Boris Fiddles (With His Mask) While Britain Burns
Boris gave a speech to the Conservative Party Conference yesterday in which he addressed people’s concerns that our national debt now exceeds 100% of GDP, that pubs, restaurants and cinemas are vanishing from our high streets and that four million people will soon be unemployed by… talking about wind farms. He claimed that offshore wind will produce enough electricity to power every home in a decade, with Britain becoming “the Saudi Arabia of wind”. Bizarre tangent to go off on and complete balls, obviously. In 2007, the Labour Government said wind energy would power every home in Britain by 2020. In reality, it’s less than 20%. Boris himself said in 2013 that wind farms “couldn’t pull the skin off a rice pudding”.
There was also a lot of boilerplate about the brilliance of the private sector and small businesses, but as Dan Hodges said on Twitter: “Has there ever been a PM’s speech where the rhetoric – small state, libertarian, entrepreneurial – has been so divorced from the reality of the policies he’s actually implementing?”
Allison Pearson’s verdict in the Telegraph is withering.
To be brutally honest, it was probably just as well that the PM couldn’t give his speech live to the conference in Birmingham as planned. Chilly silence would have been a more likely reception than rapturous applause. The Tory faithful are not just furious with their leader, they are positively adulterous – ready to run off with any Tom, Lawrence or Nigel in protest at farcical restrictions which even ministers fail to justify. In the latest Conservative Home poll of party members, Boris Johnson got a net satisfaction rating of -10.3. The PM came 24th out of 25 Cabinet members. Only Private Pike, our dunce of an Education Secretary, scored worse.
From hero to less than zero in ten months. It’s the stuff of classical tragedy. Those unimaginably dire figures for one of our best-loved communicators give some sense of the anger caused by the fact that the Conservatives, traditionally the party of the family and business, are causing immense harm to both in pursuit of an ultimately futile zero-Covid strategy. For all his fluorescent follies, at least President Trump is bold enough to level with the American people, explaining that they need to keep Covid-19 in proportion. We must, as Trump says, learn to live with it.
Far from echoing Chancellor Rishi Sunak’s recent injunction to “live without fear”, the PM used his keynote speech to tell the British people that their kettle will soon by powered by great gusts of offshore wind. Hardly our main concern as the tsunami of four million unemployed thunders towards us. How can Boris talk of “not contenting ourselves with a repair job” when the worst is yet to come? At such a time, we need our Prime Minister to be Alexander the Great, not Windy Miller.
A personal hero of Boris’s once wrote: “Nothing would be more fatal than for the Government of States to get into the hands of experts. Expert knowledge is limited knowledge and the unlimited ignorance of the plain man, who knows where it hurts, is a safer guide than any rigorous direction of a specialist.”
How right Churchill was. And how we wish the grand old man were still with us to stick Professor Neil Ferguson’s little model in his cigar cutter.
Worth reading in full.
Stop Press: For a more measured take, listen to the Spectator‘s Katy Balls, James Forsyth and John Connolly discussing the speech for Coffee House Shots.
Governments Using Pandemic to Suppress Dissent Across the World – New Report
Many governments are using the pandemic as cover to silence dissent, stifle the free press and disrupt elections, according to a new report by Freedom House, a US-based think tank. Bloomberg has more.
At least 91 of the 192 nations cited in the report, or 47%, have “experienced restrictions on the news media as part of the response to the coronavirus outbreak,” it said.
“What began as a worldwide health crisis has become part of the global crisis for democracy,” said Michael Abramowitz, president of the non-profit organization. “Governments in every part of the world have abused their powers in the name of public health, seizing the opportunity to undermine democracy and human rights.”
The Democracy under Lockdown report said that despite 158 countries putting new restrictions on protests, a significant demonstration had taken place in at least 90 countries since the outbreak began.
In a survey of experts, 62% of respondents said they distrust what they are hearing about the pandemic from their national government, Freedom House said.
“Democratically elected leaders alike have failed to be candid about the impact of the coronavirus,” according to the organization.
The report notes that government restrictions have been imposed on free speech in 72 countries, including 25 liberal democracies. Needless to say, one of those is the United Kingdom.
Journalists covering the crisis have been arrested and targeted with violence, harassment, and intimidation. Governments have exerted control over content, revoked outlets’ registrations, suspended printing of newspapers, denied press credentials, and limited independent questioning at press conferences. New legislation against spreading “fake news” about the virus has been passed, while websites have been blocked and online articles or social media posts removed. The increased public need for impartial information during a pandemic makes such varied methods of suppression particularly egregious.
The report is worth reading in full.
Scotland’s “Zero-Covid” Strategy Isn’t Working
From the beginning of the pandemic, Scotland has pursued a “Zero-Covid” strategy thanks to Nicola Sturgeon’s determination to have a lower Covid mortality rate than the rest of the UK. Why, given that any life years saved by Scotland’s draconian suppression measures will be dwarfed by the life years lost?
Because if Scotland has fewer Covid deaths per million than the rUK, Sturgeon thinks she can use that as a killer argument for independence in the next referendum. It has been because of Sturgeon’s relentless focus on winning that future battle that the Scots have had to endure a more severe lockdown that the rUK over the summer and, even now, won’t allow people from two separate households to meet in private homes.
Needless to say, it hasn’t worked. Scotland did manage to reduce daily new cases to single digits during the lockdown, but after restrictions began to be eased, the numbers began to tick up again, exacerbated by the return of students last month. Today, the infection rate in Glasgow is 191 per 100,000, in Edinburgh it’s 119 and in Dundee it’s around 101.
The sensible response to these numbers would be to switch to what Professor Sunetra Gupta (Oxford), Professor Martin Kulldorff (Harvard) and Professor Jay Bhattacharya (Stanford) call a strategy of “Focused Protection”, whereby we allow those who are at minimal risk of death to live their lives normally, building up herd immunity, while better protecting those who are at highest risk. At the time of going to press, almost 5,000 doctors, scientists and public health experts and signed the Great Barrington Declaration endorsing this strategy, as well as more than 40,000 members of the public.
But, of course, when the facts change politicians don’t change their minds. So instead, Sturgeon is doubling down on her “Zero-Covid” approach and is going to announce a new set of restrictions today. She’s calling it a “circuit breaker”, but in reality it will be a second lockdown. Cafes, bars and restaurants are all expected to be closed.
I was in Scotland last week and the personality cult around Nic Sturge-un was still strong, but there is surely only so much of this nonsense that the Scottish people can take. When it is established beyond any reasonable doubt that COVID-19 is scarcely any more deadly than seasonal flu, and the Scots survey the smouldering ruins of their economy, I suspect they may start to change their minds about Wee Krankie.
Irish Taoiseach Micheál Martin Tells Scientific Advisors to Take a Hike
Here’s a turn up for the books. The Irish Taoiseach Micheál Martin and his Government have ignored the advice of Chief Medical Officer Dr Tony Holohan and the National Public Health Emergency Team to impose a Level 5 lockdown on the entire country. The Irish Independent has more.
Trust between the Government and the National Public Health Emergency Team (Nphet) hit an all-time low as the Taoiseach faced down a shock demand to push the country into the highest level of lockdown.
During a tense meeting in Government Buildings, returning chief medical officer Dr Tony Holohan faced a barrage of criticism from senior ministers.
One well-placed source told the Irish Independent that the relationship between the Government and Nphet had “changed forever”.
Dr Holohan had stunned the Cabinet late on Sunday with a recommendation to impose Level 5 restrictions on the entire country.
He was backed by medical experts who said the trajectory of the virus in Ireland could pose a threat to hospital ICU capacity within weeks.
But the bid to impose Level 5 across the nation was shot down by senior Government ministers who argued that the economy and jobs must also be a factor in the battle against COVID-19.
One minister said Dr Holohan made the Level 5 recommendation without any “prior consultation” or “thinking it through”.
“It was all about protecting normal hospital activity and maybe schools and childcare, while the private sector was to be sacrificed,” the minister said.
“It is easy for 40 public servants to put 400,000 people out of their jobs while they don’t lose a penny,” the source added.
They said the relationship between the Government and Nphet had “changed forever”.
It’s not all good news, however. The Taoiseach announced on Monday night that the entire country would join Dublin and Donegal at Level 3, which means face masks in shops, no indoor dining and the closure of cinemas, museums and galleries.
Not a Computer Glitch
A reader with some experience of creating large databases has been in touch with his 10 cents worth on the loss of 16,000 “cases” down the back of the DHSC sofa. He’s unimpressed.
This was not a computer glitch but gross, amateurish incompetence.
20 to 30 years ago I was programming Point Of Sale programs and systems. In the early days we had to write our routines for everything; dates, rubbish in filtering and crude databases. I have to say that my programming seems to have been very much better than Neil Ferguson (unfortunately, it pains me to say, from my home town)!
My programs stood the test of time; one business used a multi terminal office system of mine for 15 years without intervention or updates from me. My programs all sailed through the YK2 fiasco – I knew they would.
Then along came the likes of Visual Basic with its modular basis and easier graphics implementation at the same time, easy to use database systems. Microsoft Access was one of the best and I made a lot of use of it via the Jet Database Engine. Easy to programme and easy to interrogate using SQL, virtually unlimited number of records allowed.
I produced a number of complex Point Of Sale systems, early use of barcodes, storage of names, addresses, stocks and invoices, etc. NO WAY would anyone but an amateur use MS Excel as a serious database. This is for the office worker who doesn’t know better.
I have seen a mess made in a government office where Fred was thought to be the office computer whizz and was entrusted with a simple but important database. Unfortunately, Fred used Excel so records would disappear and could not be interrogated. My advise was to train him up in Access which he rightly fell in love with!
So, to use Excel for such a use as the Track n Trace is ridiculous. 16,000 records is beyond an Excel sheet while for Access database it’s peanuts. You also get solid multi-user access.
I gather that they are STILL using Excel but making smaller sheets! Amateurs!
Government Pulls Vote on 10pm Curfew, Frightened of Being Defeated
The Government were planning to have a yes/no vote in the House of Commons later today about whether to renew the 10pm curfew, but have pulled it after it became clear there was a risk of defeat. The Telegraph has more.
Dozens of Tory rebels had been threatening to vote against the order that all pubs, bars and restaurants in England must close amid claims that it is not grounded in scientific evidence.
But the 10pm curfew vote, which MPs on all sides of the House had expected on Wednesday evening, will now held early next week. Instead MPs will vote on whether to approve lockdown restrictions in the north of England.
A vote on the rule of six – which a handful of Tory MPs are expected to rebel against – went ahead as planned on Tuesday. Fourteen Conservative MPs voted against the Government.
Ministers have to ask MPs to approve coronavirus lockdown measures in simple unamendable ‘yes/no’ votes in the House of Commons within 28 sitting days of them coming into force.
Labour, who were also expecting the curfew vote tomorrow evening, had not said if it would vote for the measure, instead calling for ministers to publish the scientific evidence underlying it.
Sir Christopher Chope, one of the rebels, told the Telegraph that the Government was running scared.
He said: “Although they talk the talk because they want to have Parliament deciding these issues, if it looks as though Parliament is going to decide them in a way they don’t like they deny Parliament the chance.”
Tory MP Steve Baker, the unofficial rebels’ whip, added: “It is not clear what the evidence is to support the 10pm curfew or that it is effective.
“With Hospitality UK describing the combined impact of the measures as ‘devastating’, the Government should think again.”
If the Government’s plan is to publish the “scientific evidence” underlying the curfew and then hold a vote, I’m not sure that will work. Because there isn’t any.
Worth reading in full.
How Good is the PCR Test at Detecting the Virus?
A reader has got in touch to share an interesting discovery he made while noodling around on Amazon.
I thought you might find this of interest. I was on Amazon earlier this evening looking at Viroligy textbooks. As I was leafing through this book – Principles of Virology, Volume 1: Molecular Biology – something caught my eye.
It was our old friend the PCR test. It has been experimentally demonstrated that the PCR test does not detect live virus, only viral fragments.
The first line reads: “A study of sexual transmission of Zika virus among mice demonstrates beautifully that viral nucleic acid detected by the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) is not the same as infectious virus particles.”
Later it states: “Many laboratories choose to assay the presence of viral genomes by PCR. This is an acceptable technique as long as the limitations are understood – it detects nucleic acids, not infectious virus.”
Someone should tell the Government!
Poetry Corner
A reader has sent me a squib about our Churchillian Prime Minister.
Please find the product of me finally losing it, with sincere apologies to Kipling. How sad he would have been to see a British Prime Minister laid so low.
IF you can keep your job when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when many doubt you,
And despise their doubting too;
If you can’t think – and hold in sway to experts;
Or being briefed accepting every lie,
With sixty seconds’ worth of sound bites run,
To blunder on and on and on and on.If you can deal in lies and spin deceiving
And treat those two impostors with no shame;
If you can’t bear to hear a truthful token
And heed the knaves who’ve made a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And held ensnared by sycophants and fools:
If men don’t count, and bridal dreams lie broken,
Yours is the Earth and one day you’ll be in it,
And – which is more – you are no man my son!
The Big Fat ‘social distanced’ Drive-In Indian Wedding
Devising ways to get around the lockdown, while remaining within the letter of the law, has brought out the genius in some Britons. A case in point is a wedding in Lancashire in which the happy couple invited their family and friends to a drive-in and then transmitted footage of their socially-distanced wedding onto the big screen. This is Lancashire has more.
More than two hundred guests attended the drive-in wedding of Roma Popat and her husband Vinal Patel.
No more than 15 people are permitted to attend a wedding celebration according to official guidelines. Guests were told to stay in their cars at Braxted Park, South of Colchester, and watch the ceremony on the big screen. Hampers containing snacks, anti-bacterial hand gel and bin liners for rubbish were then handed out to guests, with food served by waiters.
I-Imaani Photography posted, “What an epic event! Even during the pandemic, Roma and Vinal were able to pull off a ‘drive in’ cinema style wedding with all of their close family and friends, whilst maintaining all of the social distancing rules.
“It was lovely for us to be a part of the small intimate wedding that took place inside the Orangery at Braxted Park, while everyone else enjoyed the ceremony on the big screen in the open air whilst ordering hot pizzas and chips via Segways :).”
Worth reading in full.
Postcard From Lanzagrotty
A reader has sent us a postcard from Lanzarote, one of the Canary Islands. Doesn’t sound much fun.
My wife and I are currently on holiday in Playa Blanca in Lanzarote. Three days after we booked it Spain was put back on the quarantine list but, having already had two holidays cancelled this year, we decided to come anyway, not least because it gives us a couple of weeks away from Mad Boris and the rest of the muppets running (or rather ruining) the country.
We have been here several times before but, sad to say, this year it is rather a miserable experience. Many of the shops, hotels and restaurants are closed, some permanently, meaning that options for eating out are limited and Playa Blanca itself, which is normally a bustling town, was virtually deserted yesterday morning when we went to do some food shopping.
Face masks are compulsory in shops, in taxis and on public transport, but officially are only required elsewhere if it is not possible to maintain a distance of at least 1.5 metres from other people. However, the Police, who are normally conspicuous by their absence, have interpreted this as meaning that you must wear a face mask if there is the slightest possibility that you might, at some point whilst you are out and about, pass within 1.5 metres of someone else and are patrolling the town, seafront and marina in large numbers in their cars and leaping out to impose on the spot fines of 150 Euros on anyone not wearing a mask, even if there is no one within hundreds of metres of them. We even saw them fining someone yesterday evening because his mask was not covering his nose and mouth, so the result is that everyone wears a mask everywhere all the time, even whilst cycling.
Masks are not required in restaurants and bars, so you have the bizarre sight of large groups of Spaniards dutifully wearing their masks until they are seated and then removing the masks and talking and laughing loudly (in that lovely way that Spaniards do) whilst seated very close together. This really is such a clever virus – it can attack you while you are walking down the street with no one else around, but then ignores you when you are seated with friends!
If any of your readers are considering a holiday in Lanzarote, I’m afraid my advice would be not to bother at the moment. The only upside is that the weather is fabulous and the BA flight was delightful, being only about a quarter full.
Round-Up
- “The truth about England’s second wave of COVID-19: Hospitalisations are 6% of peak levels in the South but 30% in the North and deaths have flattened in all but the North West, North East and the Midlands” – The Daily Mail says the South of England faces panic and possible new lockdown rules based on situation hundreds of miles away
- “Trump Plays Down Coronavirus, Plans to Debate Joe Biden Next Week” – He’s fighting fit and raring to go, according to the Wall St Journal
- “The ethical case against Covid lockdowns” – Legal compliance expert Chris Kirk-Blythe makes the ethical case against lockdown in a YouTube video
- “Trump health official meets with doctors pushing herd immunity” – Gupta, Kulldorff and Bhattacharya met with Scott Atlas yesterday
- “Big Tech vs free speech” – Jeffrey Rosen, president of the National Constitution Center, joins Spiked editor Brendan O’Neill on his podcast to discuss the rise of hate-speech codes and the decline of liberty
- “Aussies defy COVID limits and crowd Victoria’s beaches, parks” – Good to see a bit of the old spirit returning
- “Fifth of people experiencing mental health issues due to coronavirus, major new survey shows” – A fifth of people have reported experiencing mental health issues and a third of people are feeling isolated because of the coronavirus pandemic, a major new survey shows
- “Swedish economy dodges Covid bullet, says Danske Bank” – New forecast says GDP in Sweden will fall by just 3.3% this year
- “As a nation we thought we were good at stuff. It turns out we aren’t” – Jeremy Warner responds to Boris’s speech
- “Boris needs to rediscover the courage to lead his nation away from Covid fear” – Philip Johnston thinks Boris needs to take a leaf out of Trump’s book
- “Cabinet split over tougher Covid lockdown measures” – Rishi is leading the rebels
- “Abandoned and isolated: the lonely students at Covid University” – Heartbreaking piece by Sabrina Miller for the Telegraph
- “Son ‘angry’ at being moved away from mum at dad’s funeral” – Story about a funeral in which a son trying to comfort his grieving mother was told to keep two metres away by a jobsworth official
- “Channel 4 could be scrapped or sold off as advertising revenues plummet, minister suggests” – That’s what you get for uncritically promoting the lockdown
- “Matt Hancock warns cancer patients will only be guaranteed treatment if COVID-19 stays ‘under control’” – The Health Secretary is a dead man walking, surely?
- “‘The culture war affects everybody’” – Laurence Fox gives an interview to Spiked about his new party
- “Football without fans is fake football – we need to stop pretending otherwise” – Couldn’t agree more with the Telegraph‘s Luke Edwards who says games with no crowds are more like training games
- “Facebook removes Donald Trump post for spreading coronavirus myths” – And the myth is… that it’s “far less lethal than flu”. But the most recent data in the UK suggests that intensive care patients with flu-related complications are less likely to survive than Covid patients
Theme Tunes Suggested by Readers
Just one today: “Check the Spreadsheet” by Klack
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. Today, we’re indebted to Lockdown Sceptics reader James Allan, a Law Professor at the University of Queensland, who’s drawn our attention to the BLM solidarity statement by the Principal of his alma mater, Queen’s University in Ontario. It’s a classic of the genre.
It begins with a bit of genuflecting to Karl Marx, whom the Principal praises for his penetrating political insight, able to see into the corrupt heart of capitalism. He then goes on to hurl himself at the feet of left-wing student activists, pleading for their forgiveness.
When students are strengthened by the Black Lives Matter movement and emboldened to speak out about their experience of racism at Queen’s, they are reminding us that we construct the university through the choices we make and therefore have the potential to remake it according to the principles of equity, diversity, inclusion, and Indigeneity. When Indigenous and LGBTQ+ students tell us they do not feel safe on campus, they are demanding that we think beyond CCTV cameras and heightened security – important though those things may be – and question some of the founding assumptions of our institutional being, interrogate what most of the time we accept as natural and universal.
It’s a doozy and it’s prompted James Allan to write an entertaining hatchet job in the National Post. Here’s one of the highlights:
No one could read his remarkable mea culpa (or rather, “the university I lead’s fault”) and be in any doubt whatsoever about the outcome of the process he has set in motion as to whether Sir John A. Macdonald’s name will be removed from the Queen’s Law School that graduated me some 35 years ago. (Last month, in a non-binding but telling ballot, the school’s Faculty Board voted 29 to three, with five abstentions, in favour of expunging the name of our first prime minister and the pre-eminent father of Confederation.) The principal’s editorial was chock full of the language of “dominant culture”, “equity”, “diversity”, “inclusion”, “reconciliation”, “economic privilege”, “unconstructedness” (your guess is as good as mine on that one) and so on.
Even worse, and certainly more remarkably, it began with a sort of tribute to Karl Marx and some of “Marx’s most distinctive insights”. Marxist rhetoric can hardly be made of sterner stuff. I say this as a law professor who has worked around the globe, including in Hong Kong for four wonderful years before the handover, where I had to teach a small segment on Marxist legal theory. What the principal nowhere mentions are Marx’s own racial views. They were orders of magnitude worse than anything Sir John A. Macdonald ever expressed. To take but one example, go and read some of Marx’s letters to Engels from, say, 1862 to get a feel for his “distinctive insights” as regards Blacks and Jews. But it seems cancel culture does not extend to heroes (sorry, providers of distinctive insights) of the political Left.
Worth reading in full.
“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 £1.49 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).
Samaritans
If you are struggling to cope, please call Samaritans for free on 116 123 (UK and ROI), email [email protected] 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…
Discussion
Comments
This week across the site:
To join in with the discussion please make a donation to the Daily Sceptic.
Profanity and abuse will be removed and may lead to a permanent ban.
They will chuck him under the bus once he has served their purpose, useful idiot.
What is the ruling in the UK if you do not have a phone compatible with Track and trace?
you are not permitted to travel, work nor transact using covid-safe-coin
LOL
Toby must be pleased with the numbers of people visiting the webpage!
My friends sister tested positive for Covid yesterday,she messaged me a bit worried (the girl has no underlying health conditions and is in her 30s, healthy). I messaged back saying she will be fine and has a 99.8% of making a full recovery. She then got a bit nasty saying how serious this is and implied that I was making ‘light’ of it. Her other sister is an ENT nurse who had to work on the covid wards back in april and said she has seen ‘many’ deaths from it. It was almost getting into a full blown argument, she went on to say that she won’t be selfish and will be careful and how the country needs another full lockdown. Normally this friend is a free spirited open minded person but this whole Covid crap has taken a hold on her! And I was only trying to reassure her! Her attitude actually makes me want to avoid her for a while!
Thankfully most of my other friends see through this nonsense for what it really is.
Funn when I asked that she said she wasn’t entirely sure, all she knew was that she felt rough!
We’ve become a nation of bedwetting hypochondriacs. It was great to see President Trump looking and sounding fit. His positivity is just what we need. Thanks to our politicians the world has become a very unhappy place to inhabit.
Avoid her permanently. She is no friend of yours. Anyone who wants more lockdown is our enemy, period.
I switched my phone on this morning and had a text message (date received?) that all routine blood tests for chronic diseases have been suspended.
(not that I need one)
Apparently there is a crisis. I read sth yday that Roche are having distribution problems from their new automated warehouse.
Has anyone had a flu vaccination, and blood tests taken at the same time? My MIL did, (and other people in the queue did too) but she was too flustered to understand what they were for, so I don’t know whether it was some sort of routine check-up or not.
The latest hand wringing is that that the NHS is about to be overwhelmed and death rates go through the roof. Well it is true that all the figures are rising but there again we are just into autumn and so maybe expected?
At present I think the NHS has over 100,000 beds and with about 3000 Covid patients I would have thought that we are a way to go before the overwhelming stage?
The good news that we do not hear much about but mentioned today on Talk Radio with Julia HB, is that the NHS now has a much better record on treating Covid 19.
As well as all the admissions, what we do not hear is that there are a lot of discharges of former Covid patients who have got better and been discharged, sort of what they invented hospitals for.
Nonetheless, I expect the gloom team of Johnson, Hancock & Witty will press on with misery for all while these figures keep rising.
The NHS had 8 months to increase capacity and avoid being overwhelmed, and since when did the population of the UK live to serve the NHS and not the other way round
What is the truth? I just accept whatever the government says to be a lie.
Dear Bunter,
Why not just make Wee Jimmy the Emperor of the UK, and save having to do all that catching up?
You’re welcome.
He’s the idiot who e mailed the whole of the secret Tory 2010 election strategy to his near namesake, Liberal Democrat MP Mike Hancock, thinking he was e mailing it to himself. Mike honourably didn’t make use of it, but that’s how stupid Our Matt is.
I’m not sure I can carry on focusing on COVID, its really starting to wind me up and dominate my thoughts. I fear I’m becoming a complete bore around mates. Pretty much got in a full blown argument with my increasingly nativist and neurotic boss the other week.
Until things start to change I’m going to escape into history, studying, and playing as much squash as possible.
Things on Guernsey seem strange. Although we are and have been ‘back to normal’ since June, we are, effectively, locked out to the outside world. It is two weeks mandatory quarantine for anyone returning from anywhere outside the Bailiwick. Plans to test on arrival seem to have been forgotten. So we are living an almost artificial existence, increasingly becoming more and more closed off to the world.
I must convince I’d settle for being isolated in normality right now.
Yes Liam, I really do not envy you in the UK. I am grateful that I can go to the pub till close, don’t have to ‘mask up’ etc… I just feel we are on borrowed time. The virus never really established itself here. We can’t isolate from the world forever! In reality, the UK is in a much better position than us, we never had a wave. I think the strategy is closed borders until the magic vaccine arrives…
In Wales, they seem to be intent on turning all the regions into islands.
Your plan is a good one. Strengthening our mental fortitude is what we need to be doing right now. When Spring comes, and we can still hold our unmasked heads up high and continue to say “No, we do not comply,”, I have a feeling we will have won. They cannot break us.
The Welsh have gone properly mad
Everyone has, not just Wales. Scotland has gone full mental and our spineless moron will follow suit. What is amusing is they don’t think we know what’s really going on.
Last time I was in Guernsey I was wondering about the basics – drinking water, power, all seem very “fragile” and reliant very much on the outside world. And a completely separate health system, but it all seems to work, so I’m not knocking it.
Health system is good. Semi subsidised, semi private. People moan about having to pay for A&E / GP visits but it keeps Social Security down! The biggest thing dragging us down in my opinion is a massively expensive and overstaffed bureaucracy and large welfare state. We have the ability to produce power onshore, but, unless there is a problem, rely on cheaper energy from France.
The intensity of squash is a super distraction.
Look at the spaffing Johnson’s stupid face at the top of this post. It is the face of a man who knows he has totally screwed up with terrible consequences, and has realised to his pleasant surprise that it doesn’t matter. He is still prime minister, he is at no political risk at all, he can do whatever he wants.
If you think that face is bad, then just imagine the “Sex Face” Carrie Symonds has to see every time he mounts her!
Sorry I had to downtick – thank you so much for that thought that I now can’t unthink! Eugh!
Sweet suffering Jesus! Did you really have to do that :-)? Some things are best left unimagined but you sowed the thought and now I’m going to have to get the mind bleach.
😂😂. I wonder if they wear masks in bed?
Don’t think of pink elephants. Don’t think of pink elephants.
Lalalalala…
Flu has only killed 394 people between January and August, that’s around 20,000 down on how many people are killed by it each year. So COVID has completely eliminated Flu!
Figures are:
48,186 Deaths due to COVID
13,619 Deaths die to Pneumonia
394 Deaths due to Flu
Gibberish. Just utterly laughable figures.
Complete lies as we know from the ONS figures that 90%+ had two or three other co-morbidities on the death certificate, thus 48,186 deaths weren’t “due to COVID”. The most likely died of the other co-morbidities but tested positive for COVID.
What is the average yearly “flu only” death rate for both England and Wales during the same period? This should give some persective
PHE figures for 2014/2015 to 2018/19 are 15,000 deaths each flu season in this period.
In 2014-15 there was 28,330 deaths from Flu.
Covid is the cure to the flu, we should all be happy.
Hospitals, over 80s, with pre existing: 15000 odd deaths. Same age group, no pre existing: 500 and odd.
Pointless data with no comparison to the last 5 years when COVID was not a thing
Hi Skipper, where can I find the source for these figures please?
Breaking news on Sky News:
https://news.sky.com/story/coronavirus-killed-three-times-as-many-people-as-flu-and-pneumonia-combined-figures-show-12098893
Luvverly, thanks.
PS. Cook me a kipper, I’ll be back for breakfast.
Here’s a chart of Influenza like illnesses from flusurvey.net This is for 2017-18, a bad season. It’s not deaths, but I think shows the incidence per 1000. I think we currently have even with the testdemic, around 8.5 “cases” of Cov2 at the moment. If I’m working this correctly, then it would hardly even register on the chart.
Sky headline “Covid kills 3 times more people than flu & pneumonia combined”.
Really? Not since May, for sure.
They’re looking at one of them rubbish spreadsheets again.
One Jerry Seinfeld was on R4 just now promoting a book or something. The interviewer asked his opinion about the Covid ( although why the opinion of a popular comedian might matter is beyond me.)
” like the Spanish flu it will pass through the worlds population over about 18 months and then fade away by itself ”
Silence from interviewer
He redeemed himself by adding ” but we’re only 8 months in so there’s a way to go”
Closet sceptic!
Something else I heard on the radio. This morning. But I’m not sure if I’m quoting accurately.
An interviewer interviewing a representative of the hospitality industry said 26% of people acquiring Covid were thought to have done so in a pub or a cafè etc.
The person being interviewed said the statistic applied to people out and about – shopping, travelling etc. – and not just people obtaining beverages and sustenance amongst other people.
If I’m recalling the conversation more or less accurately. In what situations are the other 74% picking up the virus? Hospitals? Care Homes? Halls of residences. At home? – anyone know the percentages?
Presumably the highly accurate track and destroy system supplied the %’s?
See pie chart LS 29th September
Schools/Colleges, workplaces and care homes are each 25% plus, hospitality 3%.
It’s outrageous picking on them.
I don’t know, but anything we are told has to be based on complete fantasy. The powers that be claim that so many of us are walking around shedding virus that any individual with a positive test would be likely to have been exposed to the virus multiple times. . One of the reasons why they admitted contact tracing was pointless way back when.
I heard it as “26% had been in one of those places recently”. Pretty meaningless but being used as justification for the new measures. Finding out where anyone is actually catching it would indeed be useful but no-one seems interested in finding out.
Hospitals were the epicentres for the virus then they infected the care homes.
Care sector was about 25% I believe. ..but then they probably have 80% of most vulnerable people. Not sure how they define home…in most households people who live together also shop together or at least use the same shops. I believe shops and supermarkets were the location where most people aquired the virus.
They have no idea. None. The idea that you can accurately pinpoint where individuals pick up a simple coronavirus in a highly complex society of tens of millions of people is a complete and utter fantasy.
It really is a fantasy. The idea you can say “Oh yes, I got “IT” in the fag and ferret on Saturday night” is mental. No way can you pin down where you got “infected” with a virus. No way. It’s insane to think this is possible.
Unfortunately, the obviously bonkers seems to be the core of the new normal.
I saw Jason Leitch, top man in Scotland’s health system, on TV this morning saying that they had spoken to each and every contact of persons testing positive (?!) and the common factor they identified was that they had been frequenting pubs and restaurants. So must have a 16 day lock down.
I don’t get it. We all use a toilet 3-5 times a day. But the answer is not to prevent us visiting it. We might not have caught CV19 there for a start, and even if we did, isn’t the answer to clean it up, not ban visits – even given CV19 spreads via aerosols, not via faecal oral route. I sense a Wee Free strain of puritanism at large.
‘Puritans travel in disguise, afraid to say what they really think – that alcohol should be priced and restricted to the point where it is eventually driven underground. They will bring in restrictions like minimum pricing, and then when it has failed they will say the minimum price has to go up to be effective. Indeed some are saying it already.
The prohibitionists are drunk on power – it’s time to dry them out’.
Brian Monteith, see also ‘ the McNanny State’, from 2018 or 19.
My condolences. My MP is invisible she does not acknowledge my emails, she might as well not be there.
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1314072319564931072.html
The indomitable Dr Clare Craig again with interesting information about the April peak
“If lockdown worked then every region of the UK should have had peak deaths on the same date. The truth is far from that. It took nearly 6 weeks between the peak in Brighton and the peak in York. Here is the data”
Reminder of the first fiasco of the first national lockdown when everybody(even MSM) now see that the new local lockdowns have been total fiasco with just increase in “cases”
Interesting analysis, except peak deaths in one NE and Yorks Hospital falls in 2nd week, so it hasn’t actually been a slow creep northwards by any means.
A Leicestershire MP speaking on radio 4 yesterday actually put a figure on the number of deaths the government is striving to avoid:- 100,000 or so.
This equates to less than one percent of everyone over 65. (I’m in that group)
595,000 died in the UK in 2017.
Is that net? Are they taking into account the additional deaths from lockdown (limited cancer treatment/diagnosis, suicides etc)?
I don’t think it will be net. You can add those on.
Well, that would be my suspicion. I just don’t think it’s taken into account. The media will continue to fail to press that point home.
I’m hoping it will start to seep in that the cure is worse than the disease. We can’t keep buggering on like this.
Tell oldies (like me) to batten down the hatches – and most are able to do that – if they are really anxious – or take their chances as I do myself.
I am actually in a sort of personal lockdown. Because I don’t like being challenged for not wearing a mask I hardly venture indoors anywhere – I’ve sat only thrice in a pub in five weeks. My biggest ‘risk’ is travelling on bus each day. And I rate that risk negligible as a) I mostly travel on an open top bus – and b) there are far fewer bus passengers these days.
The way I dealt with it in the office is that I made fun out out everybody who tried to wear it around me (in a lighthearted way) and then told them don’t wear a mask on my account as I don’t wear one..No nobody wears a mask as I sometimes loudly explain to my team how there is no science, vaccines are useless etc. Waiting for a call from HR every day ,but I’m a key worked so they can go and f themselves.
Hi, I’m 70+, and my chances of surviving a Covid dose are 94.6%.
How I wish I was young again, say 20-49, when my chances of surviving a Covid dose would rise to 99.98%.
You youngsters don’t know how lucky you are.
(All stats from the CDC).
Absolutely brilliantly put,Stuart.
From a fellow 70+ and wife who is even more 70+ than me.
Well, yes (from a slightly younger man), but one’s chance of keeping one’s job, or getting one, gives me pause for thought!
Hahaha he reminds me of so many estate agents here in Surrey. A lot of amateurism and a touch of malice…
They should have minimum 5 years employment in the real world (it’s only the life of one parliament) and by ‘real world’ I mean employed on PAYE – no ducking and diving to minimise taxes paid. The sharp difference between gross pay at the top and nett pay at the bottom of their monthly payslip might focus the mind a little.
Sack all MPs/ministers. Replace them with people who want to do the job. Ensure that by paying them thirty grand. Sorted.
Never thought I would hear it.
On 2 separate local radio news bulletins this morning its aid about an outbreak in 5 care homes on the Staffordshire/Cheshire border that they think it is being driven by increased testing of the staff as they have tested positive but none of them have any symptoms.
Amazing.
New study shows of the positive tests 77% had no symptoms, only 23% had symptoms, but 86% did not have the three main symptoms: cough, temperature or loss of taste or smell.
Which study is this, I’d like to include it in my reassuring dashboard of alternative graphs haha
https://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/wales-news/most-people-who-test-positive-19068507
https://reaction.life/hugh-pennington-interview-covid-19-is-about-superspreading-and-there-is-no-second-wave/
The veteran, Prof Pennington, in an interesting interview saying many sensible things. He was also involved with many virologists during the swine flu pandemic 2009 by influencing the response. That time it was successful in stopping the continuous PCR testing of all flu cases and early on, stopping all contact tracing, and stop treating with Tamiflu for mild cases. Everything was switched to diagnose and treat hospitalized patients. Sadly, 11 years later, Big Pharma has now immense control over the response and influencing all the key actors.
But I am not totally convinced with Pennington’s view that super spreaders are driving the pandemic. They are important as introducers perhaps, but it is strange that all curves in many countries look very alike which I think is a more traditional spread of a respiratory virus.
I heard that the tried to do the same thing in 2010 re the bird flu, but it failed, so this is the next try
Yes, Pennington sounds pretty sensible. However I too am sceptical about the “superspreaders” explanation. Read an article in the Atlantic Monthly which was putting this forward, particularly as a way of explaining strong variations between different countries. I wasn’t convinced. Seems like a way for Lockdownists to explain away the complete failure of Lockdowns in Belgium, Ecuador, Spain, Italy, France and the UK.
I suspect superspreaders are more effect than cause, being found especially where there is little cross immunuty.
National variations probably reflect a combination of cross immunity, population density, virus mutations, BCG vaccination status, international travel frequency, hygiene culture, and cultural factors eg importance of extended families.
A ban on overnight stays!!!
Try explaining that to my wife’s mother (95) when my wife can’t stop overnight every other week to help with her finances, housework, shopping etc.
I expect she can be part of your “bubble”. Ridiculous isn’t it?
Past ridiculous.
This is a spiritual battle
Excellent 25 minutes
https://youtu.be/U7rAAuudROg
Robert Jenrick talking to JHB on Talk Radio, absolutely no clue at all and showing the Gov is just making it up as they go along. JHB said to him that the data shows that in 19/20 places locked down that positives had gone up, he flatly denied this was true.
Time is running out for these liars now!
Only got until January 2021 before they get their new ‘rules’
What is ‘common sensical’????
Nothing nice about 2 homes Jenrick.
I think he actually has 5.
Karol Sikora next on Talk Radio
What an absolute spluttering liar
I read that book too. Worth a read.