What Happened to Hancock’s Promise of a “Great British Summer”?
Hard to believe it was only 11 days ago that Matt Hancock was telling Brits they could look forward to a “great British summer”. Yesterday, Transport Secretary Grant Shapps turned up on breakfast TV to pour icy water on that ember of hope and tell the country to hold off on their summer plans – and in the UK, too, not just abroad. The reason? Because we can’t go back to moving around the country until everyone is vaccinated. As for travelling abroad, that’s off the table until the whole world is vaccinated. The Independent has more.
Speaking on BBC Breakfast, Grant Shapps said travelling abroad would depend on “everybody having their vaccinations” in the UK – and potentially abroad.
He was speaking after the Government revealed plans for many arrivals to the UK to go into hotel quarantine, with penalties of up to 10 years in prison for people who fail to disclose a visit to Portugal or other “red-list” countries within the past 10 days.
The presenter, Louise Minchin, asked Mr Shapps: “There’s so much concern from many people, including of course the travel industry, about how you lift this – so what is the pathway, what needs to be the difference for this to change?”
“We’ll need to wait for other countries to catch up as well, in order to do that wider international unlock,” he added.
The Transport Secretary also told BBC Breakfast that jail terms of up to 10 years for people who lied on their passenger locator form was appropriate.
“I think the British public would expect pretty strong action,” he said.
In a move that will anger the travel industry, Mr Shapps warned prospective holidaymakers against making any plans.
“Further down the line I simply don’t know the answer to the question of where we’ll be up to this summer. It’s too early to be able to give you that information. You’d want to wait until that’s clear before booking anything.
“The best advice is: do nothing at this stage.”
He told BBC Today: “On the shrinking chance that there’s anybody listening to this interview at this stage and thinking of booking a holiday under the current circumstances, bear in mind you cannot legally do that at the moment.
“Until you know the result of a lockdown which we can’t know until we have more data, more information, more information on vaccines as well, please don’t go ahead and book holidays for something which at this stage it is illegal to actually go and do – whether it’s here or abroad.”
Surely, it isn’t technically illegal to book a summer holiday?!? Unwise, perhaps, but not illegal. Or is the Government planning to make that a criminal offence punishable by 10 years in jail?
It feels a lot like September all over again. Back then, the great optimistic opening up over the summer, which we’d been led to believe was a one-way process, was suddenly slammed into reverse as we headed into autumn. Now, the great promise of opening up through a lightning-fast vaccination programme has over the course of a couple of weeks warped into a threat of indefinite lockdown.
Allison Pearson hits the nail on the head as usual in the Telegraph.
Back at the beginning of January, the Prime Minister told us that – alas! – we must enter a third lockdown because the NHS was in danger of being overwhelmed again. Now, despite what you see on the TV news, that danger is receding fast.
In the last three weeks, there has been a massive reduction in beds occupied by Covid patients, a much steeper dropping-off in numbers than we saw back in May and June.
There is a slower fall in intensive care than across beds in general, but that’s because very sick people are being treated for longer and not dying, as they may well have done in the spring.
The UK vaccine rollout continues to astonish. At this rate, the top nine at-risk groups, currently linked to 99% of Covid deaths, will all be protected by March 23rd. Once the most vulnerable have been vaccinated, hospital admissions and deaths should plummet.
Make no mistake, this is tremendous news. Factor in that the weather will start to get warmer (spring is when all respiratory viruses retreat), and there really is no excuse for the Government not to provide a clear roadmap out of lockdown.
Yet, dismayingly, the reaction of members of SAGE and the even-more-Left-wing Independent SAGE, is to spread further fear and despondency.
Hear that loud trundling? It’s the sound of a World Cup of goalposts being moved by hatchet-faced mathematical modellers. Opening up by spring has somehow slipped to summer. It used to be that we could get our lives back once people over 70 had been vaccinated. Suddenly, it’s the over-50s.
“Vaccinating everyone over 50 doesn’t stop Covid spreading,” cautions Independent SAGE’s Professor Christina Pagel. True – but why would that matter when the risk is of a very mild or asymptomatic infection? By then, the chance of serious illness from Covid would be around the same as the fatality level of flu.
As free people, we should be allowed to run that small risk in order to enjoy a full and satisfying life, not the lonely, twilit existence of the past 10 months.
Not so long ago, relieving pressure on the NHS was the condition to be met before they gave us our freedom back. Now that we’ve almost cleared that bar, fools who think the virus can be extinguished are saying we can’t be released until we get down to 1,000 cases a day. If they test enough people, they’ll always find enough false positives to keep us in jail. Trapped forever, then.
“We risk suffering from the failure of so many experts to imagine a post-vaccine world, where COVID-19 ranks with other respiratory viruses in terms of risk,” says Professor Robert Dingwall, one of the most balanced and humane scientists during a period when humanity and proportion have been sorely lacking.
Worth reading in full.
Stop Press: A Lockdown Sceptics reader had a good dig through the SAGE minutes and found the likely source of the new extreme travel restrictions. In SAGE 77 minutes from January 21st we read:
Measures to reduce importations are most important when domestic prevalence (either overall or of a particular variant of concern) is low and when importation could lead to R>1. No intervention, other than a complete, pre-emptive closure of borders, or the mandatory quarantine of all visitors upon arrival in designated facilities, irrespective of testing history, can get close to fully prevent the importation of cases or new variants (moderate confidence, moderate evidence).
When will this recently discovered need to keep borders tightly sealed to “new variants of concern” end? The wise monkeys do not say.
“Existing Isn’t Living” – Sir Charles Walker MP on Radio 4’s World at One
Historian and Lockdown Sceptics regular Guy de la Bédoyère has written a new piece for us, complete with an edited transcript of Charles Walker’s inspiring turn on BBC Radio yesterday morning. Here’s how Guy begins.
I freely admit that of late I have tried to adopt a more conciliatory tone, frustrated by the polarisation of the debate about how to get out of this crisis and the apparent inability of people to listen to each other. But with the news getting worse every day, vaccines gradually diminishing as an escape as scientists reel back at the earth-shattering discovery that viruses mutate, and lockdowns turning into a permanent policy in the fantasy world of zero-Covid (now they are necessary to help the fight against mutations), I am close to the point of giving up.
Living in Britain in 2021 is like cowering in a submarine while enemy depth charges explode all around you. You daren’t rise to the surface and instead just sink lower and lower. The only difference is it’s our own Government dropping them.
I don’t mean to sound trite. I’m well aware what real despair and depression can do to people. I have seen it at first hand. But as things stand it’s getting more and more difficult to understand what the point of carrying on is, if the only vision of the future the Government and large swathes of the population have is of living in a country where we can’t do anything, can’t see anyone or go anywhere, and have nothing to look forward to except living in a police state to ‘keep us safe’. What the hell for?
We’ve now had the ever-wise-after-the-event expert, Professor Neil Ferguson, telling us social distancing and masks are probably here to stay for the rest of the year thanks to Government ministers’ negligence. One wonders just exactly what would satisfy him?
Today, I turned on the World at One on Radio 4, filled with almost total despair at the news of 10-year prison sentences being added to the list of reasons why this country is turning into a control freak’s paradise. It turned out to be better than I expected. An interview with Paul Hunter, professor of Medicine at UEA, included the helpful gem that “complete eradication is an unachievable goal” but he still wanted to worry about the extent to which restrictions should stay in place to protect those who haven’t been vaccinated. He rejected the idea that border restrictions could not have any “substantial, ongoing benefit after April… I hope they don’t last very long” but still seemed fairly obsessed with worries about mutated variants.
That was all nothing to what came next. I was overjoyed to hear the Voice of Reason from one of the heroes of the hour (it starts at 28m 45s into the show).
There was a priceless no-punches pulled interview with Sir Charles Walker MP, Vice-Chairman of the 1922 Committee. He strafed the most recent hapless Government double-act by Messrs. Shapps and Hancock like a rocket-firing Hawker Typhoon on a low-level raid in 1944. This is some of what he said. Sarah Montague kicked off with asking him what he felt about how things should be playing out in the next few weeks.
Charles Walker: Very disappointed. The Prime Minister has had a good few weeks where he seems to have been on top of things and then he is somewhat let down by both the Secretary of State for Health and the Secretary of State for Transport. First the Secretary of State for Health threatening to lock people up for 10 years… 10 years for crying out loud! And then we have the Secretary of State for Transport urging people not even to book domestic holidays. Now there’s a lot of people who will have seen a lot of hope evaporate at that… so, two really depressing interventions from two senior secretaries of state.
An extended exercise in almost studied and deliberate cruelty.
Worth reading in full.
Stop Press: A Lockdown Sceptics reader has uploaded Walker’s World At One interview to his YouTube channel.
Stop Press 2: Fraser Knight tweets about Charles Walker’s interview with Sky News here.
WHO Tugs Forelock and Toes Chinese Communist Party Line on Virus Origin
Following Tuesday’s perfunctory dismissal by the World Health Organisation (WHO) of the lab-leak hypothesis, Ian Birrell in UnHerd is dismayed by the WHO’s blatant kowtowing to China and apparent lack of curiosity about the facts.
So why is WHO so dismissive of a possible lab leak? After all, Peter Ben Embarek, the Danish food safety scientist leading its mission, explained that all the work to identify the origin of COVID-19 continues to point towards a natural viral reservoir in bats – but accepted they were unlikely to have been flying over Wuhan. He said his team held a “very long, frank, open discussion with the management and the staff” at Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV), listened to their description of research carried out, accepted assurances that they did not posses Sars-Cov-2 in their virus banks, examined health data they were given, took the view such leaks are rare and then decided that microscopic pathogens could not escape from such a high-secure unit. “It was very unlikely that anything could escape from such a place,” he said firmly.
It is sweet these international scientists are so trusting of their Chinese colleagues, despite all the evidence of cover-up with the previous Sars epidemic soon after the turn of this century and then again in initial weeks of this pandemic. But this hardly sounds the most forensic, evidence-based approach given the seismic importance of their conclusions. We know the controlling nature of Chinese state repression. We know there have been many leaks before from labs, including 11 Sars infections from a top-security Beijing research centre in 2004. We know there were safety concerns since they were admitted by WIV’s head of security in a journal shortly before the outbreak. We know databases of unpublished viruses were hidden from outsiders. And we know that for all the WHO team’s faith in the WIV security, much of their Sars research was carried out at lower security labs in the city,
We also know scientists in Wuhan initially feared the novel coronavirus leaked from their lab. We know they were performing risky “gain of function” research that forces evolution of viruses, which some scientists have long feared might spark pandemic. We know they were combining snippets from different strains of bat coronaviruses and creating chimeric diseases using cloning techniques that display no sign of human manipulation. We know they were injecting viruses into “humanised mice” and trying to determine how bat diseases jump the barrier between species. We know also this new disease was well adapted to human transmission, possessing a mutation that allows its spike protein to bind to many human cells that is not found on similar types of coronaviruses. And we know two Chinese scientists in February claimed “the killer coronavirus probably originated from a laboratory in Wuhan” before their paper was hastily deleted.
Then there are the issues swirling around Shi Zhingli, Wuhan’s famed expert known as “Batwoman” for her sample-gathering trips in southern China, that have raised suspicions after being winkled out by Drastic, a group of researchers and scientists. Her actions include claiming three miners died of a fungal infection in 2012, when it later emerged they died from a respiratory disease similar to Covid that they caught clearing bat droppings in one of those caves. She obscured a link to their fatalities when publishing an influential Nature paper about the closest known relative to Sars-Cov-2 – and altered the name of this virus without mention of her action in that paper, widely taken as indication of natural transmission. Now she pushes ideas of transmission by mink and, yes, frozen food.
The episode, which exposes the extent to which the WHO has become supine before the Chinese Community Party, was “embarrassing”, writes Birrell.
That charade of a press conference – after 12 days wandering around Wuhan that included visiting a propaganda exhibition celebrating China’s recovery – was simply embarrassing. There is also a major flaw in the logic expressed at the event. The WHO stance is based on placing faith in China, despite all the evidence that this is a state that cannot be trusted – whether lying about its horrific treatment of minorities in Xinjiang, breaking a historic deal with Britain to protect freedom in Hong Kong or silencing noble doctors trying to alert the world to looming disaster. Yet if a leak was covered up, is it possible to trust such a Government? So if WHO is ruling out the likelihood of a laboratory accident, it must immediately release all data and evidence supporting its case.
Worth reading in full.
Stop Press: Breitbart News reports that World Health Organization adviser Jamie Metzl told Fox News that “the actual investigation was done by Chinese authorities. And so, the WHO investigators were basically receiving reports from the Chinese officials”.
Stop Press 2: Freddie Sayers of UnHerd tweets that this is how Ian Birrell’s piece appears on Facebook.
Frustrations of a Volunteer Vaccinator
Today we’re publishing an original piece by a former nurse on her experience of stepping up to help with the vaccination programme after reading in Lockdown Sceptics that St John Ambulance was recruiting volunteers. The red tape she had to get through was unbelievably voluminous and, when she finally reported for duty, she found she wasn’t needed. Here’s an excerpt:
I arrived for the 2pm-8pm shift, and it immediately became obvious that volunteers were, by and large, superfluous to requirements: Despite our training and preparation, almost all St. John volunteers were assigned roles which could be generously described as ‘meet and greet’, but mainly involved giving out leaflets and standing at cold doors with nothing to do.
The place was full-to-bursting with NHS clinical staff. There were so many in fact that a good number were kicking their heels and just watching the proceedings. One nurse told me that they daren’t leave their vaccination posts for a break, as if they did so their tables would be snapped up by other staff with nothing to do.
As the second vaccination site had now become ‘live’ and was better positioned geographically for me (and located in a more rural area), I decided to change my shifts to volunteer at that site in the hope they might actually need volunteers!
The evening before my first shift (8am-2pm) I received an email to say the shift had been cancelled as the NHS didn’t require volunteers at this time. The following week was also cancelled, so I contacted St. John’s local team to find out what was going on.
I was told that the NHS team managing the site had informed them they currently had “no need for volunteers”. In addition, the original vaccination site (in the large city) now also didn’t require volunteer vaccinators, only ‘advocates’ and ‘carers’ (aka ‘meet and greeters’) so despite all our training, commitment, frustrations and efforts, there is at present nowhere in our region where a St. John Ambulance volunteer vaccinator (50 trained at present) can actually carry out vaccinations!
As well as being extremely frustrating, this is also very strange as we are constantly hearing how the NHS is at risk of being ‘overwhelmed’ and needs ‘protecting’, yet when given a perfect opportunity for volunteers to pick up the slack and do the bulk of work at mass vaccination centres, the NHS instead choose to divert hundreds of staff from hospitals into the mass-vaccination centres, turning down offers of help from perfectly capable volunteers.
Worth reading in full.
Prof Karol Sikora: Lockdowns Cause More Deaths Than They Prevent
Professor Karol Sikora and colleagues have a new article in a peer-reviewed journal evaluating lockdowns from a cost-benefit perspective in terms of life-years lost and saved. This is the abstract.
Every policy has direct and indirect effects of intended and unintended consequences. Policies that require people to stay at home to reduce the morbidity and mortality from COVID-19 will have effects beyond the virus. For example, they will adversely affect mental health and economic prospects for many. They will also affect people’s willingness and ability to access health and social services. This is likely to result in increases in morbidity and mortality from otherwise curable diseases, such as cancer, acute myocardial infarction and stroke. A comparison between COVID-19 deaths prevented and excess cancer deaths caused shows it is possible that preventing COVID-19 deaths through lockdowns might result in more life-years being lost than saved.
Worth reading in full.
Stop Press: Great Barrington Declaration co-author Professor Martin Kulldorff and Professor Günter Kampf have a letter in the Lancet calling on Governments to carry out proper “benefit–risk evaluations of COVID-19 control measures”.
We think government lockdowns cause substantial collateral health damage. For example, hospital admissions in the USA for emergency treatment of acute ischaemic strokes have been substantially lower in February–March, 2020, than in February–March, 2019, resulting in delayed treatment. Compared with a historical baseline, UK nursing homes and hospices saw an increase in the number of deaths between February and June, 2020, associated with acute coronary syndrome (a 41% increase), stroke (a 39% increase), and heart failure (a 25% increase). The situation is similar for patients with cancer. In German hospitals, cancer cases decreased during the first national lockdown between March 12th and April 19th, 2020: by 13·9% for breast cancer, 16·5% for bladder cancer, 18·4% for gastric cancer, 19·8% for lung cancer, 22·3% for colon cancer, and 23·1% for prostate cancer, suggesting that cancers might have been undetected and untreated during this period. In England, hospital admissions for chemotherapy appointments have fallen by 60%, and urgent referrals for early diagnosis of suspected cancers have decreased by 76% compared with pre-COVID-19 levels, which could contribute to 6270 additional deaths within 1 year. Delayed diagnosis and treatment are expected to increase the numbers of deaths up to year 5 after diagnosis by 7·9–9·6% for breast cancer, 15·3–16·6% for colorectal cancer, 4·8–5·3% for lung cancer, and 5·8–6·0% for oesophageal cancer.
Government restrictions are disrupting traditional means of support between friends and family members. Physical distancing and contact reduction are causing severe stress to many people and might increase the risk of suicide. In a meta-analysis of the prevalence of stress, anxiety, depression among the general population during the COVID-19 pandemic,7 the prevalence of depression in the months of the pandemic up to May, 2020, was 33·7% (95% CI 27·5–40·6). Between April 22nd and May 11th, 2020, 795 (78·9%) of 1008 people aged 18–35 years in the USA reported symptoms of depression. Further and stronger restrictions on physical and social contact could lead to a further increase in the prevalence of depression.
Worth reading in full.
Sweden Smeared by Secretive Elite Facebook Group
Two Swedish investigating media groups have exposed an online cabal that deliberately smeared their own country in international media in an effort to discredit the Swedish light-touch Covid strategy. Sveriges Radio has the details.
– Ekot and Vetenskapsradion have gained insight into the activities of a hidden Facebook group.
– Very serious allegations are spread in a social media campaign.
– Experts in the field of information influence consider the tone and methods to be worrying.The closed Facebook group with just over 200 members includes academics, opinion leaders, researchers at Swedish universities and others who are upset about Sweden’s handling of the coronavirus.
The members are largely active in Sweden, but the dialogue is conducted in English. We have gained insight into the closed group, the posts and activities for a long time.
Members coordinate activities in the Facebook group and take the messages to the comment field, Twitter, Swedish and international media. They have placed their messages in Time, Science, Washington Post, among others.
Hanna Linderstål is an independent virtual analyst and works to strengthen the business community’s and authorities’ knowledge of the impact of information.
What we can see in this group’s activities that make it interesting is partly that they court international media where they present Sweden as both a failure and that the authorities in Sweden would have a hidden agenda about the country’s corona strategy, says Hanna Linderstål.
Hanna Linderstål thinks that the group’s processing of international and Swedish media is very worrying.
Among other things, other countries are urged not to let Swedes in, to protect the countries. And these are strong statements that are made about Sweden internationally, she says.
Johan Hellström tweets about it here.
Poetry Corner
12 year-old E. C. wrote this and sent it in at the encouragement of her mother.
Hands, face, space
Hands, face, space
Wreck your hands by washing them,
Strip them of all oil
End up with zombie skin
Turn water up to boil.
Cover your face – let’s suffocate
From the lack of air
Smell your breath wherever you go,
As if cloth will stop a virus!
Keep away from people
Possible? Nah
We all are on the same Earth;
Same air
The virus isn’t picky
Distance – doesn’t care!
Round-up
- “Boris Johnson sets out the new normal on vaccines” – We need to “get used to the idea of vaccinating and then revaccinating in the autumn, as we come to face these new variants”, says the PM, reports Katy Balls in the Spectator
- “Will this be a mandatory vaccine in all but name?” – Michael Curzon in Bournbrook smells another rotten promise
- “Family fury after 78-year-old woman with broken hip was left lying on a mattress on hospital floor days before she died after contracting Covid while on ward” – The Mail with a shocking story of neglect from a Scottish hospital, prompting a formal complaint from the family
- “Urgent warning re Covid-19 vaccine-related deaths in the elderly and Care Homes” – Open letter from the UK Medical Freedom Alliance to Government ministers flagging a possible concern similar to the one raised by Norway last month
- “A Few Covid Vaccine Recipients Developed a Rare Blood Disorder” – The New York Times reports on a potential vaccine side effect
- “Pfizer drops India vaccine application after regulator seeks local trial” – India asks for more evidence, and Pfizer says no, in a curious development reported by Reuters
- “How China Beat COVID-19 and Revived Its Economy” – More of the misplaced praise for China that got us into this mess in the first place from the New York Times
- “Smiles Matter” – The campaign invites you to “show your support, wear your badge”
- “Spain’s Government pinning hopes on a vaccination passport to help kick-start ailing tourism sector” – They edge ever closer, from El Pais
- “WHO backs Britain over Oxford jab for over-65s and delayed booster” – The Times reports on a boost for the Government and AstraZeneca against critics of the vaccine in Europe and elsewhere
- “CDC Estimates 83 Million U.S. COVID Infections. This Has Major Implications” – Alex Berezow in American Council on Science and Health says the figures cast new light on the true scale of population immunity in America
- “Why aren’t we taking these simple steps to help beat the virus?” – Epidemiologist Dr Laurence Villard in the Conservative Woman wonders why we’re not making better use of cheap and effective treatments
- “Nailing the Offenders” – From Kester Disability Rights – an organisation who can help if you are being given trouble over not wearing a mask for reasons of disability
- “I voted for lockdown. But the choice between saving lives and losing freedom is hard” – Dr Andrew Murrison MP writing in ConservativeHome attempts some perspective on Covid and lockdown, suggesting it is possible for people to shift their view
- “Ministers should have ‘learned lessons properly’ from first wave, adviser says” – For some reason Sky News goes to Professor Neil Ferguson for his thoughts, despite his atrocious track record of models and predictions. Isn’t the main lesson of the first wave not to listen to Neil Ferguson?
- “Common asthma treatment reduces need for hospitalisation in COVID-19 patients, study suggests” – Looks like we can add budesonide to the cheap treatments that reduce the severity and duration of the disease, according to a report from the University of Oxford
- “Liberty’s view on immunity passports” – The human rights organisation is finally starting to push back against some of the egregious infringements of basic liberties being perpetrated by Government during the crisis
- “The dangers of compulsory vaccination” – Barrister Adam King writes for UnHerd on the parallels between ‘No Jab, No Job’ and company-imposed free speech restrictions
Theme Tunes Suggested by Readers
Four today: “All Around The World” by Oasis, “For Tomorrow” by Blur, “I Wanna Be Sedated” by the Ramones and “The Shape of Things to Come” by Headboys.
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 Lockdown Sceptics here.
Sharing Stories
Some of you have asked how to link to particular stories on Lockdown Sceptics so you can share it. To do that, click on the headline of a particular story and a link symbol will appear on the right-hand side of the headline. Click on the link and the URL of your page will switch to the URL of that particular story. You can then copy that URL and either email it to your friends or post it on social media. Please do share the stories.
Social Media Accounts
You can follow Lockdown Sceptics on our social media accounts which are updated throughout the day. To follow us on Facebook, click here; to follow us on Twitter, click here; to follow us on Instagram, click here; to follow us on Parler, click here; and to follow us on MeWe, click here.
Woke Gobbledegook
We’ve decided to create a permanent slot down here for woke gobbledegook. Today, it’s the news that Brighton and Sussex University Hospitals NHS Trust is going full woke and erasing women from its maternity perinatal services department. The Mail has the story.
Critics have lambasted a hospital which told staff to use terms like “birthing parents” and “human milk” rather than just referring to “mothers” and “breast milk”.
Brighton and Sussex University Hospitals NHS Trust unveiled a blizzard of “gender inclusive” phrases in a drive to stamp out “mainstream transphobia”.
Other changes include replacing the use of the word “woman” with the phrase “woman or person”, and the term “father” with “parent”, “co-parent” or “second biological parent”, depending on the circumstances.
But it has led to a backlash from critics today who have hit out at the new terminology, branding it “utter nonsense”.
This comes as a row erupted in Westminster over a special maternity bill referring to “pregnant people” rather than women.
Brighton and Sussex University Hospitals NHS Trust is the first in the country to formally implement such a radical overhaul for its maternity services department – which will now be known as “perinatal services”.
But author and film writer Dougie Brimson and editor of the Jewish Chronicle, Stephen Pollard, are among critics to hit out at the new terminology.
Mr Brimson tweeted: ‘”Chestfeeding’ and ‘human milk’… Someone within this trust is no doubt being paid a fortune to come up with this kind of utter nonsense. Think about that the next time you’re whining about the #NHS being underfunded.”
Speaking about the move on Good Morning Britain, Piers Morgan said today: “Midwives have been told to refer to chest-feeding rather than breastfeeding and replace the term mother with birthing parent.”
“Chan” wrote on Twitter: “I’m transgender myself and Morgan is completely correct. This isn’t what the majority of transpeople ask for and it hinders our rights, not helps us. That’s my point. I want transgender people to have respect and dignity and equality. I don’t think you get there by telling midwives to stop using the term breastfeeding because it may upset a few people when 99% of the people in there are breastfeeding.
“It’s nonsense and this kind of PC nonsense with the language, it has the opposite effect to what you think it does. It annoys people, it doesn’t bring them any inclusivity. It becomes exclusive and alienates people.”
Read it in full here.
“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.
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: Warner Media in the US have teamed up with the CDC to produce a video with famous film characters such as Wonder Woman, Harry Potter and the hobbits wearing masks to encourage compliance. Is nothing sacred?
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. In February, Facebook deleted the GBD’s page because it “goes against our community standards”. The reason the zealots hate it, of course, is that it gives the lie to their claim that “the science” only supports their strategy. These three scientists are every bit as eminent – more eminent – than the pro-lockdown fanatics so expect no let up in the attacks. (Wikipedia has also done a smear job.)
You can find it here. Please sign it. Now over three quarters of a million signatures.
Update: The authors of the GBD have expanded the FAQs to deal with some of the arguments and smears that have been made against their proposal. Worth reading in full.
Update 2: Many of the signatories of the Great Barrington Declaration are involved with new UK anti-lockdown campaign Recovery. Find out more and join here.
Update 3: You can watch Sunetra Gupta set out the case for “Focused Protection” here and Jay Bhattacharya make it here.
Update 4: The three GBD authors plus Prof Carl Heneghan of CEBM have launched a new website collateralglobal.org, “a global repository for research into the collateral effects of the COVID-19 lockdown measures”. Follow Collateral Global on Twitter here. Sign up to the newsletter here.
Judicial Reviews Against the Government
There are now so many legal cases being brought against the Government and its ministers we thought we’d include them all in one place down here.
The Simon Dolan case has now reached the end of the road. The current lead case is the Robin Tilbrook case which challenges whether the Lockdown Regulations are constitutional. You can read about that and contribute here.
Then there’s John’s Campaign which is focused specifically on care homes. Find out more about that here.
There’s the GoodLawProject and Runnymede Trust’s Judicial Review of the Government’s award of lucrative PPE contracts to various private companies. You can find out more about that here and contribute to the crowdfunder here.
Scottish Church leaders from a range of Christian denominations have launched legal action, supported by the Christian Legal Centre against the Scottish Government’s attempt to close churches in Scotland for the first time since the the Stuart kings in the 17th century. The church leaders emphasised it is a disproportionate step, and one which has serious implications for freedom of religion.” Further information available here.
There’s the class action lawsuit being brought by Dr Reiner Fuellmich and his team in various countries against “the manufacturers and sellers of the defective product, PCR tests”. Dr Fuellmich explains the lawsuit in this video. Dr Fuellmich has also served cease and desist papers on Professor Christian Drosten, co-author of the Corman-Drosten paper which was the first and WHO-recommended PCR protocol for detection of SARS-CoV-2. That paper, which was pivotal to the roll out of mass PCR testing, was submitted to the journal Eurosurveillance on January 21st and accepted following peer review on January 22nd. The paper has been critically reviewed here by Pieter Borger and colleagues, who also submitted a retraction request, which was rejected in February.
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
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Discussion
Comments
This week across the site:
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Has anyone heard of a group called Covid19 Assembly? They keep sending me e-mails. At first I was unsure if they were pro or anti lockdown. But when I e-mailed to ask they replied saying they were anti. I asked for more information about them and the man replied “there is nothing to tell”. At one point he said “Don’t worry. We’ll make all the decisions”. I don’t trust them at all.
Yep. So hardly any Covid in China…and a pretty mild effect in India. That’s over a third of the world’s population covered there
Yesterday evening I was woken by the sound of fireworks coming from several directions that lasted for several minutes before drifting off back to sleep.
Couldn’t for the life of me think what they might be celebrating but now it occurs to me that it was Thursday, possibly 8pm.
Please tell me that this isn’t a new mutant version of Clap for Heroes to be visited upon us every Thursday evening.
On the other hand it might be a measure of their desperation given the low level of public support for the Thursday clap these days.
I’ve heard and seen fireworks recently but regard them positively as young people having a bit of fun despite the ‘rules’. Certainly not seen anything about the Thursday claps.
Universities are wailing – ‘Drop £1,750 quarantine charge for students’
Without overseas students the bloated business model of the fat cat British university system will not survive. These clowns haven’t yet worked out that the climate co2ing they preach makes each institution a carbon producing monster that will be first against the wall when Gretna pick up her hockey stick in earnst.
Bye bye universities you were too greedy, too watered down and too bloated.
Basement Joe moves mask-wearing goalpost from 100 days out to one year:
https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2021/02/11/biden-urges-americans-to-wear-masks-over-the-next-year-to-save-lives/
“It’s just a mask” has got to be the Covid Cult mantra that beats them all. Every single evil that has been perpetrated and will be perpetrated originates from this.
I told people back in June last year when it was mandated on UK public transport that they will be wearing a mask everywhere for the rest of their miserable lives. Nothing has dissuaded me from this position since.
Yep. The move from ‘we don’t recommend masks’ (made sense to me) in April to mask mandate in July filled me with disgust and such scepticism that……here I am.
Masks are so wrong and I’m happy to report a convert. My sister was discussing how much she hates and suffers wearing a mask along with struggling wfh – she’s a housing officer. I sent her everything I have about masks not working viz virus and being disgustingly unhealthy. She’s now asked me to order her a Mask Exempt lanyard (she didn’t realise she is qualified…..I told her ‘you won’t get this info from the BBC given they’re in the pay of the government’).
“Tobias Ellwood MP
@Tobias_Ellwood
· 3h
I support the introduction
of VACCINE PASSPORTS
Am internationally recognised system will expedite travel movement & help our economy.
Travel should still be possible without- but should require current testing & quarantine measures.
We must adapt to these extraordinary times”
___
A few short months ago when this prat made a statement to the House all but saying vaccine passports are to come the Incompetence Theorists among LSs rattled of nay saying as fast as you like. Elwood tgereafter tweeded a clarification of his weasel words suggesting he never said vaccine passports would be a thing – he merely implied it.
It is long overdue a review of your position if you are an incompetence theorist, those who are calling out whats coming are able to do so simpky by realising the direction of the pattern.
I, for one, would appreciate an apology from folk who have been egotistical enough to shoot down any comments I have made about coming restrictions. Travel will be a luxury for the rich, if you are upper middle class you are not rich.
Medical papers showing latest vaccine (6, 12 months?) will be required to… Read more »
He laid it all out in that infamous statement to the Commons. Vaccination programme for the entire population to last for a year. A two tier society for the vaccinated versus unvaccinated. The Army to be used. The arrogant manner in which he delivered these statements, as if they were foregone conclusions, made me take everything he said very seriously. He is a very dark figure indeed.
The era of civilian international travel is over. The sooner people get their heads around the fact that unless they rebel the place they are living now is where they are going to be for the rest of their lives, the better. And I am not referring merely to nation states here. The dream of the technocrats is to limit our movement to medieval levels i.e. the majority will never stray more than a few miles from where they live.
Notice the capping of his tweet. This is a considered message probably handed to his account by a n other. Nobody caps that way naturally.
He, or should I say it, is an empty vessel. Devoid of all humanity. Thoroughly predictable. Lacking originality, creativity or spontaneity of any kind. We should be running rings around artificial constructs like this.
I am still a non-dogmatist on competence v conspiracy and everything inbetween or outside.
But I have said before I have found it extremely concerning that if you wind back 12 months, it is the so called “conspiracy theorists” who have been right in their predictions and everyone else who has got it wrong. It wasn’t a 3 week lockdown. They did introduce mandatory masking on the basis of no scientific evidence whatsoever. The tiers were followed by full lockdown. Mutant virus strains are being used to maintain fear levels and provide justification for continued lockdown. Coervice vaccination is being allowed and there will be vaccine passports – despite all the vociferous denials from Ministers.
Tobias Ellwood is very, very thick so I doubt he’s any sort of mastermind in whatever is being plotted!
https://www.unz.com/mwhitney/covid-vaccine-the-nightmare-scenario/
Does anybody remember what LDS poster and vigorous campaigner Rosie’s web site is, it was beauty and the beast or something like that, an alternative health site she ran.
She hasn’t posted on here for ages and I am bit concerned.
Good point.
https://www.beautyandthebeastlytruth.com/
Perfect thats the one, I am going to try to email her, see if she’s ok.
Done.
Good man.
What about Mabel cow? She hasn’t been heard of for a long time either
Yes I was also wondering about her absence …. also Mabel Cow who hasn’t posted for ages
University of California-Berkeley imposes Alcatraz-style lockdowns on student body:
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/berkeleys-draconian-covid-19-restrictions-look-more-prison-college
What kind of sick society does this to its youth?
Seems I got to have a change of scene
Every night I have the strangest dreams
Imprisoned by the way it could have been
Left here on my own or so it seems
I got to leave before I start to scream
‘Cause someone locked the door and took the key
You feelin’ alright?
I’m not feelin’ too good myself
Yes, you feelin’ alright?
I’m not feelin’ that good myself
Boy you sure took me for one big ride
And even now I sit and I wonder why
That when I think of you I start myself to cry out
I just can’t waste my time, I must keep dry
Gotta stop believin’ in all your lies
‘Cause there’s too much to do before I die, hey
You feelin’ alright?
I’m not feelin’ too good myself
You feelin’ alright?
I’m not feelin’ that good myself
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zIIzp9cqyUk
I notice The Gates of Hell is now promoting a book on Climate Change on Talk Radio. How is he able to do that?? It’s sickening. I hate that man.
Yes but he’s chosen the coldest February in 25 years to launch his book on global warming. 🙂
I attended a meeting today, and we are getting close to the point where we are ready to fight. That is how serious the situation is.
Go on…
You’re right it is extremely serious. With the intention to hold the massive number of elections, at least in England, anything should be held off with a view to contesting those elections or at least seeing how things pan out with them.
They’re talking about a ‘snap’ lockdown because of the point nothing cases in Victoria. Please give me strength…
Good. Clearly the Aussies are going to have to suffer a lot more before they start to understand just how stupid they have been letting their government force them into hiding from the coronavirus. (Not that we have much room to talk on that, of course.)
I’ve been against all this from the start and still have to suffer 🙁
We’re in summer now, clearly those cases are going to fill up the hospitals.
Nothing personal, obviously. It’s just business : -)
(I’m in the same boat over here – opposed this stupidity from the beginning, but still have to put up with all the nonsense – at least all of it that I can’t just deal with by ignoring the dictats.)
I’m the same – against this from the beginning, having seen through the nonsense. I was worried about the panic and hysteria leading to governments saying ‘something MUST be done’ and not having an exit strategy. Here we are, nearly a year later.
A friend in Melbourne was a big cheerleader for this and still seems to support ‘Chairman Dan’. I told him recently to do as much travel as possible while he still can (by car, not planes). I still think Victoria could get locked down in the near future, and then it might last until September. It’s bonkers and I don’t understand why people accept it, especially now.
“It’s bonkers and I don’t understand why people accept it, especially now.“
It hurts most when you try to understand it, I find.
Unlike many, I’ve always had a sneaking respect for Katie Hopkins. But somehow in 12 months Johnson, the”Conservative” and Labour Party hierarchies, SAGE and the BBC have conspired to make her look like a tower of liberal principle.
Katie Hopkins: DO you REMEMBER giving politicians ALL this power?
Yes, she may be talking sense here!
I’m still saying ‘I don’t understand it’ to my friends and relatives (most of whom agree with me, fortunately) and have been since March. I’m cursed having taken the red pill – I can’t help that I’m a Doubting Thomas. Yes, it hurts those of us who are awake, but I wouldn’t have it any other way. I’ll never agree that 2+2=5.
Eppur si muove!
It’s called the bend (over) and snap
More often than not on here we are preaching to the converted, and sometimes it feels like we are baying at the moon. Despite this – and I can only speak for myself here – this is not wasted time or energy. The sheer amount of information I glean, and the level of bile I accumulate, from the excellent contributions on here directly informs and inspires my interactions with every other person I have dealings with. It has, does and will continue to make a difference.
As I noted here yesterday (?) in response to someone asking what this site is for, it’s the arsenal of liberty, for the struggle against lockdown.
Very true, and minus the toxicity of so many other places online. It won’t last forever of course, but while it still does it gives me a sliver of hope.
Indeed.
Ditto.
We’ll be able to tell our grandkids in the future that we either contributed to saving the world from itself or didn’t manage to do enough to prevent years of misery for millions.
And we’ll be able to point them to this site and say yep that was me.
If nothing else we are a thorn in the side of the BBC-Guardian-perpetual lockdownn gang. They hate that we are here with our stats, and our thoughts and our beliefs and our freedom.
A very apt song title with a very apt album cover:
Iron Maiden – No More Lies – YouTube
Just had to sit through dinner with a normie co-worker who thinks things will return to mostly normal after we enter our glorious future of being human pincushions pumped full of toxic heavy metals and genetic gobbledegook.
Yes and old folk’s lungs will be made young, the aged will leap from their beds and perform handstands and no more novel pathogens shall ever arise.
If your colleague ate meat during the dinner, and drives a car, and visits other states, and has a family, then you missed a trick explaining to them that all of these things will be deleted in short order, because of the precious vaccine, and the mask that preceded and now accompanies it.
It’s worse than that.
He’s all excited because we are supposed to expatriate on a long-term contract for an overseas project.
Nevermind the target country just got marked, “Do not travel,” by the US State Dept.
I understand he needs the money.
I am fortunate that I don’t, at least until they shut down retail traders.
Trying to figure out how to get to a free state.
Not the UK by any chance? Given that we are the variant plague pit of the world and all.
No, just Algeria.
It would be a one way trip as there is no commercial air or sea travel out of the country at present.
No one else on the project seems to care about this.
I believe deaths will continue to decline not because of the vaccine but because herd immunity is kicking in acting like a brake to infections. If we still have all these laws then Britain really as been taken over by fascists and the coup took place without a shot being fired.
Sadly not because the deaths due to Lockdown will start kicking into the stastics but the elite can never accept they are other than due to Covid-19.
That must have been quite a trial!
anyone noticing Duck Duck Go is being brought into line now?
searches seem to have more Covid propaganda as the first few returns
Try Yandex.
So, I really think the vaccine IS going to be mandatory for adults AND children.
Prepare for the concentration camps.
I won’t be having it. End of. Full stop.
What you mean like those leaked Canadian papers. Tick
Energy goes where attention flows. If enough of us believe that this is the inevitable outcome, then so it will be. We may be far more powerful then we think.
Spot on! We need to focus on what we want, not what’s wrong – we already know all about that!
I don’t say that
I think that there are only 77 people who still want the vaccine and that the 77 concentration camps will be for the 77 thousand or so people who were complicit in this psy op… that’s what I think.
I’ve read your post 77 times and can concur.
Had some bloke spouting the ‘secret’ Swedish FB group message blackening the country in a group I’m in. Told him there were 77 reasons why I didn’t buy his shit.
Why?
Because there’s a 77 pound bonus for every reply that doesn’t suss out it’s the work of a paid troll.
Nah, the psyop is nearly over . You know it, just admit it.
Whether you know it or not, you sound like a paid troll.
Is the increase in deaths linked to the vaccine?
Look at the Medical Freedom Alliance letter on the front page.
Who knows? But (a) the vaccine manufacturers state the vaccine can produce Covid-like symptoms (b) Dr John Lees suggest the Pfizer vaccine could trigger positive results in Covid tests (c) the vaccine was not tried out on the very elderly and frail in trials and (d) taking (a), (b) and (c) together you could have a situtation where the energy demands of the immune response created by the vaccine are enough to kill the very elderly and frail who nevertheless test positive for Covid because the vaccine gets the body to produce virus “spikes” that can trigger positive results in Covid tests.
No, of course not. It’s just another one of those million to one coincidences.
The graphs coincide so it requires investigating. If we know it, they know it. What are they doing about it? Sitting on it? Put it on the the crimes list.
John Carpenter’s They Live 1988
Full film free https://youtu.be/oQ6xPBTDHxc
Every sceptic knows the plot. The fight scene was deliberately made to be the longest in film history in an effort to show how hard it is to get people to put the glasses on (wake up).
You’ve already seen it but pass it on to those who are not yet getting it, the film is an early expression of hidden manipulation of our lives. A false reality woven around us.
Bonus of youtube is you can skip forward the 18 minute fist fight!
Dug out my old DVD of this recently and was transfixed by the whole thing as never before. In the same vein as Total Recall, you have to see past the Hollywood cheesy moments to appreciate the message. Truth drops galore, wonderful stuff.
“I have come here to chew bubble gum, and kick ass. And I’m all out of bubble gum.” 😉
Roddy gets his eyes opened: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g4XiKChyK7A
This goes nicely with the Sweden smeared piece above:
The Sweden “Problem” SOLVED!
Or, how does a biased world rid itself of the best example of a non-lockdown control for its horrible lockdown experiment?
Simple! CHANGE THE DATA.
Who controls the past, controls the future. Who controls the present, controls the past.
Great find. Thanks.
I just came across this fascinating talk by Jordan Peterson about the ‘insane’ link (his words) between infectious disease and authoritarianism. It explains a lot, and is something of a warning.
https://youtu.be/yO6VfFqvRkM
Hmmm…he had his moment. He let us down. A lot of people have let us down in recent years. We’re looking for lionhearts not lion dieters.
Oi, he’s doing his best. He is human. He has vulnerabilities.
So do we all but most of us don’t take on a leadership role as he did in the sphere of culture and mental health, promoting good living and individual resilience – only to then suffer a total collapse due to addiction to valium-type medication, after which we find out he was on a whacky all-meat diet recommended by his daughter who now seems to control his every movement…hmmm. sorry I can’t be so forgiving. A lot of people invested a lot of valid emotion in him. He has let them down, and that’s the honest truth. That doesn’t make him or his previous message bad but it does create confusion and undermine the message. We are in a culture war and this is a bit like a general deserting his troops.
if you let astronomers run the country we’d probably have a moonbase
if you let the Navy run the country we’d have a massive Navy
if you let Extinction Rebellion run the…….etc
The government is supposed to balance conflicting demands
At the moment we are being run by Public Health
Time for some populism, damn it!
That’s what we’ve got : manipulation by lies and trickery using the techniques of media manipulation.
No, we’ve got the opposite of populism – rule by elites, with popular support manufactured by massive fear propaganda and active suppression of dissent.
If anyone wants to understand populism and anti-populism today, and the current conflicts between elites and populists, Thomas Frank (a Democrat, but not an overly hidebound one) is very good for a quick intro:
Thomas Frank on Anti-Populism’s Surprising History
As I’ve noted here before, he points to an excellent parallel between the current elites’ dogmatic incompetence on the coronapanic and the way the “best and the brightest” of the Vietnam era made such a complete mess of that war by insisting they knew better and they were going to do it in shiny new clever ways.
Populists choose their wars carefully. They are not careless about shedding blood. They are not foreign adventurers. They are not empire builders. The UK built up a huge world empire in the 19th century that greatly benefited the elites but produced one of the sickliest, most stunted and most malnourished generations ever by the end of that century.
Populism can cover both left and right. The Atlee government pursued a populist welfare agenda but so too did Thatcher in extending home ownership on an unprecedented scale.
And I would add now – a new development – massive electoral fraud on an unprecedented scale.
I’m with you on this Mark. Populism is the pursuit of policies that benefit the mass of the people.
Why does this country always end up with a government that wants to abdicate it’s responsibly for governing to someone else. For years they were happy to sit back and let the EU run the show, when we tried to give them some power back from the EU they did everything they could to try to stop us and now we are out of the eu they are sitting back and letting scientists run the country.
Problem is its more of a Public Elf
Was it just co-incidence that a select few members of this cabal ‘caught’ the virus early last year? Did they really have the virus and was there a purpose behind that?
^^^^^^ This!
Regular discussion between myself and the good Lady C. She has always thought that it was a bit “too coincidental” that almost all of the ‘main players’ had supposed caught it. “Convenient” was her other word.
She thinks it was to make the public “really believe”; she always noted how big a deal they made of it at the press conferences – “Oh, I’ve had it and it’s really unpleasant, etc.”
Hrrrrm I understand your thinking but politicians do not normally want to admit to been ill as they think it makes them look weak
I understand that, but I also know that politicians will do and say anything if it will further their aims.
Mrs DThom thinks that the dictator was deliberately infected with the virus and that ever since he has been under threat by an unknown power!
It certainly appears like he is acting under duress. Either that or long Covid has turned his brain to mush
He does look terrible; at least, I thought he did last night.
Not surprised though given all the damage he has done. If I make a relatively minor error at work I feel stressed and dreadful for days so imagine what trashing an entire nation would do to you!
He always looks terrible. He is terrible.
Because he’s been caught out as the spineless, ambitious fat bluffer he always knew he was but hid behind an affable fwahfwah mask.
At the time some people thought it was all staged managed. The nurse and her parents came across as paid stooges.
My conjecture was that all “leading figures” are given a sort of priviledged health going-over which includes various vaccinations, notably the flu jab (just as airline pilots and others are) and these are sometimes even in public.
Given that I speculate that there might be a link between the flu jab and severe covid (or perhaps even getting any covid at all), it doesn’t surprise me that they get it.
Yes I wondered about that.
https://brandnewtube.com/watch/proof-the-nhs-is-lying-this-is-genocide-and-the-jabs-must-stop-now_9GiGrKw12GUMrQw.html
10 years for them! No, more than that because this is serious.
Both my parents have had the vaccine despite my best efforts. Question is nowm do I desway them for taking the second dose is is it too late??
Why don’t you show them Vernon Coleman’s video?
I was talking to an elderly uncle today who proudly informed me that both he and his wife were vaccinated a couple of weeks ago “and we’re still here”, said pointedly and with a degree of sarcasm because they know my views. I had previously sent them links to simple and short (you definitely have to be selective with regard to what some people are capable of understanding) videos by experts, including ‘the old man in a chair’ explaining the lack of safety data. It wasn’t even worth my while going into the details again about potential mid and long-term effects and what could happen after the second jab which they are of course yet to have.
Anyway, I was told that my uncle’s wife who has chronic kidney problems, has had two heart attacks in the past four years and is on lots of medication had suffered some debilitating side effects a few days after ‘the jab’, mainly tiredness and aching which led to her staying in bed for two days. I asked my uncle if the side effects had been reported via the Yellow Card system. “What’s that?” was his response. And they hadn’t contacted their GP to… Read more »
Absolutely, its the nature of a passive reporting system.
It is speculated it could be as low as 1% of events.
Good there still alive. I suppose that’s the benchmark of a successful vaccination these days.
I have mentioned before, I think there is a culture of non-reporting in the NHS and the wider health community. Even if they had reported symptoms to a GP I am not convinced that would have been recorded on an Adverse Reaction form.
Now that the pretence has ended and they are openly talking about a permanently medicalised country, of rolling vaccines, perpetual masks and distancing from loved ones, the optimist in me believes that it will all come crashing down. Sage will be marginalised, politicians will jump on the “we just followed the science” line, and it will end.
The pessimist in me however sees a largely indifferent, self serving and ultimately selfish nation of sheeples that will give up their entire way of life with a resigned shrug.
The realist? It will end, and be taught about in history lessons one day, but we are talking years not weeks or months.
I’m not sure I can live with options 2 and 3.
Years? So what exactly is the point of the vaccines then?
To cull the human population!! No other reason.
You are right I am afraid. As long as people have Booze, Netflix and Shite TV they are content in their little bubbles. Take those things away though and the government will have a problem…….
True.
Often thought that lockdown simply could never have happened even ten years ago.
Closing schools, working from home, zoom meetings, let alone social media and Netflix.
Remove the internet, and it would end tomorrow.
Correct this could never have happened 10 years ago.
I shift between both positions but you’ve outlined it well.
There was a case today in Westminster Court where a man was convicted for being with one other person at Speaker’s Corner during the first lockdown. Dolores Cahill was there to support and he defended himself under Common Law lines. So freedom to stand there and speak your case is deemed a criminal act. When a judge is willing to allow the government to undermine that, its time to prepare mentally for the worst I feel.
People need to appreciate the freedom they still have because it is disappearing fast into a world we simply do not see.
What was the outcome of the case?
Oh sorry, he was convicted. Not fined, that was dropped, but they upheld the charge.
He was considering appeal.
slip sliding away
this pesky irksome virus
Wouldn’t you just know it
we’ve got mass hysteria and a vaccine
but the virus is slip sliding away
According to the NHS/Gov dashboard total number of ‘covid’ patients in UK NHS hospitals has dropped by by 13,615 from a high of 39,236 down to 25621 today, that is a drop of 35%. So it looks like the NHS has been ‘protected’ and is doing fine.
Deaths are nothing startling for a respiratory virus situation in winter time and the rate seems to be falling.
Even the dodgy ‘infections/cases/testing’ date is falling.
So why are we not shouting hooray, announcing VV day (victory over virus), scrapping all the silly rules and getting back to normal life?
“”Success is dependent on the lockdown”.
So, just to be clear, what is the latest from Belarus, and is there anything in that country (which may or may not be less democratic than the UK) to suggest that they have got it catastrophically wrong compared to Professor Pantsdown’s UK?
And is the government sending a fact finding mission to Belarus – or Sweden, Utah etc.? If not, why not? Perhaps they could get 10 years for being less than honest with us?
Here’s a prediction covid infections continues to decline to below a thousand a day, everyone begins mass demonstrations and still the infections fall below a hundred a day.
The people begin invading the parks and beaches and infections fall below ten a day and the government hasn’t a clue why. Fantasy no it’s what happened last year before we all got stupid wearing face masks and avoiding each others company and allowing the fascists to take over Britain.
Infections of <1000/day will not happen if the number of tests/day excedes 100,000 such that the false positive rate of say 1% is exceded. Hunt is a cunt.
The worst spin is put on every stat. Anything positive is downplayed. How can they find it in their dark hearts to do it?
When it comes to covid deaths everyone talks about dying from covid or with covid without explaining what it all means. To avoid all the confusion it’s best to look at excess all cause mortality. In that case all cause mortality as increased from 1% to 1.1% while deaths from covid represent 0.2% of all deaths so in other words half of all covid deaths are deaths that would have happened anyway. Normally
these people would have died of things like heart disease,strokes an dementia excertra so covid was simply incidental to why they died and not why they died. So the UK doesn’t have one of the highest deaths from covid but the government is using covid to shutdown society. Why ?
1 They are bastards!
2 Because they can.
3 See 1.
Seriously, though; you are correct. Ferguson actually explained this to the Science and Health Committees way back in 2020. He said that between one third and one half of all deaths would be from people who were going to die in the next few months anyway.
BY now you should’ve realised that Covid is a Trojan horse for something else. Why ahve all nations bought into this? We’ve all speculated why?
In September 2019 the whole banking system was so close to collapse again. The FED pumped 6 Trillion dollars between then and March 2020. Maybe at some point early last year they realised everything was going tits up (not sorry you woke fuckers) and Covid was the way out as a great financial reset. Others have said this has been in the planning for decades. Others say communist have infiltrated every aspect of society and it’s a communist takeover. Some say it’s to save the planet by culling billions of us with the use of the vaccine. It could be a combination of all of the above. We may never know!!!
For what it’s worth my personal view is it is a combination of all of the above and Covid was just the spark that brought it all to a head. If it’s had’nt been Covid then sooner or later something else would have come along to trigger all this.
Derek – I am so energised by the detail you’ve gone into that it’s really difficult for me to point out that ‘they’ don’t actually give a sh’poo’it. They know it’s a crock of shit so any rational response we come up with will be buried in emotional non-irrational shit.
Another one chips in with some disaster news. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/02/11/covid-pandemic-risks-repeat-1930s-chaos-says-forces-chief/ FFS
Another halfwit blaming the chaos on the virus and not the actions of governments.
As for the economic crisis: for the West maybe; not for China – they are raking it in.
What about Russia? If they can ride this one out, I fear they may take advantage of weakness in the Western alliance to stir up trouble in Eastern Europe. (And then there’s China and Tai Wan – dangerous times).
The US will keep Russia tied up in Ukraine and Syria.
Russian will need to watch its borders with China. Lots of empty land with natural resources underneath out there.
Thought for the day – if the government are so bothered about saving lives at any cost why are they still persevering with smart motorways?
They’re not bothered about saving lives. Only about saving votes.
Not even really votes.
Only about saving face.
And you don’t even have to be alive to vote these days- so long as you vote Democrat.
Yes, the optimist in me says they will offer us something in time for the May elections – the pessimist says they will “postpone” them (or make it postal only perhaps).
And that experiment in abandoning the 4mph speed limit for motor vehicles.
errm that’s a tough one, could it be because they made a decision in the past and cannot reverse it? As its done and therefore proven
Because death is absolutely fine just not death from covid.
Last year less than 400 people under 60 without health problems died of covid, in the same period over a thousand died in car accidents. So why are people terrified of covid when your twice as likely to die in car accident.I know people really don’t understand risk but come on this fear is totally out of proportion to what the risk really is. But then the government response as been out of proportion from exaggerated deaths to exaggerated laws.
To track your every movement in the new world order.