper disaster for the country, it makes them reluctant to stick their heads above the parapet.
I would like to think that the letters from members of this fine group might have pricked a few consciences here and there. Enough to start a drunken conversation in their late night bars anyway.
I hope and believe you are correct in that, but I also suspect we are heavily outnumbered by coronapanic zealots and generally fearful types writing to urge their MP to protect them.
We have an ally the zealots do not. The truth. It makes a difference.
I know, its so unsporting when those clever woke leftists will insist on using the law in the way the traditionalist, conservative ‘patriots’, didn’t intend or have the wit to foresee.
I hope all the nurses who participated in Tik Tok dancing videos are given the highest vaccination priority of all. No further retribution required.
Important new article in abstract
https://www.jci.org/articles/view/143380
Recent endemic coronavirus infection is associated with less severe COVID-19
”Importantly, the patients with a previously detected eCoV had less severe coronavirus disease-2019 (COVID-19) illness. Our observations suggest that pre-existing immune responses against endemic human coronaviruses can mitigate disease manifestations from SARS-CoV-2 infection.”
Or to put it another way, the virus is running out of victims.
By the way, this supports the idea that the virus is indeed highly infectious. If it wasn’t it wouldn’t have been able to find all those highly vulnerable victims first time round (and we would consequently be seeing a much higher death rate now, as opposed to the extremely low death rate we have in reality). I suspect as well millions of us are having repeat infections but it’s likely each time the body is better able to defend itself.
Umm, do we know if the body is better able to defend itself in a repeat infection? Or might it be more like dengue fever, which can be worse second time round?
So 19 alleged Covid deaths in the last 24 hours…at that rate it will take over six years to double the current death total. I’ve watched a lot of mainstream TV news tonight. ..haven’t heard anyone mention how staggeringly low that figure is.
No to mention the fact that even the CDC estimate just 6% of deaths are of Covid, as opposed to with Covid. So that’s effectively 1 death in the whole country directly attributable to Covid in the last 24 hours.
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.09.28.20203463v1
Efficacy of Famotidine for COVID-19: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis
“Results: Five studies were eligible for inclusion: all were retrospective cohort or case series. Low quality evidence suggests a likely clinical benefit for the use of famotidine in decreasing mortality in hospitalized patients with moderate to severe COVID-19. A meta-analysis of two cohort studies showed a statistically significant decrease in the composite outcome for death and intubation with famotidine (HR 0.44, 95% CI 0.27 to 0.73). Conclusion: Further evidence from RCTs is required for famotidine to treat COVID 19.”
Famotidin (Pepcid) is a dirt cheap drug sold over the counter in some countries.Maybe Trump’s doctors saw this newly published article.
Also many surprised that Trump doctors prescribed Melatonin(an antinflammatory) not much talked about but perhpas guided by this articlefrom Texas and Beijng
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0024320520303313#!
From US Minister Azar
“In the conversation with Martin Kulldorff, PhD (Harvard), Jay Bhattacharya, MD, PhD (Stanford), and Sunetra Gupta, PhD (Oxford), we heard strong reinforcement of the Trump Administration’s strategy of aggressively protecting the vulnerable while opening schools and the workplace.”
Funny.Gupta hardly had an opportunity to speak to Boris J by phone but can fly to Washington and get in touch with the top echelon of US C-19 response!
Seems like Laurence Fox had a twitter meltdown calling some people things you shouldn’t…had to delete a load of tweets. Probably the end of the Reclaim Party, I expect. Shame. Operating outside the PC circle of acceptability is extremely difficult.
Twitter meltdown not important probably but I gather some hypocritical scumbag thought it was just fine to call Fox a “racist” but is going to sue him for slinging insults back. Lawsuits can be a real problem for dissenters in modern Britain, because the judges tend to be woke types who back the hypocrites almost every time.
Quite. One law for them, another for the rest of us. But it showed a sad lack of judgment on Fox’s part that he should risk his nascent party on a few tweets.
Is there any element of double counting in the ‘cases’? I can imagine some people wanting repeat tests to see if they still have an infection. Thus it is the same person being positive twice and not a ‘new’ case?
Time for some light entertainment
#HANCOCKS POSTULATES #NO1 THE ONANIST APPROACH #CONTRICK19
https://www.bitchute.com/video/rpLhowNuwT0f/
Latest hospital admissions by region & total England, data release 6th Oct.
Really the interesting one here is London.
Is it ethnic minorities in the North West driving it there? Well, London has a higher proportion.
Is it over-crowded housing in North West driving it? Well, London is more over-crowded.
Is it obesity in the North West driving it? Well, London is just as obese.
……… or could it be that London essentially reached herd immunity in the spring & the North West didn’t? Keep the care homes secure, stop nosocomial infections in both & it all stays under control. Nothing to see here, move on.
2338 Public Health officials and 2561 medical practitioners have now signed the Great Barrington declaration. It is gaining some momentum. If the number of signatories becomes large enough maybe someone will print it out and bash Boris and chums over the head with it.
MORON NATION PART DEUX
So we need another lockdown to stop hospitals running out of beds (save the nhs yet again). And again create a covid only service. And again cancel other critical care services. And again have excess deaths at home. And again have excess deaths in care homes. And again increase mental health
problems. And again increase the unemployment and national debt. And again create a “solution” that is worse than the problem.
Errrrrrrr..did we not save the nhs first time round?…but the extra beds (nightingale hospitals) where never used. Then we got rid of
some of the extra beds, but some do remain. So why not use them and shield the most vulnerable if they so desire!?
THIS NATION IS RUN BY FUCKWITS EXTRAORDINAIRE!
Keep clapping.