Did the Virus Escape From the Wuhan Institute of Virology?
In one of his last acts as President of the United States, Donald Trump has directed the US Department of State to issue a fact sheet about the Wuhan Institute of Virology and the origin of the pandemic. Suffice to say it’s a marmalade-dropper.
For more than a year, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has systematically prevented a transparent and thorough investigation of the COVID-19 pandemic’s origin, choosing instead to devote enormous resources to deceit and disinformation. Nearly two million people have died. Their families deserve to know the truth. Only through transparency can we learn what caused this pandemic and how to prevent the next one.
The U.S. Government does not know exactly where, when, or how the COVID-19 virus, known as SARS-CoV-2, was transmitted initially to humans. We have not determined whether the outbreak began through contact with infected animals or was the result of an accident at a laboratory in Wuhan, China.
The virus could have emerged naturally from human contact with infected animals, spreading in a pattern consistent with a natural epidemic. Alternatively, a laboratory accident could resemble a natural outbreak if the initial exposure included only a few individuals and was compounded by asymptomatic infection. Scientists in China have researched animal-derived coronaviruses under conditions that increased the risk for accidental and potentially unwitting exposure.
The CCP’s deadly obsession with secrecy and control comes at the expense of public health in China and around the world. The previously undisclosed information in this fact sheet, combined with open-source reporting, highlights three elements about COVID-19’s origin that deserve greater scrutiny:
1. Illnesses inside the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV):
The U.S. Government has reason to believe that several researchers inside the WIV became sick in autumn 2019, before the first identified case of the outbreak, with symptoms consistent with both COVID-19 and common seasonal illnesses. This raises questions about the credibility of WIV Senior Researcher Shi Zhengli’s public claim that there was “zero infection” among the WIV’s staff and students of SARS-CoV-2 or SARS-related viruses.
Accidental infections in labs have caused several previous virus outbreaks in China and elsewhere, including a 2004 SARS outbreak in Beijing that infected nine people, killing one.
The CCP has prevented independent journalists, investigators, and global health authorities from interviewing researchers at the WIV, including those who were ill in the fall of 2019. Any credible inquiry into the origin of the virus must include interviews with these researchers and a full accounting of their previously unreported illness.
2. Research at the WIV:
Starting in at least 2016, and with no indication of a stop prior to the COVID-19 outbreak, WIV researchers conducted experiments involving RaTG13, the bat coronavirus identified by the WIV in January 2020 as its closest sample to SARS-CoV-2 (96.2% similar). The WIV became a focal point for international coronavirus research after the 2003 SARS outbreak and has since studied animals including mice, bats, and pangolins.
The WIV has a published record of conducting “gain-of-function” research to engineer chimeric viruses. But the WIV has not been transparent or consistent about its record of studying viruses most similar to the COVID-19 virus, including “RaTG13,” which it sampled from a cave in Yunnan Province in 2013 after several miners died of SARS-like illness.
WHO investigators must have access to the records of the WIV’s work on bat and other coronaviruses before the COVID-19 outbreak. As part of a thorough inquiry, they must have a full accounting of why the WIV altered and then removed online records of its work with RaTG13 and other viruses.
3. Secret military activity at the WIV:
Secrecy and non-disclosure are standard practice for Beijing. For many years the United States has publicly raised concerns about China’s past biological weapons work, which Beijing has neither documented nor demonstrably eliminated, despite its clear obligations under the Biological Weapons Convention.
Despite the WIV presenting itself as a civilian institution, the United States has determined that the WIV has collaborated on publications and secret projects with China’s military. The WIV has engaged in classified research, including laboratory animal experiments, on behalf of the Chinese military since at least 2017.
The United States and other donors who funded or collaborated on civilian research at the WIV have a right and obligation to determine whether any of our research funding was diverted to secret Chinese military projects at the WIV.
Today’s revelations just scratch the surface of what is still hidden about COVID-19’s origin in China. Any credible investigation into the origin of COVID-19 demands complete, transparent access to the research labs in Wuhan, including their facilities, samples, personnel, and records.
As the world continues to battle this pandemic, and as WHO investigators begin their work, after more than a year of delays, the virus’s origin remains uncertain. The United States will continue to do everything it can to support a credible and thorough investigation, including by continuing to demand transparency on the part of Chinese authorities.
Stop Press: A World Health Organisation team is currently in China to investigate the origin of SARS-CoV-2. Matt Ridley co-authored a piece with Alina Chan about this in the Wall Street Journal on Jan 15th pointing out that the investigation is tainted from the outset because the WHO will not be looking into the possibility that the coronavirus originated in a lab.
Stop Press 2: China is currently seeing a new surge in cases and is reported to have built a new hospital in Nangong in Hebei province in just five days.
Stop Press 3: If you want to look more closely into the theory that the pandemic began with a leak from the WIV – still regarded as a “conspiracy theory” by Facebook’s “independent fact checkers” – we recommend this piece by Nicholson Baker in New York magazine.
Lockdown? What Lockdown?
MailOnline reports that Health Secretary Matt Hancock was seen out and about yesterday, seemingly enjoying life:
Matt Hancock was seen “covered in mud” while carrying a rugby ball through a London park this afternoon the day after Boris Johnson pleaded with the nation to “stay at home this weekend”.
The Prime Minister yesterday released a video calling on the public to ‘think twice’ before leaving the house as he moved to cool rising optimism amid a drop in daily infections and the vaccination of more than 3.5 million people.
He urged everyone to behave as if they have coronavirus, warning that asymptomatic “silent spreaders” are unwittingly fuelling the crisis and the next person infected “could be you”.
But his sobering clarion call did little to put off crowds who headed to busy parks – including the Health Secretary who was filmed by a passerby casually walking through Queen’s Park in North London while clutching a rugby ball.
In the clip, Mr Hancock, who is not wearing a mask, smiles as a member of the public who remarks at how “muddy” he is.
The witness told MailOnline: “I was there at about 3.30 this afternoon… Suddenly I saw Matt Hancock, he was there playing rugby with his son I think. He walked right up to me and I saw he was covered head to toe in mud.”
While rugby is a favourite of his boss, the Prime Minister, father-of-three Mr Hancock is instead known for his cricketing prowess and plays for the parliamentary side.
Lockdown rules state that people can leave their homes for exercise by themselves, with the people they live with or with a legally-permitted support bubble. Official guidance does not rule out ball sports.
Ministers are launching an advertising blitz to hammer home the importance of sticking to lockdown rules while the biggest vaccination drive in British history paves a path out of the pandemic.
Worth reading in full.
Are COVID-19 Patients in Hospital Really Getting Younger?
Are Covid patients getting younger? The senior doctor who writes regularly for Lockdown Sceptics has taken a look at the data and thinks not.
Recently there have been a series of claims in the media that patients in hospital with COVID-19 are younger than they were in the spring. These assertions have been vigorously contested or supported by contributors to social media, feeding an unhelpful coarsening of debate and distasteful ad hominem attacks.
In my last post I examined one of these claims made by BBC reporter Hugh Pym after a visit to Croydon Hospital. I was unable to find any significant increase in younger patients, either from the latest NHS Hospital data, the ONS death data or the ICNARC ICU audit data to support his assertion.
Having had time to look into the monthly packet from January 14th in more detail, I now examine three other specific claims. Readers may find this information a bit dense and technical, but it’s important to establish whether claims made in the media, which have a substantial impact on public opinion, are backed up by officially published figures. It is only by careful analysis and honest transparent discussion that we can arrive at the truth. No one is infallible, which is why peer review is important.
The usual caveats apply: We can only assess the information the NHS allows us to see in the form in which they present it (which leaves a lot to be desired) – and we have to assume it is accurate.
- On December 31st, a nurse at King’s College Hospital gave an interview to Adrian Chiles on Radio 5 live in which she said there were many more children affected by COVID-19 in the winter compared to the spring. She said there was a “whole ward” of sick children in her hospital and many of her colleagues in other trusts had the same problem.
- An ICU consultant at Queen Mary University, London has said there are more younger people in ICU with COVID-19 compared to the spring.
- In an interview on Sky TV, a doctor from the Royal Surrey county hospital said that the patients with COVID-19 were sicker and younger in the winter than in the spring.
I have examined the available data to see what quantitative evidence from the official figures there is to support these assertions.
Table 1 shows the total number of COVID-19 diagnoses made on children at Kings College Hospital in two comparable six week periods from the spring and the winter. There is no significant difference between the two periods. Twenty four patients admitted over six weeks with short lengths of stay does not constitute a “ward full” of patients.
Graph 1 shows the number of COVID-19 inpatients at two leading children’s hospitals. Great Ormond St in London and Alder Hey in Liverpool. The graph shows that there are fewer children in both hospitals in the winter than in the spring. The overall numbers are low, fewer than 30 at the spring peak, fewer than 20 in the winter. Great Ormond Street in particular has seen very low numbers of children ill enough with COVID-19 to warrant admission this winter.
So, I don’t think the data published by the NHS supports the assertion that there is an increased proportion of children sick with COVID-19 compared to the spring. This begs the question, why did the nurse make such a statement, and does she have convincing evidence to back it up which contradicts the officially published figures?
I did notice that the teaching unions retweeted the interview immediately after it was broadcast. It was around the time when they were agitating for the Government to close schools. Correlation does not imply causation of course, but it does seem a curious temporal juxtaposition.
ICU COVID-19 Age Profiles
Table 2 shows age stratification data from 14,710 patients admitted to ICU in England between Sept 1st and January 14th published in the most recent ICNARC audit. It shows that 8.2% of admissions to ICU in the period were under 40. That doesn’t seem to be an excessive proportion of younger people.
Unfortunately, the raw data for the period up to August 31st is not available on the ICNARC site. However, the same information was used in a recently published paper in Intensive Care Medicine called “COVID-19 in critical care: epidemiology of the first epidemic wave across England, Wales and Northern Ireland”.
In the paper the age groupings were quoted slightly differently to the raw data from the cohort of patients from September to January, so I have aligned the information enabling a direct comparison between the ages of ICU patients in the spring and the winter in Table 3. The only difference is a skew to the older age group in the winter. The data reported in the literature from ICUs in other European countries are broadly comparable with the UK ICNARC figures.
I have not been able to find detailed information as to the age profile of patients in ICU at Barts and the Royal London to compare with the national figures, so it is entirely possible that their local population differs significantly from the national case mix. On a national level there appears to be no significant difference between the age profiles of ICU patients between spring and winter in the figures I have access to.
Searching the published literature on PubMed I can find a couple of relevant papers. Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore noted in the Lancet in April that clinical obesity was associated with younger patients being admitted to ICU.
Another study looked at increasing proportions of younger American patients testing positive for COVID-19 in the community and concluded this was a consequence of increased testing rather than a change in the demographics of the disease.
I wondered whether there might be a difference between age mixes in London compared to the whole of England. Table 4 suggests not. There is a slight skew towards the middle 18-64 band in London compared with the national figures, but London figures comparing spring to winter show the same percentages within each age band; nothing to indicate a major shift to younger people. Readers should note that the lower total numbers of patients in the spring is probably a testing artefact; much more testing is being done now than earlier in 2020, but the age stratified percentages are remarkably stable.
Table 5 is a comparison of the age stratified COVID-19 diagnoses at the Royal Surrey Hospital between comparable six week periods in the spring and winter. The data is contained in the monthly summary of NHS COVID-19 activity published on January 14th. The figures show a slight increase in the percentage of patients over 85 years in the winter compared to the spring. There is no significant increase in patients in the younger cohort 18-64. Unfortunately, the NHS figures do not allow a more detailed analysis of this wide age band, so it is possible that within the 18-64 cohort, the numbers could be skewed to the younger side. Publication of local audit figures would be informative.
The NHS could also be more helpful in their presentation of the numbers. Simon Stevens reportedly told MP’s last week that under 55 year-olds made up 25% of hospital admissions.
That is consistent with the data presented in the 18-64 age group discussed above. He did not comment on whether the proportion of younger patients had changed since the spring. The NHS clearly has the granular figures on age stratification; it would be useful if they could present the data more precisely so the public had accurate figures to compare against media reporting.
Why does any of this matter? If there are a larger number of younger patients in hospital with COVID-19, does that really make any difference, as long as the mortality rate remains low?
From the broader medical perspective it probably doesn’t matter at all, unless there is a significant change in the way younger people need to be managed to achieve better outcomes. If there is new clinical information relevant to treatment, that needs to be disseminated rapidly in the online medical press. I can’t find any such reports in the medical literature over the last two months in relation to younger age groups being affected more by COVID-19 in the winter compared to the spring.
On the other hand, doctors making claims in the media about COVID-19 which cannot be supported by published evidence does matter. In the current febrile climate, where alarmist reporting generates excessive public anxiety and increased social antagonism, it is important that medical professionals are careful only to report matters in the media that can be substantiated – and the plural of anecdote is not data.
Reporting that COVID-19 patients are younger and sicker than in the spring implies that the ‘new variant’ attacks younger people more readily than the previous manifestation of the virus and this clearly generates alarm in the population at large.
If doctors have evidence that COVID-19 is affecting a disproportionate number of young people, then that evidence should be published in the peer reviewed journals via online portals so the whole profession can have a look at it – not issued as ad hoc sound bites to reporters panting for a sensational story or as Twitter clickbait. If the publicly available information does not support the assertion, the suspicion will be that the thrill of being in the media spotlight has got the better of sound clinical judgement.
Confessions of a Psychologist: “I’m Having to Turn Away Grieving Teenagers”
The Sunday Telegraph has published an article today by psychologist Dr Vanessa Moulton who has seen an explosion in mental health problems among teenagers.
For the first time ever in my 10 years of working as a psychologist, the number of people coming to me for help has surpassed anything I am capable of coping with. I am turning people away every week, something I’ve never done before, because I’m at capacity. I hate doing it, because there are so many who need help, and mental health provision across the NHS and private sector is bursting at the seams, but often all I can do is give them a list of names and wish them well. The worst thing is that so many of them are parents of teenagers who are dangerously unhappy.
Compared to the atrocities people across the country are facing at the moment, not being able to go to school or see your friends might sound like small fry, but it isn’t. I have seen a huge spike in the numbers of teenagers seeking mental health support, and if lockdown goes on much longer, I fear it will only get worse
We talk about loss a lot at the moment – for teenagers, the loss of social interaction is profound, and for many it is having a huge developmental impact. The teens coming through my (virtual) doors these past months have been suffering with loneliness, a sense of crippling helplessness, and a total lack of motivation. All of which adds up to make life feel pretty relentlessly bleak. For many of these young people, what I’m helping them with is a form of grief.
The parents who contact me are so worried, because it can be hard to tell if your 14 year-old is just “being a teenager” or if they are particularly, notably low. They don’t know what to do, and in lockdown there isn’t a lot they can do. They can’t fashion a social life and a sense of structure and purpose where there isn’t one. What worries me is that the teens I see have at least taken that step, or a parent or carer has, of seeking help.
There will be many, many children out there suffering in silence. In many families the adults are having such a difficult time of it that they may not be fully cognisant of how quiet their teenager has become. In many cases a child doesn’t feel able to tell someone they are so low, perhaps because they don’t understand it themselves or feel ashamed. I am currently helping one teenager who had never suffered mental health problems before this past year, but with the loss of his social group, the sense of disempowerment and helplessness, they became so low they started self-harming. It is so devastating to see the effects of this pandemic on young people like them.
Worth reading in full.
Stop Press: The Observer reports that a coalition of child experts are pressing for an inquiry into the impact of the COVID-19 response on children’s education, development and mental health.
The World’s Most Powerful Passport
Euronews reports that the World Health Organisation has, for the moment, recommended against vaccine passports.
The World Health Organisation said on Friday it was opposed “for the time being’ to the introduction of certificates of vaccination – so-called “vaccine passports” – against COVID-19 as a condition for allowing international travellers into other countries.
Several countries have already signalled their interest in producing vaccine passports in some form, including Spain, Belgium, Iceland, Estonia, and Denmark.
“There are still too many fundamental unknowns in terms of the effectiveness of vaccines in reducing (virus) transmission and vaccines are still only available in limited quantities,” the committee said in its recommendations…
Nonetheless, the WHO may in time need to change its advice in order to keep up with the politics, according to the Euronews report. Last Thursday, Poland announced that it was going to introduce passports:
The country’s Deputy Health Minister Anna Golawska said Poles would be able able to access certification in the form of a downloadable QR code after they received the second dose of a coronavirus vaccine. The code would then allow the recipient to “use the rights to which vaccinated people are entitled”.
Worth reading in full.
We reported on January 13th that companies MVine and iProov have designed a digital passport app set to undergo a Government-funded trial. Across the pond meanwhile, CTVNews reports that a number of tech giants are joining together to create something called the Vaccine Credential Initiative.
With coronavirus vaccines now rolling out across the United States, businesses and schools are considering how, and what it will take, to safely resume in-person operations.
Some of the country’s biggest tech firms and health care organizations have joined together to help facilitate that return to “normal”. The group, called the Vaccine Credential Initiative, wants to ensure that everyone has access to a secure, digital record of their COVID-19 vaccination – like a digital vaccine passport – that can be stored in people’s smartphones. The records could be used for everything from airline travel to entering concert venues.
The coalition comprises a broad range of health care and tech leaders including Microsoft, Salesforce, Oracle, Cerner, Cigna’s Evernorth, health care software firm Epic and the Mayo Clinic, among others…
The Vaccine Credential Initiative wants to create an open-source, standard model for how hospitals, pharmacies and clinics administering COVID-19 vaccines make digital records of immunizations, which can be provided to patients who want them.
Immunizations are typically tracked by writing them down on a paper card for people to store with their important records, and are also kept track of in a patient’s electronic medical records.
But for a number of reasons, the COVID-19 vaccination required developing a different system. For one thing, coronavirus vaccination records will need to be more easily transported if people have to use them to access schools, offices and event venues, making a digital record more practical. They also need to be “interoperable”, meaning all organizations administering the shots should use the same model for recording vaccine credentials.
“It’s not just for health care purposes that you will need this health data,” Paul Meyer, CEO of non-profit The Commons Project, told CNN Business. The Commons Project created an app called Common Pass, where people can store digital records of their COVID-19 test results and, eventually, their COVID-19 vaccination record.
“Now you are going to need either your lab results or vaccination data to get on an airplane, to go to school, go to work, real life, non-health-care use cases,” Meyer said. “And it needs to be in a standard form so when you’re presenting it, people actually understand, ‘Oh, it was the Pfizer vaccine that you got.'”
The COVID-19 vaccination record also needs to be verifiable and secure in a way that was less important for past vaccination records, otherwise, a person could try to fake having gotten the COVID-19 vaccine by using someone else’s record, Meyer said.
Worth reading in full.
Large tech companies storing the private medical data of many thousands of people. What could possibly go wrong? Read more about the Vaccination Credential Initiative on their website here.
Stop Press: Reuters reports that the European Commission is working on a certificate dubbed “Vaxproof”. It looks like they will have until 2022 to get it done, judging from this tweet by journalist Bruno Maçães.
Scottish Churches Fight to Re-Open
A group of church leaders in Scotland, from a range of denominations, have submitted a pre-action letter to the Scottish Government, calling on it to reverse the rules which require their closure. A press release from Christian advocacy group Christian Concern has the details:
Restrictions outlined by First Minister, Nicola Sturgeon, on Friday January 8th, without debate, have made it a criminal offence for churches to hold services in-person and, for example, to conduct baptisms in the highest tiers.
The closure of churches in Scotland is unprecedented, with no attempt to close them since the Stuart kings made it a capital offence to meet for worship and listen to preaching other than that of the established church in the 17th century.
The pre-action letter states that the church leaders wish to emphasise that they “fully understand the seriousness of the COVID-19 pandemic and they appreciate that the Scottish Government is required to make difficult decisions as it seeks to take steps to decrease the spread of the virus“.
However, the leaders say that they believe the Scottish Ministers’ have “failed to appreciate that the closure of places of worship is a disproportionate step, and one which has serious implications for freedom of religion“.
The letter contends that the regulations that came into force on January 8th 2021 are in violation of Article 9, read with Article 11, of the European Convention on Human Rights.
The letter identifies that with suitable restrictions in place, public transport, essential shops, professional sport, and the court system continue to function. Yet, places of worship are closed.
It states that this closure is: “arbitrary, inconsistent and disproportionate when looked at in light of the Convention. The closure of places of worship and the criminalisation of collective manifestation of religion which takes place under carefully and responsibly controlled conditions goes too far.“
Outlining the position of the church leaders on how the separation of church and state is a fundamental feature of the constitution of Scotland, the letter argues that the current restrictions on church activity violates the Act of 1592.
This Act, which gave authority to the church over all matters ecclesiastical, also gave the elders of each church a specific legal responsibility to ensure that regular worship continued.
The press release goes on to describe the dangerous precedent set by the state closing churches.
The Scottish pre-action letter comes as leaders in England and Wales continue to pursue a judicial review over their respective Government’s decision to close churches during the November 2020 Lockdown.
An oral permission hearing is set for Monday January 25th at the Cardiff Civil Justice Centre, which will decide whether the case will go to full judicial review.
During a parliamentary debate ahead of the November 2020 lockdown in England, former Prime Minister Theresa May said of the English Government’s decision to close places of worship:
“My concern is the Government today making it illegal to conduct an act of public worship for the best of intentions, sets a precedent that could be misused for a Government in the future with the worst of intentions. It has unintended consequences.”
When asked in November 2020 how the English Government had justified closing places of worship, chief scientific advisors, Professor Chris Whitty and Sir Patrick Vallance, said: “We haven’t got good evidence”, “this is not a very exact science at all” and “we don’t have good data to answer that with any degree of certainty”.
Similarly, the Scottish Government has failed to present any scientific evidence to justify church closures.
Worth reading in full.
The Church leaders’ pre-action letter can be read in full here (pdf).
Stop Press: Mayor Sadiq Kahn has called for places of worship in London to be closed, a call which religious leaders have rejected.
Stop Press 2: Christian Concern responded to the Government’s recent call for evidence about the Human Rights impact of lockdown with a submission highlighting the cost to religious freedom.
Back to Normal
Back to Normal, is a public-facing, grass roots group, campaigning to end the lockdown and they are looking for volunteers. It’s spokesman, Geoff Cox, has written the guest post below.
Back to Normal is a growing band of lockdown sceptics from all walks of life who are determined to counter the tidal wave of hysterical pronouncements from the Government and the media. Through small groups of sceptics across the UK, we are delivering our message outside the control of the Government or Twitter or the BBC.
Although we have a website and a presence on social media, we have a deliberately low tech operation and have produced a simple, well worded postcard-sized leaflet, to be hand-delivered by volunteers. Our aim is to distribute one million to houses all over the country. We are on our way and at the last count had reached 235,000.
Currently we also have 100 small, loosely affiliated groups operating at constituency level. We’ve chosen to work in constituencies, mainly because they are well defined and a manageable size, but also because they are the heart of the political process. In time, our volunteers may choose to take a more active role politically – a letter writing campaign to the local press or perhaps supporting one of the new political parties who are making sceptic noises; even possibly standing for election as independents.
Doing something is better than doing nothing: it raises our morale and annoys the Government. Please become a postman and deliver some postcards and let’s get Back to Normal.
You can follow us on Facebook here, on MeWe here, or get in touch by email.
Readers Respond to Ipso’s Ruling Against Toby
As we reported yesterday, Ipso, the independent press regulator, upheld a complaint against the Telegraph for publishing a “misleading” opinion piece by Toby. Ipso objected to his claim that the population of London was approaching herd immunity in July, in spite of the fact that seroprevalence surveys indicated only 17% of Londoners had antibodies to SARS-CoV-2, and dismissed the idea that T Cells could provide comparable immunity to antibodies. It also dismissed as “inaccurate” his claim that exposure to those coronavirus that cause some varieties of the common cold will provide some people with immunity to COVID-19.
Toby thinks Ipso has got this one wrong and yesterday we invited readers, particularly those with a scientific background, to send in their comments.
Dr Rachel Nicholl, a Researcher in the Department of Public Health and Clinical Medicine at Umea University, Sweden, who recently had a rapid response published in the BMJ in which she hypothesised “that exposure to some of the common cold viruses can induce immunity to other coronaviruses”, sent this response.
Herd immunity is a concept. It has never been proven to exist and there has been no outbreak where scientists definitively concluded that herd immunity was reached. In fact, the sheer logic of it suggests that it is a moveable feast and if we did achieve it one day, we would have likely lost it the next.
Some scientists equate herd immunity with whether R0 (the ‘R number’) is below 1 – see this article in Nature. I believe R0 was <1 over the summer.
My article in the BMJ highlighted the fact that we have some pre-existing immunity (coronaviruses make up around 1/3 of all common cold viruses) and the problems with relying merely on IgG antibodies.
So yes, you got some things wrong in your article, notably your prediction that there wouldn’t be a second wave, but arguably the lockdown and intensive sanitisation contributed to the second wave. Immune systems need to be challenged to be healthy. We need to circulate among people, picking up the odd virus here and there, and collecting bacteria from unsanitised surfaces. This is healthy. Also ‘stay home’ meant we were not going out and topping up our vitamin D from the sun. So our immune systems faced the autumn in a poorer state than usual. I’m not suggesting the second wave would not have occurred without lockdown (there is too much else wrong with our immune systems!) but it might not have been so severe.
Here’s what another senior scientist wrote:
Viruses are killed by T cells. That is what T cells are for. What the hell do they think T cells are for? Antibodies are just markers.
There has been an erroneous assumption that 100% of the population were susceptible to Covid at the beginning of the pandemic. We know this is not true, in part because during outbreaks in spring, when thorough testing was carried out, 50% of people demonstrated immunity by testing positive in the absence of symptoms.
The 17% figure for London discounts all prior immunity. Adding in the 50% figure above gets you to 67% = herd immunity.
Antibodies and T cell responses are wonderfully flexible. They both notice shapes rather than specific amino acids or letters of genetic sequence. When you are matching shapes you get plenty of overlap. Also, our responses to one virus are hugely diverse. We make antibodies to every corner and crevice of the shapes. These shapes will overlap with things we have seen before. They need not only overlap with other coronaviruses. In fact there is excellent evidence that prior immunity came largely from our immune responses to mumps.
Viv Evans, a retired zoologist with a Phd in Cell Biology, sent the following comment:
I’m sure other scientists contributing regularly to Lockdown Sceptics will have pointed out that ‘science’ and scientific research results are not carved in stone, that they change with research and are not meant to be adhered to, like immutable laws, in perpetuity.
It is impossible to predict research results from ongoing, properly scientific studies and it often turns out that an opinion by a lay person is in fact supported by later research.
If an opinion piece can be criticised retroactively, the author admonished, the publication made to retract during an ongoing scientific debate, then that ‘judgement’ can equally be questioned, a retraction of it can equally be demanded based on more recent scientific developments. [Dr Evans then included a link to the rapid response in the BMJ written by Dr Nicholl.]
A reader sent in this:
Surely the constant claim from SAGE and Government that having had Covid does not confer immunity is grossly misleading. IPSO says nothing.
As is the claim that people can have Covid many times – without qualifying it by saying if this has happened at all it has been very rare.
A GP in Hereford sent these encouraging words:
Knowing how hard it is to stand up against the orthodoxy I just wanted to encourage Toby not to stop his excellent and brave work on behalf of all free people. I really admire what he is doing.
And regular Lockdown Sceptics contributor Neville Hodgkinson, a former medical and science correspondent of the Daily Mail and Sunday Times, and the author of AIDS: The Failure of Contemporary Science (Fourth Estate, 1996), sent in this comment:
With regard to the Ipso ruling: leaving aside uncertainties around the science, I’d like to comment on the huge public importance of Lockdown Sceptics in countering the fear about COVID that has been induced by Government policies, a majority of politicians on both left and right, and much of the mainstream media.
It seems to me that “attack dogs” of fear have been let loose in the belief that this is the best way to counter the epidemic. In particular, I have been dismayed at seeing the BBC abandoning its much prized impartiality to become an unquestioning mouthpiece for official policy. The contrast with talkRADIO’s performance is immense.
Of course, people need to know that a nasty and potentially lethal infection is circulating. But exaggerated forecasts, misleading description of PCR test results as “cases”, panic over “new variants”, global death statistics, mask-wearing, social distancing, job losses, relatives dying alone, businesses failing, operations postponed, and almost daily changes of the rules on travel and even going for a walk, all carry a price in terms of increased susceptibility to infectious disease.
Decades of work by Professor Sheldon Cohen’s team at Carnegie Mellon University in the USA has highlighted the effect of social support systems in strengthening immunity to disease, and of stress in reducing it (as a Lockdown Sceptics contributor has previously reported). The team has performed laboratory as well as field work to gain detailed understanding of pathways that link stress, personality, and social networks, to disease susceptibility. Many of these insights arose from Sheldon’s classic work on the role of psychosocial factors in susceptibility to the common cold, published in the New England Journal of Medicine and the Journal of the American Medical Association.
It would be hugely helpful to us all, including the hard-pressed NHS, if government advisors would reconsider current strategy completely. We need measures to enable us to feel more in charge of our own destinies, instead of being herded around – and in some cases frightened to death – like timid sheep.
Stop Press: Mike Robinson and Patrick Henningsen at UK Column devoted some time to defending Toby yesterday. The relevant bit starts at the six minute mark.
Round-up
- “Doctors told to throw away leftover Covid vaccines rather than giving second doses” – The Telegraph reports that medics have been warned they cannot use any leftover doses on staff or patients to give a second dose to those who’ve received the first dose
- “Britain could have more COVID-19 variants as population has greater immunity, Sage scientist suggests” – The Telegraph reports that Sage scientists think Britain could be experiencing more variants because so many people are immune to the pre-existing variants
- “Britain will be able to vaccinate nation against new Covid strains within months after new super-factory opens” – Britain will be able to vaccinate the entire nation against dangerous new Covid strains within four months, reports the Telegraph
- “Is the one shot jab a game changer?” – Ross Clark reports on the promise of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine for the Spectator
- “Suspension of councillor over Facebook posts condemned” – The North Wales Chronicle reports on the case of councillor Gruffydd Williams, Plaid Cymru, who was suspended following the allegation that he shared “false information” related to COVID-19 on Facebook. Cllr William maintains that all he did was to encourage constituents to undertake their own research
- “Young lives have shrunk to the size of a screen” – Writing in the Times, Joanna Williams says that we’ve no idea what damage is being caused by children spending all day online
- “Why the overzealous policing of lockdown is a threat to us all” – Rachel Cunliffe points out in the New Statesman that allowing the police to interpret COVID-19 laws as they please has set a dangerous human rights precedent
- “Lockdown and the unbelievable negligence of Johnson & Co” – David Seedhouse, in the Conservative Woman, calls out the Government’s failure to conduct a proper cost benefit analysis of its many lockdowns
- In science the science is never settled – An old BBC podcast with Clive James about climate science which is very topical
- Lockdown, crackdown and Chinatown: the week in review – In the latest edition of the Bournbrook podcast, Michael Curzon, S.D. Wickett and Luke Perry discuss the latest, disproportionate lockdown restrictions, the censoring of conservative voices by big tech, and human rights abuses by China
- “Rise of the coronavirus cranks” – A critique of lockdown scepticism by Christopher Snowdon in Quillette. Toby is going to write a reply for the same publication
- “We need more scepticism, not less” – A defence of scepticism in general and lockdown scepticism in particular by Candice Holdsworth in Spiked
- “Indonesia vaccine rollout bucks trend by targeting younger generations” – SkyNews reports on the rollout of the vaccine in Indonesia. Rather than vaccinate the elderly and vulnerable, they are targeting the 18-59 age group, thinking this will both cut transmission and enable workers to return to work
- “Review of the emerging evidence demonstrating the efficacy of ivermectin in the prophylaxis and treatment of COVID-19” – Abstract of Dr Pierre Kory’s paper on ivermectin, published in Frontiers in Pharmacology
- “Norway raises concern over vaccine jabs for the elderly” – “Norway has registered a total of 29 deaths among people over the age of 75 who’ve had their first COVID-19 vaccination shot,” reports Bloomberg
- “COVID Hypocrisy: Policymakers breaking their own rules” – An interactive map on Heritage.org detailing the ongoing hypocrisy of U.S. local, state and federal officials who have fallen foul of their own Covid rules
- “Covid and the illusion of control” – A great piece by Phil Kerpen in the American Spectator taking on the idea that humans can control a virus
- “Pandemic Security Theatre” – James Bovard on public health theatrics for the AIER blog
- “Why our liberal elite cheered for this violent mob” – Peter Hitchens’s column in the Mail on Sunday is about how delighted liberals were when protestors in Ukraine in 2014 stormed the seat of Government and the hypocrisy that they’ve now recognised such acts are wrong
- “We are all opening up” – A delightful video from Italy of a crowd cheering a restaurant owner who is opening up. Plenty more on twitter at #IoApro
Theme Tunes Suggested by Readers
Five today: “Schweizerpsalm” by Alberich Zwyssig performed by the National Anthem of Switzerland, “Wake Up and Live” by Bob Marley, “Get Up, Stand Up” by Bob Marley, “Help!” by The Beatles and “Standin’ in the Rain” by the Electric Light Orchestra.
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 Green Unpleasant Land, a recently published work by the Professor of Post Colonial Literature at the University of Leicester who worked on the National Trust report addressing the historic links of its properties with colonialism and slavery, and who is presently in charge of the Colonial Countryside Project at the National Trust. The Daily Mail has the story:
Last week Corinne Fowler, Professor of Post-Colonial Literature at the University of Leicester, published a sprawling 316-page work examining the links between the British countryside, racism, slavery and our colonial past.
Among her startling conclusions? Our cherished national pastime, gardening, has its roots in racial injustice.
Should we be surprised? Perhaps not. The book’s title, Green Unpleasant Land, gives us an indication of Professor Fowler’s thoughts on the countryside…
Professor Fowler insists that our “green and pleasant land”, as the poet William Blake put it, is anything but. Our countryside, she suggests, is a hotbed of oppression, racism and exploitation, and it is time for its dark history to be exposed.
Intriguingly, Fowler acknowledges that her own family had long-standing connections to slavery and colonialism, through sugar plantations in the Caribbean. As she says in the book on this issue: “I make no claim to neutrality… Our relatives either profited from empire, or were impoverished by it.”
The professor also writes that her parents gave her a love of country walking.
She appears to have rambled tirelessly along country lanes finding evidence to prove her central premise: that the British countryside is linked inexorably to racism and colonialism.
“The countryside is a terrain of inequalities,” she writes, “so it should not surprise us that it should be seen as a place of particular hostility to those who are seen as not to belong, principally black and Asian Britons.”
Many great estates were financed by slavery and colonialism, and the origins of gardening were fundamentally elitist: “Knowledge about gardens and plants, in particular botany, has had deep colonial resonances,” she says.
“The scientific categorisation of plants has at times engaged in the same hierarchies of race that justified empire and slave and slavery…”
“Inevitably, then,” she adds, “gardens are matters of class and privilege.”
Racism is ingrained not just in gardening, she believes, but in many of our rural traditions. She cites as an example our nation’s approach to that symbol of rural Britain, the pheasant.
She says that the bird’s heritage has effectively been hijacked by the indigenous white population. We are all in denial, apparently, about its Asian origins.
“This bird,” she writes, “is habitually represented as native to England’s fields, hedgerows and woodlands…” But, she stresses, it “is a global not a local bird”. A clear case of cultural appropriation.
Morris dancing is another source of controversy. “The face-blackening practised by the dancers has become a potent symbol of rural racism.” And, to be fair, many Morris dancing groups have now abandoned the practice.
She is unimpressed by former Tory Prime Minister John Major’s evocative prediction in 1993 that “50 years from now, Britain will still be the country of long shadows on county grounds, warm beer, invincible green suburbs, dog lovers and, as George Orwell said, old maids bicycling to Holy Communion through the morning mist.” “Rural Britain,” she counters dismissively “…is rarely peaceful. The elderliness of the maids is incongruous with the many itinerant female East Europeans who, before Brexit, picked the fruit and vegetables that grace our tables.”
And there is more, much more, in the same vein running through her book.
As she says, she makes no claim to neutrality.
Worth reading in full.
Stop Press: The Spectator US has initiated a new column called Wokeyleaks. It’s anonymous author (pronouns they/them) starts off with a piece on the blurring of the boundaries between social media and social justice.
Stop Press 2: In an article for the Telegraph, Communities Secretary Robert Jenrick has said that he is changing the law in order to “protect Britain’s statues from the woke militants who want to censor our past”.
“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 new piece of research has come up with an old answer: masks could lead to more Covid spread. Medical Xpress reports:
A novel new study suggests that the behaviour public officials are now mandating or recommending unequivocally to slow the spread of surging COVID-19 – wearing a face covering – should come with a caveat. If not accompanied by proper public education, the practice could lead to more infections.
The finding is part of an unique study, just published in JMIR Public Health and Surveillance, that was conducted by a team of health economists and public health faculty at the University of Vermont’s Larner College of Medicine in partnership with public health officials for the state of Vermont.
The study combines survey data gathered from adults living in north-western Vermont with test results that showed whether a subset of them had contracted COVID-19, a dual research approach that few COVID studies have employed. By correlating the two data sets, researchers were able to determine what behaviours and circumstances increased respondents’ risk of becoming sick.
The key risk factor driving transmission of the disease, the study found, was the number of daily contacts participants had with other adults and seniors.
That had relevance for two other findings.
Those who wore masks had more of these daily contacts compared with those who didn’t, and a higher proportion contracted the virus as a result.
Basic human psychology could be at work, said Eline van den Broek-Altenburg, an Assistant Professor and Vice Chair for Population Health Science in the Department of Radiology at the Larner College of Medicine and the study’s principal investigator.
“When you wear a mask, you may have a deceptive sense of being protected and have more interactions with other people,” she said.
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.
Stop Press: Prof Martin Kulldorff has reminded people on Twitter that the lockdown strategy is a form of focused protection – “of affluent professionals, while letting it rip among the working class, hitting inner cities the hardest”.
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…
Discussion
Comments
This week across the site:
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Delete – Wrong day
yes, its tomorrow now
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/We_Are_the_World 1985.
An early version of virtue signalling from the 1980s.
Sir Bob, Sir Paul and Sir Eltons new single
‘Vaccinate The World’.
What is now happening to human civilization these days is a crying shame.
It’s been turned into a torture chamber of some kind
If only we could be arsed, eh?
So, I was out running errands yesterday, and I overheard multiple normies clucking in excitement in this fashion:
“Ooooh, Unca Joe gon’ gib us $1400 in stimmy! We’s rich ma!”
Welcome to the Land of the Sheep, Home of the Slave.
I hate this timeline.
How to mitigate a deflationary collapse?
Deflation – apparently happened twice in the past and now:
https://www.investopedia.com/terms/d/deflationary-spiral.asp
From last April but quite informative:
https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/04/29/federal-reserve-global-economy-coronavirus-pandemic-inflation-terminal-deflation-is-coming/
UBI, or maybe a Debt Jubilee would be better:
http://www.debtdeflation.com/blogs/2020/12/19/discussing-a-modern-debt-jubilee-on-macroncheese/
If we are looking at deflation then you best pay off your debt now.
Just a closing thought before bed.
The Precautionary Principle is by its very nature a call to overreact.
Suggestion for a new TV cartoon show: The Snitches.
I recommend a German TV series called Weissensee about life in East Germany in the eighties. Really an eye opener.
Gibraltar is reporting an absolutely massive spike in “Covid deaths”. Nine more deaths today in a jurisdiction with only 32,000 people. That’s 20% of all 43 “Covid deaths” in Gibraltar since the start of the epidemic, in just one day. And most of those deaths within the last week.
What happened this week?
Last Sunday, 10th January, an RAF A400M military transport aircraft landed at Gibraltar’s tiny airport with nearly 6,000 doses of the Pfizer vaccine. This is the vaccine that has to be kept at an incredibly low temperature. Dry ice was used in the aircraft to maintain the -70C temperature, and the vaccines were quickly used before they spoiled. Most, if not all, of the deaths are in the groups who were targeted for vaccination. (Elderly and Gibraltar Health Authority workers.)
See Gibraltar Chronicle here: https://www.chronicle.gi/devastating-weekend-as-gibraltar-loses-13-people-in-two-days-to-covid-19/?fbclid=IwAR0-ONAgJiZTKkSGKhhlihXTaJQO8xRJXqQ6SJ4FpUWBvgtN-Okgetqu7Rk
Looks like the vaccine arrived just in time. Think how much worse things could be without it.
😉
If you want to carry out genocide, the easiest way to conceal it is under cover of an ongoing epidemic.
It really is the perfect narrative cover, isn’t it?
Shit!!!!
Ungrateful bastards.
25,000 Covid-19 victims were infected in hospital, figures show
https://mol.im/a/9157627
Close the hospitals, its the only answer to the spread. ”
#IndependentSage
Global Reset is Global Genocide.
Indeed, cultural genocide us defined as genocide by the UN.
The elite have decided to go all in on the livestock cull, and this is how they have chosen to achieve it.
a.k.a. the bad guys. the lizards. the nwo. the ancient and only genuine Bavarian Illuminati. the vatican. whatever.
Anything but ‘elite’.
I’m going to be a pain-in-the-arse at this point and say why?
We’re supposed to be skeptical here, so why do you think is so?
I worry that we’re getting caught up in emotion like the maskholes rather than thinking based on logic and evidence.
So why is this anything other than an outrageously scandalous medical disaster driven by political ambition?
Rushed testing – yes.
Worrying push to use mRNA – yes.
Silencing of dissenting voices – yes.
But isn’t that all in a politician’s standard modus operandi as opposed to calculated genocide?
(I’m agnostic about this right now.)
Globalists, including HRH Prince Charles, believe in depopulation. Depopulation is Genocide.
Dr. Fauci Promoted Hydroxychloroquine As Cure To COVID — In 2005!
https://www.dropbox.com/s/wikrwg2msofnloe/Excess%20Deaths%202020%20-%20First%20vs%20Second%20Wave%20-%20Spain.pdf?dl=0 Phantastic good illustration of excess deaths in Spain and C-19.All regions and a very significant in some regions but also surprising no excess deaths in several regions.
The most important no excess death below age 60 in Spain. This is a geriatric pandemic.
Could well have been made possible by widespread use of the flu vaccine. Vaccines don’t make old people’s lungs young again.
Daniel Hannan makes some very good points in this article. If you have a goal of saving as many lives as you can but set no limit then you can never stop.
Freedom won’t survive a world where every lethal virus triggers another lockdown
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/01/17/freedom-wont-survive-world-every-lethal-virus-triggers-another/
But ‘they‘ don’t want freedom to survive, surely?
Neo-feudalism and the restoration of serfdom are all part of the plan.
A French Quebec friend of mine, Jean-Jacques, and I discussed many times about the possibility of a modern feudal society at a café in Montréal way back in the late eighties; just around the time that Gerhard Berger starting racing in F1. Jean-Jacques thought that he would become champion one day, but it didn’t happen. Neo-feudalism is happening now.
https://nyadagbladet.se/inrikes/allvarliga-vaccinskador-och-dodsfall-inrapporterade-i-sverige/
In Sweden 80 000 doses of Pfizer vaccine. One anaphylaxis reaction. Six deaths in elderly most likely not connected. Of 96 reported side effects half have been very serious. 24 new side effects not reported in the studies. Acute Bell’s palsy, severe fever and chills and headache is going to be studied further. Further confirmation that this is more dangerous than flu vaccine and anaphylaxis 10 times more than for flu vaccine. Next week Moderna’s vaccine will arrive. Everybody can see that this vaccine must be voluntarily also for health care staff. There is quite a big group among HCWs not opting for vaccine. That has led to a severe rebuttal from the eq Tory party leader in Sweden, who wants to sack or change workplace for doctors not willing to be vaccinated (He is, thankfully, not yet in power)
When are we hearing anything from UK?
Have you seen this site – it’s an accumulation of articles on vaccine reactions:
https://hpv-vaccine-side-effects.com/covid-19-vaccine-side-effects-world-map/
interesting site! I honestly think the risk of these vaccines are greater than catching the darn virus. It’s ironical that the gov have scared the shit out of everyone about the virus, and i don’t fret about that, but I am scared shitless of having one of these vaxxs!
I might go to Russia and have their vaxx 🙂
I feel just the same PP. I have no fear whatsoever of contracting this virus, and I’m fit and healthy so I presume I’m at no risk. But I’m really concerned about the long-term effects of the vaccine. And what coercive methods will be used to make us take it.
The government says it has ”no plans” (weasel words) to make it mandatory, but I’m sure private enterprise will do that job for them. But how far will this go? Will it be discriminatory for a restaurant to refuse you entry if you don’t have a ‘passport’? Will campsites refuse to allow you in? What about travel, even domestically?
This is keeping me awake at night!
In the UK all vaccines are safe and never result in adverse resctions, as confirmed by the BBC. To say otherwise is a hate crime against the NHS.
Thank god for Sweden!
I never thought i’d say that in my life.
So many countries now actively participating in spreading misinformation…
Utter bollox about morris dancing black faces being in any way racist, of course. Nor indeed anything to do with race.
Poachers used to blacken their faces to take deer, pheasants, rabbits, or anything else that could be eaten. So they were harder to see in the dark. To avoid being hung, have bits cut off, or be transported.
Any sides dropping their blackface tradition due to woke pressure should be ashamed.
I do agree that gardening is racist though especially discriminating against so-called weeds, which I prefer to see as equally valid but different plants.
There are no weeds – the weed is a modern-day gardener construct – it’s crime is to be a hardy natural plant that is growing in the wrong place and puts the cultivated plants in their place and, hence, embarrasses the cultivated gardener.
Weedophobia is something that needs to be weeded out … oops sorry I meant banished from our society.
Some people deal with weeds the same way as they deal with viruses – blitz the bastards with chemicals. Trouble is, afterwards, you have no garden.
weeds are just the wrong plant in the wrong place at the wrong time
That’s what I chant to them on their way to the compost heap. I like to think it soothes their astral selves …
Absolutely correct.
Sides are being prevented from bookings via pressure placed on venues and festivals.
Soldiers will no longer be able to put boot polish on their faces as camouflage.
Or does that only happen in the movies?
You said ‘pheasant’ which is cultural appropriation also ‘rabbits’ which are a reminder of our own colonial exploitation by the evil Romans.
🙁 I am a bad person. I blame the tobacco.
(Interestingly another colonial exploitation/appropriation – though, along with cocaine (and a great cartoon of a helicopter), tobacco was found in Egyptian tombs.).
I’m not a pheasant plucker, I’m a pheasant plucker’s son, I’m only plucking pheasants til the pheasant plucker comes.
you mean peasant?
The awards keep coming for Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus
Don’t forget we are all in this together.
Chunt !!
Who was the runner up, the leader of Al Shabaab?
Well actually, I think he may have been the only contender. Just looking again at this image, it looks like some kind of cheesy 70’s LP cover for a c list disco singer.
Shouldn’t that be Chinese?
Everybody loves Tedros – he has more awards than you have had hot dinners – he’s dripping with them.
Well his name is an anagram of “sorted”…
and “Do rest …”.
potentially implicated in overseeing genocide, roping ethiopia into debt with china, not a medical doctor, member of some extreme lefty organisation..
an all round good guy to head up the WHO at a time like this.
He surely is in line for an ‘…of the year’ award on this site:
https://is-a-cunt.com/
and the screw tightens another notch in austria as specific mask mandated. god these people are on a power trip…
Austrians must wear FFP2 respirators in malls & on public transport, govt says amid lockdown extensionhttps://www.rt.com/news/512810-austria-lockdown-mask-rules/
‘People will also have to stay two meters apart from each other, instead of one meter.’
Eh, hello? When will people, in this case, Austrians, realise that this whole thing is an utter piss-take?
They always seem to be independent, self-possessed sort of people – rather like their German brethren. But, like the Germans, I suppose they’re rule-takers. Which makes them (now and in the past) easy to control.
Just looked up what an FFP2 mask is: FFP2 Dust Masks protect against moderate levels of dust, as well as solid and liquid aerosols. FFP2 Dust Masks have a higher level of protection than FFP1 – FFP2 masks protect against materials in concentrations up to 12x OEL or 4x APF. FFP2 masks are ideal for plastering and sanding.
So it will be good for builders when working in dusty environments?
But they LOOK more scary.
.
Why is noone in the Austrian Government for hard evidence that they work?
Bavaria, too.
So any shop workers have to wear them too? In Germany employees are by law required to have an examination with a govt approved doctor to see if they are healthy enough to wear them.
After 3 hours(?) they have to have a 35 minute break without a mouthnosecovering. And only 3 or 4 days a week.
I hope the employees know this and will demand that. Won’t last a week.
Two important things in the attached – the extent of nosocomial transmission in hospitals, and, more significantly given the recent shifting narrative, direct evidence that the median age of patients in intensive care has gone up not down:
One in six hospital patients caught Covid-19 while being treated for other illnesses, figures show | Daily Mail Online
Too many posts for me to go through tonight. This has probably been commented on already. A lot of people getting their knickers in a twist over Lord Sumptions comments:
Anti-lockdown campaigner Lord Sumption says his remarks were ‘taken out of context’ after he was branded ‘inhuman, almost grotesque’ for apparently saying Stage 4 bowel cancer sufferer’s life was ‘less valuable’ than others in TV debate over Covid measures
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9156849/Lord-Sumption-tells-Stage-4-cancer-sufferer-life-valuable-others.html
I can’t remember where I heard this quote but it goes like this:
You have to discriminate to be fair.
The word discriminate has negative connotations but really it just means “recognise a distinction; differentiate”
There is an unhealthy obsession that for some reason everyone should be considered the same. But if you don’t recognise that people are different and act accordingly then you are not actually being fair to them or others.
If we didn’t discriminate in some way then we wouldn’t bother with job interviews. Everyone should be considered the same so you’d be as well to employ people on a random basis.
If somebody has a disability you have to recognise that they have a disability in order to be fair to them. If we didn’t discriminate… Read more »
What he said was absolutely correct. The comments on the article – top ones and with thousands of upticks – are very supportive. It is already implicit in insurance claims, NHS practice and all manner of other tried and tested principles.
Good point. In some businesses, casinos, & some bookmakers, they will even tell you, quite often in writing, they will not take your business if they consider you are playing, or gaming, in a consistently skillful manner. that’s considered perfectly legit discrimination.
Edited- point made already!
All lives are of equal value. Sumption was wrong on this in my opinion, despite not being wrong about lock-down. A massive own goal.
So the remaining life of a 91 year old is equivalent to the remaining life of a ten year old.
.
Really ?
Ask an Actuary for his opinion or maybe those that devised the Liverpool pathway or even those who placed DNR orders on people in the spring.
The thing with value is that everyone will put their own value on life/lives.
Do you consider a total strangers life to be equal to somebody you love dearly?
If a doctor had to choose between saving the life of your loved one and that of a stranger would you be ok with them telling you it will be decided by drawing straws?
False dichotomy Nobody.
It’s not about drawing straws.
If all lives are to be considered of equal value then it would make no difference if the choice was made randomly.
Any other way requires a value judgement.
No area of life that handles death or the risk of death works in this way. A nice sentiment, but that’s all it is.
To say there is no difference between saving the life of a 90 year old with a failing immune system or Alzheimer’s and saving the life of a 6 month old, essentially healthy, baby is total crap but the sort of crap the government comes out with.
I believe Charles Walker said similar in parliamentary debate over the lockdowns. This is just cancel culture stuff, jumping on definitions.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9156853/Aus-Open-debacle-72-players-quarantine-5-cases-saw-coming.html -fit young people under house arrest for 14 days . That’s what zero covid means. Hope they all pull out . Comments despressingly predictable.
Can anyone else articulate exactly why they find face masks so distressing? I know I do, but I’d be grateful for a succinct description that I could give to less sceptical/questioning friends and family!
If nature wanted us to be faceless it wouldn’t have bothered giving us faces.
Yes and the Mark I nose she gave us is actually a pretty good antiviral filter. Quite possibly better for your own infection risk than mouth-breathing through a damp rag.
If I really thought that there was a dangerous respiraory disease going about and if I thought that masks would help, then I would gladly wear them (for a short time and on a voluntary basis) and encourage others to do so. However, because we know that this is not true then I resent wearing them, because to do so is an acknowledgement of blind stupidity, mindless conformity and the fact that the state has the power to compel me to acknowledge those two things, at the cost of me being able to breathe freely.
The answer is obvious – the government says you are exempt if you are severely distressed; therefore I am distressed. I have no other option. I borrowed one of my granddaughters fairy dresses and told them I was under 11 but no-one believed me.I’m gonna shave next time I try that one!
I used to pity people wearing masks when passed thro I far east airports. Now I don’t want to pity myself. Also I like unobstructed breathing
I can feel myself inhaling the lint and excess threads from the fabric masks.
I hate that feeling.
If you feel you MUST wear a face covering – then make it just that: a ‘covering’. A loose scarf or bandana. Don’t wear one of those ugly Chinese things.
Some do wear them in the Far East, but it has a myth that seems to have taken hold in the last few months that masks are somehow de rigeur in China and Japan.
You see plenty of videos of Asian streets pre-2020 with nobody wearing one. I myself have been in China in January, presumably flu season, and saw virtually nobody wearing one.
When they are worn , then it has more to do with air pollution.
Yep, they were few n far between and they just looked wrong wandering around an airport
Same here.
It’s a sign of compliance on a mass scale, which I find frightening. Slaves were masked. We associate masks with criminals, perverts and anarchists. Masks are a constant reminder that people are frightened and that there’s something to be frightened of. I literally can’t breathe with my mouth and nose covered. I find missing half of people’s faces distressing. The polarizing nature of masks is distressing, as is the lack of any scientific evidence for their use. Masks symbolize everything we have lost this last year, especially our humanity.
Very well said indeed, Lisa. We know and can feel the bad physical effects of wearing a mask, but it’s more than this, as you say. It IS distressing on so many levels. And it so obviously IS pointless (peoples specs mist up – don’t they see that’s because the mask doesn’t work?) The mindlessness of it, the sign of thraldom, the very deliberate deprivation of communication, is appallingly inhumane.
I miss people’s smiles. I miss smiling my thanks to people.
Totally agree Lisa. Masks must never be normalised. Mandatory mask wearing is a direct assault on the individual’s bodily integrity .
The human face is a hugely expressive and detailed canvas that is mankind’s most important non-verbal communication tool.
Yes – I found that I was quite deliberately ignoring people in shops because their faces are covered. Because I don’t wear one myself, I’m now trying to force myself to look directly at them and smile – but it’s very very difficult, and very strange.
yes i just ignore anyone with a mask on – no eye contact, look straight ahead etc – just cannot face it (excuse the pun 🙂 Doesn’t make me feel a particularly nice person but i don’t think society is a particularly nice place to be at the moment.
Snap. Those mask wearers don’t feel like they’re of the same race, now. I don’t identify with them at all.
That’s so true. But I also feel I’m being coerced into the kind of behaviour that isn’t natural to me, so I’m rebelling against that by trying to be myself and to ignore their muzzle, as I would if they had any kind of facial disfigurement. And it IS a disfigurement.
We are being manipulated, so that it’s difficult to remain an individual without appearing to be ”odd”.
I’m exactly the same. I can’t look these people in the eye and I ignore them like I would a fly. They don’t deserve to be treated with humanity. I will confess to sometimes staring at them with my WTF face.
Man has survived for thousands of years without then. We would have evolved to have them if they were required. It is not natural to stick something over your mouth and nose such that you can’t breathe normally and can’t speak normally.
Physical – It makes it difficult to breathe especially in hot or humid conditions or when requiring extra oxygen.
It’s uncomfortable and can cause rashes or other skin irritation.
Psychological – Covering ones face is unnatural and makes the mask wearer seem either afraid or suspicious.
Not seeing someones face is unnerving as part of body language requires receiving subtle signals.
Wearing a face mask feels like a gag and inhibits the natural way we would talk to strangers in social situations.
Political – It feels like a control mechanism.
It signifies compliance.
The very idea makes me feel choked and short of breath.
It’s insanitary.
It’s dehumanising.
It makes people singly look horrible, and people collectively look like a ghastly nightmare of nothingness.
It makes it impossible to communicate properly.
It deletes your smile.
It fosters fear.
It encourages persecution of the faced minority.
It fosters the herd mentality.
It deprives young children of the chance to learn how humans communicate, both verbally and through facial expressions.
It’s a mark of servile capitulation.
It’s pointless.
Hi Annie,
Agree all. (You can tell I’m deep in marking right now!). But I would add this:
You believe what you do. It is virtually impossible to resist that. If you put on the mask, even if only because you have been frightened by the threats and incitement to scapegoating, you enact the belief that Covid is a terrible ever-present threat to which all that the regime has done is proportionate. Regardless of your motive for putting on the mask, you come to believe what it signifies. It is the height of arrogance to assume you can avoid that.
The mask is also a perfect medium for promoting the growth of infectious bacteria that can lead to staph infections, bronchitis, etc.
Just adding:
There is no evidence that masks work. Evidence means randomized, controlled tests – RCTs The generally accepted position pre-May 2020 was that they didn’t work to hinder the ransmission of respiratory disease.
Governments know this too, which means that masks have only been imposed to exact compliance and to signify conformity.
Deborah Cohen made clear with her reporting that WHO had capitulated to political – not scientific – lobbying, with its changed recommendation in June.
It was the WHO that said masks were ineffective except that they reminded people to obey the rules.
That’s a great reason to form policy. I presume the DVLA will start mandating sticking the highway code to your bonnet to remind people of the highway rules.
it’s because they’re coerced. that’s the key: it is distasteful to be coerced to wear anything – even a badge, [yellow star anyone?] or a hat [the dunce hat?], – even that bloody lanyard thing. The fact that they are also uncomfortable, ridiculous and instrusive, adds to the humiliation. In wearing them, we are being forced to enact some kind of ritual, like those concentration camp victims who were made by their torturers to run around on all fours, barking like a dog. It is intended as an affront to our dignity. The way to understand this is to contrast this with how a good faith actor would behave: – if there were some evidence that masks were anything other than as I have described them, this evidence would be presented and widely circulated, and the believers in masks would try to encourage, persuade people to adopt them of their own free will.
Submissive; self-harming; ridiculous; ineffective; unhygienic; repellent; …
Because it represents compliance and it was that same compliance amongst the German citizens of the 1920-30s which allowed the Nazis to come to power. The Nazis could never have won without the tacit cooperation of the German Citizenry
For me personally seeing how the fabric moves with every breath and comes close to the mouth, cutting the airflow off, gives me anxiety and I just want to tear them off their faces so they can breathe. It makes me anxious about my breathing and gives me the creeps.
The original idea was so that people who might be pre symptomatic and of course do not know that they have virus particles in their throat do not breathe it at others, so for me every person wearing a mouthnosecovering is a walking virus load and puts me at risk. Not that I actually believe that, but it kind of is fun to remind me of the real reason why people were told to wear them. And think to myself how stupid everyone is, they will soon get ill with all the bacteria they breathe in and will be more likely to have dementia later as they deprive themselves of oxygen.
The number of people that wear them without questioning.
Thanks for all those replies. Some great, intelligent, and insightful responses there. For me, it’s the mental effect of them. Their wearers seem defeated, repressed and diminished. I remember wearing one in a barber’s (briefly before I had to take it off) and feeling like part of me had gone. It’s hard to articulate to people who don’t fully understand though, isn’t it? And why do they not? Why does this not really freak them out, as it does us? The number of times people tell me ‘it’s just a mask’. NO. It’s much, much more than that!!
I have had the same conversation with a number of people. It is just a mask they say, no big deal to wear it for 15 minutes in a shop. They are free to think that way I suppose, even though they annoy the hell out of me, these same people are not thinking ahead. It is basically a symbol to show our compliance and to keep us aware of this ‘killer’ virus. Let’s face it, without masks and msm propoganda, it would be really easy to forget that we are in the middle of a plandemic!.
They can’t or won’t think ahead, though, will they? The exact mentality that got us in this gargantuan mess in the first place!
I don’t wear one for all those reasons mentioned by other posters, and because I am contrary, difficult, and have to go against the grain 🙂
Ditto.
Because they’re stupid and they encourage the hysteria which is doing far more harm than the virus, nasty though that can be sometimes.
I wouldn’t mind if the recommendation was to wear one if you had to go out when actually ill and coughing or sneezing. But just making everyone wear them all the time is deranged. People need to snap out of thinking like that and treating everyone else like a walking spraygun of death as Annie brilliantly put it.
I do wear dust masks sometimes if I’m grinding a lot of metal or something and they are pretty uncomfortable and annoying.
Dehumanising psy-op.
Newborns are pre-programmed to respond to faces.
Physical and behavioural impacts of mask wearing on children
https://principia-scientific.com/study-most-children-harmed-mentally-physically-by-masks/
A German study involving over 25,000 children reveals that major negative impacts on the physical, psychological, and behavioral health of children may be far more widespread than reported in the media and by government officials — affecting approximately 68% and contributing to 24 distinct health complaints, according to parent submitted observations.
As written elsewhere.
Lockdown lovers and Maskholes love forcing people into muzzles despite the almost universal evidence they don’t work for the disruptive effect they have on civil society. Despite copious expressions of faux concern the maskholes aways push an agenda which is anti people:
“People will say things online that they would never say face-to-face. Masks create a similar sense of anonymity for the aggressor, empowering interpersonal violence, and hostility across our nation.
Research tells us that if you are kidnapped and blindfolded by your captors, you are far more likely to be murdered. You would think, “I cannot identify my captors, so I am less of a threat to them.” But your potential long-term threat is not what is keeping you alive. It is looking into the face of another human being — thus creating a powerful biological sense of empathy — that is the most important factor keeping that captive alive.
The face is the window to the soul and covering the face with a mask erodes empathy and empowers interpersonal aggression.
That is why individuals being executed by hanging or firing squad, are traditionally blindfolded or hooded. Mass murders committed by criminals,… Read more »
Breathing is an intimate physical process. If it is acceptable for governments to mandate that we cover our mouths and noses to “save lives” (supposedly) how could anyone object to the government telling people to cover their penises and vaginas with condoms/barriers to prevent STD infections that cost lives? But it’s interesting this government doesn’t propose such action because they know it would not be considered PC and because really they are not that interested in “saving lives”.
Wearing one is just such an obvious sign of capitulation to a deeply toxic and evil agenda. It is an outward sign that you are a brainwashed fool. By wearing one you are perpetuating the psychological warfare. By wearing one you are destroying the social cohesion of society. The effect of face masking is the most corrosive anti human thing I have ever seen. It’s truly very disturbing that people have accepted mandatory face masking as OK. It just is not OK. It’s idiotic and evil in equal measures.
Some random thoughts:
Where are all these cases coming from? How about some detail.
Is this virus more infectious than a flu virus? What is the usual fatality rate for flu?
Did they destroy the hospitality industry just to stop us talking?
On a Good note visited local Morrisons and M & S and no change from normal, no challenges but no other faces.
I don’t think we are allowed to even mention Covid and flu in the same sentence, never mind compare them…
That’s what I don’t get -between 30 and 50k a day . You’d think all the houses of multiple occupation/mixed generations would have done all the spreading by now.
That’s what we’re told, yes. But how do we know these figures are real?
Hospitals are one of the key vectors of transmission. On top of hospital-acquired infection, we can add all of the positive PCR tests being registered by those who are in hospital for issues not related to Covid. If they’re testing people constantly and using a high cycle threshold, you could manufacture all kinds of positive cases from hospitals alone. Just one thought — can’t really know how many “cases,” true or false positives, are generated from hospitals.
A friend I was speaking with yesterday confirmed the high number of hospital-acquired infection. She is a phlebotomist/lab worker at our local hospital. Said that patients admitted with non-covid illness were routinely admitted to covid wards. This happened to my neighbour’s mother before Christmas. She had a fall, got taken to hospital (against her wishes), put onto a covid ward and subsequently died.
Vague update of Scottish relevance.
UK Government will be bypassing Holyrood in funding billions type sum into Scotland. The move follows on from many SNP financial blackholes including £2Bn iirc covid aid money granted to Holyrood by UK Government – no one knows where the money has gone. Certainly 10k green homes recovery BBB money to each home is not happening north of the border – housing being a devolved matter and 22 million dwellings requiring insulation upgrades to meet SNP Greta targets doesn’t seem to factor.
UK Government now by passing Holyrood due to poor Scottish treasury performance.
Yes, I have seen something about this but don’t know the details. The direct funding idea has been around for a while but is now being implemented and I can see why the UK government wants to do it. Polling still has support for independence very high, despite the Scottish Government’s dire performance in all areas of its powers; why it would improve after independence is hard to understand.
Its a easy sell. Look at the bile here towards boris. You can have all the political skill of a slug in lipstick and look better. Point at westminster and shriek. It is the gift that keeps on giving. Internal collapse of SNP possible.
About bloody time – just had yet another of their propaganda messages through the post – two since Christmas, both about taking the jab – that’s where some of the money is going. And don’t forget the booklet on ‘Covid Etiquette’, which to be fair, I haven’t seen, but the SNP is very, very good at propaganda and diverting money, not to mention siphoning it off for the forthcoming battle of the fishes.
Just announced we could be out of lockdown by end of March.I remember Johnson saying it would be up to February although it’s legislated up to March 31.
Also if you remember furlough was extended in November until March.Its almost like they knew a new variant would appear.
It was always going to cover the winter period regardless of what we did.
Yeah but it will be tier 4 which isn’t much different. Even in tier 2 you can’t go to the pub and sit where you like with who you like while being served by muzzleoids.
The moment they let people back in a pub now it’ll be impossible to police. Masks will come off and distancing will dissapear. This shit goes against human nature.
Well I don’t know about that . I stopped going when they brought muzzles in to enter/exit/go for a gypsy’s -not because I wore one but it felt like being on a horror movie set. But just before you could not sit at the bar -they just wouldn’t serve you . Thing is if the licensee doesn’t bow down, they lose their license.
You could be right with the license putting the landlords back against the wall.
However, I just think it will be impossible to police. There was large support for these policies initailly as people thought we were facing an existential threat and therefore it was easy to enforce distancing. Once the vulnerable have been vaccinated where is the risk? People want normality and anyone suggesting otherwise in a pub will be met with derision I expect.
That’s the thing -the story is that the vaccines don’t stop you getting it and don’t stop you transmitting it. The only gain is that C19 is less likely to kill you -but there’s only been 400 U60s with no underlying health conditions.
I still go back to that you can go into a pub and if you don’t sit where told, you won’t be served. Mind you I have said I’m not going back until the muzzles go. Not cutting nose off -there is just no pleasure in going -and I can get 4 bottles for £6 as opposed to paying upwards of £3.50 for a pint and I don’t pay £1.20 for a packet of crisps.
Fair enough, I really don’t have it in me to go without the pubs for another year i’ll need to accept dystpoia of sorts. They can put me seated wherever the want i’ll be outside with the smokers as will everyone else (im a non smoker btw). It won’t work people are starving for socialisation.
No, not even less likely to kill you. The claim for the vackseeeens is, I believe, only that they may make symptoms more moderate in those for whom they would have been pretty moderate anyway.
Tier 4 is lockdown by another name.I was pointing out how casually they can add another 6 weeks to lockdown and it not even raise an eyebrow and then vaguely promise we may get out of it then.
Yes – funny that!
Just back from a visit to my daughter and grandsons – Norfolk coast to small village in darkest Cambs. No problems in either direction, though very little traffic. Just one notice demanding ‘stay home, save lives.’
So glad I went. Daughter informed me not to worry – the Brazilian has been around for quite a while on these shores. Who knew! Such a relief!
It’s definitely dark and silent in Cambs at the minute.
Small world, I grew up watching the Fen Tiger. My folks still live there and are petrified after watching the BBC day in day out. They have bought into the vaccine story, wife wont let me visit them.
Went for 3 mile walk earlier, saw 50 ish people no masks, no SocDis. About ten times as many as I would expect. Strange, if I didn’t read what’s going on I could almost think it wants happening. But almost everyone still in hiding and watching the BBC sadly.
Thank you so much for sharing this story and sharing your joy. Having heard all my healthy family members have been sucked into the experimental vaccine, and talking to other brainwashed zombie friends on zoom, I was depressed. It makes me exceedingly happy to hear you got to see your family. We also got to see a number of real live people on Saturday. Lots of hugs. Isn’t it just wonderful to have real human connection. Sadly also got news tonight of another suicide attempt. Please get out and connect with and hug people!
Yes indeed – that close physical connection is the essence of what it is to be human.
Sad to hear of the act of despair. Best wishes to the person concerned.
And a virtual hug to you. Bonne courage mon brave….
I’m no hugger, but I think the vilest porn slogan ever is the current one about the beastly virus ‘thriving on human contact.’
Be inhuman. Save lives.
CNC, if you’re still around, want to give me a ring ?
I am a native of Brazil
While all can kill, I’m deadlier still.
I’ve come to England now because
I’m even deadlier than I was…
(adapted from English lyrics to La Vie parisienne.)
A certain Brazilian has been around for years, yes. 🙂
Indeed! Very immature I know, but oh how we did laugh.
Feeling creeping despair at this from the DT
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/01/17/almost-third-recovered-covid-patients-return-hospital-five-months/
“Research by Leicester University and the Office for National Statistics (ONS) found there is a devastating long-term toll on survivors of severe coronavirus, with many people developing heart problems, diabetes and chronic liver and kidney conditions.
Out of 47,780 people who were discharged from hospital in the first wave, 29.4 per cent were readmitted to hospital within 140 days, and 12.3 per cent of the total died.
The current cut-off point for recording Covid deaths is 28 days after a positive test, so it may mean thousands more people should be included in the coronavirus death statistics.”
Another way to ramp up the fear and the numbers. But how can this be accurate without a much bigger excess mortality than we have?
This may well be so. But have they done a similar analysis of post-viral syndrome from other diseases at other times? And even if this is the case it still needs to be analysed whether this issue with Covid-19 justifies the actions taken.
Not that I am aware and they are not going to! But at the moment this is the perfect fodder for a govt and advisers who have no one holding them to account in such matters and and have ridden high on the waves of fear that they have deliberately generated with the collusion of mSm.
This is dredged up from the slime left by previous waves.
No worries Charlie.
It’s the job of MSM to support the narrative, not question it.
Par for the course.
I have to admit I wasn’t a regular reader of Pravda in the 70s but you get the idea.
The job of the mainstream is to follow dominant memes, not create them.
It would be useful to know the average age of these people.
And any other underlying health conditions/
If they’ve developed type 2 diabetes then chances are they were/are in absolutely awful shape physically and that’s probably why they ended up in hospital in the first place. Same with the other conditions. Ridiculous article by the looks of it.
My thought exactly ref obesity/poor metabolic health.
But Cosmopolitan magazine just featured special covers to let us know obesity is healthy!
And beautiful!
Another big fat lie.
doubt if they are new devastating problems more likely pre-existing which helped them to catch the lurgy, then the lurgy returned the favour by amplifying these conditions
Average age?
Were they on ventilators the first time round?
Much of this is probably predictable from flu or any serious respiratory illness.
So the hospitals are packed with long covid patients now, on top of new covid who will also soon be long covid. At least that explains the case for being overwhelmed.
Is there any room at the Inn?
New pub name: The Long Covid. Could replace ‘The Black Boy’ and other names the wokeys abhor. If any pubs still remain to have names.
Not far from where I used to live there’s a pub called The Black Cock. It’s affectionately known as The Nigger’s Dick by the locals.
(this is true).
No causation demonstrated, of course. But the reader is pointed firmly in the direction of long covid.
I just had a long look at the poisonous writing of the woman who wrote this, Sarah Knapton from The Telegraph,and it is generally awful. It is garbage. Sarah is probably not a scientist, but has the job of ‘science editor’. Unfortunately Bill Gates now pays for the Telegraph Science team. Gutter press.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/authors/sarah-knapton/
Believe it or not, her articles are usually rather good, at least compared to most other so-called science journalists!
I made a considerable effort when I was still subscribing to that rag to discover Knapton’s academic qualifications for being a science editor. I could find nothing at all, so I infer from this that she isn’t scientifically-qualified.
FFS, the average age of these people is probably 80. Is it really surprising that 12.3% (or is that 12.3% of 29.4% – can’t see through paywall) die within 5 months?
exactly. It’s hardly surprising that a number of people old and frail enough to end up in ICU from a respiratory illness go on to die within a few months.
Unless the data is described in more detail as to age and pre-existing health conditions the metrics are meaningless.
Survivors of severe covid says it all really. Why would it be a surprise?
The new 28 day methodology was introduced on 12th Aug so as the peak deaths were early April then a lot of these returnees may be already down as Covid deaths. Most were probably in a bad state anyway e.g. from care homes and all drug cocktails and ventilation going on then won’t have helped their outcomes.
These nudge words… “devastating”, “terrible”, “soaring”, “unprecedented”, “alarming”… pandemic of fear keeps spreading and mutating. There’s a great, 100% effective vaccine available. Shout BULLSHIT at it and get on with your life! Ugh the struggle is real…
Probably because so many of the were ill with something else when they went into hospital and caught Covid. So sick old people going back to hospital because they were sick and old.
But it makes not difference, even if Long Covid is a thing. Lockdowns make it worse, all the data says so. So to avoid Long Covid, end lockdowns.
Headache, tense nervous headache, take Anadin. Instant relief from symptoms of colds and flu. Coves 90% of ‘long’ covid. Short covid even easier. I’m sure most of them can feel a compensation pain, I mean claim, coming on
Could the issue in Norway be that they have hardly any natural immunity? My 91 year old stepfather with COPD had the Pfizer and has been fine but I am convinced he had covid in December 2019 so might, therefore, be naturally immune.
Do you mean that those 29 fatalities have perhaps occurred because the unfortunate people concerned were not immune to the vaccine?
So, you can only get safely veccinated if you have already had that against which you are allegedly being caccinated.
I think Monty Python should get back together again to do this sketch.
John Cleese as the vaccinator. Eric Idle as the hapless patient.
You mean this one? https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=916426955466719
I asked the question because I don’t know the answer. The Pfizer jab seems to be designed to provoke an immune response. If you have already have immunity, could the vaccine provoke less of a response? If that is the case NZ is fucked.
Aha. Somebody else who gets ‘caccinated’ instead of ‘vaccinated’.
It was Frank Richards’ favourite expression for Billy Bunter’s laugh when he’d done something despicable.
Natural bodily function defends against the very illness you now want a vaccine for? I just don’t get this.
What is the logic? I am immune, but you can’t be too careful?
It seems strange to me that my extended family in France can have whoever they like in their homes. This has been the case for a while. Since before Xmas. Received some lovely photos of 7 people celebrating today in France. They had a great “Gateau des Rois”. My Mother in law won that one. “Gateau des Rois” is a French tradition in January.
Boris is a very strong Dictator because his rules here in the UK about who you are allowed to have in your own home are now among the most restrictive in the world. The British public really do have the boot of Boris and Sage on their throats, and are freely allowing these dysfunctional weirdos to dictate who we allow into our homes.
The French have to wear masks outside but at least they can entertain family in their own homes. Macron is a bit scared of going too far. So he always has an end date about that sort of thing.
PS – My daughter and family here in Hampshire came round anyway, so the rules are only for those who want to use them really. We had a great “Gateau des Rois”, and for… Read more »
They can try and dictate but it only works if you let them. It’s nerve-wracking if you have snitchy neighbours (I don’t know about mine) but my son & wife stayed 2days over Xmas, other family came a week later. Next-door neighbour came in and chatted in our hallway, and I smuggle pupils into the house as darkness falls and if they walk. (Bit cloak and dagger) No masks, of course.
Buggrem.
My wife reckons we have been gaining the respect of neighbors for consistently having people round. I think the curtain twitchers around here got fed up about 6 months ago and just want a return to normality.
A German client of mine was explaining to me the other day that, constitutionally, the government can’t make any rules about what you can and can’t do in your own home.
Congratulations! On vous félicite.
When, here in Britain, an elderly, but formerly rational woman has her Christmas dinner dumped on her doorstep by a formerly devoted son, who then rushes away lest the Deadly Contagion pass in the gravy, there is something desperately wrong not with Bozo and his thugs – Fascists, like all evil things, work according to their natures – but with the woman and her son.
A list of potential 77th Brigade friends who might work in Hermitage, Berkshire:
BMWman
dhid
nomenotreally
mayo
Cristi.Neagu
Same old scripts, digging for details and never following a debate very far, plus the good old ‘clog it up with crap’ approach.
I might be wrong, so apologies if you’re not an esteemed army recruit and just a regular troll.
What a waste of energy but are there any more trolls to avoid?
mayo, like the chap running the Zoe app, is a lockdown sceptic, and quite refreshing. His/her disagreement is the level of herd and pre immunity
Yes, I think Mayo is trying to be a constructive critic and raises some interesting points.
OK, fair enough. I’m a very suspicious bastard nowadays and don’t trust much I see or hear just because of who or where I see it..
I also noticed a change in sentiment and tone on this site when those listed above appeared in dialogue.
Some are more cogent than others but they stand out from the crowd.
Im sure if the site admin checks their ip addresses from the site logs they could very quickly confirm this. A sure giveaway is generally they only post monday to friday during office hours
Perhaps I am over estimating the cunning of the brigade. But a far more subtle approach would be to gain friends and influence them.
The odd boney knee only stirs things in a minor way. I fancy 77 brigade are quite content to let the comments heat alone, it gives them chance to study debate and track links.
Like I say I may be giving too much credit too the army apparatus turned on it’s own people.
It would be nice to think the 77th might actually be used against this country’s real enemies and prove it’s worth but I’m not impressed if it’s used on domestic matters.
Civilians could be used in army exercises once upon a time but gave consent to it – I’m not happy about it’s use against non consenting taxpayers.
Nice username,by the way.
No fair. Don’t let’s go into the denunciation business.
There’s a one-eyed yellow idol …
The agency found that “the number of incidents so far is not alarming, and in line with expectations,” Pfizer said. – cited in a zerohedge article detailing post-vaccine deaths. What? so deaths from covid: nothing above zero is tolerable, and anyone who says otherwise is a granny-killer; deaths from the covid vaccine: suddenly the baseline is accepted to be above zero, and some people are, after all, expendable?
How can anybody STILL not see what their game is????
Because most people are as thick as two short planks and too terrified to think even with two short planks.
That is an admission that the experimental treatment — I won’t call it a vaccine — is expected to injure and kill some number of people. Pfizer and the rest cannot claim their interventions are safe for everyone. Unlike Covid, where we know who is at highest risk, nobody knows who will be irreversibly injured or even killed from this treatment.
Pfizer have a history of law suites and damage payouts for their vaccines, running into billions of dollars. It’s obvious they cut corners to push their product and it has backfired before. I suspect they are not alone in this within the pharma industry. Their first priority is their shareholders and not the patient i fear.
As I see it, there are only two explanations for rapid falls in cases/deaths in spring: lockdown, or ‘herd immunity’, however you want to define it.
Or the entirely normal and predictable behaviour of bronchial viruses? Like the flu, rhinoviruses, and the previous strains of coronavirus?
To be honest, this was a pointed comment aimed at ‘Mayo’, who doesn’t believe in herd immunity and claimed it might be a seasonal effect. To which I say nonsense, given that it came and went in a very short period of fine spring weather.
Looks pretty likely that it was here and doing the rounds during the winter, though. We just weren’t testing and the monomania had yet to be imposed on the health services. Looks seasonal enough.
Herd immunity occurs as a consequence of evolutionary selection pressure, and is simply a fact, not an article of faith. Our friend might as well tell us he doesn’t believe in clouds, or that water isn’t wet. The denial by the drivers of this agenda of its existence, or the implication that it’s a euphemism for deliberately placing the vulnerable in harm’s way, is one of the most wicked lies among many that they’ve promulgated, and the fact that the campaign has been largely successful must surely have convinced them that most people can be persuaded to believe anything.
I don’t think so, otherwise the deaths would follow a much smoother pattern?
Climate changes?
Brexit ?
Seasonality.
Or a (look the other way), reduction in testing or pcr cycles. Gosh. That won’t happen, wiil it?
In my opinoon the spike in mortality was overwhelmingly due to lockdown and all of its costs.
As people and institutions adjusted to the shocks of lockdown, so mortality fell.
If you look at the shape of the mortality curve, then it is does not show the slowly rising hump characteristic of the typical progress of an epidemic through a population, but is a spike indicating hunan intervention – ie lockdown.
In addition, the spike followed lockdown in all cases, and was dependent on the jurisdiction which imposed it, rather than the number of ‘cases’
UK column did a brilliant piece on this months ago.Covid had been around for months before lockdown.This is proved by sewage samples.The peak in mortality only came after lockdown
Deaths in care homes,people not presenting themselves to hospitals and delays in Ambulance response times would account for most of the excess deaths.
There are a series of graphs in the article showing the spike in deaths across Europe only occurred after lockdown.
Sweden who didn’t lock down had a smaller peak but they made the same mistake with care homes,which they have since owned up to.
The truth is that the only thing unprecedented about this virus is the governmental response.
The reason deaths increased in April was because they refused to treat people in care homes and left them
along with a lot old people in hospitals to die. Plus people weren’t going to hospitals with heart attacks etc. When that stopped the excessive deaths stopped. Nothing to do with lockdown or heard immunity.