Record Rise in “Cases” – But October Still Normal For Respiratory Disease
Yesterday saw the biggest daily rise yet in positive tests reported: 26,688. The last three days have each seen significant increases, though it’s worth noting that by date of specimen there is still no major upward trend since the start of the month. That may change in the coming days (the column for October 19th admittedly looks high already) but relying on reporting date can give a false impression of trends.
What’s really missing in these numbers though is context. Were more tests done on October 19th than 18th, so the apparent rise is just an artefact of the increase in testing? And how many of these “cases” are false positives? As Sir Patrick Vallance said on Tuesday, SARS-CoV-2 is now likely to be an endemic virus that comes back in some form each flu season. Infections are rising now because it’s autumn and many respiratory viruses spread in autumn, plus the spring lockdowns will have left some areas with lower levels of immunity. It’s notable that London, where infections were falling before lockdown as Chris Whitty admitted to MPs, has yet to see any major increase in hospital admissions or deaths.
But if Covid infections, hospital admissions and deaths do keep rising throughout the winter there would be nothing unusual about that. Herd immunity doesn’t mean no one gets infected anymore, especially in the colder months. It means enough people have enough resistance to prevent a repeat of the spring and keep it within normal bounds.
COVID-19 isn’t the only respiratory disease around of course. But this year the rest are being strangely timid. Flu and pneumonia hospital admissions and deaths have been trending well below average since May with no sign of change yet, leaving Covid largely having the field to itself. That’s one reason the rise in Covid hospital admissions isn’t likely to overwhelm the NHS – there’s been a corresponding fall in admissions for flu and pneumonia.
If winter 2020 is a typical year then it’s likely to get a lot worse than this – not because we’re in the midst of a “second wave” but because it’s winter. If those panicking and calling for lockdowns think October’s bad, wait till they see a typical December. While the few journalists who have been asking the right questions haven’t been able to get the data from the NHS that would let us properly compare 2020 with a normal year (what are they hiding?), Carl Heneghan and co have tracked down this graph released in 2017 in response to an MP’s request.
It shows that England typically experiences a sharp increase in emergency admissions for respiratory conditions from September through November, followed by an even bigger spike in December, before beginning to drop off again in the new year. How does 2020 compare with this?
October 2016 had around 24,500 admissions, which is an average of 790 per day. Covid admissions this month up to the 18th are 10,503 with 13 days to go. The month started at around 370 per day and reached about 800 as of October 18th, so is currently running about average.
In other words, so far as we can tell from data in the public domain there is nothing unusual about the current October rise in respiratory disease-related hospital admissions. We can expect them to keep on rising and then to peak in December, although we don’t yet know if COVID-19 will fizzle out during the winter, to be replaced by other viruses. The lack so far of a big rise in Covid admissions and deaths in Sweden, London and New York suggests the emergence of herd immunity could lead to it receding. But even if it doesn’t, there is no evidence so far that Covid’s second ripple will exceed the usual bounds of a seasonal virus now that population immunity is moving upwards.
What Western countries have really lost sight of here is perspective. As Philip Johnston points out, in 1999-2000 – the last really bad flu season before this one, when a greater proportion of the UK population died – hospitals would leave people dying in waiting rooms. Yet it never occurred to anyone that this unfortunate situation meant we should shut down society for months on end – an intervention which kills and harms people in numerous ways.
As Professor Karol Sikora says: if lockdown was a drug or a vaccine, the authorities would have to take into account the side effects. Given that it causes so much harm to healthy people for so little demonstrable benefit it is unlikely it would even make it through the first hoop – a point also made by Dr Matt Strauss in the Spectator. Why then should we have different standards for drugs than for other public health interventions? Somewhere along the line, Western nations have lost sight of the key ethical principle that we are not responsible for viruses and illnesses, we are only responsible for our actions. And governments, like doctors, should aim to do more good than harm and not contravene important ethical principles such as consent. Even vaccinations of nasty diseases like measles and TB are not compulsory. Yet lockdown is imposed on all by force of law. How is that ethical? Covid has turned our principles upside down.
Stop Press: The CEBM has a new study explaining T-Cell immunity and reviewing the mounting evidence for longer-term immunity from SARS-CoV-2.
Why Were Democratic Citizens So Willing to Surrender Their Liberty?
Stacey Rudin has written an excellent piece for the American Institute for Economic Research exploring the question of why citizens of liberal democracies around the world complied so readily with draconian government diktats.
One has to wonder, how did this come about? Why weren’t we behaving this way before, when seasonal influenza is known to kill up to 650,000 people globally every single year? Why didn’t anyone ever care about saving all of those millions of people? If we really can stop infections, we murdered all of them!
Fortunately for our collective conscience, none of our pre-COVID public health guidelines so much as suggests that human behaviour can eliminate infections as necessary to stop deaths. We have always understood that we have limited control over invisible biological agents, which is why we do not opt to incur the gigantic costs of “lockdowns” and similar: we realize the effort to save every life, while noble, is unfortunately futile. We cannot stop death, so we accept it, and balance it with many other human interests. We know that pandemics causing upwards of two million deaths can and do occur, yet our CDC does not EVER recommend isolating healthy people outside of the household of the sick, closing “nonessential” businesses, or closing schools for longer than 12 weeks.
So why did we adopt all of these extreme, harmful, and deadly measures in 2020 for COVID-19, a pandemic that has not even caused statistically significant excess deaths in nations with short lockdowns and no lockdowns. Why did we depart so completely from our regulations? Did new science develop? I can’t find any. All pre-Covid epidemiological and public health literature unanimously acknowledges that it is impossible to stop infectious diseases with isolation and quarantine.
Good question and one that most lockdown sceptics have been puzzling over. Why isn’t everyone more like us? As Lionel Shriver said:
The supine capitulation to a de facto police state in a country long regarded as a cradle of liberty has been one of the most depressing spectacles I’ve ever witnessed. In a matter of days, busybodies are ratting out neighbours for going for a run twice; these people would be pigs in muck in the GDR.
Rudin’s answer is that politicians succeeded in persuading the public that they could prevent death – something the public, who’d already been terrified out of their wits by the politicians and their handmaidens in the media, wanted to hear.
To the calm (rational) mind, it is clear that “suppression” is a set of “brakes” that should only be imposed to the minimum extent necessary to manage hospital capacity. Any “extra” suppression just saves infections for later — when you may or may not have a vaccine or improved treatment — at extraordinary cost. To scared (irrational) people, however, suppression provides at least some “hope” of avoiding a horrific early death. You cannot blame terrified people for their feelings, but you can and should blame the media and government for misrepresenting personal risk during a pandemic. No cost is too high to keep open the possibility of staying alive. People focused on that will not comprehend any second- or third-tier consequences of their self-preservation efforts.
This is a terrific piece, written in a punchy, accessible style. Worth reading in full.
Impact of Lockdowns on the Developing World
There’s a good piece in Quillette by Joel Kotkin and Hügo Krüger called “The Coming Post-Covid Global Order“. It makes for grim reading, predicting the further decline of Western liberal democracies and the ascendancy of authoritarian China. The opening, in which the authors document the devastating impact of the lockdowns on the developing world, is particularly sobering.
The COVID-19 pandemic has devastated economics in the West, but the harshest impacts may yet be felt in the developing world. After decades of improvement in poorer countries, a regression threatens that could usher in, both economically and politically, a neo-feudal future, leaving billions stranded permanently in poverty. If this threat is not addressed, these conditions could threaten not just the world economy, but prospects for democracy worldwide.
In its most recent analysis, the World Bank predicted that the global economy will shrink by 5.2% in 2020, with developing countries overall seeing their incomes fall for the first time in 60 years. The United Nations predicts that the pandemic recession could plunge as many as 420 million people into extreme poverty, defined as earning less than $2 a day. The disruption will be particularly notable in the poorest countries. The UN has forecast that Africa could have 30 million more people in poverty. A study by the International Growth Centre spoke of “staggering” implications with 9.1% of the population descending into extreme poverty as savings are drained, with two-thirds of this due to lockdown. The loss of remittances has cost developing economies billions more income.
Latin America had seen its poverty rate drop from 45 to 30% over the past two decades, but now nearly 45 million, according to the UN, are being plunged into destitution as a result of the novel coronavirus pandemic. In Mexico alone, COVID-19 has caused at least 16 million more people to fall into extreme poverty, according to a study by the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM).
These trends undermine the appeal of neoliberal globalization across the developing world. The pandemic has forced people to stay in their countries, and has closed off the ability to move to wealthier places. With Western countries themselves in disarray, there’s been a growing temptation to adopt authoritarian controls modeled by China, which appears to have emerged from the pandemic and economic collapse quicker than the rest of the world. The pandemic could boost China’s great ambition to replace the West, and notably America, as the heart of global civilization.
Worth reading in full.
The Official Government Line?
A Lockdown Sceptics reader got a reply this week from their MP, Kelly Tolhurst. I’m reproducing it here because it reads to me like the official line provided pre-packaged from central command, albeit with some personal touches. (Although the bizarre, run-on sentences suggest it isn’t just being copied verbatim by Kelly’s researcher). Did anyone else receive something with words like these from their MP? Full of holes, obviously – I’ll leave it to readers to take it apart below the line.
I am terribly sorry to hear that your mother recently passed away, I can only imagine how difficult it was for you to say goodbye in that way and how hard it is to be around loved ones and not be able to kiss or touch them.
It is also very upsetting to hear about your business having to close after all the hard work you put into building it up through a tough period. Without knowing the extent and details of your financial situation it is hard for me to offer specific advice, however I have noted that this blog by Money Saving Expert has been very helpful for constituents with financial difficulties over recent months and hope it provides you with some useful information: https://www.moneysavingexpert.com/news/2020/03/uk-coronavirus-help-and-your-rights/
Regarding our approach to tackling the coronavirus, I understand your frustration with the current restrictions on our normal lives, this is an incredibly difficult situation for everyone. Coronavirus is deadly and, unfortunately, it is now spreading exponentially in the UK. It is our responsibility to act to prevent more hospitalisations, more deaths and more economic damage. We know from recent history that when this virus keeps growing, unless we act together to get it under control, this is the result.
To be clear, our strategy is to suppress the virus, supporting the economy, education and the NHS. Local action is at the centre of our response. The virus is currently not spread evenly, and the situation is particularly severe in some parts of the country. Through the Joint Biosecurity Centre and NHS Test and Trace, we have built up a detailed picture of where and how the virus is spreading. NHS Test and Trace statistics show that testing capacity is up, testing turnaround times are down, and the distance travelled for tests is down too. Thanks to this capacity and analysis, we have been able to take a more targeted approach, keeping a close eye on the situation in local areas, bearing down hard through restrictions on a local level where they are necessary.
I believe that we must take firm and balanced decisions to keep this virus under control. This is the only way to protect lives and livelihoods, and we must act now. Delayed action means more deaths from covid, it means more non-covid deaths, and it means more economic pain later, because the virus comes down slower than it goes up. We should stop it going up in the first place. Unless we suppress the virus, we cannot return to the economy we had; unless we suppress the virus, we cannot keep non-covid NHS services going; and unless we suppress the virus, we cannot keep the elderly and the vulnerable safe and secure.
You also mentioned the range of scientific advice the Government is receiving, and I should point out that the Prime Minister, the Chief Medical Officer and other advisers have been talking to their Swedish counterparts regularly in order to learn lessons from there. They have also been talking to other European countries such as Belgium, which have taken measures, in order to learn internationally. We are all learning the best way to deal with this virus. We are trying to restore the NHS services that were suspended while we dealt with the initial impact of Covid. NHS England has issued guidance for the return of non-Covid health services to near normal levels, making use of the available capacity while protecting the most vulnerable from Covid. The way to minimise disruption to other treatments is to deal with this virus as effectively as we can, so that we do not have a huge spike of people with Covid being admitted to hospital.
“Breathing is Dangerous”
An Oxford University student and Lockdown Sceptics reader has written a powerful reflection on the loss of freedom. Here’s an excerpt.
Anyone who ventures out onto the high street will see long queues of masked and muted figures. They probably cannot breathe but, we are told, breathing is dangerous. So we hold our breath. These flimsy shields have become the marks of subservience to a policy that, no one can deny, is bewilderingly inconsistent. The Government has stated on numerous occasions how ineffective face-coverings are; in one document, published on June 23rd, it stated: “The evidence of the benefit of using a face covering to protect others is weak and the effect is likely to be small.” And yet, after only a few months, this symbol of conformity is now normalised and unquestionable. We have become literally silenced and distanced from one another. Why? Because scepticism spreads through communication and scepticism is contagious. According to one official within my university: “If you are comfortable talking to someone, then it is likely that you are not socially distanced.” Our statistical language cannot and does not speak to the sanity of human interaction.
This piece conveys the inhuman weirdness of being a university student at present. Worth reading in full.
First Do No Harm
Professor Ramesh Thakur, former United Nations Assistant Secretary-General and Professor at the Crawford School of Public Policy in Australia, has written a cracking piece in Spectator Australia on the real harms and dubious ethics of lockdowns.
We now know the fear-mongers were disastrously wrong, but persist with their heartless cruelty nonetheless. In April, the UN Economic Commission for Africa said “between 300,000 and 3.3 million African people could lose their lives as a direct result of COVID-19”. In February, Bill Gates warned of 10 million corona virus deaths in Africa. On October 15th, the real number was 38,977. Gates is a genius as a tech entrepreneur but his grasp of epidemiology is near the other end of the scale. Mind you, the tech sector is one of the very few to have done well financially from the lockdown.
The unbearable cruelty imposed by health bureaucrats without a distinguished medical research record has sucked the very humanity out of society: delaying interstate visits until too late to see a dying father or save one of the twins in the womb in need of urgent attention. As British MP Charles Walker said in a BBC radio interview on October 12th, for many elderly people, “being told that you’ve got to spend the next six or 12 months without human contact, without seeing the people that you love, without embracing your grandchildren, is a price too high”.
Millions will be pushed into extreme poverty.
Of course, the biggest tragedy will be across the developing world over the next decade, with over 100 million more people pushed into extreme poverty, 10s of millions of additional dead from increased infant and maternal mortality, hunger and starvation with more poverty and disrupted crop production and food distribution networks, sharp cutbacks in immunisation and schooling, and destruction of the informal sectors of the economy in which daily wage earners earn a pitiful living. Most countries will also need to prepare for potential spikes in mental health problems and suicides from the fear generated by exaggerated alarmism as well as the loneliness, isolation, financial ruin and despair caused by the lockdowns.
Read it in full here.
Unlikely Hero Emerges – 83 year-old Herd Immunity Advocate
Is this a sign that public opinion is beginning to shift? Last night, the BBC News included a lone voice of scepticism in the form of an 83 year-old Barnsley resident commenting on the Government’s decision to plunge 1.4 million people in South Yorkshire into a Tier 3 lockdown. In what must have been a nasty shock to the BBC team on the ground, the elderly shopper turned out to be a well-informed advocate of “Focused Protection”. The Mail has more.
The outspoken shopper told the broadcaster: “I think it’s all ridiculous, we should never have been in lockdown. All the people who were vulnerable should have been helped and kept home safe.
“And all the rest of us, I’m 83, I don’t give a sod.
“I look at it this way, I’ve not got all that many years left of me and I’m not going to be fastened in a house when the Government have got it all wrong.
“We need… how can we get the country on its feet? Money-wise? Where’s all the money?
“By the end of this year there’s going to be millions of people unemployed and you know who’s going to pay for it? All the young ones. Not me because I’m going to be dead.”
Can we put this woman on SAGE please? She seems to have a much better grasp of the situation than Sir Patrick Vallance.
Worth reading in full.
Round-Up
- “Manchester should mark the beginning of the end for senseless lockdown mania” – Strong piece from Liam Halligan in the Telegraph. Let’s hope he’s right
- “Let the oldies like us shield… and let our young go free, say Deidre Sanders, Trevor Kavanagh and Peter Seabrook” – More support for GBD-style shielding in the Sun
- “Red Box: October Focus Group” – The Times‘s Matt Chorley talks to pollster James Johnson about the public’s changing attitude to the Covid rules. People who were compliant in March and April now taking a “pick and mix” approach
- “Trouble in the trough: how uncertainties were downplayed in the UK’s science advice on COVID-19” – Curious paper in Nature which, reading between the lines, reads like a brief for the prosecuting counsel in a criminal case against SAGE for corporate manslaughter
- “How Cancel Culture captured campus” – Prof Eric Kaufmann in UnHerd on the real plague in our midst – the woke cult
- “Arise Sir Ed, saviour of King’s College London” – Satirical piece in the Critic about the recent knighthood awarded to Ed Byrne, Principal of the least free speech friendly university in Britain
- “The Strange Advent of Lockdown Denialism” – Good piece by Phillip W. Magness for the AIER about why the critics of the Great Barrington Declaration are pretending full lockdowns are a thing of the past
- Dr. Reiner Fuellmich’s Video in English – A reader has pointed out that you can still view the German lawyer’s video, in which he describes the class action suit he’s bringing against various public health agencies, on this website
- “Ask the people what we want to do about COVID-19” – New Change.org petition started by a 65 year-old asking the Government to consult those aged 65 and over what measures they would choose to see in place to protect them
- “Is reaching Zero COVID-19 possible?” – Kingston Mills in CapX says Zero Covid is a misguided policy
- “Met Police drop ‘race hate’ investigation into Darren Grimes and David Starkey” – Good news. Well done to the Free Speech Union
- “The Covid Creed” – David Matcham in Conservative Woman thinks he’s found what lockdown zealots recite each morning
- “What we can learn from Sweden” – Good even-handed piece from Harrison Pitt in Spiked
- “The cruelty of the care home visit ban” – Nick Cohen in the Spectator on the awfulness of what we’ve done to our old and frail
- “Facebook labels 2+2=4 ‘misinformation’” – Kit Knightly in OffGuardian on Facebook’s censorship of some basic IFR maths
- “From ‘role models’ to sex workers: Kenya’s child labour rises” – AP News reports on the terrible consequences of lockdown in Africa
- “In Proportion Dashboard” – Handy new feature on the staple sceptic site
- “The World Health Organization in 2011 Warned Against a ‘Culture of Fear’” – Jeffrey Tucker, Editorial Director of the AIER, finds the WHO again not following its own advice
- “Second wave is bringing a mental health crisis” – Alice Thomson in the Times on how the forever lockdown is taking its toll
- “Lord Sedwill: ‘We didn’t have the exact measures’ for tackling Covid” – Turns out the Government was unprepared and hadn’t practised. Who knew?
- “Lockdown didn’t work in South Africa: why it shouldn’t happen again” – Three academics in the Conversation take a closer look at the data
- “Will a vaccine stop Covid?” – Informative rundown of the challenges facing vaccine development from Tom Chivers in UnHerd
- “Death rates for hospitalised COVID-19 patients are now almost a QUARTER of what they were during the peak of the pandemic, studies show” – Yet another reason to go back to normal, from the Mail
- “Police chief leading on Covid doesn’t know if households can mix indoors” – You know your rules are too complicated when… No wonder police are refusing to enforce them
- “Letting the young go back to normal would be a disaster, says SAGE” – The Times has seen the minutes, and they’re as disappointing as expected for sceptics
Theme Tunes Suggested by Readers
Lots today: “Everything Seems Bad” by Abbie and The Sawyers, “Bad As They Seem” by Hayden, “You Ain’t Seen Nothing Yet” by Bachman-Turner Overdrive, “It’ll be Lonely this Christmas” by Mud, “Clampdown” by Bruce Springsteen and “Tiers” by Dusky.
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.
Sharing stories: 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
Toby featured Calvin Robinson’s tweet yesterday about equalities minister Kemi Badenoch’s response to a Labour question in Parliament telling schools in no uncertain terms that teaching Critical Race Theory and “white privilege” as fact is against the law. Today we bring you Calvin’s excellent piece in the Spectator.
Why, then, have schools been getting away with teaching highly contested political ideas as if they are accepted facts? The idea of ‘white privilege’, for example, is the principal element of Critical Race Theory, which teaches that white people are at a natural advantage and that black people are oppressed, based on nothing but the colour of their skin. CRT encourages a victimhood mentality among young black people, perpetuating the myth of white supremacy, and aligning blame for all societal problems on the white man.
CRT tells white people they are not only privileged but racist, either overtly or unconsciously. Under these rules, a white person can either admit their racist tendencies and be labelled with ‘white guilt’, or they can deny their unconscious bias and be accused of ‘white fragility’. It is a lazy Kafkaesque trap, completely closed off from challenge and criticism by design.
That is why it was so encouraging to see yesterday that Kemi Badenoch MP, the Equalities Minister, make a rousing address to Parliament during a Black History Month debate, in which she made clear that this is no longer to be tolerated. She said the government are avidly and actively against Critical Race Theory, and it has no place in our schools; any school politicising the curriculum is breaking the law.
Worth reading in full. He’s also written on the same subject in the Telegraph.
Little Known Fact: Calvin used to work as a Computer Science teacher at the West London Free School, the school co-founded by Toby.
Stop Press: In their lead article this week, the Spectator highlights how the recently published ONS figures on ethnic pay disparity put paid to any idea of “white privilege”. The article notes: “The ethnic group called ‘White British’ came only fifth in the pay rankings, with a median hourly pay that is 7% lower than ‘White and Asian’, 16% below ‘Indian’, 23% below ‘Chinese’ and a whacking 41% below ‘White Irish’. Among the under-30s, the ‘White British’ come out even worse: they are fifth from bottom, earning 2% less than ‘Bangladeshi’, 3% less than ‘Black Caribbean’, 13% less than ‘Black African’, 15% less than ‘Indian’ and 46% less than ‘Chinese’.”
“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 masks in shops here.
A reader has started a website that contains some useful guidance about how you can claim legal exemption.
And here’s an excellent piece about the ineffectiveness of masks by a Roger W. Koops, who has a doctorate in organic chemistry.
The Great Barrington Declaration
The Great Barrington Declaration, a petition started by Professor Martin Kulldorff, Professor Sunetra Gupta and Professor Jay Bhattacharya calling for a strategy of “Focused Protection” (protect the elderly and the vulnerable and let everyone else get on with life), was launched last week and the lockdown zealots have been doing their best to discredit it. If you Googled it on Tuesday, the top hits were three smear pieces from the Guardian, including: “Herd immunity letter signed by fake experts including ‘Dr Johnny Bananas’.” (Freddie Sayers at UnHerd warned us about this hit job the day before it appeared.) On the bright side, Google UK has stopped shadow banning it, so the actual Declaration now tops the search results – and Toby’s Spectator piece about the attempt to suppress it is among the top hits – although discussion of it has been censored by Reddit. The reason the zealots hate it, of course, is that it gives the lie to their claim that “the science” only supports their strategy. These three scientists are every bit as eminent – more eminent – than the pro-lockdown fanatics so expect no let up in the attacks. (Wikipedia has also done a smear job).
You can find it here. Please sign it. Now over 600,000 signatures.
Judicial Reviews Against the Government
There are now so many JRs being brought against the Government and its ministers, we thought we’d include them all in one place down here.
First, there’s the Simon Dolan case. You can see all the latest updates and contribute to that cause here.
Then there’s the Robin Tilbrook case. You can read about that and contribute here.
Then there’s John’s Campaign which is focused specifically on care homes. Find out more about that here.
There’s the GoodLawProject’s Judicial Review of the Government’s award of lucrative PPE contracts to various private companies. You can find out more about that here and contribute to the crowdfunder here.
The Night Time Industries Association has instructed lawyers to JR any further restrictions on restaurants, pubs and bars.
And last but not least there’s the Free Speech Union‘s challenge to Ofcom over its ‘coronavirus guidance’. You can read about that and make a donation here.
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. (Don’t assume we’ll pick them up in the comments).
Special thanks to graphic designer and Lockdown Sceptics reader Claire Whitten for designing our new logo. We think it’s ace. Find her work 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.
Arrived back finally to the Channel Island of Guernsey, all normal here with no nonsense like UK. Seems it’s going to go south over there again any time soon. Beyond ridiculous now with more testing not surprisingly resulting in more ‘cases’. I thought the media switch from daily death totals to daily cases was sketchy off the bat. Something sinister going on and it isn’t C-19 that’s for sure.
Political Science Examination Autumn 2020.
Q1] Herd Immunity is not possible therefore we must vaccinate everyone.
Discuss.
10 Marks(but only if you come up with the same answer as us).
New page up.
Why Were Democratic Citizens So Willing to Surrender Their Liberty? It seems to me that its very much like classic Pavlovian conditioning of the masses. As practised by many communist dictatorships. Create confusion in the populace until they will accept any solution offered. Check out Yuri Bezmenov on subverting a nation.
A lot of people can be conditioned to push someone they’ve never met off of a tall building.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=doFpACkiZ2Q
Clicked and collected after buying my lunch inside (no problems apart from zombies).
Nice young girl brought my shopping out. Relieved that she could take her mask off, she hates them and the staff have to wear them in the staff room!
Told her her health more important and it’s a scam, she agreed although maybe out politeness, did say zero staff been off with ‘it’.
Not aware of risk assessment, told her employer has responsibility to ensure her safety. Urged her to speak to manager, she will.
Told her to keep safe and healthy, nice to see a smiley face.
Fucking zombies everywhere.
“Low quality politicians love to ramp up the hysteria of a crisis. The drama gives their lives meaning: they are here to save us all, and lead the people to safety. They exploit fear to boost their squalid egos.” – Luke Johnson
Regarding Layla Moran, MP for Oxford and lockdown enthusiast, Luke has this to say:
“It is astonishing that a city with so many brilliant residents has elected such a low calibre MP. The quality of public servants in Britain has surely never been lower.”
I’ve always loathed Luke Johnson since he appeared on ‘Back to the Floor’, a fly on the wall where he was supposed to be improving his business from the shop floor but demonstrated nothing but contempt for the staff. I’m slowly warming to him now. Times are way more than Strange.
Yes. People on the hedgehog-helper forum have a sad tendency to get excited about hoggy masks!
Brilliant!
Devi Sridhar has deleted all her twitter posts prior to August.
1. It shows us what fibre she is made from.
2. Don’t be afraid to capture comments that strike you as criminal or professionally unbalanced. In time those comments may be needed.
Any idea why? Is she changing her tune?
I suspect she is afraid they may be used as evidence against her.
That would seem a likely attempt to cover something up. Shame that nothing is ever really gone……
Non that I know of. It has been pleasing to see her connections and contrary arguments to hers being directly put to her. She is fragile for one who has a say in the control of nations. Blocks and does not answer any questions.
I would expect the other reasonable suggestions by LS commentors are near the mark. Something to hide or too much vulnerability exposed.
Off-topic but why would Kamala Harris say this:
http://82.221.129.208/220milliondied.mp4
220 million Americans dead in the past 7 months? What planet she on?
Or has she been reading the Deagel Report again as this, by another of those massing coincidences, is what they claim is going to happen before 2025.
I have no idea who she is, but clearly not inhabiting the same reality as the rest of us.
She will, most likely, be the US President within the next few years.
That sort of “mistake” is criminal.
I have absolutely no idea, but just that short clip isn’t saying very much. The population of the United States is about 330 million, so that figure is 2/3.
She might be “covering” for Biden who is often alleged to be suffering from dementia and often comes out with absurd figures.
But that is the United States anyway. I live in the United Kingdom. Different country.
What is the Deagel report? More conspiracy bullshit?
I would recommend listening to Dr Mike Yeadon who has recently been interviewed at length by James Delingpole. I put a link to it here last night. It would be a far better use of your time.
You say “What is the Deagel report? More conspiracy bullshit?”
Possibly, maybe, quite possibly.
But it’s been around for years starting as something to do with arms and military stuff then they started doing population estimates about 10 or so years ago for 2025 if I remember rightly.
This lot say it’s for real:
https://prepareforchange.net/2020/03/31/the-new-world-order-plans-for-depopulation-murder-rates-in-the-forthcoming-planned-global-genocide-2018-2025/
Others disagree and say it’s bullshit so make your own mind up.
My question was why did she say this not about conspiracy theories or otherwise?
Does she really believe 220 million dead in the USA in the past 7 months?
If so she’s madder than Biden and Trump put together.
If you aren’t becoming a conspiracy theorist by now, then you just haven’t been paying attention and Dr Mike Yeadon, clever as he is, is not going to cut it. Nice try though.
Even if she added a zero by mistake, or a 2, they are still numbers that only a person who has no grasp of numbers at all can mention.
Isn’t it more like 220,000?
You prefer Trump or Biden?
I have a feeling Joe expressed that number as well. Not quite yet biting the hand that feeds her (political ambition).
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/10/22/coronavirus-second-wave-europe-is-affected-differently-heres-why.html
JP Morgan thinks it knows why Germany and Italy seem to be fairing better than other countries. Of course, it’s all down to mask wearing and track and trace! They could not be more wrong. Idiots!
Does anyone know what happened to the Danish muzzle research? I really hope that get released and set these lunatics straight.
Italy fairing better? In what way?
I have yet to see anyone explain to me in Ladybird book terms how Track & Trace can “work”
It cannot work once a virus is endemic in the population.It only has a brief time that it could feasibly work at the start of a epidemic.Other than that a colossal waste of time and money
It’s very useful, as it stokes up panic and hysteria, especially among those poor demented souls who thought it was a good idea to download the control app.
Regarding the Danish mask study: There’s a controversy brewing over academic journals including the Lancet having refused to publish the results … whatever they are. The authors have started to speak up. I’ll try to find a link.
EDIT: here you go
https://twitter.com/henrik_ullum/status/1319157496720785410
Dear Drakeford.
Is lettuce essential?
Thank you.
For rabbits yes
I’m hoping he’ll go into hibernation soon.
His cognitive facilities already have.
Radio 4 turned itself into a seedy Soho porn shop specializing in coronophilia.
Main news and Today lying about how many more people are getting horribly ill and dying.
Desert Island Disks had to bring up and Womans Hour is all about Long Covid For Women.
Thank goodness Pop Quiz is on in a minute.
popmaster is the only thing i listen to on BBC now ..
I was gonna post something about WOman’s hour today and their Long Covid journey of discovery. Utter Utter Bollocks.
Try Radio Three – a covid-free zone and fabulous music to nourish the soul. Go on, you might like it!
Not quite covid-free, but by far the best of the BBC bunch.
You’re right on both counts. News bulletins still intrude, and requests sometimes mention the need for quality sonic distraction.
absolute radio
Alarming rise in stillbirths during coronavirus pandemic emerges as new figures suggest the number has QUADRUPLED at just one London hospital (16/7/20)
https://twitter.com/LeahButlerSmith/status/1319395365670576128
Their granny’s are OK though are they?
Not now they’re not grannies they’re not . God – the sick bastards.
Thanks for the link Victoria. This has really pissed me off even more than I was already. It appears that neo natal death also went up during the period. It’s something this country has a terrible record in.
Just received a letter from ONS “Play your part in shaping the future of the UK” / “On Her Majesty’s Service” – seems to be addressed to “The Resident”
I will cross out the address and add “Does not live at this address, return to sender” then post it back to them I suppose
This houshold received those invites one or two months ago – which were ignored. If UK Government is conducting continuous analysis of the public mood, best that it’s left guessing.
Ok, well just in case they’re reading, this is the current mood I’m in expressed in a you tube video…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BSJcXPCxlzI
Ha, I got one from Sky addressed to “The TV Lover”, did the same
I dared to look at the C dashboard yday.
ONS testing has jumped from 1000 tests to 14.000.
Either they were super successful recruiting, or they have accumulated tests from several months.
“Unsolicited junk mail”
I cancelled my Telegraph sub a couple of weeks ago.
A moderator actually admitted to me that rather than deleting my post for a naughty (but coded) word I’d used they had set the likes to zero. I thought it was strange because I was making a good point and I usually get good votes.
I put it to him/her that if word got around that they have the ability to adjust votes to their liking they’d lose a lot of subscribers overnight.
That awful rag the ‘Guardian’ have been doing that for years.
I’ve seen that happen often. Glad you pointed out the backlash effect!
The moderators don’t just fiddle with the ratings they also fiddle with the names of posters.
One article with comments was from a link that I had followed from here and the moderation was utterly bizarre: The initiator of a fairly large thread has posted as, say, “John Smith”. Replies were @John. Nothing strange there, but when I went back 24 hours later to see what other comments had been posted, I noticed that “John Smith” had become “Paul Jones” but replies still said @John. But along with that moderators had deleted mid-thread replies rather then deleting the whole sub-thread so much so that the entire section o longer made any sense.
77th swapping shifts?
There’s a song for this situation
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OBwf2r1SQkU
Here a little game for you – peruse the 200+ comments on this article from Wales Online, and see if you can spot a single comment that’s not derogatory of Drakeford and his commie mutant traitor cabal.
https://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/wales-news/supermarkets-wales-only-able-sell-19150886#comments-section
Prize for most comments in favour of Commissar Cherepakha = supermarket sweep in Lidl, Rhyl – essential items only.
I’ve so far only counted two.
Wow. Breathtakingly bonkers reasoning. They really are on a different planet!
I’ve also had the pleasure of discovering among the comments a great new nickname for Drakeford: Uncle Dickfraud
Some favourites please, I can’t access comments at local newspaper sites from Android.
I’ll give you a random sample of three (I’m supposed to be working…)
The assembly needs to be disbanded. Project fear is destroying our country and these people are letting it happen. Healthy people under house arrest is abhorrent given the number that died fighting for out freedom in the last two world wars.
Drakeford would rather invest in a chocolate tea pot company than essential infrastructure. In his own mind he must genuinely believe he is good for wales and everyone in his bubble feel the same the welsh government is very insular it’s just the culture and unlikely to change I’m not sure if another welsh speaker from west wales representing Conservative party will Change the culture of the welsh government
this is illegal! this is going far and beyond just lockdown to control a virus, this is taking away civil liberties, i didn’t realise when I woke up this morning I had been moved to North Korea!! It is bad enough that Dopey Drakeford and his left wing terrorists are taking away our human rights by shutting us down considering our R number is well below that of England and Scotland. This is the real problem… Read more »
Thank you Mr Dee
Hahaha! Didn’t spot that North Korea one. Brill!
These same types of comments are appearing in articles around the world. The tide turned months back and is now rushing in. The biggest concern now is how many of the lunatics in charge, will cause even more damage trying to save their own skin as they go down?
Creating lockdown by misusing data from testing sewage to prolong the life of their foul little scam
But the Facebook page of Walesonline says the opposite – widespread disapproval. It’s like US media ignoring Hunter Biden’s laptop from hell and Creepy Joe’s billion dollars from China.
Must be censorbots.
Anyway, 6pm tonight I’m going to buy myself a t-shirt from Sainsburies in Wrexham.
Drakeford is a communist. He’s waited his whole 66 years for his wet dream to come true.
Said a woman who just locked down Northern Ireland
The Offy on the High Street in Whitstable is a fabulously mask free zone. It actually has a statement about exemptions on the counter. I congratulated the unmasked owner on his policy. Elsewhere, Whitstable is every bit as dreadful as I expected it to be but then it always is.
Speaker intervenes in Simon Dolan’s legal fight against lockdown (22/10/20)
https://bdaily.co.uk/articles/2020/10/22/speaker-intervenes-in-simon-dolans-legal-fight-against-lockdown
Hoyle has stated that, if that happened, it would “amount to an attack on the ability of each House of Parliament to determine when and how to exercise its functions in scrutinising legislation, subject to the time limits imposed by statutory provisions.”
The hypocrisy in that statement is astounding!
The cult is owned. Billionaires have very deep pockets.
Basically – an attack on the rule of law, which should act as a counterweight to parliament acting unreasonably and/or ultra vires.
Of course, executives hate checks and balances – but we now have the legislative assembly conspiring with the executive in this tawdry game.
The consequences are dire, since the media (the third ‘pillar’) no longer functions critically, but has been captured by the establishment. If the judiciary concedes the game – then we explicitly have constitutional totalitarianism without any pretense at balance. This is even more frightening when even the opposition within the HoC has already been captured by the same establishment interests.
John Bercow has been criticized here – but, whatever else, he wasn’t a shill of the executive.
Dark days.
What f’ing scrutiny- isn’t that the point?
He’s concerned about something enshrined in Article 9 of the Bill of Rights 1689, while ignoring the Magna Carta…..nice one Lyndsay, prick.
Very relevant then
I had high hopes of Mr Hoyle but he is now acting against someone trying to help Parliament reassert its authority.
Probably been got at or bought.
I despaired yesterday, whilst catching up with Talk Radio interviews, at the utter ill-informed garbage being spouted by MPs on both sides of the HoC. The only thing that was impressive was their ignorance, given that their role is to be informed participants in the complexities thrown up by the legislative process.
When someone talks about the ‘success’ of lock-ups, you know there are in the same class of intelligence as a dog turd on the pavement, given all that has been learned since April I’d rather not encounter either – but at least the dog turd serves a natural function, even if in the wrong place.
But what struck me is that the argument (if you can call it that) focuses on whether lock-ups ‘work’ in that narrow sense.
What seems still to receive too little attention in discussion, it seems to me, is that key factor of the associated costs – the health and social penalties that we are all facing. These disastrous consequences need to be brought to the fore much more often in stating the ‘anti-‘ case, pinning responsibility for all the death and destruction that is being wrought by the manic focus on the virus.… Read more »
I agree. We’ve done the data to disprove the narrative and it makes no difference so I think the only way to change minds is to constantly reiterate the human costs of lockdown. We have to fight the emotion of fear with other emotions, data isn’t working.
That’s right, Achilles. There’s a need to fight fire with fire. The Goebbels Brigade of SPI-B have deliberately ramped up fear of a moderate viral episode as an explicit psy-ops tool. The counter is to turn that around by ramping up the realistic balancing fear about the effects of these measures, from your greater chances of dying of cancer, developing mental health problems, dying from an undiagnosed heart attack etc. – as well as the linked social and economic consequences of having no job to support yourself – and the child abuse perpetrated by mask wearing.
It needs thinking through in a coherent, focused way, soi that the Fear factor turns arouind and bites the originator.
But don’t say it … we have the massive disadvantage of not having the subservient media at out beck and call.
As an adjunct to this, I think that it’s important to lay off various ‘theories’ and other partisan views that will just dilute the message with a stable full of hobby-horses. Forget the Great Reset, Climate Change, Wokeness etc. – leave all that for another day and another setting. Just concentrate on the data and the real death and destruction.
Focus
I love my local service station.
Seeing me enter unmasked to pay for petrol, the guy who runs it apologised when I couldn’t hear what he was saying, ripped his own mask off, and we proceeded to chat about how useless masks were and how we were living in a clown world – in front of the other customers…
I’ve taken to walking around Tesco with my daughter in one of those front-facing baby carrier things with no mask (her head is not far from mine – and as I’m caring for someone who is mask exempt, I can legally do this).
Because talking to your baby is good for their development, I keep telling her things like “It’s OK darling, all of these masked zombies will come to their senses and realise they’ve been conned sooner or later – yes they will! They will won’t they darling?!” – that sort of thing.
People are much less confrontational if you have a cute baby strapped to you. You can get away with way more subversive insults 🙂
I also make sure to take her to the checkout of the only brave checkout girl in the shop who is maskless. “Look darling, that girl has a beautiful smile” – you get the idea.
…. in the North East and Yorkshire almost one in 10, 1,531, patients were in hospital with the virus.
Are they trying to say that there are only 15,310 hospital beds in the whole of Yorkshire and the North East?
Or does it mean those are the only available beds in that enormous region?
Or am I missing something?
Whichever, the DT Live has backslid disgracefully with this scaremongering article that’s worthy of the Grad and the Beeb!
Proves the Truth was getting through the cracks this week. This is war and we need to push back with the Truth.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/global-health/science-and-disease/coronavirus-news-covid-uk-lockdown-tier-3-cases-deaths-vaccine/
The “absolutely terrifying” impact of coronavirus admissions on Northern hospitals has been revealed, after leaked NHS data reportedly shows more than 6,000 patients are being treated across England.
As of Thursday, almost 6,100 patients were in hospital with Covid-19 across the country, 4,670 were receiving oxygen and 563 were on ventilators, according to the data.
But the impact on hospitals in the North was even more stark, with more than a quarter of Liverpool University Hospital Trust beds occupied by Covid-19 patients.
In Lancashire and South Cumbria, one in seven hospital beds were occupied by people suffering from coronavirus,… Read more »
They also appear to have missed out the crucial data on whether these are normal figures for respiratory admissions for this time of year. Funny that.
Anything to stoke up the fear. Was speaking to a friend on the phone yesterday, he is one of the ones in compulsory self isolation earlier in the year due to health issues. When I pointed out that flu and pneumonia deaths have been strangely very low this year he said: ‘Of course many of us have been very careful this year which may explain why there has not been much flu’. Seriously couldn’t see that all those flu sufferers have been painted with the Covid brush.
Also, why do people think “being careful” has eliminated flu, but covid is still (supposedly) spreading like wildfire?
So sad.
They’re still not telling us if these test positive patients are actually symptomatic and being treated for covid, or are in hospital for something else entirely.
“4,670 were receiving oxygen”
Patients receive oxygen as a matter of course in a number of situations – not least following an operation.
Doh!
All those folks on here always writing to their MPs – how’s that going for you?
Action to end the interminable unlawful lockdown
We are trying – and i copy all mine to Sir Des now
I’ve just been using WriteToThem to send my MP (the thickest woman in parliament) historical facts about what happened at the Nuremberg trials.
I don’t expect a reply because I’m not sure she can read.
If you “write” to Nadine again, use pictures.
I send mine graphs – with accompanying awkward questions.
It’s going great, thanks. She knows she is being scrutinised.
Mine too. He turned up trumps yesterday when he was one of the five decent Tories who voted for school dinners.
Astonishing that there is such belief in and energetic discussion of the casedemic when “Covid-19” was hospital population left to die all at the same time, dressed up to look like one disease. If they can do that and get away with it, they can invent case numbers.
Covid-19 in a nutshell
David Kurten –
Say no to testing.
Refuse track and trace.
Meet your friends.
Go where you want.
Use cash.
Support small businesses.
Be flu & Covid vax-free.
Boost your immune system with vitamins.
Show your face.
Smile!
#FightBackBetter
https://twitter.com/davidkurten/status/1319289596950114311?s=20
I have a lot of respect for David Kurtan
And I would add, deny the system wealth, legitimacy, and access.
Action to end the interminable unlawful lockdown
BTW Basics Did you know that David K has joined the Extra Parliamentary International Corona Inquiry ACU 2020.org…Good man!
The dictatorship tells the population that a large group in the population are trying to kill them
These people are not to be trusted, they are selfish and will kill their children and grannies if they get the chance
Herein lies the route to genocide
This is like pre genocide Rwanda
This dictator is sowing the seeds of genocide and he knows exactly what he is doing
It’s always just two or three steps away…
Yesterday MPs passed a law by 333 to 1 to let police use reasonable force to detain and lock up people for not isolating.
https://twitter.com/simondolan/status/1319539229249146880
How are they allowed to march on with this? I can hear the jackboots. It is terrifying.
Already in place from the 1984 Health Act and the Coronavirus Act.
Absolutely disgusting that all the ayes were Tory b’stards and all the Labour b’stards abstained.
So much for being our representatives!
We should have been watching Australia more closely…What Chairman Dan has been doing over there is what we will get once nature starts its annual winter cull of the elderly and infirm.
I hope everyone is watching for the switch back from ‘cases’ to ‘deaths’ in the media….I’m guessing end of November-Early December.
They WILL do this. Back to the daily covid body count soon.
There is a big footy final this weekend. Whilst he has relaxed the rules for households there will be no mixing. Drones and police helicopters out to catch miscreants. I kid you not.
I am sorry to say the Isle of Man has been doing this for months, with nary a peep from anyone here.
Sir Charles Walker MP was the 1
Oh no.
Video banned by YouTube but now on BrandNewTube and others
The Great Reset of Great Divide? (Intro then Rob start talking at 2.46m)
https://brandnewtube.com/watch/the-great-reset-or-great-divide_eShB3dwecfWtEkK.html
Vitamin D – what governments are and aren’t telling us
See video or read video transcript
doses recommended by Governments are not enough
https://www.anhinternational.org/news/vitamin-d-what-governments-are-and-arent-telling-us
“ informed of how to use the vitamin optimally.”
Miracles usually aren’t (relatively few of those expensive ‘supplements’ on chemists’ shelves have credibility)- but it does seem that Vitamin D is indeed a useful supplement (along with Zinc).
Bur one caution – it can be related to kidney stones if the individual has a propensity for them.
Hence the K2.
Always take high dose vitamin D3 with Magnesium and vitamin K2 as it helps to get the calcium from the blood into the bones and teeth (not in the cells).
https://vitamindwiki.com/Overview+Kidney+Stones+and+vitamin+D
And take your K2 at a different time from the D3.