Month: October 2020

by Dr Janie Axelrad Neil Ferguson predicted 50,000 deaths from Mad Cow Disease. The actual number was 178. Thirty years ago the U.K. was gripped by another terrifying health crisis – BSE (Mad Cow Disease). The suggestion that one teaspoon of beef from an infected cow could pass the disease to humans as CJD (Creutzfeldt-Jacob Disease), a neurodegenerative disease with no cure, caused mass hysteria both in the media and then the general public. We were all doomed. Both the BSE crisis and the COVID-19 pandemic needed a group of experts. For the BSE crisis, epidemiologists, computer modellers, microbiologists and others were assembled on the committee known as SEAC (the Spongiform Encephalopathy Advisory Committee). For the COVID-19 pandemic, a similar but larger committee, SAGE, was assembled for the task. Both committees suggested huge numbers of deaths would occur in the absence of intervention. With COVID-19, the estimate by the computer modelling team at Imperial College London was 500,000 deaths, whereas for BSE/CJD the figure was up to 50,000 deaths. Both sets of predictions led to a media-fuelled frenzy and spurred the sitting Governments into action. Once the ‘experts’ outlined the scientific narrative, the next step in each crisis involved sensationalisation. With BSE the news was filled with images of staggering cows, and soon with young people dying with similar symptoms. ...

by Thucydides I see you have already received a lot of postcards from around the world, but none yet from the country with the longest and most irrational quarantine on the planet! So, allow me to fill in some of the gap (be warned, this gets long). I am a professor in an area of the social sciences (non-woke) related to international politics, and also do some policy analysis for a private institution. Although I miss meeting my students (online classes are in no way a replacement for in-person interaction), I am lucky that my work was not interrupted by the lockdown, my financial position is secure enough that I am well prepared to ride this out. But millions of people are not. South America being so far from the initial outbreaks, we had the benefit of seeing the pandemic unfold earlier almost everywhere else, but it did not do us much good. The images from northern Italy made a strong impression here, since so many people here are descended from Italian immigrants and our cultures have much in common. So, in late March, the Government decided to lock down hard, with the well known argument of flattening the infection curve to allow our inadequate third-world health system to cope with the expected influx of patients. A newly-installed Government facing ...

NHS Test and Trace Whistleblower: "It's a Complete Shit Show." "Is this Humpty Dumpty? We've been given your name by someone who tested positive for COVID-19. DO NOT FALL OFF THAT WALL. YOU MUST REMAIN ON THAT WALL FOR 14 DAYS." I've been contacted by a track-and-tracer who works for one of Serco's sub-contractors. She's a Tier 3 tracer (nothing to do with lockdown 'Tiers'), which means her job is to call people who've been named as contacts by confirmed cases and advise them to self-isolate for 14 days. Sounds straightforward, right? Wrong. I'll let her take up the story. One of the most significant problems is the level of calls people are getting. People regularly say they feel harassed and bullied by us. I often call someone who says that they have just put the phone down on another contract tracer and while I’m on the line more calls are coming in.I’ll give some examples to explain why this happens.Tier 2 call handlers are tasked with speaking to someone when they test positive to take the details of everyone they've been in contact with two days prior to the onset of their symptoms, up to the time they began their 10-day isolation.Tier 3 operatives (me) then call all these contacts to tell them to isolate for 14 days.BUT this ...

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 ...

Guy de la Bédoyère Sitting on a beach on the north coast of Rhodes in the last week of October, the sight is enough to warm the cockles of a British airport manager’s heart. One Boeing 737 and Airbus A320 series machine after another joins the circuit to come down at the airport. Every one of them is carrying a couple of hundred more willing punters and representing money and jobs for the local economy. And meanwhile what’s happening in Britain? One glance at the news and I learn that Mark Drakeford has thrown Wales back hundreds of years into half-demented medieval superstition. Totally unable to concede to himself and anyone else the basic reality that coronaviruses are beyond the wit of man to do any more than inhibit, he has decided the best thing to do is lead the pack in the race to the bottom of economic destruction in the crazed belief that finally COVID-19 will get the message that he means to destroy it with futile gestures. While the Welsh wrap up microwaves and socks in supermarkets to stop anyone buying them, the citizens of Rhodes are operating more or less normally. Mind you, we didn’t get here without some trouble. Both the British and Greek governments are subscribing to the ‘we’re not here to enjoy ourselves’ ...

Gyms Are Essential Services A group of 100 gym owners from across Wales have got together to tell the Welsh Government that it is wrong and harmful to shut gyms during the so-called "fire break" lockdown. They told Lockdown Sceptics: As of 18.00 Friday we enter a 17 day “fire break” period where all but non-essential businesses will close across the entire country.As a collective, we strongly believe that gyms are an essential service, and scientific evidence shows that active participation in exercise through establishments such as gyms relieves the strain on the NHS through the promotion of physical and mental wellbeing.  In forcing the closure of gyms, the Welsh Government will be harming a large proportion of the Welsh population and we cannot stand by and allow that to happen.Just as the Liverpudlian gym community fought (and won) against gym closures in its city, we are now going to do the same for our country. However, we want to take it a step further in getting gyms officially recognised as an essential service by the Government, as they have in other countries across Europe.– According to ukactive, there were 22 million gym visits in England between July 25th and September 13th and they resulted in just 78 confirmed Covid cases– The number of cases per 100,000 gym visits in ...

Medical Journals Refuse To Publish Landmark Danish Mask Study Three leading medical journals have refused to publish the results of the first major scientific investigation into the effects of wearing masks on the spread of COVID-19. The authors of the long-awaited "gold-standard" randomised controlled trial have admitted their findings are "controversial" and are keeping them secret until their paper has been peer-reviewed and published. The Danish newspaper Berlingske has the details. Professor: Large Danish mask study rejected by three top journalsThe researchers behind a large and unique Danish study on the effect of wearing a mask are having great difficulty in getting their research results published. One of the participating professors in the study admits that the still secret research result could be perceived as 'controversial'.For weeks, the media and researchers around the world have been waiting with increasing impatience for the publication of a large Danish study on the effect – or lack thereof – of wearing a mask in a public space during the corona pandemic.Now one of the researchers who has been involved in the study has said that the finished research result has been rejected by at least three of the world's leading medical journals.These include the Lancet, the New England Journal of Medicine and the American Medical Association's journal JAMA."They all said no," says the Chief Physician in ...

As a lockdown-sceptical teacher of Philosophy, I tell my students daily that I am currently seeking what I call a ‘Greta in reverse’: a youthful person, ideally of innocent and appealing countenance, who would be willing to face the media and to lead a student strike not against school, but rather demanding the right to be educated, in school, maskless, and face to face, should a second corona-related closure of our educational establishments be proposed.    Since, however, I was never wildly enamoured of the original Greta, who seemed to me strong in irate accusation but depressingly weak in argument and positive proposals, I am aware that my alternative activist – let’s call her Gerta – will need, in the interim, to hone her intellect so that she is armed against the arguments that will be advanced against her.  And if her studies in Philosophy are to serve any practical purpose, it must surely be their aim so to equip her.  Examples are the life-blood of Philosophy, and the silver lining to the dark cloud of lockdown, from my perspective, has been that it has offered a wealth of instances of dire logic and related philosophical failings, from which teacher and student alike may learn and profit. For the benefit of fellow teachers; for any parents who may be nurturing potential ...

by Molly Kingsley What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans and the homeless, whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or in the holy name of liberty or democracy?Mahatma Gandhi An email received a few days ago into the UsforThem inbox reads thus: I wanted to inform you that my son’s secondary school is stating that after the October half term any child who is exempt must wear a lanyard in future to show they are exempt. The school up until recently was a mask choice school, but now has become masks in all moving spaces to be worn by all. Kinds regards, A Concerned Parent Sadly, there is nothing exceptional about this email. I’ve quoted it precisely because it’s representative of hundreds of messages we’ve received. The details vary, but the gist doesn’t: schools, often not in areas of high viral prevalence, requiring masks in situations over and above those recommended by the Department for Education (DfE). Masks in classrooms, masks for parents at pick-up and drop-off, masks for teachers and staff – including teachers of nursery age children and those with special needs. Proof of exemption required and exempt children made to wear identifying lanyards highlighting their status. The situation in schools is reflective of that in the country at large – ...