Lockdown 3.0 Set to Continue to Summer 2021
Despite all the vaccine optimism and the promise of a relaxation of the rules over Christmas, the dreadful financial forecasts by the OBR yesterday came with some underlying assumptions that appear to foresee restrictions continuing until summer 2021. Guido Fawkes has done the digging.
The Chancellor, in his statement today, used the forecasts from the OBR’s “central scenario” when it comes to Covid complications. So Guido took a look at those underlying assumptions. The OBR assumes, presumably with good reason given how closely it works with the Treasury, widespread deployment of a vaccine by the middle of 2021, not by the Spring, with a high to medium level of restrictions until then. The differences in implied borrowing, growth, and scarring are stark.
The “upside” scenario the Government is clearly not confident of taking place, involves restrictions “broadly equivalent” to October 2020’s tiers 1 and 2. The Government’s modelled upside is the previous tiered system. Meanwhile the “central scenario” expects the whole country to be between tiers 2 and 3 right through until “mid 2021“. No household mixing until June…
As Boris stated earlier this week, his post-lockdown plan is for a “new, stronger and more sustainable tiers framework on December 2nd”, styled as “tougher than in October” – reinforcing the Government’s view that we will find ourselves in the OBR’s “central scenario” where things “may vary regionally and temporally”, however are still predominantly repressive, until the start of summer. Guido can only hope the forecasters are once again wrong.
Read it here.
Hospitals Still Not Protecting Patients From Covid
Professor Carl Heneghan from the Oxford Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine has warned that UK hospitals are still failing to prevent the spread of the virus among patients. It comes after outbreaks in cancer wards in Edinburgh’s Western General and Glasgow’s Queen Elizabeth University Hospital left a number of patients dead. The Scottish Sun has the story.
The Oxford University expert spoke out as he said levels of ward-acquired infections in Scotland during the ongoing second wave were a “really serious issue”.
It came as it emerged planned ops, including cancer surgery, have had to be axed in Greater Glasgow and Clyde due to pandemic pressures – and more than 100,000 Scots are waiting on key diagnostic tests.
Prof Heneghan said: “Community admissions are coming down but we are seeing this ongoing problem of hospital- acquired infections. It is a big issue now, as it was in the first wave. Staff are becoming infected and then go back and forward between areas in hospitals. We urgently need to get on top. It’s particularly important as we go into winter, where we’ll have Covid hospital-acquired infections, and potentially other infections like respiratory syncytial virus and influenza in hospitals.
“Where we’ve seen problems, it’s often mixing non-Covid patients and Covid patients, and staff taking the virus between areas. What we need is completely separate entrances, separate staff working on these wards, and the staff need to be quarantined when they’ve been working. No mixing. The PPE reduces your risk but not to zero. The more times you see patients who are symptomatic, the more you are at risk.”
Prof Heneghan said old-style community hospitals – many of which have shut – could have been used for Covid patients to stop disruption at larger health facilities.
He added: “If we look to places like Germany, they have nearly three times as many beds as we’ve got, and they have many more smaller facilities in the community. That allows Covid patients to be put in those facilities and centralised hospitals to keep running.”
In a nod to the Louisa Jordan field hospital at Glasgow’s SEC campus – which hasn’t treated any Covid patients – he said: “If it was a problem to use Nightingale hospitals or staff them, why procure and pay for them when you could have been thinking about smaller facilities to separate patients?”
The newspaper notes that the number of patients catching Covid in Scottish hospitals doubled in a week during October to 189 as the virus spread to non-Covid wards.
How tragic that we have spent so much money and imposed so many restrictions on the healthy in experimental and often vain efforts to contain this virus, yet have failed to take the basic steps necessary to protect the vulnerable, such as keeping infectious patients separate from other vulnerable patients.
Worth reading in full.
Oxford Vaccine Red Flags
Hilda Bastian in Wired has looked in detail at the AstraZeneca trial and is extremely unimpressed, arguing the vaccine “isn’t up to snuff”.
Presumably, neither of the two trials from which they combined data could have provided a clear answer on the vaccine’s efficacy on its own. To make things worse, Oxford-AstraZeneca reported only the results for certain subgroups of people within each one. (For perspective on this: The two subgroups chosen leave out perhaps half the people in the Brazilian trial.) Meanwhile, one of their key claims is that giving half a dose of the vaccine on the first injection, followed by a standard dose on the second one, led to better outcomes – but neither of these trials had been designed to test this hypothesis. In fact, it’s since emerged that the half-dose/full-dose option started out as a mistake, and one that was only caught when some people in the study didn’t have the usual high rate of adverse effects.
The problems are legion.
There are other problems, too. In the press release, Oxford-AstraZeneca reports that two of the dosing regimens “demonstrated efficacy.” Presumably, none of the others did, but they didn’t give specifics. Of the only two regimens they reported, one (the mistaken first half-dose, followed by a full dose at least a month later) came in at 90%, and the other (two standard doses at least a month apart) achieved only 62% efficacy. You’ll see reports that the vaccine had 70% efficacy, on average; but that’s un-knowable, because we only have numbers on these two regimens, as opposed to everyone in the trials – and how they arrived at those percentages isn’t explained. As far as we know, some of this analysis could hinge on data from just a few sick people. That means the findings could be a coincidence, or they could be biased by other factors. For example, it has since been revealed that the people who received an initial half-dose – and for whom the vaccine was said to have 90% efficacy – included no one over the age of 55. That was not the case for the standard-dosing group, however, where the reported efficacy was 62%. This demographic difference could be more important than the change to the size of the first dose.
That’s not the end of the problems. Overall, the Oxford-AstraZeneca trials appear to include relatively few participants over the age of 55, even though this group is especially vulnerable to COVID-19. (People over 55 were not originally eligible to join the Brazilian trial at all.) Compare that to BNT-Pfizer’s trial, where 41% of the volunteers were over 55. The Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine also seems to produce relatively high rates of adverse events. If you want to dig further into this vaccine’s story and issues, I’ve laid out a more detailed rundown of the Oxford-AstraZeneca trials and sources here.
The Oxford vaccine is a more traditional type of vaccine so the lower efficacy and stronger side-effects are more in line with what was originally expected. The concerns do call into question though how political any UK decision to approve the vaccine will be, as well as how many will agree to have it and how far the Government will deem it sufficiently protective to bring the emergency to a close. The Pfizer and Moderna RNA vaccines appear to be more effective (if more expensive and logistically challenging), but we don’t yet know for how long or if they will prevent serious illness or transmission. There are also questions of long-term safety.
Even if a vaccine does enable this crisis to come to an end in the next six months, there is still the problem of what happens next time. We can’t go through this every time a new flu-like pandemic gets going.
Stop Press: A new peer-reviewed article has appeared in Annals of Internal Medicine, “Ethical and Scientific Considerations Regarding the Early Approval and Deployment of a COVID-19 Vaccine“, questioning the ethical basis of the current Covid vaccine trials. Is this the kind of anti-vaxx messaging that Keir Starmer wants banned?
FIVE Places That Prove Lockdowns Aren’t Needed
The foundational myth of 2020’s dangerous new cult of lockdownism is that without severe restrictions on the freedom and movement of the general population COVID-19 will afflict and kill hundreds of thousands of people. That is the only claim that could plausibly justify such extreme infringements of our liberty with all the extraordinary costs and harms that come with them. Disturbingly, its sole basis appears to be a belief in the epidemiological modelling by Imperial College and others which purports to show that this calamity is likely, or at least a reasonable worst case scenario.
Many have pointed out that the Government’s own surveys show that the UK R rate fell below 1 before the recent national lockdown, though this hasn’t stopped the Government claiming it was the lockdown wot done it.
This is far from the only evidence that lockdowns are not necessary for COVID-19 epidemics to slow and decline. Below are the latest graphs from Worldometer for five places (two countries and three US states) which have not imposed a lockdown or many restrictions at all on a national, state or local level this autumn. While most of them have seen a busy autumn in intensive care, hospitals have not been overwhelmed and are operating within normal seasonal bounds. In all of them the epidemic is now (in terms of positive test results) either in decline or plateauing.
Assuming these slowing and declining trends continue, these data will become solid proof that lockdowns and other extreme restrictions on the general population are not necessary to “control” COVID-19 outbreaks, even in winter, and therefore cannot be justified as a matter of proportionate public health policy.
Stop Press: Prof Carl Heneghan has warned that as “cases” plummet, the data the Government will use as the base of its announcement today about which areas will be in which tiers will be out of date by December 2nd.
Scientist Demands Retraction of Original PCR Study
A reader writes with news about a challenge being issued by a Dutch scientist to the original paper which underpins the supposed scientific validity of the Covid PCR test.
Today, Dutch scientist sceptic Pieter Borger has issued a paper to journals for publication demanding retraction of the paper with the origin of our PCR test. The original paper was submitted January 21st, and published January 23rd – the fastest peer review ever! Keep in mind that the virus was only DNA sequenced on January 7th. That paper apparently is the origin of all PCR tests in Europe. Borger says it is dodgy science and should be retracted.
These are his charges from an earlier unofficial publication (translation courtesy of Google translate):
1. Use is made of non-specific primers and probes. This can be established because the letters with which the primer is indicated are not fully stated. This gives the researcher the opportunity to further specify which primer he will eventually use. The researcher may enter the letters left blank himself.
2. The probes must be specific to detect the gene. In the January 2020 article, one probe is said to be specific for the SARS-CoV-2 virus. The other probe is common to SARS-CoV viruses. With the group of scientists I work with, we have determined that in reality those probes are the same. Whether those probes are both specific for SARS-CoV-2 or whether they are both more general for SARS-CoV viruses, I don’t know. This test is bad design for this reason alone.
3. I have explained the importance of a correct primer concentration above. We have found that these concentrations are in many cases four to five times too high.
4. There are six primers in total. We found that the GC content was significantly too low for three primers; the correct GC content should be, as I have explained above, between 40% and 60%. Two of the six primers tested were found to have a GC content of 28% and a 34%. This also means that the PCR test is a bad design.
5. Based on the article from January 2020, I investigated which annealing temperature is used in this PCR test. I have explained to you that within a primer pair the temperature difference may be one or at most two degrees. In this test, the temperature difference in one of the important genes turns out to be about 10 degrees in reality.
I have the impression that RIVM itself has also established that something is wrong here and that this was the reason for RIVM to change the protocol and for that reason removed one gene from the test, namely this gene.
6. Insufficient parts of the virus are detected to determine whether one is indeed dealing with the SARS-CoV-2 virus (corona). I am referring to my imagery from above with regard to the auto parts. With the SARS-CoV-2 virus (corona) it is important to examine the entire RNA strand. Otherwise you will not know whether you are dealing with the whole strand or just some fragments.
7. The coronavirus PCR test has no negative control. The aim is therefore not to rule out the possibility that other coronaviruses have been detected.
8. In the PCR test described in the January 2020 protocol, a number of cycles of 45 is assumed. However, it is not indicated at which number of cycles the test should be read as positive or negative. I would like to point out that at 35 cycles you detect almost no infectious virus anymore. Then you will understand that increasing by more than 35 makes no sense anymore. The test does not indicate when you should start reading and that is a major defect in the test. RIVM first used 30 multiplications as a starting point. You cannot just increase the number of cycles to 35 as the RIVM has done. Then you change the rules during the game. Cycles of between 30 and 35 are also a grey area. Again, after 35 cycles, there is no more infectious virus. This applies to 97% of the cases. This has been scientifically proven.
9. The aforementioned January 2020 publication also shows that the test also gives false positive results. Because the result was negative with retesting. This means that you should always re-test if the test is positive. I do not know if this also happens in practice. I do know, for example, that top athletes in case of a positive test often have themselves re-tested and the test then regularly turns out negative. If I tested positive myself, I would insist that I be retested. If that re-test also turned out positive, I would demand a third test. Only if that third test also turned out positive, then I would like to assume that I have indeed tested positive (aside: that does not mean that I am infected with the virus). Only then will you have reduced the uncertainty about the reliability of the result to minimal proportions.
10. My last but by no means least point of criticism is that the article describing the PCR COVID-19 test is not peer reviewed. Why I think this I have explained above. I find that very bad because the test is used for diagnostics.
He adds: “Incidentally, I also notice that two of the authors of this article are also part of the editorial board. In itself there is nothing wrong with that, but it is an extra reason to be careful with the placement of the article.“
I presume the actual scientific retraction demand, when we see it, will be more precisely formulated.
This seems like an important developing story, that no doubt will be ignored/censored elsewhere.
“China Is Trolling Us”
Lockdown Sceptics regular contributor Dr Clare Craig has written a scathing Twitter thread about the peer-reviewed study in Nature purporting to show that Wuhan had no infectious virus left at all in May. She calls foul on this highly implausible finding, placing the study alongside the earlier ones from China from which came the asymptomatic transmission myth that has been so effective at shutting down Western societies.
China is trolling us with this and Nature should be embarrassed at having published it. It claims 10 million people were tested in the last two weeks of May in Wuhan. That’s over 700k tests a day. I do not believe that – do you? It then claims that not a single Covid case was found, i.e., Covid disease with symptoms capable of spread – weeks after all the drama. I do not believe that – do you? The ultimate trolling is that what they are claiming to report is a 0.003% false positive rate (all their ‘cases’ were asymptomatic, no viral culture and no transmission). I do not even believe that. It is a total fabrication. What’s the point of peer review if it lets something like this into Nature? Scientists have to start looking more critically at the politics. The studies showing asymptomatic spread were almost all Chinese too with non-Chinese studies observing no spread.
Read it here.
A Vivisection of the Idiocy
We are publishing today Part 3 of Dr Roger Hodkinson’s analysis of the Covid lunacy, written back in the summer but published for the first time on Lockdown Sceptics. Find Part 1 here and Part 2 here. From the introduction:
In this Part Three I intend to dismember limb-by-limb virtually every intervention that has been so forcibly foisted on us, using a combination of (largely) common sense and (some) medical knowledge. If my rant seems excessive to sensitive eyes, I urge you to hold your venom until the end, and then compare the utterly indefensible arbitrary measures with the untimely and unnecessary deaths for so many of our loved ones, and the totally unwarranted devastation of the global economy with hundreds of millions (that’s MILLIONS by the way) of people now out of work and facing a highly uncertain future. The manipulated scale of the threat and the inestimable consequences of the so-called ‘control’ measures begs for a vivisection as the beast is still alive. So here it is.
Well worth reading in full.
We hope to publish Part 4 – “The Autopsy” – in a couple of weeks.
Wanted: National Alliance Against Lockdown
Kathy Gyngell, editor of the Conservative Woman, has penned an impassioned plea for some properly financed, concerted opposition to the increasingly totalitarian approach of the Government to the pandemic.
It’s crazy. There are several anti-lockdown groups and many brilliantly outspoken critics of lockdown – scientists, businessmen, lawyers and commentators – out there. They include Lord Sumption, Peter Hitchens, Karol Sikora, Carl Heneghan, Luke Johnson, Toby Young and Simon Dolan, to name but a few.
Add to them the 70 MPs of the Covid Recovery Group, led by Graham Brady, Mark Harper and Steve Baker. And also the millions, some 30% of the public, that successive polls show haven’t been roped into the Save Our NHS lockdown mantras.
Yet despite this evidence of potential dissent, the case against lockdown has had no traction politically – none. Despite the Daily Mail alone of the MSM taking up the cause.
Why? Because beyond following each other on Twitter, publishing and endorsing each other in a new online industry, there’s been no serious or adequately financed, co-ordinated opposition to the Government’s authoritarian diktats. Not that I can see, anyway.
Is it then surprising that however cogent – legally, scientifically and morally – their case is, that these disparate and fragmented groups and individuals have failed to change the conforming mainstream media’s reporting narrative?
Or that, eight months after Britain was turned to the dark side, they’ve failed to prevent a seemingly beleaguered Boris Johnson from entrenching himself in his bunker as the nation’s Big Brother, against whom there is no rising up?
Or, indeed, that we now find ourselves listening to the Prime Minister’s latest and (in true Orwellian style) ever-changing social rules, which he tells us we must endure in the name of this spectral disease through to next October? With every newspaper co-operatively giving its columns over to dutiful explanations of ‘what they mean’ to an already subjugated and compliant public.
Is it surprising that we watch helplessly as Covid-free normality recedes further across the horizon? Or to find that, in this period of restriction, our ‘liberty’ and economic activity is to be conditional on following whatever the latest set of arbitrary rules and/or compliance with vaccination or testing, is chosen for us?
Kathy goes on to outline nine key points that need to be pressed home to policymakers by this hoped-for alliance, including “how the public have been frightened and misled into supporting lockdown in the deliberate fostering of a climate of fear and hysteria” and “how the populist ‘Save our NHS’ Covid priority policy was misjudged and mismanaged, leaving millions of patients untreated and at risk of illness and death from all other conditions and diseases”.
Worth reading in full.
And any public-spirited philanthropists feeling moved to come to their country’s aid at this time of Government-induced peril, do get in touch.
Round-Up
- “Economically catastrophic lockdown policies must be brought to an end as soon as possible” – Andrew Lilico speaks sense in the Telegraph. As does Allister Heath
- “For Greater Manchester, the latest government announcements could be the end of the traditional British pub” – Greater Manchester’s night time economy adviser Sacha Lord writes in the Independent that he is “more fearful than ever about the impact these ill-thought-through moves are having on our society”
- “We cannot afford to lockdown until a vaccine comes” – William Parker in Bournbrook on why the progress on vaccines should not mean a delay to lifting restrictions
- “Predictive performance of international COVID-19 mortality forecasting models” – Study from Yale that reveals quite how poor the Imperial College modelling has been in its predictive success – worst of the lot
- “COVID-19 pandemic is a crisis of democracy” – Perceptive article from George Dance
- “Covid Wisdom From Ireland: No Blarney Here!” – Omar S. Khan summarises the excellent recent report from the Irish doctors challenging lockdown orthodoxy and adds in some insights from elsewhere
- “What NO ONE is Saying About The Lockdowns” – Powerful new video (with transcript) from James Corbett on the deadly folly of lockdowns
- “Covid restrictions show what we’re really like” – Joanna Williams in the Times on the snobbery and hypocrisy that lie behind the love of lockdowns among so many metropolitan “liberals”
- “Scams led California to send Covid jobless benefits to Scott Peterson, death row inmates” – Report in the LA Times showing once again the extent to which public pandemic schemes are open to fraud
- “Late rush for coronavirus PPE cost £10 billion extra” – The National Audit Office has totted up the premium the UK paid for being ill-prepared, in the Times. And a lot of it was useless
- “Macron’s Covid war goes from bad to worse” – Jonathan Miller in the Spectator on the risible record of the president who in August promised there would be no second lockdown
- “Open Letter From UK Medical Freedom Alliance to the MHRA” – Well-argued letter from the recently established libertarian medical organisation that, among other things, flags up the risks of rushed-out Covid vaccines
- “Older viewers turning away from BBC” – The Times reports on the annual Ofcom report on the national broadcaster, which finds only 54% of adults believe the BBC provides impartial news
- “COVID-19 vaccine – is the hype justified?” – Latest post from former NHS Consultant Clinical Psychologist Dr Gary Sidley on his Coronababble blog
- “What the Covid Vaccine Hype Fails to Mention” – Associate Professor of Medicine Dr Gilbert Berdine urges caution on the Mises Institute blog
- “The Feminist Case for Opposing Lockdowns” – Naomi Bridges argues the Government is behaving like an abusive partner
- “COVID-19 antibody surveys underestimate infections: study” – New US CDC study finds the same thing as all the others, in the Medical Xpress
- “Prevent any restrictions on those who refuse a COVID-19 vaccination” – Sign the petition on the Parliament website, over a quarter of a million so far
- “The Covid Chronicles” – Support the kickstarter for Ivor Cummins’ documentary project that will “provide an entertaining, evidence based ‘time capsule’ for the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020”
- “Do lockdowns work?” – Pub chain J D Wetherspoon has produced a 23 page online edition of Wetherspoon News, its pub magazine, with articles from leading academics, doctors and other commentators, highlighting serious flaws in the Government’s reaction to coronavirus
Theme Tunes Suggested by Readers
Just one today: “Fings Ain’t Wot They Used T’Be” by Max Bygraves.
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 so you can share it. To do that, click on the headline of a particular story and a link symbol will appear on the right-hand side of the headline. Click on the link and the URL of your page will switch to the URL of that particular story. You can then copy that URL and either email it to your friends or post it on social media. Please do share the stories.
Social Media Accounts
You can follow Lockdown Sceptics on our social media accounts which are updated throughout the day. To follow us on Facebook, click here; to follow us on Twitter, click here; to follow us on Instagram, click here; to follow us on Parler, click here; and to follow us on MeWe, click here.
Woke Gobbledegook
We’ve decided to create a permanent slot down here for woke gobbledegook. Today, new guidance from Universities UK stating that vice-chancellors and other senior university leaders “should be given anti-racist training on ‘white privilege'”. From the Telegraph:
Institutions must “go beyond” unconscious bias training when it comes to tackling racial harassment on campus, according to new advice from Universities UK (UUK).
University chiefs, staff and students all need to be taught about “racism, racial harassment and microaggressions and white privilege” through training that is drawn up specially form an anti-racism perspective, the guidance says.
UUK, an organisation which represents vice-chancellors, has published recommendations for senior leaders to eradicate racial harassment at universities.
It comes after a report by the Equality and Human Rights Commission last year found that there was an “alarmingly high rate” of racial harassment on university campuses.
Nearly a quarter of ethnic minority students said they had experienced racial harassment at UK universities, according to the watchdog’s report which concluded that many universities are unaware of the scale of the problem and are overconfident in their ability to respond to it.
The guidance, from the advisory group set up by UUK, calls on senior leaders and governing bodies to acknowledge issues that exist in their universities and acknowledge that higher education “perpetuates institutional racism”.
Universities are also told to review their curricula to ensure that they are teaching students in a way that is “diverse and inclusive”.
The guidance notes that “curricula that are based on Eurocentric, typically white voices will perpetuate existing inequalities”. It adds that teaching courses from such a perspective is “unlikely to reflect the experience or viewpoints of many members of the student and staff body”.
UUK cited a report published last year by the National Union of Students which claimed that a lack of a “sense of belonging” may contribute to the black, Asian and minority ethnic students performing less well academically.
Perhaps UUK would like to explain why “white” children in UK state schools are the least likely racial group to go to university? Where’s the “white privilege” there? And one would have thought that European universities would be entitled to teach their own academic and literary traditions. Are European institutions no longer to be allowed to sustain a distinctive intellectual culture? Is that not why people from all over the world come to study in them?
Stop Press: Seems like a good time to recap this excellent piece from Quillette back in February: “The Misguided Moral Panic About Racism in British Universities” by Wanjiru Njoya and Doug Stokes. As they point out, the notion that British unis are hotbeds of racism is completely bonkers. They are among the least racist institutions in the world.
“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.
If you’re a shop owner and you want to let your customers know you want be insisting on face masks or asking them what their reasons for exemption are, you can download a friendly sign to stick in your window here.
And here’s an excellent piece about the ineffectiveness of masks by a Roger W. Koops, who has a doctorate in organic chemistry.
Stop Press: A famous doctor who demanded a mandatory mask law has been snapped partying maskless on a boat surrounded by bikini-clad women in the latest instance of hypocrisy from one of our self-appointed moral guardians. Mikhail Varshavski (pictured in the blue cap below), known as “Dr Mike” online and dubbed the world’s “hottest doctor”, was celebrating his 31st birthday in flagrant breach of the very rules he has been insisting on for everyone else.
Read the full story in Summit News.
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 month and the lockdown zealots have been doing their best to discredit it ever since. If you Googled it a week after launch, 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 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 my 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 700,000 signatures.
Update: The authors of the GDB have expanded the FAQs to deal with some of the arguments and smears that have been made against their proposal. Worth reading in full.
Update 2: Many of the signatories of the Great Barrington Declaration are involved with new UK anti-lockdown campaign Recovery. Find out more and join here.
Update 3: You can watch Sunetra Gupta set out the case for “Focused Protection” here and Jay Bhattacharya make it here.
Update 4: The three GBD authors plus Prof Carl Heneghan of CEBM have launched a new website collateralglobal.org, “a global repository for research into the collateral effects of the COVID-19 lockdown measures”.
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.
Quotation Corner
It’s easier to fool people than to convince them that they have been fooled.
Mark Twain
Men, it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, one by one.
Charles Mackay
They who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.
Benjamin Franklin
To do evil a human being must first of all believe that what he’s doing is good, or else that it’s a well-considered act in conformity with natural law. Fortunately, it is in the nature of the human being to seek a justification for his actions…
Ideology – that is what gives the evildoing its long-sought justification and gives the evildoer the necessary steadfastness and determination.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
No lesson seems to be so deeply inculcated by the experience of life as that you never should trust experts. If you believe the doctors, nothing is wholesome: if you believe the theologians, nothing is innocent: if you believe the soldiers, nothing is safe. They all require to have their strong wine diluted by a very large admixture of insipid common sense.
Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury
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.
Sir Winston Churchill
If it disagrees with experiment, it’s wrong. In that simple statement is the key to science.
Richard Feynman
Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.
C.S. Lewis
The welfare of humanity is always the alibi of tyrants.
Albert Camus
We’ve arranged a global civilization in which most crucial elements profoundly depend on science and technology. We have also arranged things so that almost no one understands science and technology. This is a prescription for disaster. We might get away with it for a while, but sooner or later this combustible mixture of ignorance and power is going to blow up in our faces.
Carl Sagan
Political language – and with variations this is true of all political parties, from Conservatives to Anarchists – is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.
George Orwell
The object of life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane.
Marcus Aurelius
Necessity is the plea for every restriction of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.
William Pitt the Younger
Shameless Begging Bit
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And Finally…
Discussion
Comments
This week across the site:
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What is it with Johnson and his patronising phrases? Does he really think they impress us? What an arrogant and shallow oik he’s turned out to be.
As far as I can see I can sit in the pub all day drinking coffee but if I want alcohol I have to buy a meal and leave as soon as I have finished it, even if I have booze left (I’m partial to a rump steak and a bottle of Chilean red in my local Wetherspoons). Who dreams up this garbage?
I meant starting next Thursday
How tragic that we have spent so much money and imposed so many restrictions on the healthy in experimental and often vain efforts to contain this virus, yet have failed to take the basic steps necessary to protect the vulnerable, such as keeping infectious patients separate from other vulnerable patients.
Tragic? Criminally negligent in my book. Certainly criminally incompetent at best.
Actually – it’s simpler. He’s just not intelligent.
Both my grannies passed on many years ago
Does this mean the covid rules don’t apply to me?
Sorry – that’s not a reason.
The key question is ‘Do you have a working brain?’
If ‘Yes’ – they don’t apply.
Nail on the Head!
There was a PR picture of him getting “vaccinated” a while back. His eyes looked straight at the camera with that giveaway cold, dead stare of the psychopath. A very nasty piece of work indeed. I wish I did not know his name.
Certainly wasn’t a personality injection, that’s for sure.
Agreed. Not only is he a nasty, evil bastard, he is a Covid obsessed nasty, evil bastard!
‘Covid’ is just the tool – the sledgehammer. How convenient it’s been. What would he have been without it? I wonder.
Feel free to share:
“I don’t want you to wear a mask for me.
I don’t want you to restrict your airways for me.
The bacterial growth inside your mask will be a constant (literally in your face) risk to your health.
I don’t want you to take that risk for me.
If you want me to take that risk for you then you didn’t care about me in the first place.”
First priorities for a new populist government:
1. Abolish SAGE.
2. Sack Whitty and Vallance. Replace with Heneghan and Gupta.
3. Remove all lockdown enabling legislation.
4. Publish a Return to Normality programme and pass supporting legislation to help give it effect. Should include emergency support for those worst hit eg pubs and restaurants.
5. Establish a judicial enquiry into the horrific period of lockdown.
6. Enshrine our liberties in a written constitution. This should include specific strong Free Speech provisions and provisions to prevent any Lockdown repeat.
7. Put in place retrospective legislation to try and punish anyone found guilty of infringing our natural rights of free speech, free movement, free protest and so on. We need to send a message to the elite.
8. Abolish the Electoral Commission, Ofcom, and the EHRC.
9. Defund the BBC.
10. Create the money to pay off the lockdowns debt. It is wrong to saddle future generations with that millstone.
Reform. OKUK Nigel?
Reform seems the most likely beneficiary of the anti-lockdown voted. I am not a fan of Nigel’s way of operating parties as personal fiefdoms but the most important thing now is to ensure there is a strong populist response. ,
We are where we are and the main immediate aim has to be to panic Tory MPs – they are mostly v weak types who are easily panicked, so even just a 10% rating for Reform should do it.
We need a bye-election ASAP to give Farage a chance to give the Tories a bloody nose at the very least
I daresay the present bunch don’t like the word ”election”. Perhaps they’ll come up with an alternative.
A manifesto is born.
Point 10 could be tricky, we can’t carry on using QE. A debt jubilee followed by a return to a currency backed by gold/silver – or a complete decentralisation of the means of exchange like cryptocurrency – would be my demand.
I think we need to encourage a free market in currencies/payment methods so that people can use what they want and a robust free market system can form which would include gold, silver and cryptocurrencies. If you want ‘cash’ as we think of it now then gold/silver/copper coins are useful. If you want digital units in an ‘account’ for online payments or sending money then cryptocurrencies are useful. From the cryptocurrency ecosystem many new financial services could emerge. Keeping long term savings in precious metals provides a stable underpinning.
So, for the fiscally thick (me) are you saying that for the time being I should draw out my (meagre) savings and keep them under the mattress in cash?
I don’t want to be giving out any sort of financial advice and I don’t presume to know what anyone should do at this point. I think we have all lived in a relatively free and prosperous country for too long to be able imagine what is coming. I think perhaps food stocks, generators, fuel, batteries, solar panels, inverters, reverse osmosis equipment(aka watermakers), seeds, all sorts of food growing equipment, etc should be the first priority. Personally I don’t keep any savings in GBP of any form. To my mind cash is precious metal bullion coins.
In the short term a small physical store of cash is a wise choice for emergencies, especially if there are significant power and communications outages.
I am extremely nervous that a fiat currency crash is going to wipe out my savings altogether. This is the dreaded “bail-in” scenario that happened in 2008 in places like Cyprus. Keep as little as you can in your current account.
Diversification into precious metals and cryptocurrency is an option, but it is risky and requires a good degree of technical and financial skill (I severely lack the latter). The value of cryptocurrency is skyrocketing, and it may go stratospheric if the US dollar falls, but it could also be made illegal by the state.
Yes it’s tricky but this has been a recession like no other – a recession that bears no relation to our true productive capacity and where the damage is all self inflicted.
We have to remember all the other “Western” countries are in v similar boats. That helpsma lot. Also as the international money laundering centre for oligarchs across the globe we have a v privileged position. I think we could get away with it.
Perhaps a little more controversial but maybe – Replace the NHS with a system based on the Japanese model that can operate free from government, international health body and pharmaceutical company interference. Japanese model overseen by an independent anti corruption organisation.
My view on the NHS is that while it is incredibly inefficient, it saves on insurance administration costs which amount to something like 12% in the USA.
Most objective analysts seem to favour the Belgian system where you have a system of compulsory health insurance but a choice of providers and a safety net for those who can’t afford premiums. That said, Belgium has a terrible record on Covid!
Sadly in the UK we can’t have a rational debate about the NHS and health provision. I think the NHS totally failed us in pandemic planning to a criminal degree.
Drop all criminal charges made against citizens during 2020 which were made due to breaking lockdown rules.
Refund all fines paid, wipe any criminal records appropriately; pay compensation, where appropriate.
No Government contracts to be put out to tender until a full transparent procurement process takes place.
Only established companies can apply for said contracts; i.e. no companies set up a week/month ago.
Only companies specialising in the particular area the contract pertains to can apply for said contracts; i.e. no “jewellery makers”, etc. to be awarded PPE contracts.
Retrospective legislation? Create money? Wow…
If you create the precedent of retrospective legislation, what happens when someone makes things retrospectively illegal to punish people? That’s a very dangerous precedent to set. As much as i would like to see these people in jail, retrospective legislation is insane.
And create money? So you’re just going to destroy all the savings people made, and you’re going to destroy the labour force with staggering inflation. Isn’t it a more worthwhile endeavour to ask who we’re indebted to?
Let Whitty and Vallance stand trial on charges of crimes against humanity. Retain the ECHR
What about Ferguson, his model was the start of this.
Is it me or is almost every picture of JOHNSON since this started, do he have a smirk on his face?
It’s just you.
At least I know now.
He has come across as extremely unwell – both physically and mentally – ever since his hospitalisation in April. He wasn’t fit for the office beforehand. All his weaknesses have been brutally exposed this year.
He’s just a puppet
Could we all change our billing addresses to #10 Downing Street and send every bill we now receive to BJ for direct payment ? My credit card bill for example is one he could pay for me.
How about all those fines that are being handed out? Couldn’t they be sent to No 10 for payment?
Checking on the FCO website for foreign travel restrictions – i.e. where can i go next month without having a test or ridiculous other requirements. I’m in tier 3 and can’t take my campervan it seems anywhere but i can flee the uk in a metal tube to a foreign country. This is what i hope to do but is a minefield navigating the bureaucracy and restrictions.
For portugal it seems uk and eu plus other countries don’t need a test, but temp check on arriva. Other countries do need a test including portuguese residents which seem bizarre but hey…
Says should not use the NHS to get your test:
“You should not use the NHS testing service to get a test in order to facilitate your travel to another country. You should arrange to take a private test. Make sure you have a COVID-19 RT PCR nasal swab test. Check your test result identifies the type of test taken …”
So the government having spaffed 400 billion of our money and you can’t use the facilities of the hallowed NHS – instead have to fork out £££ to private companies (school chums of some whitehall bureaucrat no doubt).
… Read more »
You have the number one symptom for Covid – no symptoms – so go get an NHS test. Look at it this way – your not planning to go abroad. But hey great news I passed the test. I am so pleased I ONLY NOW want to get away. Enjoy your break.
They might drop your tier, they are up for review every 2 or 3 weeks, however, most camp sites are open now. You don’t live in a tier 3 area do you? -No.
Also I can confidently say many camp site owners don’t really care about the covids. They don’t know about the rules, so they say, ah-hem and they don’t ask where you came from, especial in December.
We are planning a trip away soon, drop me a line.
I am in tier 3. my city the only one in the west country has been granted the elevated status of tier 3 – probably because the spotty students have been tested to death! I’m well pissed off!!!
I had a campsite booked for next week and they’ve sent a snotty email or something so i’ll probably have to cancel that and rethink.
Then on facebook all those effing snots in tier 2 who are permitted to go are going to post oh how wonderful to be out again and i think there will be a nasty backlash from those stuck in tier 3 and officially can’t go. It’s fucking crazy.
Exactly.
What is incredibly galling is that the snake-oil spivs are still getting away with peddling total fictions about PCR testing.
It’s called ”divide and rule”. Sets neighbour against neighbour.
Of course it’s a distraction. Devised to keep us unbalanced and guessing, so we forget that, actually, there should be NO lockdowns, anywhere, none at all, ever again.
Even Steve Baker et al are talking about which restrictions should be ”appropriate” and so forth – sidestepping the very fact that there should be NO LOCKDOWN.
Well for the first Time in a long time stayed till the end of question time. Well said Claire Fox.
Clare Fox talks a lot of sense. I didn’t watch QT as bbc etc but when she was an MEP i listened to her and she was very sensible arguments – strange really as she’s left leaning and i’m more the other way.
When we “keep everyone safe” what we are really doing is “enabling everyone’s fear”. You don’t enable addicts.
If you don’t want the risk then stay home. This should have been the message from day one.
Phrase of the week has to be “freedom does not end where fear begins”
It’s time to call this out. Lockdowns are murderous in their intent and murderous in effect. Perhaps, those who
initiated the first Lockdowns were easily manipulated and very stupid. But they did it again in full awareness of the consequences. That is active evil- pure and simple.
Lockdowns kill granny and grandad and will eventually kill tens of millions of perfectly healthy people. They are psychopathic culling machines. Tell that to anyone who tries to guilt trip you into wearing a mask.
Remember that Lockdown 2 has been planned for months. Delingpole spoke about a tip-off from a government insider way back in July that they were going to do it again around October/November purely to justify the first one. Pre-meditated murder.
It’s time to call this out. Lockdowns are murderous in their intent and murderous in effect. Perhaps, those who
initiated the first Lockdowns were easily manipulated and very stupid. But they did it again in full awareness of the consequences. That is active evil- pure and simple.
Lockdowns kill granny and grandad and will eventually kill tens of millions of perfectly healthy people. They are psychopathic culling machines. Tell that to anyone who tries to guilt trip you into wearing a mask.
Sad to need this strategy, but instead of wasting time contacting MPs, another direction, given the utterly populist nature of lockdown enthusiasts might be to try to get celebrity voices of “authority” on board.
With no offence to leading scientists, we live in a soundbite world, so a condemnation of lockdown by say Brian Cox, or best of all, National treasure Attenborough, would really be listened to.
Any celebrity for that matter, would help. We’ve had Gallagher and Neil Oliver and Van Morrison, but if anyone has any contacts, use them now!
I’ve been thinking about this all day, and completely agree with you. But even before that we need PR/spin doctor (ethical?) genius to organise it all. I’ve don’t know who, but I’m sure others will…
I object to you using the word “populist” in relation to pro-lockdownism. People who are pro-lockdown are elite followers, not populists.
For me “populist” is a good word, not a bad one. It is the elite and their media servants who try to make it a bad word. Populism is simply representation of the people’s interests in a non-dogmatic way.
The people NEVER requested a lockdown. It was imposed by the Resetter elite The people were perfectly happy with a stoical herd immunity strategy.
Very true. Populist, proud, patriotic and pro civil liberties. Sick of the apologists and their lockdown fervour.
“People who are pro-lockdown are elite followers, not populists”
Nonsense – another mickey-mouse idea to fit things to personal obsessions and prejudices.
Lockdown is, in fact sustained by populist propaganda.
At the end of the pandemic there were no masks. No rule of 6. No ban on indoor mixing. There was an expectation of moving back to normal in May, there was sunshine…..
At the end of lockdown 2.0, when there is no longer a pandemic. The majority of the country are masked up – even outside- you cannot mix with anyone, anywhere except at work provided you stay 6 foot 6 inches away from any other human being. Pubs, restaurants, hotels, airports are shut or barley open. There is a hope that you can somehow find yourself in Tier 1 to mix with up to 6 members of your own family. Even your children are masked up in school like slaves. WHY ? IFR is lower than expected. Young people are not affected. Hospitals are not overwhelmed. Lockdowns don’t work. The country is skint.
And the majority of people act like they are a “hero” for being complicit in this loony behaviour. It’s fucking sickening. Humanity does not deserve to survive this. Because it’s just self harm and eventually you will cut your own throat when you have cut everything else off.
We discovered from Dr. Fauci that the reason all the politicians dismissed masks during the “actual” pandemic was because there was a worldwide PPE shortage.
If he told me it was Thursday I would have to check. He is a c**t
And he should dam well know better
In another era he would have been a Mafia doctor. Corrupt as fuck.
Or a Nazi Mengele type Dr.
He might be a ‘c***t’ – but that’s not the main issue. He’s tied closely to pharmaceutical interests. And has form.
Was the lie then, or is the lie now? If they were lying then, why believe them now? Particularly when today’s offered “truth” is built upon an assertion that yesterday’s “truth” was a falsehood after all.
The pattern throughout this year has been to say whatever justifies the current policy. “Winning” the moment is what matters.
‘Was the lie then, or is the lie now?’
Both
They didn’t want the plebs wanting masks because they hadn’t produced enough then. Now they have too many and need the plebs to believe the myth and buy them and be submissive and keep the lie going.
My head hurts so much with horror and unexploded hate.
Indeed.
If you believe that from the Fauci liar you’ll believe anything.
Strangely it was such a weak excuse that it was vaguely believable. Plus at the very moment he claimed this he was losing his temper under very mild Congressional committee questioning, and temporarily dropped his veil as the caring, wise old doctor.
They also told us “no one could have predicted a pandemic like this” even though ministers and officials have attended several international symposia on planning for pandemics!
I see what you’re saying, Richard, but I’m with the others on this one. I find it very difficult to believe anything Fauci says.
Marseille. Yes.
https://twitter.com/ninnyd101/status/1331972973692137474
Far too many in masks. As long as the majority are wearing them, the protest is null and void. It is a pro-government rally.
Why are they wearing masks outside ?
Supposedly mandatory in France in crowded areas. Which makes this protest self-defeating in my opinion.
Why though when the threshold for wearing masks is set at close distance, inside for 15 minutes plus in areas of poor ventilation.
Outside does not count.
Macron ruled a few months back that masks were mandatory in crowded outdoor spaces.
It’s like Liverpool Football Club saying fans from opposing teams will only be let into Anfield if they wear Liverpool colours.
I wonder why he got away with that ? Completely bogus to have to wear them in the shops so how the hell does anyone think using the poxy things outside is of any use at all. They don’t stop you getting it.
NEWSNIGHT REVIEW
1. After the usual fear-mongering Covid tosh from non-journalist Wark, another good report from Deborah Cohen, this time on the Oxford Vaccine.
2. Surprising item for Newsnight – hate speech is ok, apparently. Only joking! They are talking about some French nutter who thinks it’s good for women to hate men. So that’s OK then.
“hate speech is ok, apparently.”
Always been the case that hating is only wrong if it’s directed at specially protected groups. Just like it’s “not racism” if it’s directed at white people.
Obvious I know, but as individuals we have no voice whatsoever. There needs to be unity of purpose, and a need to combat their simplistic rule of three rhetoric with similar. No 5G Bill Gates conspiracy theorists, no remain v leave remnants, no left v right.
We need coordinated chugs visibility branding of the message of dissent. Poster campaigns. Agreed slogans. T-shirts. Mask burning in bonfires etc. Peaceful, continuous message using statistical data and not ridicule or aggression.
Without that, we will never escape this horror in my opinion.
Ritual mask bonfires is a great idea. But it would be considered an act of extreme aggression by those who endorse the state.
It would need to be not at all ‘ritualistic’ in feeling. We are not the fascists; we don’t covertly relish pseudo-cultic practices. It should be more like zestfully burning leaves on an autumn bonfire. Efficient and uplifting.
Ritual and symbols can be extremely powerful.
We need to find some. They are not necessarily fascist at all.
Figure these two out.
2019. Pension age is increased as people are living longer in good health.
2020 older (50+) people will die a terrible death and their immune systems are so shot that they really are at risk of absolutely everything known and unknown to man.
2019. A grand parent is generally aged 50 when their first arrives.
2020. Hugging your “granny will kill them”
How many 50-60 year olds have died of Covid 19 ?
Very good point. There were a few girls at school with me who were grandmothers in their 30s, many more in their 40s.
Pretty sure that in our woke world the term Granny could be age offensive or affect something to do with pro nouns.
I made the same point earlier. In any cases most grannies by now will either have had the Covid already or enjoy cross immunity.
Just cancelled BBC licence fee.
Revolted by Question Time, revolted by Mash Report.
I refuse to pay for this bias.
Better late than never 🙂
It’s a millennial’s wet dream. Go on their news page and see how many mask pictures you see on page one and for every topic. It’s a disgrace.
Given the BBC charter do we all have a case for claiming back a % of this years licence fee ? They have made less content and admitted their quality failings. So why are we paying for it ? Actually. I’d be happy to pay £175 for an older persons license and not have one myself.
Professor Calum Semple on Newsnight now -what a bloody misery
He’s a busy man – was on Sky earlier. Does he have time to do any proper science or medicine these days, or is he transitioning to a career in media!
I often wonder this about SAGE. What else is on their radar?
Transitioning? It’s not impossible.
Waistcoated twat with a pretend beard.
Whilst Canada becomes a police state, Randy Hillier proves he is a true Canadian hero
https://twitter.com/NoLockdowns1/status/1332048195698962432?s=20
Ontario, Canada becomes a police state in full view
https://twitter.com/denisrancourt/status/1332079345708527618?s=20
Randy Hillier is awesome and there was a good turnout at the anti-lockdown protest today. The Adamson’s BBQ guy is putting up quite a fight as well. My husband checked out Reddit and it was 97% against Adam Skelly opening his restaurant. We have a LONG way to go. The Costco 500m away was open, including their lunch counter, and packed with people.
In Colorado, people can only have 10 people gathered for Thanksgiving dinner but 30 for funerals. Incoming congresswoman Lauren Boebert plans to have a funeral for a dead turkey! I’d vote for her anytime! https://www.foxnews.com/politics/rep-elect-lauren-boebert-plans-thanksgiving-funeral-for-dead-turkey-in-defiance-of-colorado-guidelines
The people selected for questions on Question Time almost begging for a third lockdown before we’ve even started the second one.
I swear this country has gone down the shitter.
Where have all the normal people gone?
Here we are
Defund the BBC
And then take away all their pensions.
As is often the case, the audience tends to split as to women (pathetic, hide behind the curtains) and men (a bit more gung-ho). As balance tonight, however, we have the eminently sensible and bold, Claire Fox, and the pathetic, woke Adam Price and Vaughan Gething (both ‘big girls blouses’), and the loathsome waffler, Zahawi.
Gething is the worst. Genuinely scary views.
Again?!
Didn’t we discuss this clown before, Tigress? Isn’t he your MP?
Ordinary people were banned from QT audiences long time ago. 🙂
You said it ‘selected’. It’s controlling the narrative. I read an article in The Canary during the GE from a young man who had asked a brilliant question. He said in order to get on to the programme at every stage of the audience selectiom process that he had to pretend to be a Tory just to get on. He had to actively demonstrate he was ant Labour.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r3mtselzeNo&ab_channel=FiverrGigRecords
“a mouth mask can never hide a friendly face”
It does and it has in the advert.
My daughter’s best friends in college are twins who share a dorm room. They became ill at college and returned to their parents. Their parents also came down ill. All four went in for the Covid test. Results: one twin-positive, one twin-negative, mother-positive, father-negative. How can this be? Sounds like a bad riddle.
I can’t link immediately to the exact reports, but I’m sure the ONS observed this as happening in a high percentage of the households they tested in the early days of their mass testing. i.e. in a household where 3, or 4 were tested, only 1 or 2 family members tested positive.
Innaccurate PCR test again?