First Anniversary of a Day That Will Live in Infamy
There follows a post by Will Jones.
Today on Lockdown Sceptics we mark a year to the day since the world changed forever.
On February 21st, 2020 the Government of Italy did something no Western Government had ever done before. Something that the World Health Organisation had expressly recommended against only four months earlier.
It decided to set aside all established pandemic protocol, as well as all considerations of basic freedoms and human rights, and imitate Communist China (which had already been praised by the WHO for its “extraordinary” response) and quarantine a whole local population in an effort to control a coronavirus outbreak.
What started with 10 towns and 50,000 people in Lombardy quickly established itself as the go-to and unassailable response to the coronavirus threat. Seventeen days later the whole of Italy was locked down, 33 days later most of the world. A year later, we still are.
From that moment on it became acceptable for Western governments to quarantine entire populations to try to control the spread of contagious disease, even one scarcely more deadly than a bad flu. They haven’t looked back. No amount of data from the few Western countries or states which refused to impose such restrictions will convince them they were or are wrong to do so. Model after model appears from respectable scientific institutions to shore up the faith. The politicians seem interested only in listening to the experts who reassure them they were right to take such extreme and costly action.
There will be many anniversaries to mark in the coming weeks, as we complete a full year since the nightmare began – the declaration of the pandemic on March 11th, the “three week” UK lockdown on March 23rd, and so on. But at Lockdown Sceptics we felt that this was the one to flag, the pivot on which the world turned. We can no longer go back to the world as it was on February 20th 2020, because we cannot undo the fact that we were locked down by our politicians for an indefinite period of time to try to control disease, and it was accepted by the public and reinforced by the medics, the scientists and the courts.
In December, Professor Neil Ferguson admitted to the Times the critical role of Italy in bringing lockdowns to the West:
[China] is a communist one party state, we said. We couldn’t get away with it in Europe, we thought… and then Italy did it. And we realised we could.
Our best hope is that in time the lesson will be learned that we must never do this again, and next time must be different – we must not panic but must stick to the pre-prepared plan.
But the tragedy is that even if we reach such a point, we can never change the fact that our Governments now know that “lockdown” is an option, that they can indeed “get away with it”. Western civilisation is undoubtedly diminished as a result.
Neil Ferguson’s Tetchy Response to Yesterday’s Article in Lockdown Sceptics
One of our readers sent a copy of Derek Winton’s article in yesterday’s Lockdown Sceptics criticising Imperial College’s modelling to Professor Neil Ferguson on the off chance he might actually read it and reply. Rather surprisingly, he did. We’re publishing his response in full below.
Dear XXXX,
I presume you sent me this because you feel upset, angry, that no-one is listening, want to hurt me or change my mind. Or all of the above.
I and my colleagues and friends (John Edmunds, Jeremy Farrar, Marc Lipsitch, Christian Drosten, Patrick Vallance, Chris Whitty,…) get so many of these sort of emails that we barely notice anymore. Most get dumped into junk mail folders automatically nowadays.
But for a change, I thought I would reply to you. Not that I really expect it to change the alternative reality you seem to have got sucked into, but occasionally I feel I should try.
To start with may [sic] want to read this: https://www.climatechangecommunication.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/ConspiracyTheoryHandbook.pdf
And ask yourself if a loved one started to exhibit those behaviours, would you be worried?
As to the article you refer to, it recycles the same old, same old misinformation. You may be surprised to learn that the Telegraph and Spectator have published over a dozen corrections in response to complaints from Imperial College about inaccurate articles. For instance, no-one ran the Imperial model for Sweden (other than us).
More substantively, the government never relied on just one model. The models written by LSHTM, Warwick University and Institut Pasteur Paris all agreed with “the” Imperial model. All used different code bases.
And in fact, there was never “one” Imperial model, but several. We now have 4 different COVID models, again which all agree.
Government responses were never dependent on one model. They were driven by the reality that any disease which generates epidemics which double every 3-4 days and for which over 2% of those infected require hospitalisation will overwhelm any health system that exists.
In fact, a case could be made that the U.K. government took too little notice of our (not just Imperial- all the SAGE groups) modelling. In that they basically only acted when they saw hospitalisations and deaths growing exponentially.
Best,
Neil Ferguson
Boris Unfolds Road Map – Can’t Tell if it’s Upside Down
According to several of the Sunday papers, the centrepiece of Boris’s Downing Street press conference tomorrow – in which he’s going to reveal his much-ballyhooed roadmap out of lockdown – is a pledge to give everyone in the country an opportunity to be vaccinated by July 31st. The Mail on Sunday has more.
Every adult in the country will be offered at least one dose of a Covid vaccine by the end of July, Boris Johnson is expected to announce tomorrow.
The ambitious new inoculation target will form a vital part of the Prime Minister’s long-awaited roadmap towards easing lockdown restrictions.
The Government previously said it hoped to reach all those aged 18 and over by the autumn, but Mr Johnson aims to greatly accelerate the successful campaign.
He is also expected to say that everyone over 50 will be offered at least a first dose by April 15, rather than by May, as previously suggested.
Unfortunately, the world-beating success of the Government’s ahead-of-schedule mass vaccination programme does not mean we’ll be accelerating quickly out of lockdown. On the contrary, Boris’s “roadmap” appears to have been created before 1958 because it doesn’t contain any motorways. It’s B roads only. The Mail on Sunday summarises its key components.
All pupils will return to school on March 8th, and care home residents in England will each be allowed one regular visitor.
By Easter, at the start of April, two households will be allowed to meet up outside. That will be followed shortly afterwards by the reopening of non-essential shops and pubs and restaurants for outdoor service only.
The hospitality industry is expected to reopen fully in May.
And there we were thinking that Boris was engaged in a game of expectation management: stress how cautious he was going to be in the run-up to tomorrow, then surprise us with some better-than-expected news. If that’s still the plan, he’s kept the good news well hidden.
A Hospital Visit
We received the following e-mail yesterday from a reader of Lockdown Sceptics. It says a lot about what has gone wrong over the past year.
How delightful that the Prince of Wales was able to visit his father in hospital today, despite the Covid precautions. I understand from the BBC News that visiting someone in hospital is considered a ‘reasonable excuse’ to leave home.
However, one of our neighbours hasn’t been so lucky. At 2am on Saturday morning her husband (aged two years less than the Prince of Wales, as it happens) was rushed to hospital with heart failure. He’s holding on – just – but needless to say his wife isn’t allowed to visit him. Let’s hope he survives then, because otherwise she and their son may never see him again. Heart failure doesn’t usually delay itself long enough to make sure family members can make it to hospital in the end. Still, at least he’s being kept safe. He’s been vaccinated, so he might not catch Covid.
Mind you, the elderly chap two doors up has solved the problem himself. He has terminal liver cancer and has been in the same hospital for weeks (where of course he tested positive for Covid after catching it following admission, but luckily never had any symptoms). But, completely sick of not being able to see his wife, he’s come home to die, preferring that option to expiring on his own in a hospital ward.
This is Boris’s Lockdown Britain, a year into this nightmare. It is almost beyond belief that it could have come to this. These are the choices real people are having to make on a daily basis as this misery goes on, and on, and on.
And it’s all because of the nebulous pursuit of ‘protecting’ everyone (except Prince Phillip and the Prince of Wales who can do as they please apparently) from one risk at the expense of absolutely everything else, driven by Lockdown Lunatics, and particularly those peculiarly idiotic scientists who have lost any sense of proportion and driven the country to the wall. I wouldn’t wish my neighbours’ experiences on any one of them, but perhaps if one of them is hit by something like this they might momentarily wake up and realise they’re supposed to be human beings. Or at least, they were. Once.
The State of the Northern Ireland Health Service
There follows a post from a Lockdown Sceptics reader based in Northern Ireland who felt compelled to write about the pitiful state of the local health service, which has been a big factor in the region’s chaotic response to Covid. As this correspondent put it: “Every time I hear Hugh Pym’s sonorous pronouncements on your waiting lists all I can think of is: Northern Ireland –‘ Hold my beer!’”
Northern Ireland is a very small place. We all know each other, and criticism of the system is never welcome. I am therefore remaining anonymous.
A Government Minister invoking the Bible in Northern Ireland is probably of little surprise and satisfies many stereotypes. As we experienced our first official Covid death in March 2020, Robin Swann (Ulster Unionist Party), our Minster for Health, warned us of a Covid experience of “Biblical proportions”.
We are a small country of approx 1.8 million souls. He predicted 15,000 could die. As of February 19th, 2021, we have reached 2026. (Source: Department of Health, NI.)
We were most recently incarcerated on December 26th, 2020 and are now locked down until April 1st, or sometime… forever. We have all lost track.
Swann has the same misfortune that all health ministers faced – a new unknown health challenge – so perhaps some hyperbole should be excused. Also, he had barely opened his brief when it all started. Swann had been left with the short straw of Health when the departments were carved up between our political parties using the byzantine ‘De Hondt’ method. After three years without a Government, he found himself made Health Minster in January 2020. (For anyone looking for a break from the Covid stats, here’s the wikipedia page on how ‘De Hondt’ works.)
There is no doubt, however, that long before Covid appeared his department was quite familiar with a health service that is overwhelmed and in chaos. Here is a short sample list of some of Northern Ireland’s current health issues:
- In data published in February 2020 – pre-Covid – 130,000 had been waiting a year for their NHS treatment to start and 305,000 had been waiting for their first outpatient appointment with a consultant out of a population of just over 1.8 million. Perhaps the most alarming element of that statistic is that it only went up 4,000 in the first three months of Covid. For an eye-opener on the comparative state of our waiting lists and England’s, see this blog post from the Nuffield Trust.
- A £200 million Critical Care Unit built at the Royal Victoria Hospital, Belfast in 2012 remains empty – because of plumbing problems. It has never taken in any patients.
- Muckamore Abbey Hospital – for those with mental health problems and severe learning difficulties – has seen 13 of its staff arrested and 61 others placed on ‘precautionary suspension’. As of November 2020 these 61 have received £1.5 million in pay. After years of campaigning by families of residents, the Minister has announced a public enquiry into the place.
- Dr Michael Watt, Senior Consultant Neurologist based at the Royal Victoria Hospital, is the subject of an investigation after 3,000 of his cases were reassessed. A report into the recall, published in December 2019 by the Department of Health, found that more than 20% of these patients were misdiagnosed, while a further 329 patients were given “uncertain” diagnoses. As of August 2020, 231 legal cases have been brought against his employer, the Belfast Health Trust (according to the Belfast Telegraph).
- When Robin Swann took up the reins of his Health Department he was also faced with a nurses’ strike.
- The entire board of the RQIA – our equivalent of the Quality Care Commission – resigned in July 2020 due to a falling out with the Minster and his officials.
This is the Health Department that has been handling our response to Covid. Perhaps we should be relieved that our deaths have been this low and our hospitals were not truly ‘overwhelmed’. Its record of looking after the health of the people of Northern Ireland is not exactly glorious.
Health Minister Swann may be new to all this but his officials are not. The Health Department and Health Trusts are run by the same people who have been in post for years. The Chief Medical Officer, Dr Michael McBride, was appointed in 2006. Between 2014 and 2017 he found time to be CMO and concurrently CEO of the Belfast Health and Social Services Trust.
On February 9th, 2021, Dr McBride helpfully announced what we all suspected was the future policy towards lockdown. The summary makes for unpleasant reading: “While restrictions will not be fully lifted until 2022, he hopes this summer will bring some respite from the current lockdown. However, he said it is likely that a range of restrictions will return in the autumn and remain in place into 2022.”
Permanent Secretary Richard Pengelly has been at the helm of this Health Department since 2014.
Minister Swann confirmed the priority of COVID-19 patients over everything else in Northern Ireland’s NHS in November when the News Letter reported on November 13th 2020 that “cancer patients may die as a result of not turning away patients with COVID-19 from hospitals”. Here is his BBC interview on the point.
Despite what are perhaps truly biblical levels of health problems, our Minster still finds time to castigate regularly “armchair experts” who have the temerity to question his approach to the pandemic. He also contributed an op-ed to Rolling Stone Magazine criticising Northern Ireland’s own Van Morrison for his Covid protest songs.
You may be aware Van Morrison isn’t very complimentary about the orthodox approach to managing Covid. Minister Swann is also a musician – a Pipe Sargent in his local pipe band.
A Cost-Benefit Analysis of Vaccinations – A Reader’s Perspective
In Friday’s Lockdown Sceptics Newsletter we published an article by Dr Mark Shaw, a retired dentist, about some of risks associated with the Covid vaccines. It prompted one reader to write with with an additional point: What about a cost-benefit analysis?
There has been a lot of debate about vaccines relating to Informed Consent and whether that can be properly given due to the speed at which the vaccines have been developed and whether all the possible long term side effects are known, as well as the incessant propaganda in the media telling us that they are safe and it’s our civic duty to have the vaccine when offered. However, there’s another issue that doesn’t seem to have been raised – a cost-benefit analysis of mass vaccination.
I wouldn’t want to undertake a cost benefit-analysis myself, but it’s worth considering the similar situation regarding the flu vaccine. This is offered every year to certain groups of people, namely the elderly plus other high risk groups to whom it gives a certain amount of protection. Being middle aged and in good health I have never been offered the flu vaccine despite having a miniscule risk of becoming seriously ill plus a higher chance of developing a minor illness and passing the infection on to people in a higher risk group. I assume the reason why people such as myself aren’t offered the flu jab is that a cost-benefit analysis shows it isn’t a good use of finite resources to vaccinate everyone. This is a position that I fully support. The NHS’s resources should be targeted where they can do the most good, so I’m happy not to have a flu jab in order that people with more pressing health problems can be treated.
It seems to me that no such cost-benefit analysis has been considered in relation to Covid vaccinations. Given the incredibly low fatality rate among younger people without comorbidities, I can’t believe that vaccinating the whole population offers anything approaching value for money. Obviously, unvaccinated people might catch Covid, but if the at risk groups are protected, so what if the worst that happens is people stay in bed for a couple of days.? Admittedly, given the amount of panic that has been generated by the Government and media leading to a lot of people thinking Covid is an existential threat to us all, it would be politically almost impossible to only offer the vaccine to some people. However, this doesn’t change my basic point that vaccinating the whole population is not good value for money.
A related issue is the funding of vaccine programs in the developing would. Numerous groups such as the WHO seem to think that the whole world should be vaccinated and that richer countries should pick up a large part of the bill for this. I’m all in favour of richer nations giving aid to poorer countries (despite being on a relatively low income, I have direct debits with a couple of aid charities) providing the money is well spent. Given the incredibly low death rates in many developing countries, with the exception of South Africa, I don’t believe that mass vaccination is a wise use of money. Lots of developing countries have serious public health problems, e.g. malaria or limited access to clean water. Surely it would be much better to target aid towards these problems rather than protecting people from something that is highly unlikely to do them any harm.
Not Cock Up or Conspiracy, but Fraud
Today we are publishing a new essay by Jonny Peppiatt, a regular contributor to Lockdown Sceptics. So far, many of the efforts to explain the response to COVID-19 have focussed on placing it on the spectrum between cock-up on the one hand and conspiracy on the other. Jonny reckons, however, that the ‘fraud triangle’ is a more useful analysis tool. As he explains:
The question most often posed of me when I embark on yet another monologue about the endless lunacies plaguing our lives right now is “why?”; if what you’re saying is true, if the damage is so great, if the virus isn’t such a threat, if the efficacy of the measures is so low, then why would the Government be doing this to us?
We’ve heard a lot of discussion around ‘cock-up’, ‘conspiracy’, and even ‘cockupspiracy’; be that, in the case of ‘cock-up’, the recurring inadequacy of advisers and politicians, in the case of ‘conspiracy’, more often than not, the Great Reset, and in the case of ‘cockupspiracy’, the opportunism of the likes of big tech and big pharma.
All of these are important factors that require attention. However, it seems to me that the debate has largely been based on the fallacy that the reason for all this lies somewhere on a spectrum between ‘cock-up’ and ‘conspiracy’, with ‘cockupspiracy’ falling somewhere in the centre. I do not believe this is the case, because I do not believe that there is a spectrum here.
What we are seeing, I’m sure many of you will agree, is a fraud – a wrongful or criminal deception intended to result in financial or personal gain (or avoidance of loss) – on a monumental scale, and, as such, and given my background in audit, I believe that, instead, this should be analysed with reference to the fraud triangle (above).
The fraud triangle (comprised of Opportunity, Rationalisation, and Incentive/Pressure) is the basic framework used to explain the reason behind an individual’s decision to commit fraud, and so it is also going to be the basic framework by which I attempt to explain the Government’s actions termed “Polis-20” in James Alexander’s December 9th piece in Lockdown Sceptics (“A Cockupspiracy”).
Opportunity
“The pandemic represents a rare but narrow window of opportunity to reflect, reimagine, and reset our world” – Professor Klaus Schwab
“We couldn’t get away with it in Europe, we thought… and then Italy did it. And we realised we could.” – Neil Ferguson
If neither of these quotes sends shivers down your spine, then I can only conclude you are as spineless as our current leader.
I include these not because I believe that the Great Reset is the factor driving the pandemic response, or that Neil Ferguson is some criminal mastermind intent on watching the world burn, but because they highlight a key fundamental of my explanation: when people panic in the face of an unknown, they are more malleable; and when people are malleable, opportunities arise.
Worth reading in full.
Postcard From Brussels
We have received a new postcard, this one from Paul Farrar in Brussels. From the sound of it, the country has suffered a classic Covid crisis, with experts dominating the national response, lockdown enthusiasts filling the media, and testing data fuelling the general sense of alarm. Here is an extract:
I’m an expat working a living near Brussels. Back in March when the lockdown was announced, we, along with half of Belgium, went out to a restaurant for our ‘last supper’ the night before their closure. Although Belgium’s Hotels, Restaurants & Cafes (HoReCa) were allowed to re-open during the summer, they have borne the full brunt of the lockdown, being the most put-upon industry despite almost no infection incidents being recorded and all the obligatory track and trace measures being in place. Belgium life is all about is HoReCa.
Belgium’s Covid strategy seems to be dominated by a few ‘expert’ individuals, supported by the local media, with an ever-changing strategy as the country tries to follow each of its neighbours by adding their own unique twist to help pretend that they know what they are doing and that they are in charge.
As an example, it was reported on October 20th that the Ministers of Health and Welfare had adapted the corona test strategy:
“Those who have no symptoms will no longer be tested, even if you had high-risk contact with an infected person. In that case, a quarantine is still mandatory. If you came back from red zone or had close contact with infected person, but no symptoms themselves? Then you will no longer be tested.“
The aim was to reduce waiting times that were too long and to ease the burden on the testing labs. This had an immediate effect on the reported cases… and did calm things a little.
However, this changed again in November when they introduced new travel restrictions and the testing started to increase again.
Worth reading in full.
Poetry Corner
Today’s entry to poetry corner comes from Edmund Sutton. He writes:
The below is a rendering of “Mad World” by Tears for Fears which in some regards describes how I have been feeling after a mental collapse late last year and suicidal depression, exacerbated by the repeated public announcements of a lifting of restrictions, followed by the imposition of new ones. I cannot tell you how much your work, plus that of others like Profs Heneghan and Gupta, has meant over the past few months. In hospital, the psychiatrists said that my personality had been eroded on all fronts, as absolutely everything that I would normally do stopped in March last year – work, social life, volunteering – and I couldn’t even go to church. I missed physical contact greatly, just simple things like shaking hands or passing a cup of tea. Happily, I am receiving treatment, and have support from my parents. I shudder to think of the state of people who do not have such help.
Mad/Sad World
after “Mad World” by Tears for FearsNowhere round me are familiar faces:
In all places, hidden faces
Why be early for our daily races,
Going nowhere, going nowhere?My tears are blurring up my glasses –
No expression, no expression –
Hide my head, I want to end my sorrow:
No tomorrow, dark tomorrow.And I find it kind of funny,
I find it kind of sad:
The dreams in which I’m dying
Are the best I’ve ever had.
I find it hard to tell you ’cause
I find it hard to take.
When people can’t be people,
It’s a very very mad world – sad world, bad world, mad world.We are waiting for the day we feel good –
May I see you, even touch you?
And I cry for all the children who must
Sit and listen, not be children.Went outside and I was very nervous –
No one knew me, no one knew me.
Hello Governor, what may I do now?
Look right through me, look right through meAnd I find it kind of funny,
I find it kind of sad:
The dreams in which I’m dying
Are the best I’ve ever had.
I find it hard to tell you ’cause
I find it hard to take.
When people all are hidden,
It’s a very very mad world – sad world, bad world, mad world.And I find it kind of funny,
I find it kind of sad:
The dreams in which I’m dying
Are the best I’ve ever had.
I find it hard to tell you ’cause
I find it hard to take.
When we are all imprisoned,
It’s a very very mad world, sad world –Reducing our world – mad world.
Round-up
- “We must believe in vaccines, restore our way of life, and acknowledge the harms caused by lockdowns” – Writing in the Telegraph, CRG member Steve Baker calls for a new Public Health Act as a protection against future lockdowns
- “Are all these people really out with their households? Brits can’t wait for freedom to enjoy first weekend of fine weather after weeks of lockdown misery” – Good weather prompted Brits to head outside to parks and beaches, MailOnline reports
- “My dad Ted passed three Covid tests and died of a chronic illness yet he’s officially one of Britain’s 120,000 victims of the virus” – Bel Mooney tells the sad story of her father’s death in the Daily Mail. His was counted as a Covid death, but that’s not true says Mooney
- “Normality will never return until we know lockdown will not be repeated” – The Government must acknowledge the gravity of the changed relationship between state and people, writes Janet Daley in the Sunday Telegraph
- “Leon chief calls for end to lockdown as he reveals firm is losing £200,000-a-week and could fold” – MailOnline reports on the plea of John Vincent, whose restaurant chain is on the brink
- “Paradise? No, but the Britain of my youth was free” – Peter Hitchens’s column in the Mail on Sunday
- “The ever-moving goalposts of lockdown” – Writing for the Conservative Woman, teacher Glyn Lewis says that he is not overly optimistic that he’ll be able to return to the classroom next month, but hopes he is wrong
- “The dubious ethics of covert psychological strategies – the BPS response” – Read the British Psychological Society’s response to Gary Sidley’s letter and his thoughts about it
- “Terrifying citizens with overwhelming statistics is no help during a pandemic” – Gerrit Olivier in Business Day says that Governments are continuing to encourage hysteria and promote lockdowns
- “COVID-19 lockdowns make it harder for middle- to low-income families to thrive” – Christianity Daily reports on a recent study looking at data from nine developing countries finding that falling living standards have affected the vulnerable most
- “Vaccine passport push exposes the bullying authoritarians in our midst” – Neil Clark in Sputnik News calls out vaccine authoritarianism
- “Everything you need to know about Israel’s green passport program” – The Israeli health ministry is facilitating the country’s “return to normality” by rolling out a green passport programme, the Jerusalem Post reports. A green passport will be required to enter certain places and to participate in certain activities and only people who have been vaccinated or who have recovered from coronavirus will be eligible
- “School closure: A careful review of the evidence” – An in-depth investigation by Paul E. Alexander on the AIER blog into the very low Covid-related risk from the re-opening of schools
- “Covid Cases, like political careers, are dropping like rocks” – Jeffrey A. Tucker takes a look at the fortunes of the U.S. politicians who advocated lockdowns on the AIER blog
- “Politician Craig Kelly speaks out on early Covid treatment censorship” – Australian MP Craig Kelly speaks to Asia Pacific Today about early treatment of COVID-19 in Australia and why it is that discussion about drugs successfully used elsewhere is censored
- “Woke Britain sees record number of free speech complaints” – On the first anniversary of the Free Speech Union, the Sunday Express reports they have provided legal support for between 500 and 700 individual cases and are dealing with 20 new cases a week
- “University speakers with gender-critical views are most likely to be banned from addressing students” – Dominic Penna in the Sunday Telegraph reports on a survey the paper has done revealing that almost half of speakers no-platformed at Russell Group universities in the last six years have been gender critical feminists – more than any other group
- Godfrey Bloom tots up all the things he’s missed in the past year – four weddings, four funerals of old friends, four cancelled holidays, favourite pub closed – and asks Matt Hancock when he can get his life back
Theme Tunes Suggested by Readers
Thirty-four today: “Divide and Conquer” by Hüsker Dü, “We Want Revolution” by Covenant, “We Shall Overcome” by Joan Baez, “Day After Day” by Badfinger, “Slow Day” by Kristin Asbjørnsen, “Yesterday” by the Beatles, “Darklands” by the Jesus and Mary Chain, “Another Day, Another Death” by the Mob, “Fear” by Zounds, “Tomorrow Never Comes” by Dreadzone, “First World Problems” by Ian Brown, “We’re Gonna Get There In The End” by Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds, “Freak Scene” by Dinosaur Jr, “Sabotage” by Beastie Boys, “Sleeping My Day Away” by D-A-D, “The ID Parade” by Danielle Dax, “Dazed And Confused” by Led Zeppelin, “Easter Is Cancelled” by the Darkness, “Sorrow” by David Bowie, “Rebel Rebel” by David Bowie, “Could It Be Forever” by David Cassidy, “Join Together” by the Who, “Mistreated” by Deep Purple, “Perfect Strangers” by Deep Purple, “Hysteria” by Def Leppard, “Action” by The Sweet, “Don’t Believe A Word” by Thin Lizzy, “Helpless” by Diamond Head, “Stand Up And Shout” by Dio, “The Bug” by Dire Straits, “Breaking The Chains” by Dokken, “All We Are” by Warlock, “Run To The Hills” by Iron Maiden and “Dear Lord and Father of Mankind” by Hubert Parry.
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
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Woke Gobbledegook
We’ve decided to create a permanent slot down here for woke gobbledegook. Today, we bring you the news that the Free Speech Union is defending the right of fans to boo football players who take the knee. The Mail On Sunday has the scoop:
Football fans who boo players taking the knee in support of Black Lives Matter should not be banned by clubs, a free speech group has demanded.
In a letter to the Football Association, the Free Speech Union insist that if players are free to make the gesture, then fans must be free to disagree with them.
The FSU argued in the letter to the FA’s interim Chairman Peter McCormick that the “simplest solution” to an issue which continues to split football and other sports, would be to stop players taking the knee at all on the grounds that it shows support for a political cause and not a moral one, something banned in football law.
And extending that argument, the FSU said players who advertise their support for Black Lives Matter (BLM) by taking a knee should “face similar penalties” to booing supporters.
The FA insist taking the knee is an apolitical stand against discrimination, yet a list of high-profile footballers – among them Les Ferdinand, Wilfried Zaha and Britt Assombalonga – have started to rail against the gesture, which they believe has become devalued and is covering up a lack of real change in anti-racism policies.
On Saturday, more players in the top two divisions didn’t kneel before kick-off than the concerted support shown for the gesture when it was first conceived last summer post-lockdown.
General secretary of the FSU, Toby Young, wants the FA, whose president is Prince William, to issue guidelines for clubs ahead of the return to stadiums later this season or at the start of the next campaign.
In the letter, he said: “If the position of the FA is that it is perfectly legitimate for players to express their support for BLM in the stadium by taking the knee it should make it clear that it is also acceptable for fans to express their feelings about this political movement.
“If fans want to boo players taking the knee – or applaud, come to that – they should face no negative repercussions. From a free speech point of view, it cannot be fair or reasonable that people on the pitch are allowed to express their political views, but those in the stands are not.”
Worth reading in full.
You can read Toby’s letter to the to the Football Association here.
Stop Press: The Welsh Government is conducting a historical audit of street names and statues which has amusingly gone a little awry in the case of Peel Street, Wrexham. The street is named after Sir Robert Peel, but which one? James Delingpole tells the story in Breitbart.
A street in Wales has been put on the naughty step by the Welsh Government because of its supposed historical associations with the slave trade. But the man after whom it is named was in fact one of Britain’s most ardent and heroic anti-slavers.
Peel Street in Wrexham is one of dozens of streets put on a warning list as part of a £170,000 audit – The Slave Trade and the British Empire – commissioned by the Welsh Government in the wake of the briefly fashionable Black Lives Matter protests.
Though it doesn’t make it onto the Red danger list reserved for alleged monsters like Christopher Columbus, Lord Kitchener, Clive of India, and Francis Drake –“definite personal culpability” — it does make it onto the next-worst amber list marked “personal culpability uncertain”.
But the only reason it’s “uncertain” is because of the sloppiness of the woke crusaders who put the report together. They have confused Sir Robert Peel – the anti-slavery prime minister – with his slavery-supporting father.
True, both men confusingly share the same name. But the son was much more famous than the father and it’s after the son that the street is definitely named.
Stop Press 2: Following the news that an NHS trust in Brighton has started using the term ‘chestfeeding’ instead of ‘breastfeeding’, the Telegraph’s Michael Deacon has examined the implications of the ongoing move to gender-inclusive language. Time to meet your ‘gestational parent’ and ‘non-birthing parent’.
Stop Press 3: The Salisbury Review has published an excellent review of Cynical Theories by Niall McCrae. The book by Helen Pluckrose and James Lindsay documents the evolution of woke dogma, providing a kind of primer for those that haven’t yet grasped the scale and influence of the cult.
Stop Press 4: Disney’s streaming channel has slapped an “offensive content” warning on… the Muppets. You did not read that wrong. Beneath these words is the following disclaimer:
This programme includes negative depictions and/or mistreatment of people or cultures. These stereotypes were wrong then and are wrong now.
Rather than remove this content, we want to acknowledge its harmful impact, learn from it and spark conversation to create a more inclusive future together.
“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: Disney World requires all guests, including those who have been vaccinated, to wear facemasks while on their property except for when they are eating and drinking. But some visitors have been making it known that they would appreciate being permitted to take the things off for the photos, according to Inside the Magic.
Inside the Magic follower, Amy B. (@safarigirl76) shared that she wishes Disney would allow pictures without masks, though she understands why this rule is in place:
“I’m planning to go in May. The masks are a concern, as I’ll have a newly two year old with me. I’m not worried about safety at all. I’d love to take pictures without masks, but there’s nothing I can do about it.“
And this is something that ITM fan Emily (@emilyazd21) agrees with:
“We are going in November, hopefully for our first Christmas party! While I understand the mask requirements, it would be so nice if Disney would let people remove masks for pictures […] Would love to have pictures to capture and remember the excitement and beautiful smiles of my children when they experience the Christmas party!“
Stop Press 2: A restaurant in Hernando County, Florida has gone viral after it made clear that facemasks are not required to dine.
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, although that case, too, has been refused permission to proceed. There’s still one more thing that can be tried. You can read about that and contribute here.
The GoodLawProject and three MPs – Debbie Abrahams, Caroline Lucas and Layla Moran – brought a Judicial Review against Matt Hancock for failing to publish details of lucrative contracts awarded by his department and it was upheld. The Court ruled Hancock had acted unlawfully.
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
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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Now that we’ve passed this landmark of the first Italian lockdown, we can ask:
Where was the Anti-Panic leadership between specifically between Feb. 21 and March 21, 2020? It vacillated, took cover, its only action in most places was to make concessions to the Pro-Panic Lockdown side. A retreat.
A related but separate question is where was the Anti-Panic Leadership since then? Why the lack of Anti-Panic opinion-leaders when the Anti-Panic position are shown correct, again and again and again?
https://hailtoyou.wordpress.com/2021/02/19/why-the-lack-of-high-profile-cheerleaders-for-the-anti-panic-side-corona-as-social-phenomenon-mystery/
Worth repeating The Moral Case Against Lockdowns
Once upon a time Fauci was 110% against quarantines:
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/remember-when-fauci-called-ebola-quarantines-draconian-warned-unintended-consequences
I hate this timeline.
During the past year alone, Fauci has stated that face masks do not prevent transmission of the virus and the general population should not wear them. He subsequently stated that they do prevent transmission and the general population should wear them. When asked about this reversal, he said he had been lying previously. He then stated that two masks were more effective than one and recommended everyone double mask. Within days he stated that there was no evidence that wearing two masks prevented transmission of the virus. Fauci says whatever he thinks it is in his interests to say.
Nicked this one from the forums. Maskless shopping a la California:
THIS VIDEO MUST GO VIRAL – YouTube
That’s beautiful.
I was just on Google maps researching supermarkets and liquor stores in Florida, South Dakota, and Idaho and almost all of them said, “face nappy required.”
Isn’t is just.
Isn’t South Dakota one of the more accommodating states for people like us?
Yes, SD is supposed to be freer.
That said, my cursory research on supermarkets in Sioux Falls, SD and Rapid City, SD show about 2/3rds say, “mask required.”
So much for my plan to leave NY state.
“Badass cowboys. Heh.”
Went to the Sturgis Bike Rally a few years ago. Nice state is South Dakota.
WARNING GRAPHIC IMAGES
New side effects of mRNA vaccines.
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it’s a joke!
US attorney Gregory Glaser has filed a lawsuit in Federal Court proving vaccines are DANGEROUS!
🙂
Apple Dessert tests POSITIVE for COVID
JAB Kids “as fast as we can” Say Sage On BBC Hugo Talks #lockdown
Irishman Gary Dempsey Speaks for All Those Who Are Being Destroyed by Lockdowns
Night sceps, cya all in the morning. Bright and early. One day at a time. Groundhog day again.
It’s Monday and another 50000 Brits will even more sick to the back teeth and will have had it up to here by this time next week.
Boris will be even more of a sad fat lying sick sack of shit by this time next week and Twatt Handycock might even be sacked for being a total cunt.
The rest of the cabinet are laying low as they don’t want to be embroiled in the fires licking aroung the fat pig dictator and his merry band of psychopaths.
Pretty soon nobody will be agreeing with these moronic evil fools that laughingly call themselves our government.
So chin up.
Tomorrow is just another day in clown world. Enjoy it. It will never happen again.
Nighty-night, Two-Six. Sleep well and be refreshed for another exciting day in paradise!
And a great post, btw. Going to bed laughing, for a change.
Early bedders!
Pépé the frog has all your clown world needs covered!
https://youtu.be/vB-qWovaCLo
Oxtards claim a jab will be required for every single Brit foreign holiday:
https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2021/02/21/vaccines-will-be-required-before-every-holiday-warn-oxford-scientists/
KERCHINGGG!!!!
Well, that’s me fucked, so to speak, then.
How is it that these lunatics keep on getting this negative view publicised???
Saw my first ever Rona Marshalls today. A pair of them “patrolling” the busy seafront. High vis jackets, hats and masks. Not sure if one had a special homemade Marshall badge and the other was his deputy, but desperately wanted to approach them to ask if they’d be willing to deputise me and some friends so we could make up a posse and go round up some villains.
My embarrassed wife and daughter stopped me, so I had to settle for pointing and laughing until they passed.
Sir Bruce would be happy to share ideas for giving the Marshalls a proper welcome to the area.
They are not in Northern Ireland as far as I’m aware. Though, they have to be the definition of brainwashed 2021
We have had them for quite a while, I’ve only ever seen them in threes with their tacky blue tabards.
Never seen them engaging with anybody.
How the hell are Covid hiwis recruited? Have members of their families been kidnapped, or do they do it voluntarily? Is the money that good?
They didn’t make the grade to be traffic wardens
I’d like to play this, then let loose with the gun:
The Musical Pocket Watch From For a Few Dollars More (HQ) – YouTube
Indeed. 🙂
From the BBC: “Dr John Wright of Bradford Royal Infirmary says he’s noticed that his medical colleagues show a preference for one vaccine, while members of the public often prefer another. He argues that this isn’t a time to be choosy.
The dash for vaccines has thrown up a rather peculiar situation. With so many pharmaceutical companies competing in this greatest of scientific races, we now have a variety of vaccines, and people are starting to ask me, “Do I get a choice?” And “Which vaccine would you recommend?”
The concept of consumer choice when it comes to immunisation, or even medications, is alien. No-one asks about the brand of their annual flu jab, or which company produces the MMR vaccine that will protect their precious children. “
Well, no, they don’t because the choice isn’t between voodoo and monkey spunk.
It probably is…but as far as I know there is a “choice” of two vaccines. So why do medical colleagues favour one of these two while the public favour the other. My theory is docs like Astra Zeneca because it is a traditional vaccine while the public have been persuaded to like the very experimental Pfizer vaccine by the MSM’s propaganda.
Is AZ traditional though I thought it was an MRNA like all the rest? It does seem to have less reactions than pfizers though.
There’s been v. little about it in the MSM but I saw a video (pro vaccine) suggesting it was a traditional vaccine. I’ve never seen it referred to as an mRNA vaccine.
It is mRNA
Link?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LSudYGwzOFI
AZ is not an mRNA vaccine.
Can’t see how you just walked away from that assertion without admitting you were wrong.
The oxford/AZ is not a traditional vaccine. It is not a weakened live virus or a inactivated one. My understanding is that the viral vector( the chimp virus) delivers the Spike protein DNA to the cells which then produce it for the immune system to deal with. So very similar to pfizer, just different delivery system.
This video says it is.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LSudYGwzOFI
https://dailyexpose.co.uk/2021/02/14/think-the-oxford-jab-is-safe-adverse-reactions/
I tend to agree with you
It is mRNA but uses a different delivery system, a monkey spunk vector rather than the Pfizer nucleoside fat globule thingie. Summat like that anyway.
It all blows my mind this Mrna shit. I could understand a dead virus quite easily why can’t I have that?
Got any dead SARS-CoV-2? Rare as monkeys teeth
Lol i like the short answer!
They’ve never actually found the virus so that kind of vaccine would be impossible – but quite frankly why would you have or let anyone you care for have any vaccines at all (see the video of the lawyer in US who has incontrovertible proof that the unvaccinated are massively less likely to get sick than the vaccinated).
All traditional vaccines fool the body it’s under real attack. AZ uses a deactivated virus. So it is NOT mRNA.
But that is a traditional vaccine. They all do that sort of thing. mRNA vaccines are very different because they are directly getting DNA to do something by giving it a message via mRNA. The mRNA has not been produced by the body.
My limited anecdotal evidence is that everyone who has the Oxford “monkey spunk” gets side-effects. So it is possibly the other way around.
I think both have more than enough side effects for me to want to avoid if at all possible!
I think the whole competing vax brands angle is a dead giveaway this whole thing is an op.
Another strange thing is Merck completely giving up on a Covid vax.
Merck aren’t stupid or benevolent.
What does Merck know that we don’t?
Another issue with competing vax brands is the potential for that to be used as another criteria for limiting mobility.
Expect this to first appear at the international level.
Eventually it will trickle down to the national level, and you will be barred from certain areas if you have the wrong jab brand.
it had occured to me that having the wrong vaccine (Russian/Israeli ?) might fall foul of some future diplomatic dispute.
Has anyone explained why the UK is still deviating from the manufacturers guidelines? A policy that has been pushed by the war criminal Blair.
Why are they so desperate to vaccinate the over 18s when they could go back and deliver the two doses to the actual vulnerable groups.
This points to a conspiracy to push vaccine passports. How else can you explain this away?
Are they afraid that reactions to second doses may be more severe so are ducking and weaving?
I’ve always suspected this. Are other Countries delivering the two doses? When we say we are ‘top of the table’ for vaccines are we actually given that we are only administering one dose?
I do believe that is part of it.
They could be trying to get as many as possible done so that when Covid goes with the change in seasons, they can say it was the vaccine.
No doubt this will be the narrative. But they could play this narrative out just as easily by delivering the two doses to protect the vulnerable as they had always intended to. There is a serious sleight of hand going on here that the media and the public appear to be letting the government away with.
Is it fear of the second dose is it the desire to deliver the vaccine passport?
The one cast iron, reliable thing, whatever else and for whatever nefarious purpose, is that we are being lied to, big time. And with that consoling thought, good night, sleep tight.
“LOS BARRIOS, SPAIN — The Nuestra Señora del Rosario (Our Lady of the Rosary) nursing home is reeling due to mass deaths after mRNA inoculations.
All residents and workers at the facility received the first dose of Pfizer mRNA in early January, according to Spain mainstream media outlet ABC de Sevilla. Most residents became extremely ill shortly after the shots.”
Un brote en una residencia de Los Barrios provoca 46 muertes por coronavirus (abc.es)
I really don’t know how care home after care home where the same thing is happening isn’t making the MSM. When it does it’s always that’s just a coincidence.
We’ve heard of conspiracy theories – they’ve got nothing on coincidence theories!
“There is “early data” showing a reduction in transmission in people who have had a coronavirus vaccine, the health secretary has said.
Matt Hancock said hospital admissions were falling “much more sharply” than they were in the pandemic’s first wave.”
The quote above doesn’t make sense to me. Surely the indication that vaccines are having an effect are a reducing number of “cases” not hospital admissions?
I also notice that daily tests performed are falling foe the last few days. My working assumption is that they are falling because fewer people are presenting themselves for testing for whatever reason that may be.
I’ve taken a drive-by at testing stations at two locations, several miles apart. No one to be seen at either apart from bored looking staff, languishing in chairs outside.
Exactly the same here.
or Spring as it is also known.
If vaccination does what it says on the can, if you vaccinate all your vulnerable population then hospital admissions and deaths should decline very rapidly. This should feed through v quickly, within about 7 days because 7 days is the average time from symptoms presentation to death in fatal cases.
At least 90% of the death rate in the UK is accounted for by people designated vulnerable. So if let’s say you were averaging 1000 deaths per day before all your vulnerable population were vaccinated, and if one vaccine shot is 50% effective then that figure of 1000 deaths should be reduced by 450 within 7 days of the vulnerable population. But of course, you should see progress to that 550 figure before all the vulnerable propulation have been vaccinated because an increasing proportion of them will have been vaccinated.
None of that happened! The daily deaths remained stubbornly high for about 2 or 3 weeks into January and then began to fall away very rapidly. My interpretation is that we started to see the seasonal decline set in in late Dec/early Jan but there was a counter trend of very old and frail people dying after receiving the vaccine… Read more »
My interpretation is that the “vaccines” don’t protect against flu, Alzheimer’s, dementia, etc.
It also invalidates the warnings of any more waves, if the vaccines work.
It’s over even by the Governments shaky standards. However they’ve moved to zero Covid so it never ends.
We’ll have to do that
Scary new variants = more waves, not to mention that so-called immunity is likely fleeting which will necessitate endless rounds of booster shots. And I suspect the Zero Covid crazies will aim for Zero Flu next season as well.
K, post detailed numeric data to the NHS site for public review.
They won’t because there isn’t any.
Good evening everyone. I have been reading this site nearly every day for the last few months. Thank you you’ve helped me a great deal. Fortunately my OH is a sceptic thank goodness, but the rest of my family are not. I have two sons in their thirties, the eldest lives in Germany and is fully signed up to all the bullshit, his German girlfriend works for the government, so he’s no chance of seeing what’s really going on. We have had to agree to disagree as we end up arguing every time he video calls. He says he is scared for my mental health. He says he will take the vaccine when offered it. I am now resigned to all this as I have tried to make him and his brother see sense. But all I have achieved is resentment and I don’t understand science or know what I’m talking about. My younger son was damaged by the flu vaccine over 20 years ago when, as a result, he became type 1 diabetic. He has said he won’t take the ‘vaccine’ but I fear he will end up having it because of his job.
What a sorry state of… Read more »
As the good Doctor always says, you are not alone.
Pathetic reopening in bound. What a joke. Hairdressers in May. Masks and social distancing to last the year. Reopening contingent on scary new variants which can be conjured up at any time. People were told that vaccines were the scientific cavalry coming to save them. I hope they start waking up once they realise that it was all a sham.
Nearly 6 months without a haircut.It might explain Johnson’s mop but newsreaders and many others in the public eye seem to have nicely trimmed hair.
Johnson’s mop is part of the clown act. It certainly doesn’t demonstrate 6 months’ growth.
Every time I catch a glimpse of him (and I do try to avoid this) I feel embarrassed that we have got such a scruffy looking oik representing us on the world stage.
why? the ‘world stage’ is a parade of demons and clowns
I don’t know about the UK, but people here were looking awfully scruffy after Lockdown 1.0 but not nearly so much during Lockdown 2.0. I just had my hair cut and coloured by my former Toronto hairdresser who has been going to people’s homes and is as busy as ever. He says he will keep up his mobile business even when he’s allowed back to the salon. I got mine done for half the salon price and no mask required. People won’t put up with this shit and will find work arounds wherever possible.
Yes, looks like it’s going to be as bad as feared. 2021 is going to be a write-off.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2021/02/21/stay-home-scrapped-pm-unveils-route-normality/
The comments following this report in the DT are, with only a few exceptions, an explosion of anger, resentment and (more importantly) defiance. Good to see. Take a look if you can.
More Conflict of Interests exposed among UK scientists
– John Edmunds and his wife Jeanne Pimenta – Director, Epidemology GSK.
John is a grey weedy thin bloke and reckons we should be wearing masks for the rest of our lives. A few links.
https://www.lshtm.ac.uk/aboutus/people/edmunds.john
https://off-guardian.org/2021/02/18/the-modelling-paper-mafiosi/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeanne-pimenta-992112101/
John is also in SAGE and promotes vaccinating 100% of our kids asap
https://inews.co.uk/news/health/covid-vaccines-children-vaccinated-fast-prevent-coronavirus-spike-sage-scientist-warns-881725
My advice is to be skeptical about what John Edmunds on Sage says.
Does he appear on Zoe Harcombe’s list?
https://www.zoeharcombe.com/2020/11/sage-conflicts-of-interest/
Yes: partner works for GSK
Another ugly bastard.
And foreign.
Is there a shortage of Brits willing to lie to us?
Well, I was engaging in speculation in a comment the other day about this being stage 1 where stage 2 is climate lockdowns. Seems it’s already in plan. Mariana Mazzucato, head of UCL Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose:
https://www.socialeurope.eu/avoiding-a-climate-lockdown
…and I know you won’t want to go to bed without a pic of your favourite tiny dictator with La Mazzucato, free gobbledegook thrown in:
Coogan’s Bluff on ITV4. Good bit of liberty loving escapism.
“In case that people are not aware that pandemic scenarios have been planned and exercised in great detail for over two decades, I am posting a couple of pointers (as a follow-up to this question). Please feel free to ask for more details or add your own research.”
https://www.peakprosperity.com/forum-topic/pandemic-planning-exercises-2001-2019-dark-winter-lock-step-event-201/
“Noteworthy exercises were:
Dark Winter (2001),
Global Mercury (2003),
Atlantic Storm (2005),
Clade X (2018), and last but not least
Event 201 (October 2019).”
“The individual is handicapped by coming face-to-face with a conspiracy so monstrous he cannot believe it exists. The American mind simply has not come to a realization of the evil which has been introduced into our midst.”
J. Edgar Hoover, first head of the FBI, speaking of the existence of the Great Plan
30 more days and that will be a full year
Hopefully the MSM will celebrate it – maybe organise a clap for it? – and people will finally start to wake up!
In July 2020 the EU relaxed rules on GMOs to ensure the use of J&J and AZ vaccines which contain such ingredients.
“This report from Reuters of June 10, 2020 (Exclusive: Europe to accelerate trials of gene-engineered COVID-19 vaccines – sources) makes it clear that individual nations’ safety protocols concerning vaccines and other medicines are to be superseded:
… The reform is expected to reduce member states’ power to impose extra requirements on drug companies when they conduct clinical trials on medicines and vaccines containing genetically modified organisms (GMOs), according to the sources.”
“The European authority is offering a blank cheque to the pharmaceutical industry to bring to market new GM drug and vaccine technologies for which not all the studies demonstrating safety have been carried out. It is the patients in these conditions who serve as guinea pigs and we, as doctors, refuse this state of affairs” insists Philippe Harvault, President of the International Association for Independent and Caring Scientific Medicine (AIMSIB).”
Rushed Covid GMO Vaccines: Legal Action to Cancel EU Regulation 2020/1043 | The Liberty Beacon
gates and monsanto ,pure evil well not very pure but definitely evil.reading altered genes twisted truth
The EU ban on GMOs and other food additives is one of the few things they had gotten right!
My poor little Welsh Terrier – 14 years old, half blind, half deaf, severe limp due to a paw damaged while trying to kill a horse five times his size – has more guts than 90% of the UK population. He’s just been out there shouting his defiance to the night – where are the rest of you?
where are the rest of you? On an adjustable long lead?
seems like 🙁
My Jack Russell’s just been out the back garden for a good yap.
They can sense what’s coming tomorrow! Bad news!!
Bless your terrier, he’s got more guts than a legion of zombies.
Make him leave horses alone, though.
i think he has learned his lesson there 🙂
the horse had strayed in to our field though.
The little chap was just trying to defend his territory.
Aw. I have a rescue terrier around the same age. She has cataracts now and is deaf. Was in a terrible state when I first had her, but she’s always spent her life with courage and happiness.
I see various comments in different places the the vaccines are still being tested and haven’t really completed that process. Is there anywhere that sets that out clearly?
https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT04368728
Estimated Study Completion Date : January 31, 2023
This twitter thread speculates that because the trials are ongoing, they need control groups to ensure they can complete as designed. Therefore some of the vaccines are in fact placebos:
Dr Angelova on Twitter: “#ScienceSunday Do you wonder why some people have severe adverse effects or die from COVID-19 but some not? Here is why https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/13.0.1/svg/1f447.svg COVID-19 vaccines are in clinical research trial until 2023. Some people receive have placebo, some the real #vaccine. #COVID19 #COVID19Vaccine #Science https://t.co/gGbvEJc1yX” / Twitter
See here on the Pfizer trial
https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT04368728
It clearly states “A PHASE 1/2/3, PLACEBO-CONTROLLED, RANDOMIZED, OBSERVER-BLIND, DOSE-FINDING STUDY”
That would certainly explain why the Fascists admit the vaxes don’t prevent infection or transmission!
Reassuringly, they could only do this if they identified and followed up the people in the placebo group, as well as the vaccine group, which would be impossible unless they knew who they were and followed them up in person to look at their outcomes. The people receiving the vaccine or placebo would have to be identified and recorded at the point of injection, and the data passed to trial co-ordinators, and that’s definitely not happening. It wouldn’t be enough to rely on the random reporting of side effects – how many people have we heard about who’ve had side effects but not told anybody medical? Even yellow cards can’t properly identify the patient nor the batch number of the vaccine. I’ve been principal investigator for a couple of post marketing drug studies, and there is endless paperwork to record very specific and complex pieces of information, and if you’re enrolled in a trial you would certainly know about it.
Ok speculating here but couldn’t you introduce the placebo by locality rather that the individual.
So you know Care Home A had the vaccine, Care Home B has the placebo. Could it be monitored that way?
I’ll agree its all very far fetched, but this is 2021 we are talking about.
The people who don’t have it are the control group – they have a clear record of who we are because our names are kept at each doctors practice as vaccine refusers.
AZ Trial
https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT04516746
Estimated Study Completion Date : February 21 2023
https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT04283461
Moderna: 22 November 2022
https://brandnewtube.com/watch/scamdemic-exposed-medics-blow-lid-on-covid-hoax_vUdMa6OGk5pIyAR.html
Lovely…. just what I needed to cheer me up
As the young man on Spring Break stated:
“It’s just the flu, bro.”
Get that man a medal!
More seriously, the second part of that clip is damning.
Multiple top US labs unable to find naught but influenza A and B in 1500 alleged positive Covid samples.
CDC unable to provide any viable Covid samples.
Only samples provided are random bits of genetic gunk 1000x shorter than a typical viral sequence.
Multiple top US labs and institutions suing CDC for fraud over inability to provide actual Covid samples.
Assuming the clip is real, is Reimer Fuellmich aware of this situation?
If not he should be, because this is a potential second front that is as important as the attack on the PCR fraud.
Has anyone sent it to him?
“But everybody else who had the placebo shot went ahead and got the actual vaccine. So now Fierro has essentially no comparison group left for the ongoing study.”
Long-Term COVID-19 Vaccine Studies Hampered As Placebo Recipients Get Real Shot : NPR
So would this invalidate the entire study? Bonkers stuff
Totally invalidates the “long-term” study and I think it’s a feature, not a bug. They purposely offered the placebo group the “vaccine” so as to mask the longer-term effects of this experimental gene therapy. I don’t even know how they’re getting away with it, but this is 2021 and “the science” is even more corrupt than usual. I’m going to do my civic duty by volunteering to be in the control group.
Walking along Brighton seafront today it was wonderful. The place was absolutely heaving. Kids on bikes, families all together. What really struck me was the absolute disconnect between the media rhetoric and the reality. As skeptics on here, we are all made to feel that we are a foolish and or selfish minority, that the weight of numbers is utterly against us.
But that is simply not the case. I doubt it ever has been either, but we can only gauge this on days like today.
👍
It’s encouraging but one other mask-less face in the supermarket would cheer me up.
Totally agree. The hypocrisy is the problem. All those thousands out today mixing, but then donning a mask in shops, acquiescing to not seeing loved ones, and allowing schools to go unchallenged. But the comfort (however small) I take from today is that yes people are self serving and compliant, but they do not all agree with this nonsense. They have not all been brainwashed. And that means that it won’t take much, to pull them back to normal.
Most people are afraid of punishment for not appearing to comply with the rules, not the virus. Most are just going along with the illusion for an easy life, emperors new clothes scenario. Unfortunately these people will still be the ones who sleep walk us into mandatory jabs and further lockdowns.
However, one ray of hope is that I feel there is a definite shift in peoples view of the situation. The government are now trying to retain control by indicating some easing of restrictions. Like a parent who is loosing control of an unruly child ‘well, you can do XYZ, but only for a short while’.
Lovely story in the DM about a couple that went up a mountain and successfully rescued a lost dog, carrying back to safety on their back.
When the public found out….. they were of course reported for breaching Covid rules.
What the hell is wrong with the world?
It’s precisely that. Hell. Full of big devils and little snitching demons.
no one likes a grass
As the brothers here in the US say:
“Snitches and talkers…
…get stitches and walkers.”
One of the main arguments you’ll hear for vaxxing kids is LONG COVID! For, as we know, they don’t die from the deadliest virus ever known. So be prepared for that I’d day. They’ll shift the goalposts and site some dodgy stats like 14% of + PCR kids developed LONG COVID
But don’t let them away with it
Vaccinating children to prevent Long Covid? Much more caution needed in interpreting current epidemiological data | The BMJ
More like 14% of kids at least are suffering lethargy, brain fog and general tetchiness due to NOT BEING IN SCHOOL 🤨
Long Covid my arse
I’ll just throw this here too
Lots of great studies on the fact schools are not death traps
Alasdair Munro on Twitter: “I have seen some repeated assertions about the evidence on #COVID19, children and schools recently which sound convincing, but unfortunately are false It is a sensitive and important topic, which is important to get right Shall we bust some myths? https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/13.0.1/svg/1f4a5.svg Let’s go! 1/10″ / Twitter
‘unfortunately’ are false?
He is saying the school studies which claim they are death traps are riddled with bias
… as identified by using a long anal swab.
I think first we need many more years of data before we know the full effects of long vaccine… notice the argument they are using for the vaccines never works for other treatments. Mention stuff like cannabis & ‘oh it needs years of testing, we have no idea of the risks or long lasting effects…’
I just read today that if treated early with the HCQ or Ivermectin protocols there is no “long” Covid. Completely avoidable, but there’s no money in it.
911 is very like covid bollocks. When the planes hit the towers I knew straight away it was a monumental psy-op. I was paying attention back then, Operation Desert Storm was a travesty to me and so was The Balkans Conflict. I remember being woken up at dawn with the B52’s flying their final approaches into Fairford a couple of thousand feet above me, returning from a night’s carpet bombing in Serbia.
I swear I could see the blood on them in the dawn sunlight sometimes.
After that terrible day:
I signed up to loads of email lists and newsgroups. Every day I would trawl through 1000’s of emails, looking for “evidence” that the official narrative was a huge lie.
Heroes of the mail lists would spring up and pump out volumes of top quality information, aggregating in their own way thousands of postings. “Vectress” is a name I will never forget
Every day there were bit of evidence, a photo of a fan blade, a tape recording of a faked “air-phone” call, eye witness reports, the list grew and grew.
Soon there was more evidence that you could poke a stick at that showed a totally different story from… Read more »
I agree. I’ve been studying psyops for years. The coronavirus didn’t seem like it at first, but quickly showed its hand.
What was the name of the guy at the CIA who said “When everything the American public believes is a lie, we will have done our job”?
I believe that was CIA director William Casey.
I’ve been a pilot all my life. Retired a couple of years ago after 45 years in the job. Trained big jet pilots for 30 years. A couple of things. One there is simply no way the Towers could have been demolished that way by ‘pilots’ with that level of training. One hit. Maybe. Two. Unlikely. Three. Impossible. Either better pilots were on board or something else is in play.
Second. My job was all about Threat Assessment and Risk Management. I give no creedence to the ‘we didn’t know what was happening’ in March 2020. It’s very simple. When something happens you might not have seen before you absolutely don’t make worst case assumptions. You reference to similar episodes, access existing plans and move cautiously none of this was done.
In any quality clip of the towers, one can see the cutter charges going off in an orderly, pre-planned, and precisely timed sequence.
Based on that visual evidence, one can only conclude it was an op from start to finish.
Someone used to post a video of that here regularly last year.
Completely agree. Some bloke who could barely operate a 172 wasn’t going to pull off an accurate 2g decending turn in a Boeing then have his passport turn up later on the pavement below.
Well done Leggy. Keep the conspiracy nutters going….all helps to discredit this site. Haven’t noticed you being v interested in such theories previously….
The only job I really ever wanted to do was fly a passenger jet.
Ah well.
2 planes, 3 buildings collapsed = NO!
Always thought the same 👍
Don’t know if it’s been posted already but here is a link to a DM Online item:https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9283623/Expert-suggests-huge-82-cent-plunge-cases-just-six-weeks-herd-immunity.html
An unnamed academic epidemiologist some of whose comments I found interesting about herd immunity and that he suspects we have it now but the bit I liked:
On the possible impact of lockdown, the professor said: ‘I could create a model which shows that this is down to lockdown or I can create one which says it is down to herd immunity.
Is this what they call creating your own evidence (seems allegations of a similar nature in Germany).
This is the case with most mathematical models – at least initially. To model the recent cases over the last few months you’d probably need to include 4 estimated parameters, i.e.
1/ NP Interventions (e.g. Lockdowns)
2/ Vaccines
3/ Developing Herd Immunity
4/ Seasonality.
4/ is a bit early to have a big effect
3/ should, by now, be a significant factor. R declines as the susceptible population shrinks and as the number ‘ recovered’ increases.
2/ is interesting because I’m not sure it would cause a decline in cases – though it might result if fewer hospitalisations & deaths.
1/ is messy. We’ve had rising case numbers in some areas & falls in other areas during Tiers and lockdowns.
As the academic says, you could apply different weightings to the parameters and still achieve the same result.
The model might be fine. It’s the assumptions that determine it’s predictive skill.
2/ might cause a perceived decline in cases if people are still getting infected but have no symptoms so don’t bother going to get a test?
Re 2, if the vaccine was working as claimed we should have seen sizeable falls in deaths by late December and more so by mid Jan (given that the vulnerable people who were first in the queue for vaccination make up about 90% of deaths and 7 days is the average time from symptoms presenting to death in fatal cases). We didn’t – it remained stubbornly high and the reduction only really took off in late Jan, a couple of weeks after the vulnerable population had received their first shot.
Given the curve in Sweden is almost identical to ours I don’t see any other explanation.
or reducing the ct in the PCR tests
Could someone do this after this “vaccine”? This article from 1998 shows Israel was trying to do this specifically against the Arabs. Very concerning.
“Israel is reportedly developing a biological weapon that would harm Arabs while leaving Jews unaffected, according to a report in London’s Sunday Times. The report, citing Israeli military and western intelligence sources, says that scientists are trying to identify distinctive genes carried by Arabs to create a genetically modified bacterium or virus.
The “ethno-bomb” is reportedly Israel’s response to the threat that Iraq may be just weeks away from completing its own biological weapons.
The “ethno-bomb” program is based at Israel’s Nes Tziyona research facility. Scientists are trying to use viruses and bacteria to alter DNA inside living cells and attack only those cells bearing Arabic genes.
The task is very complex because both Arabs and Jews are Semitic peoples. But according to the report, the Israelis have succeeded in isolating particular characteristics of certain Arabs, “particularly the Iraqi people.”
Dedi Zucker, a member of the Israeli parliament, denounced the research in the Sunday Times. “Morally, based on our history, and our tradition and our experience, such a weapon is monstrous and should be denied.””
https://www.wired.com/1998/11/israels-ethnic-weapon/
We are all Arabs now
We are already wearing the headgear, no disrespect to Arabs
From what little I remember (and the even far less I know of the relevant science), this would be a most incredibly dangerous thing for anyone to do.
One reason most governments post WWII decided not to use bio weapons was the fear they would travel around the world ( asit was put to me by an army instructor) and bite the user in the bum after maybe mutating and rendering the user’s defences ineffective.
Israel has no need for that type of weapon: it has the IDF, batallions of trained reserves/citizens and, oh,yes, nukes (so much easier to target).
Sounds like some type of anti semitic propaganda.
Just my 2p worth.
As mentioned above,Jews are not Semites,they are members of a religion.
Not all jews believe in Judaism. Ethnic atheist/secular jews are still jews AFAIK?
Just one problem – Arab refers to ethnicity, Jew does not, it refers to religion. Arabic is the main Semitic language with 90% of world speakers. Hebrew, another Semitic language died out about the 5th century CE and so-called ‘modern Hebrew’ is an invented language based on liturgical texts. Most Israelis, coming from Russia, USA etc, speak the language of the country they came from.
“Arab refers to ethnicity, Jew does not, it refers to religion.”
Nope: Arab refers to language, and to a lesser extent to culture. Most “Arabs” are no more ethnically Arab than most English speakers are ethnically English.
“Jew” really doesn’t refer to religion: the test for being allowed to settle in Israel ms based on ancestry, not religious observance.
5th century CE – woke! It should be 5th century AD, or just 5th century.
Nonsense. Egyptians and Berbers aren’t ethnic Arabs though many identify as Arabs. Most speak Arabic. Jews are defined in UK law as an ethnic group. So not sure what your point is.
” both Arabs and Jews are Semitic peoples”
Ashkenazi Jews are on average of 60% European ancestry and 40% Levantine ancestry.