Hancock Sets Out Vaccination Plan
The Government has published its ‘UK COVID-19 Vaccines Delivery Plan‘ and the Health Secretary gave a press conference alongside Professor Stephen Powis on Monday stating that 2.3 million people have been given at least one dose of a vaccine so far and explaining his plan to continue rolling out the biggest mass vaccination programme in history. The BBC reports:
The vaccine delivery plan says it is expected to take until spring to give a first dose to all 32 million people in the UK’s priority groups, including everyone over 55 and those who are clinically vulnerable.
Under the plan, the government has pledged to carry out at least two million vaccinations in England per week by the end of January, which it says will be made possible by rolling out jabs at 206 hospital sites, 50 vaccination centres and around 1,200 local vaccination sites.
It also reiterates the government’s aim of offering vaccinations to around 15 million people in the UK – the over-70s, older care home residents and staff, frontline healthcare workers and the clinically extremely vulnerable – by mid-February.
According to Mr Hancock, two fifths of over-80s have now received their first dose, and almost a quarter of care home residents have received theirs.
Ministers have stopped short so far of introducing yet stricter measures, and Hancock ruled out scrapping support ‘bubbles’, though several newspapers have run fairly hysterical finger-wagging front pages:
A glaring Chris Whitty is pictured next to an instruction not to “stop for a chat” despite his having repeated yesterday on Radio 4 that fleeting outdoor contact was not a risk.
The Metropolitan Police commissioner Cressida Dick, meanwhile, has written in The Times:
It is preposterous to me that anyone could be unaware of our duty to do all we can to stop the spread of the virus. We have been clear that those who breach COVID-19 legislation are increasingly likely to face fines.
The article continues:
Officers are now stopping people on the street and requiring them to explain why they are outside. They will also routinely hand out fines to anyone at illegal gatherings. Enforcement was previously limited to the organisers.
Another force is using surveillance cameras to track down motorists breaching lockdown rules. Devon and Cornwall is deploying automatic number-plate recognition technology, which identifies vehicles on the roads, to monitor vehicle movements.
Despite the doom-laden tone from Number 10, the ZOE Covid Symptom Study App calculated that the R rate in London was 0.9 as recently as January 7th, with infections falling:
The R rate was calculated just barely higher at 1 for the rest of the UK:
On Yer Bike! Did PM’s Journey Contravene His Own Guidance?
The Prime Minister was accused of making a journey which wasn’t in the spirit of the Government’s guidance after being spotted cycling seven miles from Downing Street. The Evening Standard reports:
The Prime Minister was wearing his TfL hat and a face mask when he was seen cycling with his security detail in Stratford, east London, at around 2pm.
Official Government guidance on exercise says it should be limited to once a day and “you should not travel outside your local area”.
The park has been noticeably busy with families exercising and the PM is said to have been concerned by what he saw in the area.
Lockdown sceptics will be less concerned by the length of his journey than the existence of such absurd guidance in the first place, although it did give the Health Secretary Matt Hancock an opportunity to clarify that:
“It is OK to go, if you went for a long walk, and ended up seven miles away from home – that is OK but you should stay local. You should not go from one side of the country to another potentially taking the virus with you.
“Remember one in three people who have the virus don’t know they have it because they have no symptoms and yet still pass it on.”
He added: “It is OK to go for a long walk or a cycle ride or exercise – but stay local.”
Steerpike commented in The Spectator:
The guidance on exercise says “you should not travel outside your local area”. So, what does the Prime Minister say? While there’s no official response, a Downing Street source confirmed that the Prime Minister was exercising — but failed to say whether he was driven there to exercise or had cycled the whole way. The former would likely be classed as a rule breach.
They did, however, voice the PM’s concern at the other people using the park at that time: “He did note how busy the park was and he commented on it at the meeting last night. He was concerned about if people were following the rules and was concerned after his cycle ride around the park.”
While going somewhere and then complaining about how many other people have done the same is an unwelcome trend of the pandemic, Mr S had hoped Johnson would know better. After all, if someone should have refrained from showing up there, surely it’s the person who lives seven miles away?
Covid, Hyper-Medicalisation, and Viral Interference
We are publishing a guest piece today by Dr Irina Metzler FRHistS, medical historian and former lecturer at the University of Swansea, as well as a Wellcome Trust University Award Fellow. Here is a short extract:
One of the puzzles in the Covid story is how different the effect of SARS-CoV-2 can be from person to person. If we accept the notion of ‘asymptomatic transmission’, then Covid is inconsequential for such a large number of apparently infected people that they notice no symptoms whatsoever, while others have symptoms so mild they are comparable to the common cold, yet a minority of infected people suffer very severe reactions and unfortunately sometimes lethal outcomes. This very wide variance in how individuals’ bodies react to the virus makes COVID-19 a most unusual illness. What follows are some speculative musings on potential factors influencing individual variance, in other words, asking the question: Have we missed something that could explain why some people fall very ill and even die, yet others don’t even know they’ve got it?
Besides individual disparity in reactions to the SARS-CoV-2 virus, there is of course the disparity in how regional variation affects mortality and severe illness. Contrary to most beliefs in an efficient health care system (including preventative care, hygiene, nutrition, immunisation programmes), whereby there should be less illness in those nations that have better and more accessible healthcare provisions, Covid actually seems to be less of a threat to poorer, economically weaker nations which had a lower case fatality rate (meaning fewer deaths per number of infected individuals) than economically stronger countries.
Demographics certainly play a role in this disparity, since older people are more likely to fall victim to Covid than younger, and economically wealthier countries have larger numbers of the old than poorer countries. But other factors, such as the former ‘hygiene hypothesis’, now refined as the ’Old Friends’ hypothesis, and the incidence of autoimmune disorders in higher-income countries have also been advanced. The hygiene hypothesis is well known and argues that the more ‘clean’ we have become, the less chance our immune systems have had to be ‘trained’ in how to ward off pathogens. Hyper-hygienic conditions, which have been advocated in most high-income countries, through things as basic as using anti-bacterial products for everything from chopping boards for food preparation to the now ubiquitous hand sanitisers, have in fact contributed to the lack of training in childhood for most Westerners’ immune systems. Lack of exposure to parasites and other pathogens, which would train the immune system, has been linked to impaired Type 1 interferon activity, which in turn has been linked with susceptibility to the SARS-CoV-2 virus (see Impaired type I interferon activity and inflammatory responses in severe COVID-19 patients). Paradoxically, then, the inhabitants of higher income countries are, despite enjoying overall better health outcomes, at greater risk of developing severe COVID-19 than those in lower-income nations.
Worth reading in full.
MP Explains His Vote Against Lockdown Restrictions – Faces Backlash
David Warburton, Member of Parliament for Somerton and Frome, whose email to one of his constituents explaining his refusal to vote for the tier system we published last month, has written an explanation on his website of his reasons for voting against lockdown again last Wednesday. Warburton has done his homework, and it’s a comprehensive argument. Here is an extract:
…I have concerns in several areas:
First, the numbers and how they are being reported. Yes, there is no doubt that the new evolving strains of the virus – though thankfully no more virulent – are more easily transmitted between individuals. But our increased rates of infection are more interesting. The mass scale of our PCR testing and self-reporting through the NHS app means that, for example, our case rate appears to be far higher than many European neighbours. And testing also creates some revealing anomalies: the virus seems to understand the soft border between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland, for example, crediting those to the north with a far higher rate of infection. Our mortality rate — dreadful though it is — remains much the same as others’. So either the false-positive incidence of our testing is giving us a bleak picture, or we appear more resilient to the worst effects of the virus, which is obviously unlikely.
Everyone who attends hospital is now tested – itself, of course, a terrifically important step. Those who test positive are reported statistically as hospital Covid patients, whether they were asymptomatic or not; whether they attended hospital for a broken ankle or regular cancer treatment. Naturally, when we then hear of hospitals managing thousands of Covid patients, such reporting will concern us all and lead the Government to seek to act.
Every death, for whatever reason, is tragic and shocking. Even to write about it — and especially to do so in terms of data and numbers — belittles and minimises the personal loss which we all feel. It is important to see, I think though, that excess deaths over the past year have not been statistically higher than the average for previous years. And the ONS reveals that, in terms of deaths per 100,000 of population, since 1993 ten previous years have had higher rates than 2020. But I also understand that, given the infection rates and the new strains, it is the predictions of future mortality which concerns the Government. They do not know what may come.
I will not dwell on the historic predictions of SAGE, but I must draw attention to the missing component in this thought process. At the end of the regulations before us yesterday was the bald admission that “No impact assessment has been prepared for these Regulations.”
That means that we were asked to vote, again, on restrictions which will have unknown effects, both positive and negative. We are not provided with evidence for the efficacy of the lockdown, other than our experience of the mixed results of previous lockdowns, and — crucially — we do not know what is the nature or the extent of the detrimental effects.
As I’ve said before, the ONS have estimated that the restrictions across 2020 will have resulted in 200,000 non-Covid excess deaths. Bristol University put the figure far higher. Whether or not these predictions have any more accuracy than SAGE’s own Covid predictions, these numbers are many times higher than those who tragically will have been lost to the virus.
Many of us have repeatedly asked for the data – a cost benefit analysis – which can allow us to make an informed decision. The crucial question we have to ask ourselves is what is the cost to lives, to livelihoods, to businesses, to mental health, suicides, to all non-Covid related heath. It’s imperative that these factors are weighed in the balance against the likely lives saved from those same restrictions.
Definitely worth reading in full.
Stop Press: A Twitter poll has been started by a local Labour Party activist asking whether people support David’s stance. If you use Twitter, you can make your voice heard here.
Stop Press 2: The Swedish physiologist Johan Hellström has published a historic mortality graph for no-lockdown Sweden up to and including 2020, and as you may expect, there isn’t much to see:
This study provides more detail on the comparison between Norway and Sweden, and also concludes that lockdowns do not explain the differences.
Stop Press 3: Yesterday, we reported on a lockdown enthusiast who has repented and joined the ranks of the lockdown sceptics. Today, we bring you another – New York Governor Andrew Cuomo!
What is Law and What is Guidance? Clarification from a QC
Chris Daw QC, author of Justice on Trial, spoke to Ian Collins at talkRADIO to give his legal expertise on the matter of what exactly police are and aren’t entitled to fine people for, after a few well-publicised instances of members of the public being questioned and even fined by over-zealous police officers.
Stop Press: The two women fined by Derbyshire Police for driving five miles to a local reservoir, whose cups of peppermint tea were described as a ‘picnic’ by the issuing officer, have received an apology and had their fines withdrawn.
A Reader’s Cancer Treatment
A Lockdown Sceptics reader has sent us her recent experience being treated for cancer in a private hospital through the NHS, as well as her bafflement at reports in the press about cancelled surgery.
You may be interested in my own recent experience of cancer treatment during this Covid crisis. I was diagnosed with cancer on December 30th following a biopsy on December 16th and advised to have a lumpectomy as initial treatment. This was at Barts NHS Trust. The operation took place on January 4th at a well-known London private hospital, which my surgeon explained was being used by Barts for such surgery during the pandemic. I won’t name the hospital, but as it is known for treating members of the Royal Family I doubt if its facilities usually come cheaply. I was shocked to be given such an early date for surgery, but my surgeon further explained that after January 5th Barts feared being ordered to suspend all such surgery. If this has indeed happened, I was very fortunate with the timing of my diagnosis and feel enormous sympathy for anyone whose surgery has now been delayed.
I was puzzled to see it reported today (the Times: “NHS attacks private hospitals for not cancelling operations”) that the NHS stopped using private hospitals for such surgery some months ago and that “NHS chiefs” were strongly critical of private hospitals for carrying out elective surgery during the present crisis (according to a “leaked” letter from senior NHS figures, including, supposedly, the head of Barts Health Trust!) The Times article states as fact that although the NHS is negotiating to use private hospitals again, this does not include any of the main London private hospitals, since the NHS reportedly balked at their high costs. This is clearly wrong from my own experience and makes me wonder if such “leaks” are inspired by political motives.
The Guardian reports that Barts NHS Trust has suspended all such surgery since December 23rd:
People with advanced cancer have had their urgent surgery cancelled at a leading London hospital trust that is treating the largest number of Covid patients in the NHS.
Patients who were due to undergo an operation to treat their disease at Barts Health NHS trust have been told the pressures the resurgent COVID-19 is putting hospitals under was to blame.
The procedures involved are known in the NHS as “red flag” cancer cases and are classed by the NHS as “priority two” surgery, which means they should be done within 28 days of the decision to operate. Any delay risks the patient’s disease spreading or becoming inoperable.
Barts is the second big hospital trust in London known to have cancelled operations as a result of the strain on the NHS, which led to the UK’s four Chief Medical Officers issuing an unprecedented warning last week that parts of the service were close to collapse.
Staff in Barts’ surgical division approached the Guardian to disclose that cancellations had been happening there since before Christmas after reading a statement in the Observer by Sir David Sloman, the NHS’s Regional Director for the capital, that “urgent cancer surgery is not being cancelled in London”.
One member of staff said last week: “This [statement] is not true. At the Royal London Hospital we have not been able to do any non-emergency surgery since December 23rd. We have not done any cancer surgery, except emergency procedures, since then. [There is] no clarity yet on when or where we can restart our elective surgery.”
Furthermore, The Times reports:
NHS chiefs have criticised private hospitals and doctors in London for performing non-urgent operations despite the “unthinkable pressures” of the pandemic.
A letter leaked to HSJ, the health service journal, asked trusts in the capital “not to support” private work for at least a month.
London’s NHS hospitals have cancelled almost all planned care. At least two have postponed urgent cancer surgery as figures show that treatment levels are failing to keep pace with demand. The NHS has been trying to negotiate use of the capital’s private hospitals for cancer patients.
Our reader is right to be confused.
Was I Just Witness to a Covid Death?
We are reproducing in full this account kindly contributed by Thomas Harrington, Professor of Iberian Studies at Trinity College, Hartford, CT, USA of a tragic occurrence last week, which he firmly attributes to the Covid restrictions.
Friday night at 4:45 in the morning my partner, K and I awoke to the flashing lights of police and medical teams outside the house where we are currently staying. It was accompanied by murmured conversations between the uniformed people and one of the men who stays with our landlord, who lives in an adjacent part of the same building.
Tired and not wanting to intrude on the lives of people we knew, but not intimately, we went back to sleep, hoping that nothing really transcendent had occurred.
By mid-morning those hopes were thoroughly dashed when K returned to our place ashen-faced to tell me that Pete, our 60 year-old weight-lifting landlord, who could have passed for a robust 45, was dead, quite probably by suicide. We just sat there numb for a very, very long time.
Over the last few months while living in the in-law apartment of his house, K, a woman who naturally invites emotional openness in others, had come to know Pete fairly well. And on my more or less extended visits to the little apartment, I had engaged with him as well. He was extremely bright and gentle, a yacht captain by trade and a romantic adventurer by predilection, who talked longingly and wistfully of lost loves and of business deals gone bad. Speaking to his best friend, Dave, yesterday after the tragedy, we were both confirmed in our suspicion that he was, in many ways, his own worst enemy.
But a message that came across just as strongly, if not stronger, was that Pete was deeply loved and supported by a network of friends who had remained true to him, and they to him, over a half a century. As Dave explained they had all seen each other through difficult moments, ratifying their support for each other, at times, through, among other things, the lending of not insignificant sums of money.
Indeed, as we spoke, just around the corner in the gorgeous, if decadently unkempt, tropical back yard of the house with its irregularly-shaped pool, the members of that support-crew were sitting together drinking beer while crying and laughing about their friend. This once grand property had, in effect, been their clubhouse, the place was where they had reaffirmed their friendship over and again during 50 years (Pete grew up in the house and had inherited it from his parents) with what he and they, and the women in their lives, liked to call Funday Sundays.
But over the last several months, that vital social lifeline, along with the possibilities of work in the boating industry, had been, if not wholly severed, severely weakened by the social restrictions imposed by the “fight against Covid”.
Pete had fallen into a very deep depression, about which he had spoken pretty openly about with K. Last week, he told her he had finally gone to a mental health professional for help.
But last Friday, night, it seems, he decided to end things. As a tragedy, this story requires no adornment.
But I nonetheless less feel compelled to ask all those out there currently justifying draconian reductions of basic human liberties, and worse yet, human customs of love and caring, on the basis of inflated ‘case’ numbers spawned by a deeply flawed PCR test, as well as a 0.23% IFR, if they might be willing to admit that Pete was also a real Covid fatality?
And more fundamentally, I’d like to ask all those that constantly tell us about the grave threat posed by Covid — with its 99.77% survival rate and victim cohort tilted overwhelmingly to those at or beyond their normal level of life expectancy — if, after playing profligately and abusively with the threat of death, they have any empathy left for the very real and concrete terminations of life, catalyzed, if not caused, by their serial exaggerations.
Or do they simply consider such thoughts to be another thing to be mentally “deplatformed”, along with all of those other things that don’t neatly affirm the media’s dominant narrative?
Does Pheasant Shooting Count as Exercise?
A reader got in touch after receiving the following email from Abel & Cole, the organic food delivery company:
Hello there, I’m just getting in touch about the Wild Pheasant on your order. I’m afraid we aren’t able to include the pack in the box as planned this week. Due to COVID-19 restrictions, our supplier can’t go out to shoot the game and we don’t have any stock left in at the moment. As the lockdown is due to last roughly until the end of shooting season this year, we might not be able to bring it back again until next season. I’m really sorry for the disappointment.
In fact, there’s nothing to stop Abel & Cole’s supplier from shooting pheasant. You are still allowed to shoot in England, provided you only do it once a day and it’s part of your daily exercise. The British Association for Shooting and Conservation has the details:
In light of the government providing greater clarity on its COVID-19 guidance and regulations, BASC is advising that outdoor shooting activities as a form of exercise are permissible once per day in England during the national lockdown, subject to two conditions.
1. You should only travel locally to shoot which is to “stay local in the village, town, or part of the city where you live” as defined in government guidance.
2. When shooting you should only meet with people you live with, your support bubble; or when on your own, with one person from another household.
If any shooting readers can supply Abel & Cole with a brace or two, please contact us here. We’ll put you in touch.
Round-up
- “In Defence of Lockdown Sceptics” – Toby’s article, which appeared on this website on Friday, has been reprinted in the Critic
- “Lockdown sceptics are society’s gadflies” — Laura Dodsworth has also written a defence of lockdown scepticism for the Critic
- “Gym lockdown costing NHS £31m a month” — Tom Walker in exerciseprofessionals points out the folly of short-termism in the shutting down of gyms, creating future burdens on the health service
- “We’ve lost sight of how much a life is worth” — Ed Conway in The Times on the well-established concept of Quality-Adjusted Life Years (QALYS) and how it has gone out the window during the COVID-19 crisis
- “COVID Hypocrisy: Policymakers breaking their own rules” — A useful compendium of reports, mapped geographically, of American lawmakers failing to adhere to their own edicts
- Ivor Cummins on the Delingpod — James Delingpole and Ivor have a deep-dive conversation into many aspects of the Covid issue
- “Joe Biden’s pork-barrel identity politics” — Fraser Myers in spiked taking the President Elect to task for his plans to woke-ify his ‘build back better’ programme
- “A New Year’s Nightmare: COVID-19 Litigation Piling Up” — Ashley Cullins in The Hollywood Reporter on the backlog of insurance claims by businesses, and other legal headaches
- “When we put faith in science we turn science into religion” — Andrew Mahon in the Post Millennial on the religious undertones of the unswerving faith in the scientific priestly class
- “NHS is ‘over-prioritising’ the virus” — NHS Consultant Dr Clare Turnbull speaks out about the effect on cancer treatment while the health service concentrates solely on Covid patients, the Daily Mail reports
- “With no lockdown or mask mandate, Florida has roughly same hospitalization level as 2018 flu season” — David Horowitz in the Blaze on the Sunshine State’s bucking of the trend
- “Our analysis of lockdown and Covid-fascism” — A site called Left Lockdown Sceptics has been launched, with the organisers describing themselves as a group of socialists who oppose lockdown. This is their inaugural piece
- “Enough of this governmental scapegoating of the public for Covid transmission” — Ross Clark in the Telegraph giving the Government both barrels
- “The Abuse of Science in the Corona Crisis” — Swiss Professor of Philosophy of Science Michael Esfeld’s piece for the AIER blog
- “Effects of mask-wearing on the inhalability and deposition of airborne SARS-CoV-2 aerosols in human upper airway” — Another detailed study, in Physics of Fluids, about the relative ineffectiveness of even surgical mask-wearing
- “Eight Gorillas test positive for coronavirus at San Diego Zoo” — The list of flora and fauna to apparently contract the virus grows
- “Rise in the incidence of abusive head trauma during the COVID-19 pandemic” — a whopping 1493% increase, reports the British Medical Journal
- “Does Vitamin D combat Covid?” — Mattha Busby in The Guardian reviews the evidence on Vitamin D
- Peter Hitchens’ conversation with Mike Graham — talkRADIO’s weekly slot with the arch-sceptic
Theme Tunes Suggested by Readers
Three today: “Drinking in the Day” by Elise LeGrow, “Happenin’ All Over Again” by Lonnie Gordon and “Boris Johnson a Big Bumbahole” by Machyo.
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, we bring you Christopher F. Rufo’s report “Radicals in the Classroom” in City Journal about the hardcore Critical Race Theory indoctrination occurring in the San Diego Unified School District’s new mandatory training sessions for teachers.
The San Diego Unified School District has been radicalized. In recent months, the district has announced mandatory diversity training for teachers, added a new “ethnic studies” curriculum focused on racial grievance, and even abolished the requirement to turn in homework on time – all in the name of becoming, in the words of school board member Richard Barrera, “an anti-racist school district.”
Last month, I reported on one of these training sessions, focused on “white privilege,” in which white teachers were accused of being colonisers on stolen Native American land and told “you are racist” and “you are upholding racist ideas, structures, and policies”. The trainers demanded that the teachers “confront and examine [their] white privilege”, “acknowledge when [they] feel white fragility”, and “teach others to see their privilege”. After the story caused an uproar, school officials defended the training as a form of “racial healing”.
Phrases such as “white privilege” and “white fragility” will be familiar to anyone who has paid attention to the crazier fringes of the woke cult recently, although one of the guest speakers hired by San Diego Unified took the hyperbole to a whole new level.
According to new whistleblower documents, San Diego Unified held an even more radical training program featuring a speaker who believes American schools are guilty of the “spirit murdering of Black children”. The school district hired Bettina Love, a critical race theorist who believes that children learn better from teachers of the same race, for the keynote address at the August Principal Institute and for an additional district-wide training on how to “challenge the oppressive practices that live within the systems and structures of school organizations”.
Though the school district explicitly forbade attendees from recording the session, one whistleblower took detailed notes of the speech and captured screenshots of the presentation. According to these notes, Love began her presentation by claiming that “racism runs deep” in the United States and that blacks alone “know who America really is”. She argued that public schools in particular “don’t see [blacks] as human”, are guilty of systemic “anti-Blackness”, and “spirit murder babies” in the education system.
Ms Love is associated with the Abolitionist Teaching Network, whose website makes for an interesting browse.
Worth reading in full.
Stop Press: Twitter’s stock has plunged after the social media platform banned Donald Trump.
Twitter’s stock price tumbled Monday as investors appeared to balk at the social network’s decision to ban President Trump from posting.
Shares in the San Francisco-based company tumbled as much as 12% to $45.17 in the first trading session after it booted Trump from the platform on Friday, saying his account posed a “risk of further incitement of violence” after his supporters stormed the US Capitol on Wednesday.
The stock pared the losses through the morning and fell 6.4% to close at $48.18.
Twitter’s move against the outgoing president – whose account had more than 88 million followers – was the first permanent suspension for a head of state, and it’s likely to spark furious debate about the role tech companies play in regulating speech.
It may also hurt Twitter’s user base as Trump supporters and right-wing activists pledge to boycott the company’s blockbuster decision.
“Mask Exempt” Lanyards
We’ve created a one-stop shop down here for people who want to obtain a “Mask Exempt” lanyard/card – because wearing a mask causes them “severe distress”, for instance. You can print out and laminate a fairly standard one for free here and the Government has instructions on how to download an official “Mask Exempt” notice to put on your phone here. And 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.
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 and Prof Carl Heneghan and Dr Tom Jefferson’s Spectator article about the Danish mask study here.
Stop Press: A reader has sent us this article in the Sydney Morning Herald from 17 years ago, written during the SARS epidemic.
Health authorities have warned that surgical masks may not be an effective protection against the virus.
“Those masks are only effective so long as they are dry,” said Professor Yvonne Cossart of the Department of Infectious Diseases at the University of Sydney.
“As soon as they become saturated with the moisture in your breath they stop doing their job and pass on the droplets.”
Professor Cossart said that could take as little as 15 or 20 minutes, after which the mask would need to be changed. But those warnings haven’t stopped people snapping up the masks, with retailers reporting they are having trouble keeping up with demand.
The article continues:
John Bell from the Pharmaceutical Society of Australia, who owns a pharmacy in Woollahra, Sydney, said mask supplies were running low.
“At the moment we don’t have any because we haven’t been able to get any in the last few days,” Mr Bell said. “In the early stages it was unbelievable; we’d get people coming in all the time.”
Mr Bell agreed with Professor Cossart’s assessment regarding the effectiveness of the masks.
“I think they’re of marginal benefit,” he said. “In a way they give some comfort to people who think they’re doing as much as they can do to prevent the infection.”
The reader who drew our attention to the piece commented:
The first line sums it up – “Retailers who cash in on community fears about SARS by exaggerating the health benefits of surgical masks could face fines of up to $110,000.”
Fast forward 17 years, and currently three Australian states have mask mandates in place, with fines of $200 for non-compliance. Last time I checked (and I do look out for these things) there has been no new significant evidence brought to light since 2003 that general public mask wearing has any effect whatsoever on community transmission of the sort of virus which causes COVID. The absurdity of Australia’s mask mandates is of course compounded by the almost complete absence of COVID in the general community at this time.
Worth reading in full.
Stop Press 2: Both Morrisons and Sainsbury’s have announced that they will ban anyone who does not wear a mask from entering their shops, reports the BBC. The Government has stated that it is not the responsibility of retailers to enforce the rules, but that of the police, who have also said they don’t intend to enforce mask-wearing in supermarkets.
Morrisons will bar customers who refuse to wear face coverings from its shops amid rising coronavirus infections.
From Monday, shoppers who refuse to wear face masks offered by staff will not be allowed inside, unless they are medically exempt.
Sainsbury’s also said it would challenge those not wearing a mask or who were shopping in groups.
The announcements come amid concerns that social distancing measures are not being adhered to in supermarkets.
Vaccines minister Nadhim Zahawi said the Government is “concerned” shops are not enforcing rules strictly enough.
“Ultimately, the most important thing to do now is to make sure that actually enforcement – and of course the compliance with the rules – when people are going into supermarkets are being adhered to,” Mr Zahawi told Sky News.
“We need to make sure people actually wear masks and follow the one-way system,” he said.
The Union of Shop, Distributive, and Allied Workers (USDAW) tweeted the following hand-wringing statement:
Key retail workers deal with hundreds of customers every day as they perform their essential duties. With the #Covid situation developing rapidly, we’re calling for retail workers and delivery drivers to get priority access to vaccinations and mass testing.
We also expect retailers to work with us, urgently, to produce new risk assessments. The new strain of Covid puts our members at increased risk of catching the virus. They need every possible protection, including the following steps:
Limits on customer numbers – back to the earlier levels if necessary – with trained security staff to manage queues. Once inside the store, customers should follow clearly highlighted one-way systems and 2m social distancing markers.
As Ivor Cummins has pointed out on numerous occasions though, and does so again in his recent conversation with James Delingpole on the Delingpod, shop workers worked for four months at the beginning of the pandemic with no masks and experienced no great wave of deaths over and above the rest of the population, even though they encountered the general public every day.
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 Toby’s Spectator piece about the attempt to suppress it is among the top hits – although discussion of it has been censored by Reddit. The reason the zealots hate it, of course, is that it gives the lie to their claim that “the science” only supports their strategy. These three scientists are every bit as eminent – more eminent – than the pro-lockdown fanatics so expect no let up in the attacks. (Wikipedia has also done a smear job.)
You can find it here. Please sign it. Now over 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.
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…
On this week’s episode of London Calling, Toby’s weekly podcast with James Delingpole, they try to avoid getting into an argument about the Great Reset (he’s a believer, Toby’s not) and stick to books and TV shows. But they cannot avoid talking about Trump’s Twitter ban and Big Tech censorship more generally.
Listen to the podcast here and subscribe to it on iTunes here.
Discussion
Comments
This week across the site:
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Its not my taste, but whatever floats your boat.
Jonny Dart – Never get the vac*ine official video.
A good rant;
ONE PISSED OFF DOCTOR – MASKS ARE KILLING YOU – TAKE THEM OFF NOW! – PLEASE SHARE THIS VIDEO
This sort of thing was predicted here by many posters when masks became a thing.
The government have announced that in order to combat COVID-19, we all need to avoid touching as many surfaces as possible because this will increase the chances of transmitting the virus.
A new groundbreaking study by the WHO has confirmed that if we all hop on one leg (THE SAME ONE mind you) for the entire duration of our weekly visit to the supermarket, we can decrease the R rate by 357%.
Tesco have announced that they have developed new AI technology that can monitor CCTV cameras and identify shoppers who are walking normally or have switched legs at any time during their shop.
A spokesperson for Tesco said “We have managed to keep people safe by requiring that all members of staff and shoppers remain hopping on the same leg during their entire time in our buildings. We are also cleaning the floors more than usual and require our staff and customers to disinfect their designated foot every 30 meters. Any customers falling foul of the new regulations will be banned from all of our stores.”
Sainsburys has followed suit, urging the government to imprison people who flout these new guidelines.
Better tell Morrisons.
My final thought of the day:
The ends don’t justify the means
https://www.podomatic.com/podcasts/richieallen/episodes/2021-01-12T11_36_30-08_00
Enjoy the Richie Allen Radio show from early evening today. Its a particularly good show dealing well with the plague they’ve put on.
Breaking: It’s all over! Covid has won.
Johnson, Starmer, Whitty, Hancock and the rest of them cleared out late this evening. Disappeared. Offices empty, grace and favour flats deserted. Unconfirmed sightings of suspicious looking carnival folk going through Heathrow towards a flight to Belize.
Only Grand Admiral Dominic Raab was caught at his post. After a brief attempt to negotiate, within the last hour he signed the instrument of unconditional surrender to Covid. (As viruses are quite small, Toby Young dressed in a coronavirus costume, and accepted the surrender pp).
It is understood that Toby Young, still wearing the costume, will form a provisional government until the Great God Covid himself makes his will known through a General Election. Covid has stipulated, however, that only sixteen of the current MPs are eligible to stand as candidates or, indeed, hold any public office.
Hail Covid!
Perhaps not the end we wanted, but at least we can move on now.
[I’m sorry to have to admit, none of that is true. But I had fun writing it. And there is a serious point buried in the silliness. Good night, all]
“Science is definitely the new religion”
No it’s not. What you are seeing with Covid zealotry isn’t worship of ‘Science’. It’s the perversion of it.
‘Science’ isn’t essentially a body of facts; it’s a process of thought – to which rational scepticism and the testing of hypotheses is central.
What we are seeing is a denial of that process, not its elevation.
We are in the same territory as the ‘scientific’ basis of eugenics and racial laws in Nazi Germany.
Isn’t it odd how nothing has changed yet positive tests and deaths are on the rise. If anything, I would guess that people would have isolated themselves even more than normal over the Christmas period, especially with how the fear was turned up to 11 before and after the break. Yes, many would have seen relatives on the day itself, but certainly no partying with people you don’t know.
For me, science can take a running jump for now because it is proving to be more of a hindrance than a help. Someone posted on the thread earlier today about cocks postulate (I prefer the vulgar spelling). I am of the same opinion that if it cannot be isolated and symptoms are wide, varied or, in most cases, nonexistent, what on earth are these scientists measuring or looking for? More to the point, what condition are doctors and nurses treating people for who are so ill they need to be admitted to hospital? Do patients exhibit flu like symptoms but are treated for Covid off the back of a positive PCR test? Who knows?
Anyway. If the figures are taken at face value and the test is still as accurate… Read more »
“For me, science can take a running jump”
You mistake what it is : it’s the zealots who relish it taking a ‘running jump’.
What science? There hasn’t been much of that this last year.
Exactly. I suppose that was the point I was trying to make which RickH has pointed out – namely, it is those who relish it and use it to justify the nonsensical restrictions that are placed upon us who deserve my ire.
Seb Gorka from America First said that he had a bout with Covid over Xmas. He took HCQ and Ivermectin. Didn’t need a vaccine.
https://omny.fm/shows/america-first-with-sebastian-gorka/battle-for-1600-episode-46-the-future-of-maga
Good spot. There’s a great big hole where the truth oughta be.
Deutsche Bank just dumped Trump.Twitter, Facebook as well. Talk about a coup d’état.
Not one court, one judge, state or federal, listened to in court testimony about the allegations of election fraud from Trump’s legal team. In the United States of America. Not China. That’s a coup d’état folks. Beware.
UK front page prize of the day – OH yes folks it’s “The Sun” (again):
JEZ WE CAN – as part of the Sun’s Jabs Army series – Jeremy (tosser) Clarkson issued a rallying call to get Britain vaccinated saying “Join the Sun’s JAB Army”. He used a traffic cone to show what an enormous dickhead he is (if we didn’t know already).
This was posted a few days ago but I feel it needs posting again so you can share this with your covid zealot ex friends
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2130424/pdf/jhyg00082-0026.pdf
An outbreak of common colds at an Antarctic base after seventeen weeks of complete isolation
Antarctica didn’t lockdown hard enough.
Actually worth reading in full to experience the genuine sprit of enquiry and scientific rectitude . We’re a long, long way from 1973, heading backwards at the speed of light.
Welcome to your nth plate of manure:
One Mask Is Good. Would Two Be Better?Health experts double down on their advice for slowing the spread of the coronavirus
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/12/health/coronavirus-masks-transmission.html?smid=tw-nytimes&smtyp=cur
Of course.
The cult must increase the humiliation of heretics.
It’s their holy mission.
Stop the train. I wanna get off.
“One mask good.
Two masks better”
immediately sprang to mind but I can’t remember where from.
Animal Farm
Four legs good, two legs baa-d.
I rather think karenovirus already knew that!
DavidC
I have no problem with this – if people want to put on two or three or fifteen masks until they suffocate, that’s their choice.
On world mental health day I went round Tesco with a nappy attached to my face using black masking tape. It was hard to breathe, but I had enough time to get 4 beers before passing out.
Keep going – do it for all of us – it’s your duty.
I suppose it might be time to do it again soon, if it saves just one life… (I’ll take a mask exempt badge for my child just in case someone beats her up)
It’s not the choice part that the issue. There’s a good chance it may become mandatory.
There are some places around the world that are starting to mandate higher specification masks.
If N95s become the mandate expect to see people falling in the streets!
DavidC
Its official then “The science” is dead now they’re practising ‘The Witch craft‘ .
Please sir, can we stop eating this shit?
Was on this myself back in June. Masks stop others catching plague from you but not you catching it from them. Well, something sparked deep inside. What if, what, if, we wear one mask normal wise and one mask reversewise. All bases covered. Sadly Im neither a research fellow or gates employed prat so no one listened. Should have patented the genius though.
Now thats something i agree with
Who wrote this, citing a well know Danish study?
”
Evidence on the protective effect of mask use in community settings
At present there is only limited and inconsistent scientific evidence to support the effectiveness of masking of healthy
people in the community to prevent infection with respiratory viruses, including SARS-CoV-2 (75). A large randomized community-based trial in which 4862 healthy participants
were divided into a group wearing medical/surgical masks and a control group found no difference in infection with SARS-CoV-2 (76). A recent systematic review found nine trials (of which eight were cluster-randomized controlled trials in which clusters of people, versus individuals, were randomized) comparing medical/surgical masks versus no
masks to prevent the spread of viral respiratory illness. Two trials were with healthcare workers and seven in the
community. The review concluded that wearing a mask may make little or no difference to the prevention of influenza-like illness (ILI) (RR 0.99, 95%CI 0.82 to 1.18) or laboratory confirmed illness (LCI) (RR 0.91, 95%CI 0.66-1.26) (44); the certainty of the evidence was low for ILI, moderate for LCI.”
World Health Organisation
Mask use in the context of COVID-19 Interim guidance
1 December 2020
Oh remember how they told us that masking was the reason for no flu globally this year?
Ah, the WHO, you can’t fault their desire to please.
Knock knock – WHO’s there – Doctor – Doctor WHO – Yes it’s Tedros, how may I help you?
Fnar, David Tennant would be better.
I like this quote by the writer Mark Barrowcliffe: An obsession is a way for damaged people to damage themselves more.
The problem is that they’re damaging everyone and everything without batting an eyelid or listening to anyone else’s point of view.
A perfect description of the current nightmare.
Apt, very apt.
They will never hear anything we say if their eyes are closed.
Too true, they disconnected the audio a while back.
I know it’s been up before, but this display of calm decorum and ‘bugger the rest of the world’ attitude is such a great antidote to the Madness.
(And still single figure daily deaths…)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=22v2TCbLdNg
Not my idea of fun but it beats the video of a US Prom with the dancers tied back to back.
Wonderful – civilization instead of madness.
From the roundup
leftlockdownsceptics.com
Imagine Toby and the team had a day off and instead of original content decided to post a summary of what we know after 9 months of Covid and lockdown.
They could do worse than copy’npaste the entire leftlockdownsceptics.com introduction which, while offering nothing new, contains little that most of us might find controversial.
Welcome aboard.
a good summary of events and coming after that letter the other day signed by Simon Dolan and others it’s good to get a clear idea of where we are at.
HSBC apparently to close the accounts of those not wearing masks, unless medically exempt. How incredibly sinister.
Enemy Of The State revisited.
My banking has been entirely online for at least ten years. The only problem this presents is how to get rid of an out of date banknote should I be so foolish as to accept it.
HSBC can do one.
On the other hand this ruling can only possibly apply to in person visits to a branch which is something all the high street banks have been trying reduce for years. Goes along with their longterm strategy.
Exactly. Even the locky lovers won’t really want to wear those face nappies if they don’t have to.
I suppose Mexican drug cartel operatives who go round chopping people’s heads off wore masks when depositing money to be laundered, so they should be ok at least…
Old news: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-hsbc-usa-idUSKBN1E50YA
Yeah, right. Who are the idiots in these companies that dream this shit up?
So I show up at a branch, tell them that I am exempt, and they don’t believe me so ask me to leave. How do they know which account to close?
File this under… I don’t even know which category to file it under because the world is so mad now. But it isn’t going to happen. It will make some nutters on Twitter happy though.
Banks generally aren’t keen on closing accounts unless its their decision, a win win for the banks, same as it ever was!
Yeah, it’s obviously ludicrous in practice. It’s more that the bank or the media are willing to issue such threats in the first place.
How can the government persistently ignore this man?
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/01/12/not-polices-job-enforce-lockdown-whims-ministers/
One of the most sensible commenters in the whole charade.
My intention, should I be approached by the police accusing me of breaking phoney Corony ‘laws’, is to say and do absolutely nothing.
Should I be arrested I will identify myself to the desk sergeant then wait for the Duty Solicitor to arrange my release having informed the sergeant that I will be suing for unlawful detention during my time spent in the police cell.
Thats the spirit, do not engage, comply with only that empowered by law. If they get physical, stay calm, try not to resist & simply lodge a complaint of unnecessary force to the custody sergeant (for later use in court). Police complaints process is purposely pointless but its evidence for your day in court.
Excellent
Lockdowns clearly have no effect
I’ve read somewhere (probably on Ivor Cummins Twitter) that Scot Atlas has joined PANDA.
He has. As an advisor. Their advisory board is impressive
The 4th Amendment of the US Constitution is now well and truly dead:
L.A. County Tells Residents To Wear Masks Inside Own Homes | ZeroHedge
Police can now kick in any American’s door on the merest suspicion of non-compliance.
Hang on a minute. Hundreds march? I thought these things were banned. Why are the police not hitting them with batons and attacking the women folk?
Oooops!! Silly me
Come on Priti, set your thugs on this lot
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-politics-55631618
Good for them, my enemies enemy is my friend.
These are the same people who support a global policy that is expected to kill 1.4 million children in Africa, and who film themselves pulling down statues of people no one has heard of while wearing clothes made by muslim slaves in China.
The most disturbing thing to me about them, even more than the hypocrisy, is how the political agenda has managed to be seized by quite frankly the most stupid bunch of child-minded morons you could possibly imagine. They’ll rage against some forgotten colonialist because its easy and it involves no sacrifice on their part, then they’ll post about it on their phones made from the blood and sweat of child labour in Africa – without seeing they are literally the same people as those they rail against, doing the same thing: ignoring where their cheap goods come from. The only difference being, pulling down a statue saves no one, ditching your phone does.
I can tolerate anything – any opinion, any personal trait – anything except stupidity.
https://mobile.twitter.com/MichaelYeadon3/status/1348923155507773441
Good thread from Mike Yeadon on why the grim modelling that came out in Summer waring of 200,000 winter deaths was impossible. Seasonal resurgence, like flu but the epidemic is self limiting and could never have matched the SAGE models.
He’s just so obviously right isn’t he.
No he’s wrong. LS followers need to distance themselves from Yeadon. He’s been banging on about herd immunity since May. It’s clear we are nowhere near herd immunity.
While there may be some misattribution of deaths, these are not the majority. NHS staff are more than aware that there are increasing numbers of very sick patients with distinct Covid symptoms.
I see the 77th B is still posting.
So how do you explain essentially normal mortality for the time of year? And what caused the drop in deaths back in spring? Lockdown?
It’s not normal.
They should be arguing the case that lockdowns have no benefit.
Sorry – replied to wrong person.
Do tell, what should lockdown sceptics be in arguing for?
Hi Mayo,
I’ve been interested to know for a while, what policy re: Covid do you support?
You are always clear that you oppose lockdowns, but frequently challenge what count for majority views on this board. So, where do you stand? What would you consider to be the right approach re: Covid?
Yes, and please highlight how you would avoid all the non-covid consequences?
Thumbs up for still chipping away there Ovis. Like what you are doing here.
“there may be some misattribution of deaths”
Indeed. The ‘some’ is probably 70%+
“It’s clear we are nowhere near herd immunity”
Really? I can’t find anyone in our pretty large circle of friends and family who have Covid, despite the pockets that can be expected to exist.
Clearly – hospitalisations for respiratory disease are around normal for the time of year; testimony from staff dealing with such are always high, because they observe a concentraion.
The incidence estimates based on PCR testing are obviously wildly overstated.
I see you have got bored posting on the DT site. You are going to have to be a bit more inventive to be convincing on this site.
They’re cancelling events due to be staged in June now. A quiet word has been had?
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-sussex-55637588
The British Heart foundation spokesman cancelling this charity bike ride said it was a ‘‘heartbreaking’ decision!
I thought you were actually joking until I looked myself 🙂
The Schizophrenia Society said they were in two minds over it.
The RNIB said they couldn’t see it happening either.
There will be nothing this summer, six people in the garden maybe before testing steps up again in September. That’s my prediction.
If the ‘rules’ aren’t going to become a joke long before then, the police will be grinding out FPNs like there’s no tomorrow (not for BLM obvs), and the courts clogged.
It may be my annoying infectious positivity, but there does seem to be a hint of desperation up top. Shellfire audible in Johnson’s bunker.
When is the next Downfall parody due?
If they try do this another winter the pretence is up and even the zealots will know thery have been had.
Yes. The slow of understanding have encouraged the indefinite continuation of this shit-show.
next election – when’s that then? (maybe not May from what I’ve heard)
No right to protest, no right to go outside unless the government has given us special permission, elections possibly postponed – and this is a free country?
Can you beleive this? https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/id-lick-vaccine-boris-johnsons-23306751
I’ve been watching the reports filtering in from around the world on all the side effects and deaths from these concoctions. The Angel of Death will be visiting many of these clamourers soon enough. Maybe Boris’s spokesman is correct about demand – which is maybe why there’s a ramping up of the fear.
Wow, that does it for me then …
i understand it’s called scientism, though computer modelling is not proper science.
if people take just one thing from this tragedy – there’s no such thing as the science!
True science is the study of nature, natural sciences eg. physics, biology chemistry to obtain objective truth, are worthy disciplines. Applied science, subjective & emotive to advance the interests of our species has been hijacked & parasitised by corporate scientists, the peer review process has sold out & been bought by nihilistic neo-liberals, they are like the black death killing everything they infect.
All I see in the linked Twitter thread is hate from presumably people who say they care about others. It’s DA responding to a Tweet by JHB.
I’ve always thought the most evil people are those who claim to be saints.
David Aaronovitch
@DAaronovitch
https://twitter.com/DAaronovitch/status/1348947539807121409
Aaronovitch, the Guardian’s enfant terrible, massive dickhead.
Don’t insult dicks.
Well this report on the institutionalised infanticide within the Irish Catholic Church was released today. So your feeling about saints as the ultimate sinners could jot be starker.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-55620124
The details are incredibly grim. The report itself was to be sealed but only released after public pressure. State cover ups galore.
Horrible comments. Is this what they call a Twitter mob?
Hit piece now on Ivor Cummins with lockdown zealot Gabriel Scally the man being used to deliver the dirt.
This is Gabriel if you haven’t come across him:
https://www.lbc.co.uk/radio/presenters/maajid-nawaz/epidemiologist-on-cost-of-second-lockdown-coronavirus/
He’s a zero Covid fanatic. Which is fine, it’s insane, but each to their own.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/covid-in-ireland-lockdown-sceptic-promises-crowdfunded-documentary-d2mn0cxjp
Ivor is getting attacked quite heavily in 2021. Things are hotting up. The article says he was approached for comment but declined. He was, after the article had been released. Disgraceful stuff.
Excellent – if they are going after Ivor they must be very, very scared. They know they are losing control of that narrative – and honestly, where is there left for them to go now?
If I was enabling an hysterical clusterfuck of incompetence and corruption the last person I’d want to be pointing people to was Ivor Cummins.
The line is breaking, people.
I thought the same. I think this may have a galvanising effect on his followers.
I wouldn’t get over-excited, but they can’t get by now without flagrant lies
It’s not fine as you know. These zero covid nutters would rather have everyone dead in order to eliminate the virus. They are insane.
I do wonder if some locky lovers are genuinely suffering from some kind of mental illness. It would explain why even some intelligent people buy into it.
There’s probably a number of disabilities and neuroses involved (both natural and induced), but the mock-‘scientists’ backing the government line (who seem to have abandoned any connection with recognisable science) definitely show common signs of autistic tendencies and general psychopathy.
Yes. Particularly Neil Ferguson and Whitty.
And Gabriel Scally!
My partner got home about an hour ago, he called in at a petrol station on the outskirts of Glasgow on his way back – one of those wee ones that has a ridiculous red/green light above the door to tell you when you’re ‘allowed’ to go in without accidental granny killing.
Anyway he joined the queue outside – one man was already waiting there and said to my partner what a load of wank all these restrictions were. On my partner’s way out, he muttered to the woman who’d joined the queue behind him what a load of shite all the restrictions were, and she agreed bitterly and said it “had all gone far enough”.
So out of two random strangers plus my partner at some random Scottish petrol station, that’s not just a 100% sceptic rate – that’s a simmering anger building up in the general public such that random folk will now whinge and complain to perfect strangers in the street!
Friends, I do believe the tide may be turning. And no doubt whatever shite Boris and Krankie announce tomorrow will be yet another tipping point. Even my respectable, conscientious, morally upstanding middle-class colleagues were grumbling about… Read more »
Oh, wouldn’t that be good. It’d be great to sleep all through the night without waking up at 4 am with an awful sick and sinking feeling that the world is shrivelling and dying around us. It’s when I’m at my most pessimistic.
For me it’s when I first wake up and realize I woke up but the nightmare persists.
Yes, exactly – I’m trying to get used to the idea that it’s not going to end in my lifetime.
It’s early days yet, but I think in the UK the powers that be actually cooked their goose on the 19th December when they 180’d to cancel Christmas and shit all over everyone’s plans. There has been no trust or good will towards the authorities since then, and with closing the schools they’ve taken another huge dump all over working parents and their kids. People want all this stuff to stop, and for their ‘sacrifices’ to have meant something – not rabid hectoring, guilt tripping and being sent to the naughty step for another undefined period of time by politician scum who don’t even keep their own rules.
The summer excitement of playing at being a wartime hero by wearing a mask to the shops and socialising over boozy Zoom calls has well and truly burst, and the vast majority of folk just want (and need) things to go back to normal now. As soon as these people realise they are in fact in the majority, the game is up. I think that’s why the telescreens are shrieking so loudly now – it’s a frantic bid to control the narrative by doubling down on fear and trying to divert the… Read more »
And anger at the NHS for being so cretinously incompetent.
I agree with this, but I think you have hit on what is our single greatest obstacle in persuading the wider public: ‘People want … their ‘sacrifices’ to have meant something’
This is the problem. The sacrifices have been pointless. They have achieved nothing.
The psychology is that of a defeated nation in the closing months of a war (ironic, given the mock-Churchillian ‘war on Covid’ nonsense). People can’t quite bring themselves to believe it has all been for nothing. Easier to dress the fourteen-year-olds as soldiers and send them to the front to buy another fortnight, and put your faith in the scientists developing wonder weapons, than admit it has all been a horrible waste. A waste with now benefits, that will have to be paid for long into the future.
Reality is a tricky sell, when things have been managed this badly.
This is certainly true, but the mental juggernaut can definitely be turned for some of them. I think it might depend on the urgency of their personal circumstances? For sure, the true covid believers are invested in this game and will turn the country upside down and destroy anything and everything before they confront the truth of their hysteria – and the truth of the damage their hysteria has caused everyone else – these lunatics will never accept their complicity because they are delusional moral cowards.
But for others – people who have jobs, kids, aspirations, dreams – the majority of young people, working parents, and professionals – these people are suffering and it’s not sustainable. My line manager told me he is starting work at 4am each day and going until lunchtime, then child minding two young kids all afternoon while his wife works, then replying to work emails all evening since his kids’ nursery school has failed to reopen. He doesn’t talk politics, but I can tell he is absolutely raging at the prospect of this going on until March. I’ve also heard a few cynical comments in meetings this week from senior managers that suggest something has… Read more »
They are playing the sam forevere game as the Soviet Union by promising a radiant future just around the corner in exchange for one more sacrifice.
Compliance was near universal but belief was continually eroded so that when the end came it was so sudden.
+357 thumbs up
Sturgeon tomorrow:-
‘Let’s be crystal clear’
‘Make no mistake’
‘Firm action’
‘We won’t hesitate’
‘As First Minister of Scotland’
Repeat ad nauseum.
“Fandabidozi”
Well I’m bored with Boris bingo, I migh try that instead.
The power of casual chat thus the reason they are now murmuring shutting takeaways, markets, click and collect (as per DM) people standing and chatting. Double masks, well that proposal sounds like a gag, nothing less.
So…the PM and his cronies can have a gaff and a laugh with vaccine providers and volunteers. The police and have a laugh and a chat with eachother (as I observed today on a walk to the park with my kids). Shelf stackers can have a giggle and a flirt in the isle … but if YOU dare stop in the street, or grab a coffee, or chat with a neighbour at the end of the drive you are a murderer! What bull-sh*t is this?
Well, they’ve been designated essential, silly!
And can someone please tell me what the police are likely to have done about the grocer’s near me where people were running in and nicking things, with nothing being done about it by the police (at the time the owner mentioned it to me a couple of years ago). Or perhaps things have changed now in this enlightened era…
Oh, and I can have a brew with work colleagues ( and perhaps I’m not alone?) Perhaps that’s the next thing they’ll put a stop to.
The one good thing about masks is that is now extraordinarily easy to shoplift.
Exactly if its so contagious why are the police routinely going around in large groups with little or no social distancing! Mixing & conversing with every other human they encounter! Still using unnecessary physical contact & placing their victims in confined high infection risk environments.
Who exactly are the super spreaders here? Its systemic cognitive dissonance & institutionalised covid spreading is what it is.