Day: 25 October 2020

James Delingpole The leader of the Anti-Mask Resistance "It's rude to stare!", most of us were told as kids. Just how rude you only realise when you're sitting in a near empty train carriage, minding your own business, when a man in a face mask gets on, takes his seat, swivels in your direction and fixes you with a long, long, cold, hard, death look. Culturally we're all so unused to this kind of behaviour that it comes as quite a shock to be on the receiving end. It's also a bit confusing – like being subjected to physical assault but only in the form of mime. That's why my immediate response was to mime back disbelievingly, mouthing and gesticulating the message: "Are you staring at me?" "Yes I am staring at you. You're not wearing a mask. Everyone else is wearing a mask. But not you. Why aren't you wearing a mask? I don't want to wear a mask either but I'm wearing a mask because we've all been told to," he shouted – or rather mumble-yelled from being his mouth-muffler. My biggest regret about this whole incident was my failure to put him in his place more crushingly and goadingly. But it's very hard to keep a cool, rational, calculating head when you're under attack. Even if the ...

NHS Refused to Treat Elderly Patients During Lockdown A Sunday Times Insight investigation has revealed the extent to which the elderly were neglected by the NHS during the full lockdown. As part of a three-month investigation into the Government’s handling of the crisis during the lockdown weeks, we have spoken to more than 50 witnesses, including doctors, paramedics, bereaved families, charities, care home workers, politicians and advisers to the government. Our inquiries have unearthed new documents and previously unpublished hospital data. Together, they show what happened while most of the country stayed at home.There were 59,000 extra deaths in England and Wales compared with previous years during the first six months of the pandemic. This consisted of 26,000 excess fatalities in care homes and another 25,000 in people’s own homes.Surprisingly, only 8,000 of those excess deaths were in hospital, even though 30,000 people died from the virus on the wards. This shows that many deaths that would normally have taken place in hospital had been displaced to people’s homes and the care homes.This huge increase of deaths outside hospitals was a mixture of coronavirus cases – many of whom were never tested – and people who were not given treatment for other conditions that they would have had access to in normal times. Ambulance and admission teams were told to ...