Gavin Williamson U-Turns Over Primaries Reopening
In a last-minute change-of-plan, the Education Secretary has declared that all primary schools in London will remain closed on Monday, regardless of whether they’re located in Covid “hotspots” – prompting renewed calls from the teaching unions to close all schools across the country. MailOnline has more.
A teaching union has called for all schools across the country to be closed for the start of the new term after the government U-turned on its decision to keep some primaries in London open despite rising Covid cases.
The Government bowed to protests, legal pressure and scientific advice on New Year’s Day after it initially omitted a number of the capital’s boroughs from the forced closures.
But Dr Mary Bousted, joint general secretary of the National Education Union, questioned why the same restrictions are not being rolled out across the rest of the country where cases are also surging.
Gavin Williamson had this week released a list of London primary schools in coronavirus ‘hotspots’ that would stay shut for two weeks after the start of term next week.
The list did not include areas where Covid rates are high such as Haringey whose leaders said they would defy the Government and support schools that decided to close.
Under the Government’s initial plan, schools in the City of London and Kingston were set to reopen but those in 22 other London boroughs would have remained closed.
The leaders of Camden, Islington, Greenwich, Haringey, Harrow, Hackney and Lewisham boroughs, and the City of London, said in a letter to Education Secretary Gavin Williamson: ‘We ask in the strongest terms that your recommendation is urgently reviewed and our primary schools are added to the list of those advised to move learning online.’
The action prompted an emergency Cabinet Office meeting today where they decided to abandon the original plans and order the remaining area to close their primary schools.
The move is expected to see similar arrangements to the spring lockdown when schools continued to accept children from key worker families but moved to online learning for the vast majority of pupils.
The main argument against keeping primaries open in some London boroughs is that that Covid infection rates in those boroughs are no different to the rates in neighbouring areas where schools will remain closed.
“It never made sense that neighbouring boroughs were being instructed to have different arrangements despite having similar rates of infection,” said Caroline Kerr, leader of Kingston Council.
But if the only objection to the Government’s school closures policy was that it was inconsistent, that could just as easily have been addressed by opening more schools rather than closing more.
This is a disappointing development and suggests the so-called “hawks” in the Cabinet – lockdown zealots like Matt Hancock and Michael Gove – have prevailed in their ongoing power struggle with the “doves”.
Gavin Williamson’s stock has never been lower. Expect him to be exiled to Northern Ireland (or the back benches) in next week’s reshuffle.
Stop Press: When secondary schools reopen, pupils could be in for a nasty shock. According to Schools Week, the Government is considering making face masks mandatory in secondary school classrooms.
Doctors in Revolt Over Single-Jab Covid Strategy
The Telegraph‘s Paul Nuki has a story in today’s paper about the global debate over whether the UK Government’s decision to focus on maximising the number of people who’ve been given just one jab – at the expense of giving people two jabs – is sensible. Answer: Probably not.
Scientists across the world were locked in fierce debate on Friday over the wisdom or otherwise of the UK switching to a single dose strategy for COVID-19 vaccines.
White coats were flapping on social media after the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) published its rationale for the move on Thursday night.
“The advice… is aimed at maximising protection in the population”, said the JVCI.
“Given the high level of protection afforded by the first dose, models suggest that initially vaccinating a greater number of people with a single dose will prevent more deaths and hospitalisations than vaccinating a smaller number of people with two doses”.
The move to prioritise first jabs of the vaccines was initially proposed by former prime minister Tony Blair. There is little doubt it is an innovation, though some prefer the word gamble.
Worth reading in full.
Stop Press: Eric Topol, the American medic with a large social media following, isn’t a fan of the single-dose strategy.
New Year’s Eve in Trafalgar Square
One intrepid reader ventured into Central London on Thursday night to celebrate New Year’s Eve. She didn’t have much fun.
Last night I went to London. I live east of the city and drove in down the A11. Which, for those who don’t know, goes right past the Royal London Hospital, as mentioned in yesterday’s newsletter.
I could not resist a little drive round the block to go past the ambulance and A&E entrance of the hospital. Only one ambulance to be seen and no people. Pretty bloody unusual for 10pm on New Year’s Eve…
Carrying on, I parked in Covent Garden, which was deserted except for covid marshals. On the way, I took another detour over London Bridge to see the river. It was boarded up on the sides. Lots of ‘guards’ in high vis but there might have been fireworks set up on it.
Having parked, Covent Garden was like a ghost town. I got a Boris bike and went for a ride. Trafalgar Square was totally boarded up. Large police presence, not many people. Picadilly and Leicester Square were empty. Then I went down Whitehall towards Parliament Square – it was getting close to midnight by then. Loads of police, including the Tactical Support Group (TSG) and horses. A few hundred people waiting. Most people in very small groups or pairs, all very calm and well behaved. I did not see any sign of the protestors organised by Piers Corbyn but they might have been blending (no placards).
I stopped on the Embankment about 50 yards from Westminster Bridge. It was five to midnight according to my photo of Big Ben. Then, at about two minutes to midnight, the TSG decided to move everyone on…
That made the crowding bad as everyone was being shepherded in the same direction and there was a fair bit of traffic so people could not walk in the roads. Seemed a mad thing to do – to wait until so close to midnight.
One of the police horses was getting extremely fractious (I am a horse person for a living, I can tell) and it was between myself and the bike rack where I was going to return the bike, so I held my ground. A police woman told me to move along. I said no way while that horse is between me and the exit. Even she could see it was dangerous so she let me be and then the clock struck.
There was massive cheering, the fireworks went off across the river and then everyone did start dispersing, without being asked really as there was no real reason for staying.
As we left I found myself beside a young woman with a scooter. Turns out she was a nurse of 10 years experience at one on the large London hospitals. She said it was busy and hard work, everyone was doing 12 hour shifts, but no worse than usual for the time of year. She said she had decided to come (unmasked) because she had been working so hard she was treating herself to a night out because it was a historic night and you would never see London like this again on New year’s Eve.
She said people’s good will kept them all going at her hospital, but many of her colleagues felt as she did, that the measures were out of proportion to the risk and the NHS has been badly managed in preparation for this crisis. She said the staff shortages were being created by constant testing so many staff perfectly fit for work were sitting at home.
Is the London Nightingale Really Reopening?
Something a bit fishy going on. Matt Hancock did the rounds of the broadcast studios on December 30th claiming that the London Nightingale had been “reactivated”. But to date there isn’t any sign of the ExCel Centre being readied for new patients. And how does Hancock plan to overcome the staffing shortages we’ve heard so much about? The Telegraph has more.
Nightingale hospitals will not be able to come to the rescue of hospitals overwhelmed by Covid patients because there is no “magic pile” of nurses to staff them, health leaders have warned.
Consultants and nursing leaders said high levels of nursing vacancies, coupled with large numbers of staff off sick with coronavirus or stress will make it nearly impossible to use the Nightingale hospitals, which [were] built around the country at the start of the pandemic.
The makeshift hospitals were built at an estimated cost of £220 million, with sites in London, Manchester, Bristol, Sunderland, Harrogate, Exeter and Birmingham.
Of these, the Exeter site received its first Covid patients in November while Manchester, Bristol and Harrogate are currently in use for non-Covid patients.
London’s Nightingale has been “reactivated”, the NHS said earlier this week, while other sites currently not in use are being readied.
But Mike Adams, the Royal College of Nursing’s England director, said on Friday the expectation that the Nightingale hospitals could deliver a significant increase in capacity was “misplaced”.
He said: “I have real concerns that the expectation that this mass rollout in capacity can happen is misplaced because there aren’t the staff to do it. If we are having to cancel leave to staff these areas, the obvious question is where will the staff come from to open the Nightingales?
“Nursing is already stretched beyond capacity, so there is no magic pile of nurses we can call upon.”
The top doctor who provides Lockdown Sceptics with regular updates from inside the NHS says he thinks it’s unlikely the London Nightingale will be reactivated. “My understanding is that it will ‘reopen’ as a vaccination centre,” he tells me. “St John Ambulance people to redeploy there from Jan 11th for vaccination. Can’t see how it can reopen as an inpatient facility and none of my colleagues think it will either.”
Stop Press: MPs have branded the empty Nightingale Hospitals an “expensive PR stunt“.
Stop Press 2: Richard Tice paid a visit to the ExCel and found no evidence it’s about to be converted into a hospital again. Watch the video he made about his fact-finding mission on Twitter.
Deaths Don’t Add Up
The senior financial journalist who regularly writes snippets for Lockdown Sceptics has spotted that the number of people who’ve been recorded as having died of Covid sits a little uncomfortably with the actuarial data
I’ve been thinking about the data you linked to a couple of days ago stating that actuarially-adjusted deaths are only 6.9% above average this year.
From the ONS data to Dec 25th there have been 592,525 deaths in England and Wales year to date. If the estimate from the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries is correct, then excess deaths are running at around 38,245.
Yet the ONS says that COVID-19 has been mentioned in 68,341 deaths. If we assume that every excess death has been caused by Covid, then reported Covid deaths exceed “excess deaths” by 30,096 (44% of total reported C-19 deaths).
This rough number-crunching appears to confirm the sainted Professor Neil Ferguson’s comment, from earlier in the year, that many of the Covid deaths would have occurred anyway within a few months.
N.B. Fraser Nelson in the DT piece you flagged up mentions that an old biddy in Switzerland died after being given a vaccine “but at the age of 91-years old with multiple illnesses”. Fair enough. But this comment might be applied equally to nearly half of C-19 reported deaths.
Van Tam’s Bingo Slip
There follows a guest post by Freddie Attenborough, a regular Lockdown Sceptics contributor.
On 28 December, the UK’s Deputy Chief Medical Officer, Professor Van Tam, joined the Prime Minister for one of his now semi-regular Covid press conferences. According to Breitbart News, at one point, “The top doctor said people should not think, ‘after the second dose of your vaccine, it’s okay to behave with wild abandon and go off to the bingo halls and whatever you like and so forth’.”
Bingo halls. What a wonderful sliver of rhetorical spite. By this rhetoric doth the activist behind the ostensibly objective scientific façade reveal himself. The condescension for the working-class, Brexit voting scum couldn’t be any clearer, could it? Bingo halls. A place-holding metonym drawn from the realm of fish and chips, pubs, boozing, council estates, seaside holidays, nail bars, self-employment. All that toxic masculinity, all those “Karens.” Yuck.
Some of what’s happening with lockdown now is, to me at least, usefully considered as a visceral, psychological reaction to the lack of control these people were able to wield when it came to Brexit. Sounds over the top, doesn’t it? Until you peruse their Twitter pages. These are not happy people. There’s anger, but, perhaps most importantly, there’s an unmistakeable sense of anxiety too. “Tory Scum” got in the way of Corbyn’s utopian society; Trump got in the way of corporate friendly (sorry, I mean “migrant friendly”) global capitalism; Brexit got in the way of their beloved European research networks and funding opportunities.
Lack of control is arguably the root cause of a psychological dysfunctionality like anxiety. For four years they’ve had to live as part of a society that was doing something they didn’t like and that they couldn’t control. They’ve never forgiven the “Bingo Hall” povs for that. It makes them anxious. And what do anxious people really want most of all? Control.
But here’s the thing, because, when you think about it, what is anxiety? It’s simply a location on a wider psychological spectrum that has “desire for minimal control” at one end (e.g. the figure of the hedonist), and “desire for high levels of control” at the other (e.g. the figure of the neurotic). Generalised anxiety is towards the latter end, the right-hand end, of this spectrum. Some anxious people can of course get by in life simply by establishing minimal types of control over their own local environment (their house, their living room, their routines, etc). Some need to manage and regulate the behaviours of others too. Beyond that, and a little further along the spectrum, some need to control everything and everyone around them. And, as we move across towards the very extreme right-hand end of this spectrum of control, we get to sadism; that is, the need to completely control others and, further, to dole out harsh punishment or humiliation to those who can’t be controlled. Have some of our scientific bureaucrats started to slide out towards this end of the spectrum? Is it the peculiar constitutional and political positioning of SAGE – ostensibly just “advisory,” but, thanks to the power of media-relations and clandestine leaking, also a de facto executive body – that has allowed them to do so?
Put another way, is what’s happening now with our never-ending lockdown the biomedical equivalent of an occupying army sadistically razing a village that’s been found to have been aiding and abetting the resistance? It makes me wonder. After all, those villages aren’t destroyed solely because of psychopathic anger; there’s also the functional need to reassert control over what hitherto hadn’t been controlled adequately. It isn’t just “we will hurt you for your disobedience,” (punishment response) but also, and at the same time, “never again will we not know what you’re doing behind our backs” (reassertion of control response). It’s this combination that creates the peculiar phenomenon we term “sadism.”
I’m not a psychologist, but I’m struggling for psychological answers, because I don’t think what’s happening is analysable in any strictly political, social or economic way. J.G. Ballard is probably the greatest sociologist of lockdown, because he saw more clearly than most that it wouldn’t be the violence of the Marxian working-classes, but rather, the neuroses of the well-paid and cosseted middle classes who would in the end destroy western, liberal, capitalist societies. So when people like Van Tam let slip these odd little comments, I feel I’m more right than I am wrong. It’s also the type of analysis that would shed a little more light on Professor Ferguson’s otherwise curious “getting away with instigating lockdown” comment from his recent interview with The Times. Getting away with … well, what, precisely? Revenge? The reassertion of technocratic control over Parliamentary unpredictability? I ask simply because it isn’t a socially recognisable thing for someone to remark that they’re “getting away” with keeping people safe, or that they’re “getting away with” saving lives. Okay, maybe he meant, “getting away” with doing what’s right in order to keep the povvy Bingo players alive. But if that is indeed what he meant, then what would that statement imply? That he and his colleagues have been hoping to find an opportunity for reasserting technocratic control over the great unwashed and that they’d finally found one… which then leads us back to my psychological analysis of their motivations.
I’m not saying that they know at any literal, conscious level that this is what they’re doing. I’m sure they feel they’re acting for the best of reasons. In that sense, they’re no different to the rest of us, are they? Most social actions require most of us, most of the time, to lie to ourselves: e.g. “I’m happy at work!” “I cheated on my wife because she wasn’t making me happy, so, really, all of this is her fault!” “Money doesn’t buy happiness!” etc., etc. But at a social psychological level, somewhere between the unknowable unconscious and the rationality of the cerebellum, I wouldn’t be surprised if a literally “sadistic” need for control now drives people like Van Tam and Ferguson; a desire to re-establish control, and to do so overtly enough that he and his colleagues can convince themselves that, after four years in the wilderness, they finally have re-established control.
Half of Britons Think BBC Does Not Share Their Values
Almost half of Britons think the BBC no longer represents their values amid declining levels of trust in the broadcaster, down from 62% in 2016. The Times has more.
The results are understood to chime with the unpublished research recently conducted by the BBC which found that residents of well-off and diverse neighbourhoods held the broadcaster in higher esteem than people from poorer and less diverse communities.
The findings also tally with an Ofcom report in November which said that the BBC’s bedrock older middle-class audience was going off it. The report added that it was seen as the least impartial public service broadcaster, below ITV, Channel 4, Sky and Channel 5. Fifty-four per cent of adults believe that it provides impartial news.
The new research, by YouGov, found 44% of the public thought that the BBC represented their values badly. This was particularly true of older people, with 48% saying that the BBC did not adequately represent their views. In the north of England it was 51% and Scotland 47%. Among those who voted for Brexit, 58% were unhappy with the overall stance of the corporation.
Asked how their views of the BBC had changed over the year only 4% said that its values had become more like theirs while 33% said it had become less like theirs. Older male viewers outside London and the southeast were the most likely to be dissatisfied with the BBC’s perceived values.
The findings come before a government review on public sector broadcasting. Boris Johnson has made little secret of his desire to reform the BBC amid speculation that the licence fee in its present form could be scrapped.
Worth reading in full.
Stop Press: Darren Grimes has added his 10 cents worth to the BBC’s expenditure of £1.5 million on a woke New Year’s Eve fireworks display.
Poetry Corner
Today, a poem composed by an NHS doctor. He calls it ‘Pandemic Polemic’.
Better hunker in your bunker, for Corona’s here today,
Do not try to take an aeroplane, they’ll turn you all away;
Wear a mask to catch the sneezes though not much good will it do,
And send a friend or neighbour for a cold compress or two.Better listen to the experts, they will tell you how to cope
Although as messages conflict you really haven’t got a hope,
So panic, panic, panic – try to remember why
If you sweat up in a fever you are surely going to die.If you’re pregnant try to miss out on the rush hour on the bus
For you do not want to run the risk of catching it from us;
And you cannot have the vaccine they’ve developed for the flu
For what it does to foetuses we haven’t got a clue.Do not come into Casualty with “query dose of flu”
As the last thing that the doctors want is catching it from you;
Wash your hands and smear them with that antiseptic goo;
Sneeze only in a tissue and then flush it down the loo.And stock up with provisions for a month or maybe three
(You can order them from Tesco, and delivery is free)
But for most of us, including the disabled and the old
The coronavirus symptoms won’t be
much
more
than
a
cold.
Round-up
- “Let’s admit what we got wrong in 2020, and shake things up in 2021” – Excellent leader in yesterday’s Telegraph
- “Word of the week: NERVTAG” – Andy Shaw continues to flesh out his seditious dictionary in Spectator LIFE
- “Trying to lock down until Covid is eradicated would be dangerous folly” – Prof Robert Dingwall in the Telegraph says we need an exit strategy
- “NHS staff fear speaking out over crisis in English hospitals” – Good piece in the Guardian – although it neglects to say that if the “speaking out” involves arguing for more restrictions there’s no price to be paid
- “Giving people false hope about the pandemic isn’t ‘balanced’ – it’s dangerous” – In an entirely predictable development, leftwing firebrand Owen Jones has appointed himself the Guardian‘s chief enforcer of Covid orthodoxy. Surely his column can’t be much longer for this world?
- “Drug Overdoses in San Francisco Have Killed Four Times as Many People as Covid” – Official figures out of San Francisco show that drug overdoses have killed almost four times more people than COVID-19 this year
- “New York mayor celebrates New Year in Times Square… after telling everyone else to stay home” – Hypocrite of the week?
- “France brings forward nightly curfew from 8pm to 6pm” – More bad news from across the Channel
- “First country bans ivermectin, a lifesaver for Covid – will the US be next?” – Ivermectin has been banned in South Africa. Bit odd, given that the WHO has just confirmed its effectiveness as a treatment for COVID-19
- “Locked-down California runs out of reasons for surprising surge” – More proof, if proof were needed, that lockdowns don’t work. California has some of the toughest restrictions in the US, yet infections are surging
- “Why 2021 could be the year of economic Armageddon” – Cheery piece by Chris Snowdon in the Spectator
- “Ignore the gaslighting – cancel culture is real” – Andrew Doyle in Spiked urges us to put a stop to the malicious vogue for shaming anyone who speaks out of turn in 2021
- Season 2 of the Real Normal Podcast is back with a letter from an actor who attended the Bristol protests
- “Nightingale closures, ‘defeating Covid’ and vaccine protection — a few niggling lockdown questions I’d like answered” – Rod Liddle’s column in the Sun in case you missed it
- “2020 in review: The year in 12 cartoons, by Matt” – The second best Telegraph cartoonist gives us some of his best cartoon of the year
- And the best Telegraph cartoonist gives us his (via Twitter)
Theme Tunes Suggested by Readers
Four today: “Little Boxes” by Malvina Reynolds, “Abandoned Luncheonette” by Daryl Hall and John Oates, “Why Am I Drinkin’” by Merle Haggard, “Only A Pawn in Their Game” by Bob Dylan
Stop Press: I spoke too soon when I said a reader had compiled a definitive list of all those pop songs with the word “Tears” in the title. Another reader has come forward with some additions. This one could run and run!
Tiers (Django Reinhardt & Stéphane Grapelli)
Tiers and Pavan (The Strawbs)
Tiers of Rage (The Band)
Tiers Dry On Their Own (Amy Winehouse)
Tiers Are Not Enough (ABC)
A Little Bitty Tier (Burl Ives)
“No More Tiers (Enough is Enough)” (Barbara Streisand)
Drown In My Own Tiers (Aretha Franklin)One shouldn’t overlook the band – Tiers for Fears
Stop Press 2: This ditty about the year gone by sung to the tune of “Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious” is a corker.
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 as well as post comments below the line, 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, it’s the turn of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who has just unveiled some new rules for the next Congressional term: the elimination of gendered terms, such as “father, mother, son, and daughter”. Breitbart News has more.
Within the proposals are the creation of the “Select Committee on Economic Disparity and Fairness in Growth”, which would require Congress to “honour all gender identities by changing pronouns and familial relationships in the House rules to be gender neutral”.
In clause 8(c)(3) of rule XXIII, gendered terms, such as “father, mother, son, daughter, brother, sister, uncle, aunt, first cousin, nephew, niece, husband, wife, father-in-law, mother-in-law, son-in-law, daughter-in-law, brother-in-law, sister-in-law, stepfather, stepmother, stepson, stepdaughter, stepbrother, stepsister, half brother, half sister, grandson, or granddaughter” will be removed.
In their place, terms such as “parent, child, sibling, parent’s sibling, first cousin, sibling’s child, spouse, parent-in-law, child-in-law, sibling-in-law, stepparent, stepchild, stepsibling, half-sibling, or grandchild” will be used, instead.
Something to look forward to next Christmas: being able to see your “parent’s sibling”, your “sibling’s child” and your “sibling-in-law”.
Worth reading in full.
Stop Press: RT celebrates the 10 anti-woke media heroes of 2020.
Stop Press 2: RealClear Politics has a list of the top 10 suppressed news stories in 2020.
“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. Another reader has created an Android app which displays “I am exempt from wearing a face mask” on your phone. Only 99p, and he’s even said he’ll donate half the money to Lockdown Sceptics, so everyone wins.
If you’re a shop owner and you want to let your customers know you will not 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. See also the Swiss Doctor’s thorough review of the scientific evidence here.
Stop Press: Is the Government about to make face coverings mandatory in outdoor spaces? Yesterday’s edition of the World at One included an interview with Professor Catherine Noakes, who chairs the Scientific Pandemic Influenza Group on Behaviours on SAGE and is supporting further measures. What SAGE wants, SAGE gets. Interview starts at 21m 10s.
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 in October 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 three quarters of a million signatures.
Update: The authors of the GBD 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”. Follow Collateral Global on Twitter here. Sign up to the newsletter here.
Judicial Reviews Against the Government
There are now so many legal cases being brought against the Government and its ministers we thought we’d include them all in one place down here.
The Simon Dolan case has now reached the end of the road.
The current lead case is the Robin Tilbrook case which challenges whether the Lockdown Regulations are constitutional. 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 and Runnymede Trust’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.
And last but not least there was the Free Speech Union‘s challenge to Ofcom over its ‘coronavirus guidance’. A High Court judge refused permission for the FSU’s judicial review on December 9th and the FSU has decided not to appeal the decision because Ofcom has conceded most of the points it was making. Check here for details.
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.
Stop Press: Read Oliver Kamm in the Times on how he overcame clinical depression. He has written a book on the subject that’s out next week.
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.)
And Finally…
Yes Minister anticipated the Nightingale Hospitals fiasco over 30 years ago. Watch this clip on YouTube of Jim Hacker visiting an empty hospital.
Discussion
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Newcomer to the site. Apologies for the late arrival but I’ve just woken up.
Apologies if already discussed but this is just one of a number of videos of doctors extolling the virtues of the drug Ivermectin as a treatment for Covid. We are being told to trust completely new vaccines, even to the extent of a casual ‘mix and match’ approach, while established existing treatments are being dismissed. It does nothing but feed suspicion and distrust.
https://youtu.be/Tq8SXOBy-4w
Whitless and unbalanced?
So far as I can tell, officially claimed daily cv deaths have changed little since 4th November (492 deaths). Average for last 7 days – 589. So no, it hasn’t been doubling.
Yes, but you see we’ve had all these controls placed on us. So really Messers Vallance and Whitty have been very successful. I’m sure that’s what they’s say anyway.
The Stasi in Wales have powers to enter your home by force if they suspect you are meeting your grandchildren
Savagery
Then again what did people expect from a Marxist dictator
It’s never too soon to teach grandkids how to throw boulders downstairs, Cecil. That ‘Home Alone’ documentary has several other examples …
Sounds a bit like Lord Of The Flies…
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/02/opinion/sunday/2020-worst-year-famine.html#click=https://t.co/k7kHI3F49x
Yes, except it’s government lockdowns that are starving children, not the covid-19 “pandemic”. Such harm big pharma has done. I remember reading an article some months ago about how teenage girls in Kenya were doing “bad things” because the money from tourism (and selling flowers to Western countries, which is big there) has gone.
Trouble is, I suspect some people in Britain would gloss over a million deaths in the third world if they think it it would save a thousand lives in Britain. That notwithstanding, if you want to spearhead a poster campaign along the lines of “lockdowns cause child starvation”, that is something I woul support.
Yes, this is yet another effect of lockdown. It’s not only boosting big tech and big pharma to the detriment of small local businesses, but also widening the gap between rich and poor nations. And come to think of it, also widening the gap between rich and poor in society generally.
And to your point about glossing over millions of deaths in the third world – that’s millions of YOUNG lives lost in the third world to save a few thousand OLD lives in wealthy nations.
Now we’re talking turkey.
Revolt not revolution.
Happy New year from Wuhan
Or as the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China calls it- PARTY CENTRAL!!!
Pass the bat, man.
So, 9 months in, is there an increase in babies named Chris, Patrick, Matt, nikla? People are that dim is would appear.
Police State…Scotland 2021.
Unbelievable!!
https://www.edinburghlive.co.uk/news/edinburgh-news/coronavirus-scotland-police-launch-new-19554198
The most enthusiastic promoters of the Covid-Fascist state are the police closely followed by Krankies Karens.
It shows how urgent cutting police numbers and defenestration of all above the rank of sergeant is.
Hopefully some unexplained house fires will follow….
If any copper stops you and you feel he’s looking for trouble just ask him when they are going to move him into barracks. And his family. Because, obviously they can’t continue to live amongst the very people they are oppressing, can they? I mean, it wouldn’t be safe them going to work. Would it?
I could almost read that as a positive – eg don’t bother us with phone calls you miserable meaning snitchers.
‘moaning’ not ‘meaning’
There is that, however, it’s open to abuse. All it takes is someone to decide to cause whoever trouble by reporting them, even if they are doing nothing.
Why there has not been riots over this shit, I really don’t know.
A one-stop shop for anyone who wants to denounce their neighbours. The Dear Leader must be pleased.
Exactly, This is getting sinister now. All because of the common flu virus.
Scots are amazingly submissive now, they seem to love the SNP Covid tyranny and nanny state government. How times have changed.
There is an easy solution:
A nice meme that the names and addresses of all callers to the snitchline go on a register and are published at the end of the year / can be got with a FOIA request etc.
That’ll dry up the snitching once people know they’ll be accountable for their actions
Agree, people obviously haven’t learned from history. The people snitching on their neighbours, friends and families for breaking petty rules are really the lowest of the low.
We thought life in the GDR was awful and tyrannical!
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/11779742/coronavirus-police-officers-social-distancing-garden-party/
Keep an eye on your respectable neighbour with a respectable job. Report them.
That’s what we have to do, right?
The form appears to only be accessible via Facebook for which I am not registered
Since they warn not to ‘mis-use’ the usual police numbers I would therefore be unable to assist.
delete
I’ve managed to recover from watching 10 minutes of BBC News earlier, whilst I was at someone’s house fixing a laptop.
They featured an interview clip with one of the scientific covid mafia running the country (Ferguson – never seems to go away). Will any journalists kindly probe him on his comments about China, “getting away” with lockdowns, and whether he thinks living in an controlling authoritarian state is something to be desired?
So I gather the government is running scared of the teaching unions again. The government is folding, and will say that the scientists told them to do it, it wasn’t their fault. If they didn’t do what they were told the NHS would collapse (again).
Then a re-run of that bizarre clip of a masked lady being wheeled down a corridor, with doctors and nurses either side of her applauding. It has the feel of some religious ceremony. What is being clapped? The lady being brave, the vaccine being our saviour?
It’s all about feelings. We’re being told when to feel anxious and when to feel grateful. Much like an abused partner.
The world is completely mad and ‘mad for it’. Years of woke conditioning. Explaining to my other half just why I’m so exasperated it struck me it’s difficult to know where to start if they don’t share my gut reaction that this ‘smells’ wrong, and lockdowns, tiers and masks are abhorrent. There is the logic – data that proves we’re not in a national emergency (and I get why some people are excited to think we are) but for me it’s my innate disgust at the attack on our human rights, rights to earn a living/run a business and civil liberties that I don’t understand why everyone isn’t appalled. (Apologies for all the double negatives there, I might have had a wine or two). Anyhoo, may the Lord save us.
It’s the lack of visceral anger. The population should be furious when in fact they are at best apathetic and at worst in collaboration.
More interested in the latest celebrity gossip or football team performance to care about freedom and liberty.
I know. Every time I go think ‘Well now they’ll see through it’ ‘That’s gone so far they can’t deny it’ ‘Now surely the anger will surface’……but nothing, just more compliance. Are we watching different films?
We are watching the film.
They have inserted themselves into the film and no longer have the ability to even see that there IS a film.
Our only hope is that the film will glitch badly enough that they see the jarring and are shaken out again.
How far off herd immunity? I’m bored of it all now.
about 4 circuit breakers, 15 lockdowns, 12 firebreakers and 9 tier 4s to be precise.
Fuck sake
I am reckoning maybe 20 million, maybe more in U.K. have had an infection so who knows might be there soon? Sunetra Gupta thought it could be as low as 20% infection rate to achieve HI. No one really knows
It takes about 4-5 weeks to get to HI whatever your starting point. So if it’s from nothing to 20% or whatever you get a big pandemic (like happened in the Spring).
If it’s Autumn and the threshold moves up from 20% to 22% or so, then you reach that 22% in about 4-5 weeks, as happened in the Autumn.
There is usually another equilibrium adjustment around now, which looks like it’s happening. It should take 4-5 weeks to reach 25% (or whatever the value is).
The 4-5 weeks is determined more by the characteristics of the virus– incubation time and infectious period– than anything else. Because growth is near-exponential it doesn’t make much difference what size the susceptible population is. It can just burn through it faster.
The point is we have had HI since the summer but we are getting the usual two winter peaks.
But the thresholds for summer and winter are somewhat artificially suppressed by people’s changes in behaviour. So there is some truth in the claim that we “don’t have herd immunity” depending on how you define it.
If we went back to behaving exactly as we did this time last year– going into work… Read more »
and a mask wearing partridge in a socially distanced pear tree
Hmmmm ‘about’ and ‘precise’ 🤔. Very SAGE
Thank you I worked it out from the Diane Abbott school of mathematics.
Herd stupidity more like.
We’ve already got that.
About seven months ago, I would guess.
Does herd immunity even matter? So long as the PCR test is used and the cycle threshold is so high, there will always be positive “cases.” Until enough people either get bored or get angry, this thing can go on indefinitely.
Very true. And then if the public are getting bored of Covid they can come out with a mutant flu virus (there are plenty to choose from every year of course) to justify the continued lunacy.
So just found out that my home town of Brighton is following london and closing all primary schools from Monday. What I was dreading having to tell my child.
Got an email from the council proudly telling that they had no choice because “the government wasn’t brave enough”.
Have written to the council demanding to see the risk assessment (which won’t exist. How can it, with a survival rate of 99.7%!).
The government is not brave enough. Not brave enough to make decisions, especially ones which the unions, the media, and covidians will not like. It has created this hysteria.
A majority Conservative government is afraid of the Unions, the NHS and the BBC.
Cowards!
You can FOI the Council, for all e mails on the subject.
More from my local paper. https://www.leicestermercury.co.uk/news/leicester-news/call-made-leicester-primary-schools-4849531#comments-section Even the comments from a consultant paediatrician in their local acute hospital is ignored. There’s still the myth that children can pass on the infection and, of course, the new strain. As the comments section doesn’t allow urls to be included it’s almost impossible to provide evidence.
We need to stop using “their definitions” like the new strain.
Dr Mike Yeadon has stated there are at least 4000 variants of Covid 19, so we need to start taking the piss and asking why the other 3999 varieties are ok but this one in incwedibly dangewous or something
Hear, hear ..
I’m bloody sick of sceptics talking about cases and infections, and taking the official death figures at face value.
Catherine Austin Fitts does a great job explaining how the controllers manage humanity, how things will only get worse under the guise of Covid 19 (digital health passports, state digital only currencies etc), and more importantly how the public can resist the increasing centralised rule by a small number technocratic and business elite. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C1-0XKYAZII
Unfortunately, the corrupt and evil politicians and media will happily sell us into eternal slavery, lots of individuals making small changes are are our only hope.
the most positive & actionable message from the video was the need to boycott the commercial activities of all the relevant participants – so no more amazon, youtube, twitter, bbc, etc etc
I certainly try to boycott globalist corporations. I would have posted a different link to the video but BitChute is currently under another state orchestrated DDoS attack – they really hate freedom of speech.
The best way to reduce MSM influence is simply not to use their services, pretty much everything they publish is misinformation and propaganda so I am amazed people even look at it, views give them power. The fear and anger the articles produce also give the controllers power over us.
I was watching Amazing Polly several hours ago when her Bitchute connection was rudely interrupted.
I couldn’t decide whether she’s on the money or a raving nutcase. It’s as well to hear the theory though, and act in ways to try and thwart the Evil Plan (if there is one).
I don’t particularly rate the government to implement an evil plan – they don’t have a good record with big projects, but I wouldn’t underestimate big business especially the tech companies to enslave people using technology. The financial system is going to be in such a mess when (if ever) this ends, there will certainly be a reset. The surveillance state is expanding rapidly every week and is be enthusiastically embraced by business and sheep like public.
Only if you let them get away with it.
Occupancy of London Hospital beds doesn’t quite tell the same story as we’re getting from the BBC.
Is the author of this shit serious????? We are not all living in big houses etc.
This is a proper scum article!!
Unbelievable.
https://uk.news.yahoo.com/over-55s-pay-costs-coronavirus-183214010.html
That’s a very poor assessment of how most over 55s live. I am in an inner city area of greater Manchester and the older generations do not live in luxury.
They are using the same old divide and conquer tactics as usual. There was also the articles about over 40s paying an increasing NHS tax last week.
Who comes out with utter dogshit like that article????!
I just pulled the hospital occupancy data for English hospitals https://www.england.nhs.uk/statistics/statistical-work-areas/uec-sitrep/urgent-and-emergency-care-daily-situation-reports-2020-21/?s=03
Doesn’t paint quite the picture we’re told!
NickR, Your graphs are brilliant. It puts everything in perspective.
Wow!
What about the same data for the last couple of years?
Homework:
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/regulatory-approval-of-covid-19-vaccine-astrazeneca
COVID-19 Vaccine AstraZeneca is indicated for active immunisation of individuals ≥18 years old for the prevention of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19).
Prevention??
The MHRA can confirm that the COVID-19 Vaccine AstraZeneca does not contain any components of animal origin.
Oh goody its vegan!
One dose (0.5 ml) contains:
COVID-19 Vaccine (ChAdOx1-S* recombinant) 5 × 1010 viral particles (vp)
*Recombinant, replication-deficient chimpanzee adenovirus vector encoding the SARS CoV 2 Spike (S) glycoprotein. Produced in genetically modified human embryonic kidney (HEK) 293 cells.
This product contains genetically modified organisms (GMOs).
For the full list of excipients, see section 6.1.
Human embryonic kidney. Definitely vegan – not!
Yea was just reading that bit! Sounds like an animal product to me…?
Isn’t this the vaccine using aborted foetuses that has caused discussions by religious authorities?
Reading those was not reassuring. So many unknowns
but as a document published by the Church of England commented- the aborted foetuses were sourced from voluntary abortions. So that’s OK?
Wonder what they would have said if they had been forced abortions?
It also contains polysorbate 80:
https://thevaccinereaction.org/2016/01/polysorbate-80-a-risky-vaccine-ingredient/
I think the cells it is grown on are discarded [or should be] when the vaccine is purified. The cells are a cloned cell line grown in a lab, I think the unfortunate baby died about 50 years ago. The Catholic Church approves the vaccine. it still feels yucky, though.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-55409693
I am also interested in what particular component of the Pfizer vaccine allows it to stay liquid at -90°!!!!.
I thought it was a genetically modified adenovirus that’s found in chimps?
Also, they killed all the chimps in the trial so they could examine their lungs.
Just one of the many reasons I won’t be taking it.
Nice…
Wow, I am constantly amazed that so called animal rights charities have been completely silent about the millions of animals killed over the past few months in experiments. I guess most of their supporters are virtue signalling hypocrites and the organisations themselves are controlled opposition.
Didn’t they skip the animal trials and move straight to humans? Doubt that will bother PETA.
Pregnancy
There is a limited experience with the use of COVID-19 Vaccine AstraZeneca in pregnant women.
Preliminary animal studies do not indicate direct or indirect harmful effects with respect to pregnancy, embryofetal development, parturition or post-natal development; definitive animal studies have not been completed yet. The full relevance of animal studies to human risk with vaccines for COVID-19 remains to be established.
Doesn’t sound like it.
I remember reading an article in The Times back in the summer (before I completely gave up on the MSM) that there was a worldwide clinical monkey / primate shortage – so they were obviously getting through a lot. I believe much of the animal experimentation is subcontracted out to laboratories abroad where anything still goes.
I think we replied at the same time about the monkey shortage! Interesting how we on LS can find out these facts and others about hospital data etc, but the MSM apparently can’t.
I think we did. God knows how many Monkeys the Chinese and other countries will have killed, big pharma still gets through plenty of animals.
The MSM know all the facts, they are just selective of what they tell the public and how they frame things, they are very much part of the problem.
Weren’t there lots of sharks killed too? MSM don’t want to bother with any of these things. Haven’t some folks said they are getting massive revenue form government advertising?
No they didn’t, several monkeys lost their lives, being killed at the end of the trials, and there are scientists who want to set up more trials involving monkeys, but there is a shortage apparently…
Most of their funds go for administration costs and parties.
Its the same as all the ooman rights mob have been rather conspicuously quiet while the Police have enthusiastically established a Covid fascist state and shut down any protests.for liberty or even filming of empty hospitals.
Just goes prove the rumours about Amnesty being used by the British Establishment as a front to attack regimes it doesn’t like are probably true. I won’t be donating again but they will probably get a bonus from the government for keeping in line.
But they used a lot of monkeys and smaller animals in the trials, which have now been killed….
The use of COVID-19 Vaccine AstraZeneca should be in accordance with official guidance.
Given recent gov track record we can scratch this bit.
From the info given to recipients (note it doesn’t say the side effects can last up to a week!):
Side effects that occurred during clinical trials with COVID 19 Vaccine AstraZeneca were as follows:
Very Common (may affect more than 1 in 10 people)
Common (may affect up to 1 in 10 people)
Uncommon (may affect up to 1 in 100 people)
In clinical trials there were very rare reports of events associated with inflammation of the nervous system, which may cause numbness, pins and needles, and/or loss of feeling. However, it is not confirmed whether these events were due to the vaccine.
Efficacy and safety data are currently limited in individuals ≥65 years of age
Summary of the safety profileThe overall safety of COVID-19 Vaccine AstraZeneca is based on an interim analysis of pooled data from four clinical trials conducted in the United Kingdom, Brazil, and South Africa. At the time of analysis, 23,745 participants ≥18 years old had been randomised and received either COVID-19 Vaccine AstraZeneca or control. Out of these, 12,021 received at least one dose of COVID-19 Vaccine AstraZeneca. The median duration of follow-up in the COVID-19 Vaccine AstraZeneca group was 105 days post dose 1, and 62 days post dose 2.
So it’s only been tested on 12,000 people!!!
Adverse reactions:
The most frequently reported adverse reactions were injection site tenderness (>60%); injection site pain, headache, fatigue (>50%); myalgia, malaise (>40%); pyrexia, chills (>30%); and arthralgia, nausea (>20%). The majority of adverse reactions were mild to moderate in severity and usually resolved within a few days of vaccination. By day 7 the incidence of subjects with at least one local or systemic reaction was 4% and 13% respectively. When compared with the first dose, adverse reactions reported after the second dose were milder and reported less frequently.
….… Read more »
Prevention, yes. Vaccines (for not above the millionth time) if they work are supposed to make you immune. That means prevention, cheezilla.
If they work.
This doesn’t guarantee prevention, so doesn’t necessarily make you immune.
I understand how you post now, welcome back John.
The BBC news website claims to provide “up to the minute news”…it’s taken them two months to admit there might be an issue over massive electoral fraud in a Biden fake victory. After no doubt some worried conferencing they are finally having to admit at least 11 Senators will challenge the Electoral College vote. I think that number may still grow because the evidence of massive fraud continues to grow. It’s recently been shown the Dominion CEO was lying when he claimed their machines were not connected to the Internet and could not be hacked. Several of their machines have been hacked in the current Georgia Senate run offs and have been shown to be connected to the Internet, specifically a Chinese company! The lying BBC claim absurdly the Senators are calling for an investigation into “unsubstantiated fraud allegations”. No! Why woukd they do that? No – they’re looking for an investigation into what they consider to be substantiated allegations.
The USA is on the brink of inaugurating a CCP controlled senile corrupt politician as the President off the back of massive fraud. America is in peril, Democracy is in peril, We are in peril, but the BBC, ITV,… Read more »
If the fraudulent ‘result’ stands it will be a festering corpse poisoning the well. There will be no return to normality possible afterwards. The postdemocratic age will be upon us, along (perhaps) with some violent reaction to that.
But if somehow the colour revolution is derailed at the last possible moment, there will be a lot of people and institutions with serious explaining to do. The Supreme Court, for one, is an institution that has definitively failed in its purpose. Major constitutional reform is inevitable whichever side wins this struggle.
There are so many ironies in this situation.
It’s the Republican right who tend to wax lyrical about constitution and the “wisdom” of the Founding Fathers. The Constitution has totally failed them! There are no specific mechanisms for dealing with electoral fraud and the Supreme Court as you say has essentially said the fraud can stand.
The Chief Justic John Roberts behaved appallingly when the Texas claim came up. It was reported he was shouting, screaming that there wss no precedent to hear it and citing the possibility of riots as a key factor in the Court’s deliberations! The Texas claim was dismissed withwith one line stating Texas had no standing. No reasoning or precedence for the decision was given! That’s how probably the most important claim in 100, years ws dealt with by SCOTUS.
It was also reported that Chief Justice Roberts said of Trump, while at a party, “that motherf***er” will never get re-elected”. They should put that on his epitaph.
In case people don’t know, Trump has called for his supporters to be in DC en masse on 6 Jan when the Senate meets to confirm the Electoral College vote. The chances of serious… Read more »
i think there are at least a few million who will be relying on the 2nd Amendment of the Constitution to right a few wrongs….
(and as for Roberts, there are some very nasty Epstein related rumours circulating that might yet see his swift exit)
The relevant document is below, the excuse is often made that it is a common name, however the correct question is how many people with that name are worth “influencing” by getting them on the Lolita Express?
it’s not just that – Roberts also allegedly arranged the “adoption” of his two children via Epstein….probably just baseless rumours being used tactically to get a rise…
There’s other rumours about Justice Roberts – namely that he supposedly was caught in discussions about replacing one of the Supremes, just days before Justice Scalia was found dead. Again, might be baseless. who knows.
yeah i heard it was diana ross…
Exactement! I don’t think our Jeff would be entertaining steel workers called John Roberts. But foul mouthed anti-Trump Chief Justices of the Supreme Court? Welcome aboard!
Chief Justice Roberts should be removed. He ignored Constitutional Law.
you are absolutely right of course – my own latest (over optimistic) take on this is that there has been a very clever plan to entrap the CCP/fraudsters and that the uk govt and the bbc is playing along as if complicit, while actually feeding info to the US military/intelligence. once the fraud is revealed and defeated, the govt and the bbc will explain their role in averting the fall of the US republic, issue a massive apology, and immediately lift all restrictions.
If the fraud is revealed and defeated it will be bicycle clips time at the BBC.
Lol! If only. I can only I’d love it if you were right…
in any case it will be fascinating to see what transpires on 06/01 – especially to see what a real protest by “we the people” looks like…
I’m glad you keep raising this OKUK. It is really important. It is interesting that even some lockdown sceptics find it unbelievable that the US election was rigged. The media censorship on this massively outclassed even the Coronabollocks censorship. It can’t be that the two massively corrupt scams of Coronabollocks and the fiddled election are unconnected.
you’re right – as we now know, the virus was the cover for the massive amount of mail-in ballots, huge numbers of which the machines sent (overseas) for “adjudication” – i.e. fiddled for Biden. latest rumours are now that italy was heavily involved, as well as MI6 (playing double agent of course)
The Red Mist worked beautifully. Unfortunately, they got caught. They should all go to prison. Just round them up. Including Joe, Hunter, Nancy, Chuck, Cuomo and several other governors and mayors.
shouldn’t that be “fortunately”?
Yes it is ironic how many Covid sceptics often refuse to even examine the mountain of evidence of electoral fraud in the recent US Presidential election. It’s based I think, on a snobbish dislike of Trump with his vanity, vulgarity and venom. It’s pointless to expect them to change their view of Trump but in previous years candidates of the Left in the Democratic primaries made very similar complaints about the voting machines and election irregularities. All the evidence now suggests they were right to do so and the primary votes were being manipulated.
My two main sources are Jones and Gorka. You?
Lots! I think Sidney Powell’s twitter account has been one of the best. Nothing of substance she has claimed from the early stages has been disproven and much has beennsubstantiated.
Gateway Pundit has been v accurate.
Obviously back in the day I consulted Fox News a lot but now we know it was an active participant in the fraud, declaring Arizona for Biden at an absurdly early juncture…not even CNN did! Why? – because it was important for “right wing” Fox News to get it on record that a “left wing” Biden had won a “right wing” sunbelt state (flipping the narrative after Trump’s huge wins in Texas and Florida) and preparing the ground for theovernight election steal which would would see rust belt states turn anti-Trump, totally against the trend from the honest election held in rustbelt Ohio.
I basically no longer trust the news networks of any stripe. Best to build your network! Rest assured – if this was all “conspiracy theory” there would be no chance of 11 plus senators laying their necks on the line and saying there has been massive fraud, enough to swing the election for Biden. Most of them have been… Read more »
11 Senators? As of Thursday there was only one. They’re making progress in a hurry. Good on them.
.
Too bad that you don’t have enough money to show that on TV all around the world. It might enlighten a few million people.
Please disseminate as widely as you can.
Another interesting factoid to share:
https://www.newswars.com/breaking-joe-biden-now-criminal-suspect-in-ukraine/
I was born in the U.S.A. Southern California. Newsom is gruesome. Recalls are heating up. And the new District Attorney in Los Angeles, formerly of San Francisco, supposedly supported by Soros is also getting his comeuppances by all the county district attorneys. Good riddance to them and all the other folks who are ruining my home state!
They’re calling it Total Recall. Happening in other states too.
Ted Cruz is leading them and he is a very powerful voice. He’s from Texas as well and to say Texas was pissed off with SCOTUS is to put it midly I would say.
as the saying goes, “don’t mess with texas!”
An informed source is saying it’s actually 16. They might be releasing the numbers slowly to maintain momentum…
Two things, the American constitution and 350m guns stand in the way. The first is under serious attack, expect the second to be shortly under a Biden administration.
It’s not something I’d ever really thought about because I don’t wear masks, but after the good news about removing VAT on tampons I thought I’d check. The government removed the exemption on PPE in October – VAT is now at 20%. So masks are essential items as far as the law/propaganda is concerned, but non-essential for tax purposes.
cos its a top money maker
I thought this chart was useful to again put some perspective on this whole business.
Essentially we’ve reverted to the usual death rates pre-flu vaccine years.
Yes very good. I was slightly surprised at how low the average for non Covid respiratory disease was. I suspect that a lot of respiratory deaths have previously been wrapped up in heart and cancer deaths whereas Covid testing means Covid tends to get highlighted in certificates.
Clearly there was a huge excess deaths spike in the Spring largely explained by this novel pathogen though with some lockdown effects. I think the Covid winter spike has been greater than many, including Yeadon, expected. However, we shouldn’t assume like Whitty that “everything is on the Covid side”. A high proportion of “Covid deaths” will be lockdown-related. Even deaths that are principally attributable to Covid respiratory disease can be lockdown related. If a care home resident is demoralised and depressed by months of isolation from
normal contact with their loved ones there is every chance their immune system will be affected negatively and as a consequence they will have serious symptoms. This, as Whitty should say but won’t, should be counted on the lockdown side, not the Covid side. The government is wilfully suppressing people’s immune systems through lockdowns, home confinement, masking and inducement of anxiety and depression,
I think there was a Covid hump in spring but the spike looks artificial. It looks like measurement harvesting. There are 1400 deaths a day and more sometimes. Of those you only need to change how you label things to get a rising spike. It can be a pure artefact of collective measurement, where one place does things a certain way due to policy changes then more do it. The viral spread is like social media rather than a real viral spread.
It doesn’t sit with other places either. And I know Joel Swalley is pointing out places like the Czech republic who are now getting a spike saying that this is their wave. I don’t think it is. They’ve changed their reporting approach and are panicking more now. Hence the spike.
What gets me is this shows who the real empiricists are, as in those who make a living measuring things. Most of those modellers if not all, don’t get their own raw data or understand the nuance it seems. They appear to see systematic uncertainty as something that can be reduced rather than being a direct limitation on use of data. Climate science is rife with… Read more »
Your graphs are very good but after this ends I never want to see another one again
You should watch Ivor Cummins latest video where he covers the well known characteristic of viruses to replace a previously dominant one in the host.
Note: flu has disappeared worldwide, i.e. it has been replaced worldwide by a new form of respiratory virus, Covid 19 currently, which has 4000+ variants.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=SdKkZLqhmDM&list=WL&index=200
I must say I love this site. There are always interesting articles and comments serious and funny and links to various other sites. It has definitely helped me stay sane during this very peculiar time.
“Rowthorn acknowledges that he can only speculate on how a genetic predisposition toward religion may manifest itself in a secular context. Previous research has suggested that a genetic predisposition toward religion is tied to a variety of characteristics such as conservatism, obedience to authority, and the inclination to follow rituals”
https://phys.org/news/2011-01-religiosity-gene-dominate-society.html
Obedience to authority?
Yes
Inclination to follow rituals?
Yes.
Conservatism?
Quite often
Sounds like Covidianism to me.
So the people doing the vaccinations need to be trained in anti-radicalisation and diversity awareness.
Shouldn’t the same criteria also apply to those being jabbed? If they don’t understand these things then surely they don’t deserve to be ‘saved’! (I’m damned!)
god forbid that they should address a vaccination patient using the wrong gender .
should it be guinea pig, guinea sow, guinea boar?
My mum is a retired GP. She and several colleagues were prepared to volunteer to do some jabbing. But none of them have diversity awareness training because people weren’t fussed about it in them days. Not to mention the hassle involved in sourcing all those certificates required and filling out the ridiculous form. So none of them will do it. Well done Boris.
This is an hilarious story. The Great Reset is self destructing on its own wokeness.
What a tangled web
Interesting that the vaccine itself is the cherry on the extreme CCP Maoist repression cake.
THE PLAINTIVE SHEEP
You told me to lock down so I did.
You told me to wear a mask
I never thought to ask
You why.
You showed me the charts, I believed.
I consented to be tracked and traced
To have my culture slowly erased.
To always comply
You told me to be afraid. I was.
I did all this for my wife, my son and my daughter
But now, like lambs to the slaughter,
We must die.
So at last I ask you: why?
That bitch Laura Duffel should be in fucking hiding.
Coronavirus: No increase in severe child cases, paediatricians say https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-55518248
My daughter is a nurse. She has been warned that if she expresses an opinion in public about Covid she could lose her job. If she tells the truth about Covid she could lose her job.
I bet Duffel’s lies get looked over though.
That just confirms there is definitely something fishy going on!
They can’t help themselves. They are gagging for kids to be dead in their thousands. Why?
Maybe to justify more controlling draconian measures as we are all obliged to protect children.
Damn right.
they need to test the water, as if they do get sacked it will hekp to blow the whole thing out of the water, it would never get to court
It’s very difficult to be a whistleblower when you work for a monopoly employer.
Most people that get sacked can find a similar job elsewhere, but when it’s the NHS that sacks you it’s not just your job but your whole career.
Hopefully some brave individuals who are looking to get out of the profession will speak out. I guess anyone who speaks publicly will be suspended on full pay pending a disciplinary hearing and then this could be taken to an employment tribunal to drag it out even longer.
She’s already getting the benefit of the doubt on Twitter whereas we are called all-sorts for very little in comparison.
I’ll check the NMC code of professional conduct to see if there’s a prima facie case for referral to the NMC.
I’ve found this
Uphold the reputation of your profession at all times
To achieve this, you must:
20.1 keep to and uphold the standards and values set out in the Code
20.2 act with honesty and integrity at all times, treating people fairly and without discrimination, bullying or harassment
20.3 be aware at all times of how your behaviour can affect and influence the behaviour of other people
20.4 keep to the laws of the country in which you are practising
20.5 treat people in a way that does not take advantage of their vulnerability or cause them upset or distress
20.6 stay objective and have clear professional boundaries at all times with people in your care (including those who have been in your care in the past), their families and carers
20.7 make sure you do not express your personal beliefs (including political, religious or moral beliefs) to people in an inappropriate way
20.8 act as a role model of professional behaviour for students and newly qualified nurses, midwives and nursing associates to aspire to
20.9 maintain the level of health you need to carry out your professional role
20.10 use all forms of spoken, written and digital… Read more »
This petition is growing strangely slowly. It won’t do any good – but it serves to show that people are not alone.
https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/550598
Is it possible for your daughter to go private? Perhaps with other nurses? Start their own clinic?
bbc – casualty has gone covid. bbc stooping to an all time low .
But now shooting themselves in the foot(Casualty)
cant bring myself to watch it .. old lady dying, baby dying, black man dying . wonder if we get Charlie Fairhead doing a tictoc dance?
seriously it needs someone with medical knowledge to go through this and pick out the fabrication and propaganda .
Of course the public will watch this and think it is a documentary .
oh no they are all applauding the baby who has recovered. applauding with jazz hands
I used to be a regular, but the fact that the NHS continues to employ geriatric Fairhead finally became too much last year. It was an addiction I am relieved to have beaten.
I know someone who was a medical advisor some years ago on the programme but they took no notice when he advised how things would or wouldn’t happen medically, because it wasn’t dramatic enough and didn’t fit with their story/agenda.
I’ve never watched ‘Casualty’?…what is it?……..
Absolute rubbish.
bbc medical drama … been on for 34 years !! so a bit of an institution
I bet it’s as woke as buggery.
never thought whether buggery was woke or not … to me its just a pain in the backside
Depressing hospital soap on the BBC. Occasionally attained the height of so bad it was good. The most entertaining part was guessing what massive accident was going to happen in the first ten minutes or so which depicted life outside the hospital and introduced us to the characters. Man climbs on roof to fix TV aerial with extremely dull chainsaw, that kind of thing.
Formulaic doesn’t begin to describe it.
A long running joke in my family is whenever a character is introduced in the show to shout ‘he/she’s dead!’
like an original star trek red shirt wearer. they never made it back off the planet . .
My wife is a fan and I’ve had to suffer it for decades.
I well remember one episode where Charlie’s total dialogue was 5 words.
I believe that the actor who plays him is paid more than the rest of the cast put together.
And he is an appalling actor.
Wooden is an understatement.
Perhaps but I felt he captured the spirit of long-suffering tetchiness that is a defining feature of the NHS. Perhaps he was just acting himself but that’s all that matters.
as Paul Merton once said “look, I know how to light a barbeque”. Gives an idea of the starting point.
And “Are you sure that ladder is safe?”
And “Pass me that can of petrol, this bonfire is a bit damp”.
Brilliant. Sums up the current wave of manic propaganda rather well.
ABSOLUTELY.
Ha,ha-never fails to amuse
Thanks, much appreciated.
Casualty is an absolute shower of sh*te. That male nurse ‘Charlie’ with the crinkly hair has been in a constant state of stress because of government cuts to the NHS, for about 40 years, but somehow has managed to stay alive and keep his job. He should have been off on full pay with ‘stress’ years ago.
Let’s hope the BBC is another Covid casualty when the public learn the full extent of their fear-mongering mendacity.
You all may know about this since I’ve not been here much recently, but I just read a comment in the Daily Mail that sent me to the NOIDs weekly report of notifiable diseases.
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/notifiable-diseases-weekly-reports-for-2020
Apparently in week 52 just past, there were only 85 reports made of COVID around the country. There are weekly reports at that link for the whole year. I went back a few weeks and found one with 170+. Back in late March, there were around 120. Why are these numbers so different to the official story?
I think that might have been me 🙂 Yes – everyone should read those reports. The first appearance of Covid was in week 11 with one case.
Its all down in black & white, how are they able to spin it the way they are?
I certainly don’t understand it. I was hoping that one of those who’ve been tracking the stats would be able to explain this.
Yes, a fascinating detail that needs explaining. Some discussion of it further down today’s comments, including a link (via yesterday’s comments) to a discussion of the possible implications by a group including Dr Clare Craig and Joel Smalley:
The PHE data that goes against the narrative – Hunting down symptomatic COVID-19
Yes it was posted earlier – sent to my MP – asked him to explain why based on figures from his own government – Norfolk and Suffolk with a grand total of ……(drum roll)…0 reported infections last week are in Tier 4 with all the economic destruction that entails. No response as yet. I think this needs to get sent to every MP.
This notifiable disease aspect has been raised before, it needs someone with some knowledge of public health administration to comment on this apparently odd situation, personally I have not got a clue.
Actually a reply to GeorgeL nd to myself earlier on.
I have just been sent this link that purports to show that the NOID figures are only for a subset of the infections. I’ve been thrown off FB, so haven’t been able to check what the story might be.
https://l.facebook.com/l.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.gov.uk%2Fguidance%2Fnotifiable-diseases-and-causative-organisms-how-to-report%3Ffbclid%3DIwAR3Lu_9qXMT622RCnbRBI88pxF2_PJxuhT8y1LKWrh4jnrZMBGBLYQllr9Q%23reporting-of-sars-cov-2-test-results-to-public-health-england&h=AT38zAAp6M_Ld6lmSkkh0E7Vsjsk7c2RZk7LJKQ6Gr8StPioC1I49yzdNP0oRd8De9eA9LvXhDfjWpCvng0E9CcSREy_YorwkzPXa3rumB7-BIdqaCMqd_4-y1LtYoxuDN4L&__tn__=R%5D-R&c%5B0%5D=AT2N96B18Ad68QkaEt4V31-lYYmkhXFV2VEfty09O76Gll7EOcNEYVR82sn5bwKi5TOJtL766hPvtj8JaUy4qtWO_STrVhKJtqq_yMz3IMvGzgRvgalStMWZuBRVGVYKpcotmM3YBiJQv8c32ynD8ZA-XLOjj6-MCgBhPQRHwlbPtORy
The person who sent the above link sent an email:
I take it you’ve seen the NOID’s link / figures being circulated by the producers of misinformation? The figures are real – but it’s there for GP’s to report a suspected case before a test has been done. The tests carried out by the labs count towards official notification so don’t need to be reported separate, and as people are advised to obtain a test rather than visit their GP with suspected Covid, the numbers are very low.
Perhaps that is the case, but surely ALL cases should be reported to NOID?
That was my logical conclusion. If it’s a notifiable disease then surely cases must be reported.
That’s not what the link says. It says “All laboratories in England performing a primary diagnostic role must notify PHE of specified causative agents (organisms), in accordance the Health Protection (Notification) Regulations 2010. SARS-COV-2 is the notifiable causative agent for COVID-19. All registered medical practitioners in England must notify the proper officer of the relevant local authority or the local PHE health protection team of specified infectious diseases, in accordance with the Public Health (Control of Disease) Act 1984 and the Health Protection (Notification) Regulations 2010. All proper officers must disclose the entire notification to PHE. COVID-19 is a notifiable infectious disease.” You can read more at that link. It’s a notifiable disease, therefore the figures given out weekly must be correct.
So logic dictates that either laboratories are not reporting SARS-COV-2 in contravention of the regulations or they are not finding any SARS-COV-2 to report. So which is it Hancock?
It’s whichever doesn’t spoil the propaganda! We’ve been lied to for months. They’re acting like we’re having 350,000 cases a week – who are they testing?
The same 50 samples thousands of times? Or with enough amplifications you can test anything positive.
Non-fb link:
https://www.gov.uk/guidance/notifiable-diseases-and-causative-organisms-how-to-report
Read about it yesterday, now trying to find out figures from my local hospital to compare
This is the question of the week. Incidentally, the number for week 52 was 50 yesterday, so a handful more must have trickled through after the holiday. As you can see, most areas are not mentioned, therefore have NO cases at all.
On the 30th, given the imminent moves to tier 4, I asked my useless MP to explain how, if Covid-19 is a notifiable disease and, apparently there are tens of thousands of “cases” daily, the actual NOIDS figures differ so dramatically.
I received this snotty response:
The Government have responded to the current growth in cases. All public health measures are voted on in Parliament, and there will be votes this evening.
You will never accept any of my answers on the data, so I will not waste either of our time.
So I checked Hansard. They voted to give themselves holiday till January 11th. That is recorded. But somehow the SI regarding the new tiers passed by some undisclosed nod and wink, for which I could find no evidence other than the chair declaring it so.
I wrote back and pointed out that he hadn’t actually answered my question regarding the ginormous discrepancy in the figures but… Read more »
I do not know the history of your correspondence with your MP, but I find that answer wholly unacceptable. MPs are public servants and would do well to remember that.
OK I’ve gone to this website https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/notifiable-diseases-weekly-reports-for-2020
Downloaded some of the PDF’s but although it mentions Covid as a notifiable disease I can’t find the numbers further down the lists, where are the number people are quoting coming from?
The chart is right at the end of each report – about the last page or so.
Each report is 15 or 16 pages long, which page is the data on?
Scroll to the last page, and it’s around there. It’s not in the charts at the beginning, it’s in the lists at the end.
Page 14 on week 52
The graphs on the pandata.org website are any easy way to view this data.
There seem to be very few cases around London.
Was reading the guidance for practitioners. This extract outlines their statutory duty:
“Complete a notification form immediately on diagnosis of a suspected notifiable disease. Don’t wait for laboratory confirmation of a suspected infection or contamination before notification. Consult the PHE Notifiable Diseases poster (PDF, 1020KB, 1 page) for further information.
Send the form to the proper officer within 3 days, or notify them verbally within 24 hours if the case is urgent by phone, letter, encrypted email or secure fax machine.”
The poster does not include Covid but says the list on it is not exhaustive,
MSM in overdrive driving up the fear factor: deaths ranging from 3 months to 103 years/patients on trollies filling up corridors (so what’s new?).
Hopefully the propaganda( right now on “Casualty”) is starting to have less affect.
CRACKS STARTING TO APPEAR?
Its a perfect storm: Govt wants to ramp up fear factor to justify Tier 4 till Easter so the Teachers and Doctors are useful idiots and happy to play along.
On the other hand when the govt want to dial down the pressure as in University students going home for Christmas and lifting a lorry blockade in Dover they were able to accomplish this without a murmur of complaint or suspicion.