How the Left Flunked the Lockdown Challenge
Lockdown Sceptics contributor and (as he puts it) working class revolutionary socialist Phil Shannon has a terrific piece in Left Lockdown Sceptics looking at how and why the Left failed so badly when Covid hit. Phil wrote for Lockdown Sceptics back in June on a similar theme and it’s great to have an update.
As a four-decade, veteran revolutionary working class socialist, it has dismayed me to see how the contemporary Left, whether in Government, in ‘Opposition’, in the trade unions, on the activist fringes or simply as liberal Guardian-reading, BBC-listening individuals, has almost uniformly become a noisy outpost of knee-trembling Covid Hysterics who have embraced, with disturbing relish, the mania for lockdown. The Left has become an auxiliary arm of the capitalist state and its distinguishing feature has been to spruik [publicly promote – Ed] for tougher, earlier and longer lockdowns. Through its love of a lockdown which devastates the working class, lays waste to civil liberties and disrespects science, the contemporary ‘Left’ well deserves to have quotation masks attached to it.
How the ‘Left’ has Flunked the Virus/Lockdown Challenge
Threat Inflation of the virus
The Left got off on the wrong foot by misrepresenting Covid as much more scary than what it actually is i.e. a bad-to-ordinary flu season. The Left has joined the lockdown establishment elite in inflating the risk posed by the SARS-CoV-2 virus by (1) lumping together deaths ‘with’ and deaths ‘from’ Covid; (2) conflating positive virus test results – including false positives – with actual clinical cases; (3) ignoring Covid’s fatal attraction almost solely for the already-ill elderly whilst being fairly innocuous to everyone else; (4) portraying the virus as a constant menace despite its cyclic behaviour as just another recurring, seasonal, warmth-shunning, mutating respiratory virus which naturally peters out during its summer recess; (5) deep-sixing the fear-quelling concept of naturally-acquired herd-immunity including pre-existing cross-immunity from other coronaviruses, both cornerstones of immunological and virological science; and (6) ignoring the fact that Covid was the plague that never was because it had been circulating globally, courtesy of the vast international Chinese tourist trade, since as early as September-October 2019, with nobody noticing anything statistically out of the ordinary in overall death rates prior to the March Madness triggered by panicky politicians in 2020.
Lockdown policy panic
From this failure of data and basic science, it has been a logical shimmy for the Left to join the policy panic by endorsing the disproportionate, and damaging, government response of economic lockdown. The Left does so under the time-honoured and politically-resonant banner of placing ‘lives before commerce’ but, in this instance, the sterling socialist catchphrase of ‘people before profit’ is mere rote dogma because it seeks to crack the nut of a mostly humdrum virus with the sledgehammer of deep economic contraction resulting in massive job losses and a decline in working class living standards, whilst recklessly embracing a giant Ponzi scheme of stellar government debt and deficit which will inevitably be paid for by austerity, increased taxes and lost opportunity costs which will fall most heavily, as they always do, on the current and future working class.
‘New Normal’ pseudoscience
Lockdown is the central dogma of ‘social distancing’ pseudoscience, a voodoo religion which comes with a host of ineffective, superstitious, magical-thinking, placebo-like, demonstratively ostentatious ‘New Normal’ rituals, all of which the Left has uncritically subscribed to – school closures, quarantining the healthy, smart-phone QR sign-in, Perspex checkout shields, masks, the 1.5 metre rule, test-test-test, track-and-trace, elbow-bumps and fist-pumps, the Obsessive Compulsive Disorder of hand sanitiser use, high-rotation North Korean style ‘public safety announcements’, Stand-Here/Don’t-Sit-There decals, ‘support bubbles’, Covid Marshals, Hallelujah vaccines, immunity-passports, limits on public gatherings, curfews, travel restrictions, border closures …. all of these pointless political and cultural theatrics predicated on a wildly exaggerated fear of a not terribly lethal virus. By also recycling vacuous slogans – ‘flatten the curve’, ‘do the right thing’, ‘save lives’, ‘slow the spread’, ‘stop the spread, ‘stay safe’ – the Covid-deranged Left has abrogated critical thinking for simplistic advertising copy.
Phil goes on to diagnose the “political pathologies afflicting the Left from lockdown” and explores the root causes.
Worth reading in full.
Lockdown Bills Begin to Arrive
In his budget yesterday, Chancellor Rishi Sunak brought the beginnings of realism to bear on the public finances after a year of make-believe economics, though there was still plenty of that. Kate Andrews has the details in the Spectator.
Last March’s £30bn spending splurge was just the start of hundreds of billions of pounds spent in the fight against COVID-19. Today Sunak pledged another £65bn: furlough and the Universal Credit uplift were both extended; incentive payments for businesses to take on apprentices were doubled; and ‘restart grants’ worth £5bn to help businesses get back on their feet were unveiled.
But this Budget wasn’t all giveaways. The Tory Chancellor announced a new, tiered system for corporation tax, which hikes the rate from 19% to 25% in 2023 for the most profitable businesses. He has also frozen personal income tax thresholds: dubbed a ‘stealth tax’, this will bump workers into higher tax brackets as wages rise while the thresholds don’t.
What does this mixed bag of policies mean for the UK’s economic recovery? The good news out of today’s Budget was an update from the Office for Budget Responsibility, which has moved forward its most recent forecast for GDP to return to pre-pandemic levels. This is now expected to happen in the middle of next year.
After contracting an astonishing 9.9% in 2020, growth is forecast to be 4% this year (reflecting a winter dominated by lockdown, and a summer in which restrictions are expected to be lifted), followed by a specular 7.3% boom in 2022.
The more problematic news, however, is that after 2022, growth rates are expected to fall back down to business as usual: hovering around a fine, but by no means impressive, 1.6% rate.
As we continue to struggle through severe hits to the economy (another dip is predicted by the OBR this winter to account for the current lockdown), any positive growth figures might seem like good news. But if Sunak has plans to address the UK’s £2.8 trillion debt and sky-high deficits in the coming years without raising taxes further, it’s going to require a pro-growth agenda.
Kate explains that the tax hikes are not to try to pay off the mountainous debt – a political aspiration that has receded into the far distance – but merely to tread water and service it.
The bills are finally falling due and it’s not pretty. The unemployment bomb has been deferred once again with the extension of the Universal Basic Income furlough scheme to the autumn. That’s a nettle no Government wants to grasp and it will be interesting to see what happens as we get closer to September.
Worth reading Kate’s piece in full.
The HCQ Saga
We’re publishing today an original piece by Rick Bradford, an Honorary Senior Research Fellow at the University of Bristol Department of Engineering, who asks if much of the world has failed to benefit from an effective, early-stage treatment for COVID-19, hydroxychloroquine (HCQ), because of misleading early trial results. He writes:
Hydroxychloroquine is not an exotic new drug with which doctors and medical authorities have little experience. On the contrary, it has been used widely for decades to treat malaria, lupus and rheumatoid arthritis. It came to public attention as a potential treatment for COVID-19 early in 2020, not least because of President Trump’s espousal of it.
In the period March – July 2020, attention focused on the WHO-led multinational Solidarity Trial and the UK’s own Recovery Trial which addressed the efficacy of hydroxychloroquine against COVID-19.
The Chief Investigators of the Recovery project released a press statement on June 5th 2020 which stated simply, “no clinical benefit from use of hydroxychloroquine in hospitalised patients with COVID-19”.
On July 4th 2020 the Solidarity project discontinued the hydroxychloroquine and lopinavir/ritonavir trials. The interim trial results showed that hydroxychloroquine and lopinavir/ritonavir produced little or no reduction in the mortality of hospitalized COVID-19 patients when compared to standard of care. The Solidarity Trial found that all four treatments evaluated (remdesivir, hydroxychloroquine, lopinavir/ritonavir and interferon) had little or no effect on overall mortality, initiation of ventilation and duration of hospital stay in hospitalised patients.
The Recovery and Solidarity trials were exclusively carried out on seriously ill patients in hospital, rather than the early-stage patients for which there was existing evidence that hydroxychloroquine might be effective. A drug which acts against the pathogen is most relevant when the pathogen is multiplying. In the later stages of COVID-19, the illness becomes an immune-system-driven inflammatory condition, and by that time the original pathogen has already done its damage. Could it be that the negative results of the Recovery and Solidarity trials were due to their deployment to patients in an inappropriate phase of the disease? Certainly, Professor Didier Raoult from IHU-Marseille, and an early leading proponent of hydroxychloroquine, was not impressed with the Recovery trial, accusing it of being “the Marx Brothers doing science”.
In passing I note that a further multinational trial, REMAP-CAP, was also deployed only to seriously ill patients with severe pneumonia admitted to an intensive care unit (ICU). I have found no results from this study. On June 3rd 2020 it was suspended following the scare from a now infamous Lancet paper by Mehra et al which claimed the use of hydroxychloroquine increased death rates (the paper was retracted a few days later). I presume that trial was never restarted.
Another criticism of the Recovery and Solidarity trials which has been made is of the dosage regime, with the doses appearing to be substantially greater than standard practice when the drug is used against malaria, lupus or rheumatoid arthritis (see, for example, “Killing the cure: The strange war against hydroxychloroquine“).
Worth reading in full.
Stop Press: A paper on another cheap drug that has shown early strong signs of effectiveness, ivermectin, was removed this week by the journal Frontiers in Pharmacology, despite being provisionally accepted, leading to questions of fair treatment. The Scientist has more details.
The paper’s removal has drawn anger from members of the FLCCC [Front Line COVID-19 Critical Care Alliance] and its followers. In comments on Twitter and in an interview with The Scientist, the organization’s president, Pierre Kory, describes the move as “censorship.” He adds in the interview that the paper had already successfully passed through multiple rounds of review. In reversing the paper’s acceptance, the journal is “allowing some sort of external peer reviewer to comment on our paper,” he says. “I find that very abnormal.”
Ivermectin is widely used in tropical medicine to treat parasitic infections, but its use as a COVID-19 drug has been controversial since the beginning of the pandemic, with major health organizations consistently stating that there is insufficient evidence for its efficacy in prevention or treatment of the disease.
The FLCCC’s paper (also posted on the organisation’s website) reviewed epidemiological and clinical evidence on ivermectin’s use in people infected with and exposed to SARS-CoV-2. In it, the authors argued that health agencies such as the National Institutes of Health (NIH) should update their recommendations to include the drug.
Frontiers takes no position on the efficacy of ivermectin as a treatment of patients with COVID-19, however, we do take a very firm stance against unbalanced or unsupported scientific conclusions.—Frederick Fenter, Frontiers
After being contacted by The Scientist, the journal posted a statement from Frontiers’s chief executive editor, Frederick Fenter, saying that “Frontiers takes no position on the efficacy of ivermectin as a treatment of patients with COVID-19, however, we do take a very firm stance against unbalanced or unsupported scientific conclusions.”
During review of the article in what the journal refers to as “the provisional acceptance phase,” Fenter says in the statement, members of Frontiers’s research integrity team identified “a series of strong, unsupported claims based on studies with insufficient statistical significance, and at times, without the use of control groups.”
The statement continues: “Further, the authors promoted their own specific ivermectin-based treatment which is inappropriate for a review article and against our editorial policies. In our view, this paper does not offer an objective nor balanced scientific contribution to the evaluation of ivermectin as a potential treatment for COVID-19.”
The statement provided no information about why these concerns had been raised and acted on now, rather than earlier in the publication process.
Worth reading in full.
Stop Press 2: The British Ivermectin Recommendation Development (BIRD) panel has issued its recommendation on the use of ivermectin for COVID-19. It explains:
The antiparasitic medicine ivermectin, which is widely available in LMICs, has been tested in numerous clinical trials of prevention and treatment of COVID-19 with promising results. A large body of evidence on ivermectin use in COVID-19 had thus accumulated, which required urgent review by health professionals and other stakeholders to determine whether it could inform clinical practice in the UK and elsewhere. More specifically, answers were needed to the following priority questions: (i) For people with COVID-19 infection, does ivermectin compared with placebo or no ivermectin improve health outcomes?, and (ii) for people at higher risk of COVID-19 infection, does ivermectin compared with placebo or no ivermectin improve health outcomes?
On February 20th 2021, the British Ivermectin Recommendation Development (BIRD) meeting was convened in Bath, United Kingdom, to evaluate the evidence on ivermectin use for the prevention and treatment of COVID-19. Evidence to address the priority questions was evaluated by a panel of clinical experts and other stakeholders in the form of a DECIDE evidence-to-decision framework, the gold standard tool for developing clinical practice guidelines.
Find it here.
A School That’s Following Government Guidance
A Lockdown Sceptics reader has got in touch to tell us that, in line with Government guidance, his son’s school is not insisting on tests and masks, and has responded well to his emails querying their initial statements.
I just wanted to write, following the Daily Telegraph reporting that schools are banning pupils who do not have the tests, that my son’s school is not like that. I wrote an email to the school last week highlighting all the points (see below). The headmaster wrote to all parents on Tuesday confirming this and their position on masks.
“In line with Government direction, I would also wish to highlight that, whilst testing is strongly encouraged, it remains voluntary and, in those instances where parents do not wish their children to be tested (or, indeed, where the students are of an age (16 or above) when they can decide themselves not to be tested) they are still able to return to School as normal. In a similar fashion, the Government direction we are following as a School is that the wearing of masks inside buildings (for example, in classrooms and communal spaces) is recommended but not compulsory. As we gain a greater understanding of how many pupils choose not to wear a mask, we may adapt our systems to enable greater social distancing or to further reduce risk in other ways”.
I have been writing to them quite a lot and got my son excused from wearing a mask last term, highlighting that a GP letter was not required and pointing them towards the Government website. Their position seems to become more relaxed following my emails (for example, “must have completed their first test” became “should have been offered Test 1 before they return”). Maybe my emails have opened their eyes a little. I hope so.
Here is my original email.
Dear Mr XXXXX,
Good morning. I am writing in relation to the testing programme as part of the return of pupils to face to face tuition. I want to understand what the school’s position is in relation to being tested or not and the reasons behind those rules, bearing in mind the legality of any such decision.
You state in your letter dated February 25th 2021 that, “before students start face to face teaching, they must have completed their first test (Test 1)”. This is not the Government’s position. You later state that, “testing of course remains completely voluntary, although strongly encouraged.” It hasn’t been made clear what will happen if pupils do not have the tests, but I should point out what it says on the relevant government website here.
It says, “From March 8th, all children and students should return to school and college. All primary pupils should attend school from this date. All secondary pupils and college students will be offered testing from March 8th, and those who consent to testing should return to face-to-face education following their first negative test result. If you or your child (if they are aged over 18) do not consent, they will not be stopped from going back and will return in line with their school or college’s arrangements.” (emphasis added)
It is therefore perfectly clear that the tests are voluntary and children are not to be excluded if they do not have the tests. All it is saying is that if you do have the tests, you need to have a negative result before returning. This is the Government’s position and the legal position. What are the arrangements at the school for those who do not have the tests, bearing in mind what I have brought to your attention, i.e., you cannot exclude those who do not have the tests?
I look forward to your reply.
Yours sincerely
Stop Press: The Guardian asks: “Should primary schoolchildren be made to wear masks?” Communist Party and SAGE member Susan Michie says the benefits are that whatever small degree of transmission is occurring in these age groups could be limited, and it could help normalise the practice, meaning young children wearing masks may make their families more likely to accept masks. And that’s where the debate is in the Guardian.
Help For Parents of Children Who Don’t Wear Masks or Consent to Tests at School
Jo Rogers from Lawyers for Liberty is offering a useful service on Facebook for the parents of children who don’t wear masks or consent to tests.
If you don’t want conflict with the school, but want your concerns noted, click this button to provide your details.
The email below will then be sent anonymously within 48 hours from Lawyers for Liberty.
The email will not reference your child or you.
Here is the email.
Find it on Facebook here.
Poetry Corner
A Complex Post-traumatic in Covid Times
When I walk into the shop
All you see is a selfish being
Not wearing a mask as provision
But my trauma is not for your seeing
The mask represents oppression
Not only in my life, but historically
Despite now loose from their clutches
I still do not feel free
My trauma is not palatable
To the staunch covid followers
Though they do not know the abuse
Inflicted on me as child by monsters
They say, “I’m doing it to save lives”
But when I’m triggered I die daily
The manipulation ever rife
Gas lighting is not a maybe
Being under house arrest is the same
As when I was locked in my room at 3
Banging on the door with my cries
Till I was let out temporarily.
Being forced fed my food
Like the propaganda machine and their lies
If you really were humane
Why not look into my eyes
Tell me my pain doesnt matter
Or that of my fellow spirits
We are just humans coping best we can
But being pushed to our outer limits
I had too much forced upon me
So forgive me for declining the coercion
I will not be poisoned by their prick
So go ahead, cast your aspersion
Rising From the Ashes
Four readers today have written to tell us about their new business ventures since lockdown disrupted their previous employment.
My husband is a chef who lost his job as a result of the Government restrictions (not as a result of Covid). He has now set up a business in Hertfordshire making and delivering fresh pasta meal kits www.hertspasta.com.
Simpkin & Roses was a successful catering and events business, owned and run by me and my wife, and our sole source of income. We had a good reputation and were really beginning to see the rewards from 10 years of work, during which we also got married and had two children.
This all came to an abrupt end a little under a year ago when our business effectively became illegal. Due to various technicalities we have only qualified for around £6k of grants. I won’t get started on this as it’s counterproductive!
We have just launched a nationwide delivery service of really delicious frozen ready meals, all made by hand in small batches. All packaging is recyclable and compostable. We will have children’s meals available very soon but at the moment we have a selection of meals and soups, all double portions. We launched on Monday at long last, having taken until July to really come to terms with the fact that the “three weeks” was the long haul. We had our third child in November which was another complication but finally we have done it and are very excited about the future!
Anyway the website is www.simpkinandroses.com and we would love to serve any like-minded sceptics. We are running a promotion at the moment and if you use the coupon WELCOME21 at the checkout you will get 15% off.
I have been running my own bookkeeping business in the Salisbury area for 13 years but, with many of my clients forced by this wretched lockdown into closure or vastly reduced operations, I am now earning less than half of my income a year ago.
I’m simply not ready to throw in the towel so if any businesses or individuals out there would like some assistance with their bookkeeping or general office admin I’d be delighted to help – and would offer my services free of charge initially if someone is really struggling. I’d hate to see the entrepreneurial spirit crushed in small businesses who have quite enough to deal with in complying with the outrageous barriers put in their way by this government.
Please email me here.
Since losing my position at the start of Lockdown 1, I then spent much time sitting around waiting for it all to get back to normal, however as we all know things didn’t. My wife then lost her job in October and we then decided to start a new venture. I have been in the kitchen and bespoke furniture industry before, but www.huckleberryhome.co.uk started up around the kitchen table in November and I am pleased to report is now firing on all cylinders after a three month start time. It’s been a lot of hard work, has literally been done for nothing as we are still both on Universal Credit but I am delighted that it is working and hope you can share the good news.
If you have a story to share then email us here and we’ll see if we can give your new venture a boost.
COVID-1984
A few more Party slogans from readers:
CRUELTY IS COMPASSION
INFORMED CONSENT IS CONFORMED CONSENT
PROTECT THE NHS – DIE AT HOME
WE ARE NO LONGER AT WAR WITH THE SOUTH AFRICAN VARIANT; WE ARE NOW AT WAR WITH THE BRAZILIAN VARIANT. WE HAVE ALWAYS BEEN AT WAR WITH THE BRAZILIAN VARIANT
Round-up
- “Covid vaccines may stop spread ‘almost completely’ with jabs working ‘better than any of us could have imagined’” – Some good news from Public Health England for the lockdown easing in the Evening Standard
- “I was cuffed by the Covid Stasi… queueing for a coffee: This 51-year-old mother strolled two miles to get some refreshment – but fell foul of the long arm of the law” – Another depressing indication of the Covid corruption of policing, in the Mail
- “Every single prosecution under Coronavirus Act was found to be ‘unlawful’” – On the other hand, the police are not having much success bringing prosecutions under the legislation, as this video in the Metro shows
- “No jabs, no nightclubs for young antivaxers, says Covid adviser Devi Sridhar” – The Zero Covid anthropologist is making up rules for Scotland’s young people again, reports the Times
- “People with severe mental disorders have higher risk of death from COVID-19” – Emily Henderson in News Medical reviews a paper by Martin Maripuu and colleagues at Umeå University and Karolinska Institute in Sweden that finds people with severe mental disorders have a significantly increased risk of dying from COVID-19 – a four-fold difference among the elderly compared to those of a similar age
- “NHS hospitals in London are told to prepare for a ‘possible surge’ in Covid patients later this year as data shows how the virus has retreated across the capital” – The Mail reports on leaked guidance to prepare for a third wave, despite the vaccines. If the NHS is ready for it this time, does that mean we don’t all have to be confined to our homes to make up for their lack of preparedness?
- “Sweden Moves To Protect Academic Freedom After Professor Quits Covid Research Due To Harassment” – Jonathan Turley contrasts the Nordic country’s robust response to that of the United States
- “‘NINETY PER CENT of Germany’s severe COVID-19 patients have migrant background and more than half are Muslim’ despite making up 4.8% of the population – with politicians ‘afraid to tackle the problem in case they look racist’” – The Mail with an extraordinary statistic, and oddly different to the UK
- “The Divisive Nature of Covid Policies” – Watch Joe Rogan go full lockdown sceptic
- “The verdict on Johnson’s Covid battle? Fail, fail, fail” – Ewen Stewart in Conservative Woman says on any measure “this has been a miserable COVID-19 for the UK”
- “Heil the vaccine apartheid!” – Laura Perrins in Conservative Woman spies worrying echoes of history in the coming discrimination against the unvaccinated
- “Mask madness makes my (donated) blood boil” – Nicola Lund also in Conservative Woman asks why she can receive her vaccine unmasked but cannot donate blood, among other absurdities
- “Hundreds of thousands of Brits sign petition against COVID vaccine passports” – Lifesite News reports on the petition, which you can sign here
- “Lockdowns: Which ‘Experts’ Were Right?” – David Catron in the American Spectator says it’s time for a reckoning
- “Equivalent of Covid emissions drop needed every two years – study” – Guardian report on something that is definitely not any kind of motive for secretly appreciating lockdowns
- “Here’s how the Government can accelerate the lifting of lockdown” – Andrew Lilico tries to give the Government some good advice on its own terms in the Telegraph
- “Galway students told to write 2,000 word essay for breaching COVID-19 guidelines” – University students at NUI Galway have been “asked” to watch a video and write a “reflective essay” about the potential impact their actions could have on family, friends and society, reports RTE
- “T-cells recognise new Covid variants, study finds” – Times report on a new pre-print by Alison Tarke and colleagues at the La Jolla Institute for Immunology in California showing T-cell immunity is not appreciably diminished by coronavirus variants. Which, if true, makes a nonsense of this Imperial-style modelling suggesting the Brazilian variant may be able to re-infect up to 61% of people who have previously had COVID-19
- “First dose of Oxford University’s Covid vaccine causes twice as many side-effects as Pfizer’s” – First vaccine results from the ZOE Covid Symptom Study app reported in the Mail
Theme Tunes Suggested by Readers
Five today: “The Fear” by Travis, “I Won’t Back Down” by Tom Petty And The Heartbreakers, “My City Was Gone” by Pretenders, “Line Up” by Elastica and “Where’s the Freedom” by Subhumans.
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 racist babies. Christopher Rufo tweets that “the Arizona Department of Education has created an ‘equity’ toolkit claiming that babies show the first signs of racism at three months old and that white children ‘remain strongly biased in favour of whiteness’ by age five”. Spiked has the details.
Have you ever wondered if your baby is racist? You should, according to the Arizona Department of Education.
Journalist Christopher Rufo’s investigations have revealed how far critical race theory has spread in America’s institutions – including, most alarmingly, in schools.
His latest discovery is that the Arizona Department of Education has released a new “equity” toolkit intended to help families and teachers tackle racism among children. It advises that even babies as young as three months old can show racial prejudice. The evidence? They “look more at faces which match the race of their caregivers”.
According to the toolkit, by the age of two and a half kids use race to determine who their playmates should be. “Expressions of racial prejudice often peak at ages four and five”, it says. “By kindergarten, children show many of the same racial attitudes that adults in our culture hold – they have already learned to associate some groups with higher status than others.”
So what should we do about this? The toolkit says that children must be made aware that “the reality in which they are embedded ascribes unearned privileges to their whiteness”.
Worth reading in full.
Stop Press: With The Muppet Show now available on Disney+, the company has slapped a woke warning on it: “This program includes negative depictions and/or mistreatment of peoples 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.”
Paul du Quenoy in the Critic can see why.
White and class privilege also rear their ugly heads throughout the series. The otherwise innocuous-looking Scooter, a bespectacled novice who seems so nice and inoffensive in his casually preppy mien, sure does know how to get his way in the theatre in which the show is set. All he has to do is issue implicit threats at Kermit the Frog, who manages the acts, by mentioning his unseen uncle, who owns the theatre and will presumably wield all the inequitable power of finance capital if Scooter’s whims and dictates are ignored. The hateful structures of power in the Muppet universe are all too obvious, even if their fetters are invisible.
And who could ignore Statler and Waldorf, the greatest villains of them all, a pair of old white males in black tie who survey the action from the elevated comfort of their exclusive box? Named for prominent hotels that are perhaps the source of their wealth, their main function is to cast down sarcastic comments upon the poor defenceless performers while they also, to add insult to injury, mock each other for their various disabilities. At the very least, we should have a separate warning to guard us against the ugly and retrograde notion, so blatantly reinforced by The Muppet Show, that the arts only exist for the amusement and approval of rich white men.
Worth reading in full.
“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: Joggers have been told by scientists they should wear face masks when running outside near others. The Derbyshire Times has more.
Experts have warned there can be a “danger” for pedestrians when a “puffing, panting” jogger passes by them, but stressed it is safe for people to “run freely” when in wide open spaces.
The warning comes amid fears that pedestrians could inhale the air from passing joggers, putting them at possible risk of catching Covid-19.
Trish Greenhalgh, professor in primary care health sciences at the University of Oxford, told Good Morning Britain: “There is no doubt the virus is in the air, there is no doubt that you can catch it if you inhale, and that someone else has exhaled.
“The exercising jogger – the puffing and panting jogger – you can feel their breath come and you can sometimes actually feel yourself inhale it, so there’s no doubt that there is a danger there.
“40% of Covid cases happen by catching it from people who have no symptoms.
“So you’re jogging along, you think you’re fine, and then the next day you develop symptoms of Covid, but you’ve actually breathed that Covid onto someone perhaps you know, an old lady walking a dog, or something like that.”
“40% of Covid cases happen by catching it from people who have no symptoms” – that’s even higher than the Government’s mantra of one in three. In fact the studies show asymptomatic and pre-symptomatic transmission accounts for only around 0.7% of transmission, not 40%.
Stop Press 2: A new study by D. G. Rancourt reviewing the harms of mask-wearing has been published on ResearchGate. Find it here.
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:
To join in with the discussion please make a donation to the Daily Sceptic.
Profanity and abuse will be removed and may lead to a permanent ban.
Dr Christopher Murray of Gates-funded IHME, equivalent of Ferguson
Who Killed Grandma? | Nursing Home Deaths – YouTube
Apologies if it has already been posted.
This one probably deserves to be re-posted tomorrow. It’s a Media Bear ‘Rona video posted a few days ago. They have a bit of fun with the anal swab.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoofodxGV0E
Unbelievably infantile!
Continued shorting of US 10Y Treasury bonds sets new -4.25% overnight repo yield rate.
10Y Treasury Hits A Stunning -4.25% In Repo As Yields Blow Out | ZeroHedge
Yeah, it’s getting ugly out there…
This may be the reason behind the “policy blunder” of lockdown.
Gail Tverberg is arguing that Energy Return on Energy Invested ratios getting too low is the underlying reason everything is getting worse:
Why Collapse Occurs; Why It May Not Be Far Away | Our Finite World
I agree with Gail, and SRSRocco Report, and JH Kunstler. It is one reason why i think the elites will never achieve the technocratic slave state. It is probably easier for them to kill us all.
precisely – why would they bother? they don’t even need us as slaves [unlike dictators in the past] – so why should they devote their lives to administering a cumbersome and unwieldy global gulag system? they’ll just eliminate us, by far the most simple and obvious solution to [for them] the problem of our existence
i certainly agree with her opening sentence: “Collapse is a frightening subject.”
NY State piloting Vaxports:
ALERT!! It’s Not “COMING” …. It’s HERE!!! (lbry.tv)
Vax Macht Frei.
Newsom supports double masking for Californians – will not make the same mistake as Texas. https://www.zerohedge.com/covid-19/newsom-urges-double-masking-all-californians-will-not-make-terrible-mistake-texas
Are we at peak lunacy yet?
Nope. Perhaps when anal swabs replace the PCR test we can declare that we’ve reached peak lunacy.
Not so much the peak but the deepest point of the lunacy. Ouch!
Medical sodomy.
There’s far too much state-sanctioned inserting stuff in people’s bodies without informed consent going on. For many reasons we consider the anal swab to be sexual assault — and it is — but why don’t we object as strenuously to the PCR nasal swab which, by all accounts, could do way more physical damage than an anal swab? People so easily capitulated to the former but would be up in arms about the latter…at least I’d like to think so, but these days it’s not a given.
In Jacinda land a tsunami alert trumps Covid restrictions. https://www.rt.com/news/517250-new-zealand-tsunami-evacuations/
Latest Euromomo data shows no excess deaths in any of the four nations of the UK.
If anybody is still awake here is a poll to mess up. Should be pretty easy, probably only about 5 people have voted on it.
https://www.newburytoday.co.uk/poll/poll/33896/poll-have-you-had-been-invited-for-a-covid-vaccination-jab.html
I’m in the 1%
It’s a big 1%.
Big 2% now. 😉
It is now 2%. But my (three) votes made no difference. I’ll cast a few more votes later.
Four votes and no difference – either there’s huge amount of respondents or they are not counting all votes, even those from different IP addresses. Does Newbury Today have many readers? I doubt it..
3% now 😃
When you vote it says, “Thank you for your vote. It will be counted in a few minutes. So maybe there’s just a delay.” Off to cast Number Six.
4%. This is like Pennsylvania (and Georgia, Wisconsin and Michigan.
Pain to register, unfortunately.
I didn’t need to register; I just voted ‘I won’t have one’ and that was it.
There was no option to register. I voted and they said Thank you.
.
is that David Byrne ?
Swayne!
Well damn!
I thought he was dead. He was bloody brilliant in Pricilla Queen of the Desert.
Well it seems my plan to give up the rapping and take up the love song hasn’t worked. My love song has been censored. The advocates of free speech are melting heartfelt works of art designed to provoke emotion and pouring them into the bucket marked “unacceptable opinions”. You know the kind i mean. They say free speech but then they delete things they don’t like but then they continue to say they promote free speech like nothing happened. It’s crystal clear that they want free speech it’s just people like me take them at their word so they have to censor me to prove how much they love free speech.
I don’t mind. I don’t give two ducks if i’m censored by the free speech people. It’s not like they’ve anything original to offer themselves so me annoying them brightens up the kind of mind that wants to silence people who can come with things they can’t even dream about. I mean if i wasn’t me i’d be jealous of me. It’s like i provide a canvas for them to paint a picture of how free speech actually works. I for one am glad that free speech means censorship.… Read more »
Well what a thing this is – I don’t know whether we’d get on in “real life” – but here we are – both censored on the same day. Quite something. Dark days as you say.
We’d get on just fine. I can mix with the lower classes no problem.
Ah – I forgot you are part of the Royal family – I hope you’re happy with their marketing bollocks. I’m more of a down to earth Del Boy meself mate. Gawd bless you.
The “royal family” are peasants compared to my family. No German blood in our DNA.
So you’re Celtic
Pictish bro. I live in a house in the middle of a stone circle built by my ancestors 12000 years ago. I despise Celts, scots, gales and any of the rest of these savages.
Is Pictishness a protected characteristic? I do hope it is. 🙂
Rhinelander robber barons
For what it’s worth, I loved your raps. You are a welcome oasis of smutty humour in this miserable world.
Thanks. My raps were clearly funny and not offensive at all. if you’ve ever listened to someone like Biggie Smalls my raps are tame and i’d bet if the person censoring me was to meet Biggie he’d be a big fan and wouldn’t censor him.
I found them very funny. Some woke-type folk might be offended, I suppose but that’s their problem. Hope you’ll be able to entertain us again with your words.
good night, bon chance, bonnet de douche and give me all your lovin’
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TG2JtdUEMJU
Aldi trip earlier tonight, about 8pm.
Very quiet, about a dozen customers, mostly muzzled. Nobody looked scared, I think they’re just used to them.
One other besides me was barefaced plus a couple very ostentatiously wearing their nappies under their noses. Wish I’d been able to catch their eye.
No covid-safe broadcasts, yet again. Yay!!!!
No floor staff out tonight. Unmuzzled checkout operator was absolutely wonderful as we unloaded our trolley in a way that meant we could pack the stuff straight into bags with the heavies at the bottom instead of having to use the side bench. I said if there had been a tip box I’d have put something in it! To be fair, there was nobody queuing behind us and she said there was no rush.
Another good Aldi experience.
In contrast, I’d written to Who Gives A Crap about my upcoming TP order. (Fabulous company, check them out: https://uk.whogivesacrap.org/pages/our-impact ) Query was handled very effectively by someone called Sugar (!) who signed off Sending good vibes your way. Take care! Elbows bump.
Sigh!
I was in Lidl this morning, with my exemption badge, good as usual including a cheery goodbye from the guy at the self-checkouts. But their poster at the door mentions face coverings “except for those with medical exemptions”. As we all know, the exemption doesn’t have to be medical.
Only just registered this post.
I had the great pleasure of dining with him in 1974. He was an engaging gentleman, literally an imposing personality who made this young man ( at the time) feel very much at ease.
Good article in Off-Guardian to help ward off pressures to take a ‘vaccine’.
https://off-guardian.org/2021/03/04/5-ways-theyre-trying-to-trick-you-into-taking-the-covid-vaccine/
Sir Elton John talks of the National Covid Pandemic, sorry mate Pandemics are international by definition.
Sir Elton is delusional on many levels – I bet he’s looking forward to the anal swabbing however. I had a good laugh when the Russian pranksters phoned him several years ago and pretended to be Putin.
Good article indeed. To summarise, the five tricks are bribery, celebrity endorsements, forced “scarcity”, fake “popularity”, and “resistance is useless”.
The last of these is the “inevitability” argument. I remember people saying it was inevitable that the UK would join the euro currency.
Elsewhere I saw a report that an NHS employee has made a song and video with his family band encouraging people to get vaccinated. Oh yeah, I didn’t want to get vaccinated but this song has changed my mind. Infantilisation.
Nearly up to 2000 comments today. But a warning to the administrators, if you continue censoring Biker and others l’ll semi-boycott the site, as I currently do with Facebook and for the same reason. You don’t want to be like Facebook, do you?
Talking about downticks my record is 33.
OK – There’s serious shit going on here – I’ve been censored for some reason. This site is fucked – I’m out of here. I will miss some of you here. If you know how to get in touch please do.
We will miss you too. Please don’t leave.
Yes. Please don’t just go. This needs sorting- plus we’d miss you.
what happened?
My earlier post to Admin – was removed……..
umm what did you say?
Surely a glitch?
Sadly no cheezy
Write here and ask: [email protected]
Hey i’m after the title of being censored the most so what the hell do you think you’re doing being censored? You’re stealing my cool points. I’m the only black sheep of the Lockdown Skeptics family.
Hey censorship dude get rid of this guy, it’s like your’e cheating on me with him.
Brilliant – so you want the site owners to uncensor me so you can outcensor me? Fantastic.
I felt the need to comment on this particular thought:
Noted COVID expert Noam Chomsky compares anti-maskers to mass shooters
If we carry on this analogy it would be like going on a shooting rampage not actually knowing if you were armed and Chomsky would be someone running around shouting “he’s got a gun” pointing at random people and everyone else wondering why nobody is actually armed or shooting people.
I used to like Chomsky – Manufacturing Consent is very relevant today – but he’s seriously lost the plot!
He’s been locked up too long. Same, his defence of freedom and free speech has always been strong. And his work on linguistics is astounding even now.
Howard Zinn would have seen through this surely. Chris Hedges has made some excellent speeches recently. He’s still seeing the whole polticial setup as a dystopian fire sale.
Michael Parenti would have been an interesting leftist to be analysing all of this if he was still with us.
Yes. I did Linguistics at Uni when it was a very new subject. Chomsky’s work was a linchpin. However, I always regretted I was a couple of years too early for de Saussure’s work to be mainstream.
I like some of what he says, but then he says so much, it’s not really that hard to land a few points. I’ve met a few stool pigeons that have been equally profound.
Noam Chomsky is a total moron but i like him because when someone tells me they like his views i know they’re a moron too and i can cruelly mock and bully them for my own enjoyment.
Chomsky – defended Pol Pot’s regime. Barking then, barking now.
You have to wonder how the yanks would have coped if they had exemptions like us.
I’m reading “The Coddling of the American Mind” – they would call this catastrophising.
Just noticed these from May and September 2020 re Ivermectin. It was being spoken of with interest then, and in September 2020 Dr Thomas Borody was very concerned that it should be considered as a treatment for covid. How cleverly it’s been suppressed.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LAm6Q0EPvgs
https://www.ausdoc.com.au/news/dr-thomas-borody-why-he-wants-gps-prescribe-ivermectin-covid19
Conflicts of interests. Intertwined with the Gates. https://twitter.com/Kevin_McKernan/status/1367542386419773449
Great thread. To a man/woman/nonbinary the roads all lead to Gates or the Wellcome Trust
Power Trip of the Mediocre.
With some Bonfire of the vanities
Government advice can be so muddled, that in reading it I feel a fog of confusion come over me. I have to keep reminding myself that my moral conscience is clear, I have not lost my mind, it is those around me who are insane, and the maniacs who ‘lead’ and oppress us.
Take this for instance:
Breastfeeding
This literally says:
1) there is no data or evidence about whether the vaccine is safe for breast fed infants
2) breastfeeding is good for infants
Therefore:
3) the vaccine should be taken by breastfeeding mothers.
Our government is like children trying to put out a forest fire.
What’s the advice to nursing mothers regarding other vaccines?
It’s mixed. Generally it is to go for vaccination. But I thought this would be after trials which include testing and monitoring of nursing mothers during a trial of a new vaccine.
Government advice says there is no data on it, but that it must be safe.
I would have thought the mothers vulnerability to covid would be a consideration in whether the vaccine is necessary
Interesting that the babies are deciding for themselves and refusing to breastfeed from vaxxed mothers!
I always make a note of these sorts of non sequiturs when I hear them on the briefings. For example: ‘We have no evidence that the vaccine won’t work against the variants which means that we have strong reason to believe that they will work.’ Sorry – what?
Further to earlier ‘debate’ on the effectiveness of vaccines.
Alex Berenson has been a major critic of vaccines. He has been scrutinising Israeli data for weeks. However, it now appears he accepts that the Pfizer vaccine, at least, is effective since he tweeted this a few hours ago
https://twitter.com/AlexBerenson/status/1367561647661985795
1/ Based on big datasets from several countries, the real-world protection the mRNA vaccines offer (at peak power, after the second dose) looks to be settling in the 70-75% range, maybe a bit less.
i.e. about the same as my earlier estimate. Though when it comes to serious cases it’s probably better than 75% and might be nearer 90%.
Also if ADE is an issue it would have shown up by now. ADE occurs when an individual is exposed to the ‘wild’ virus. Around 20 million have had the vaccine. Several thousand must have been exposed in the last 3 months so the concerns of Cahill, Colman et al appear to be unfounded.
There is perhaps the possibility that immunity may not last and a booster may be needed but any decline looks to be slow and immunity should last beyond 12 months.
It’s time to drop the anti-Vax arguments.… Read more »
This is not anti-Vax, this is sensible:
1) Await the normal 2 year testing period outcome;
2) Weigh up for yourself whether you need or want the vaccine against the risk of Covid;
3) Spend at least as long researching a ‘vaccine’ prototype as you would for a car/tele/house. Longer in fact given all the unknowns;
4) Have faith in your god given immune system and natural herd immunity.
Can you tell me the 2-10 year outcome of this prototype ‘vaccine’? No. So in the meantime I prefer to take my chances with covid and natural antibodies and T-cell immunity. Natural health hasn’t changed just because various people and bodies want to:
Push vaccine sales/‘addiction’
Push ID cards/passports
Push test kit sales
Push tracking & tracing
Remain in power/world king
Etc….etc….etc….
World King is cute when you’re 9, but using it as part of your campaign to run a country is creepy.
Agree. That’s more or less what I’m doing. That doesn’t mean that I don’t think it’s effective though – or safe for that matter.
We’ll drop the anti_Vax arguments, when you can provide proof of the long term safety. See you in a couple of years……..
I was not party to previous ‘debate’. But I had to check who Berenson was, a journalist and thriller writer. So leaving that aside , and imagining he might conceibably be qualified in some way , his full quote said a few other things which contradict your conclusion considerably. You might want to review whether you should base your comments on this 4 part twitter.
Your last para is illogical.
Concern about mass production of novel therapies is justified. Interesting and disturbing views have been made by very well qualified people.
All the numbers I have seen quoted by government and pharmas alike are relative not absolute. The relative efficacy appears to be at best 50% for hospitalisation and 40% for death. The absolute figures struggle to get over 1%.
As even Berenson said, it might be worth real ‘at risk’ people taking these odds, but most would not if they had all the current information. The real tragedy is that they do not because its public policy not to expose them to full facts, rather constant propaganda.
What exactly are your incentives to promote that propaganda?
I’ve followed him for several weeks. He has a good grasp of data analysis.
Such as?
I know. I’ve probably read and watched more output from these people than anyone else who reads this blog. The main specific concerns were expected in the first few months.
I disagree. Most people would follow whatever advice they were given. How many people do you think know what the efficacy of the annual flu shot is?
Wow, yeah. Fabulous. I wonder if the vaccines would appear so efficacious if they were delivered before the respiratory season began rather than at the tail-end.
Or they at least gave us the data on vaccinated vs non vaccinated in good controls. To me, the seasonality impact is ignored and controls are not visibly explained.
Your comments on ADE are ridiculous sorry.
you can drop whatever arguments you like. I don’t care about ‘damaging the credibility of the anti-lockdown case’ I’m not a marketing manager. I’m only interested in what is true. whether people believe it or not is up to them.
Exactly. And what is indisputable is that vaccines can make young healthy people ill and can kill elderly and frail people. Maybe not huge numbers but significant numbers and that raises all sorts of ethical issues.
So do you not recognise the risk that mass vaccination for well established respiratory viruses will provide an environmental niche for yet more novel pathogens? Or do you believe vaccines make old people’s lungs young again?
Your comments imply you think we are dealing with a medical problem here. If it was a medical problem the NHS, PHE, Government and Big Pharma would all have been investing some of the billions wasted on the Covid response in establishing the efficacy of Ivermectin, Vit D therapy, HCQ and weight reduction programmes over the last 12 months, together with other crucial factors like T cell immunity. They haven’t. It isn’t about “saving lives”.
What we have here is an ideological assault on our freedoms.
If it isn’t that, then why haven’t we seen the same approach adopted in relation to flu viruses that have killed on a similar scale.
UK latest numbers;
Positive test ; 6573 out of 864,000 tests per day , 0.7% which must surely mean they are all or almost all false positives.
Covid patients in hospital 12k, in ICU 1.6K. As there are no other respiratory diseases patients, its difficult to see how these numbers can get smaller at this time of year.
Deaths 242 , out of a normal figure at this time of year of about 1,800. Again as no other respiratory deaths are being recorded, how can this get much smaller in March?
Comparing with France, death numbers are not much different, but French positive tests are running over 25k and patients approx double. Which makes me wonder if the big reductions in UK test and hospital numbers are due to big use of lateral flow tests and lowering CTs in PCR tests in the UK?
A snap shot of the position in the UK in any other year other than 2020 or 2021 would see nothing out of the ordinary from these figures. There is no justification for any NPI to be in effect.
Jenin Younis at AIER hits it out of the park again. She’s been spot on with all of her commentaries. I don’t think the “vaccine passport” will pass muster with the US Supreme Court given the conservative majority, but I wouldn’t have thought Sumption would cave on this one either.
https://www.aier.org/article/your-right-to-refuse-a-health-passport/
These poor kids in quarantine. https://twitter.com/Resilient_Vet/status/1367552143381643264
All for a virus that is probably, for them at a least (I’m assuming they are young and ‘average’ families), no worse than the flu.
There’s child abuse and insane child abuse!
In a society where everything is run by the brute and capricious force of consensus and ‘conspiracy theory’ is a charge levelled at any point of view that advocates caution how can there ever be whistle blowers or journalists ever again?
I first noticed that journalism had ceased when watching the reaction of “journalists” to Hillary Clinton have a weird seizure in front of them with an uncontrollable head movement. Their fawning smiles turned to horror at the thought that they might have to report something negative about her…Clinton managed to recover after a few seconds of head rocking and of course the MSM totally ignored the incident (whereas a musical and a major motion picture would have been made out of it if it had been Trump having a seizure). Journalism I believe is already dead. The way the BBC non-journos report US politics confirms it. It’s only on the internet and some magazines you find anything remotely resembling the journalism of old.
Dom Joly of the erstwhile ‘Trigger Happy TV’ says of us:
What’s really incredible about these “counter-narrative critical thinkers” is how predictable and unoriginal their replies are…it’s like a cult.
And refers to his mask (I think) as a: “tin foil twat magnet”
Saw arse from being made redundant by Remi Gaillard. One of my favourites..
https://youtu.be/BNCoaKE4S7M
Thank you. Taking a look now 🙂
That made me almost spill my coffee. The ‘snail’ one was funny too 🙂
Hmmm…and what do you think of that Nymeria?
My comment is that Dom Joly is a rolly-polly who doesn’t want to believe obesity is a risk factor for Covid. He likes the MSM cover-up on that subject.
Majorca Daily Bulletin: The side effects of the Covid vaccines in Mallorca.
https://www.majorcadailybulletin.com/news/local/2021/03/03/80199/mallorca-coronavirus-vaccines-1.html
“Side effects from AstraZeneca, Pfizer and Moderna are more frequent than from vaccines that have been around for decades, but they also clear up faster.”
That’s ok then.
If it’s really one in ten and they are that bad I’d have thought it might kill many vulnerable people. With those odds you might be better off with Covid.
Also, if they are so different from previous vaccines it’s just more evidence we don’t know what we are playing with given the short trial period.
Since one of the side effects is death, that doesn’t make me feel better. So these “vaccines” kill you quickly instead of slowly — really inspires confidence.
Yes the clear up faster side effect of death should be interesting to watch!
The downticking is definitely a technical glitch. Ignore.
I haven’t seen any sign of a technical glitch (that isn’t explainable by the count refreshing upon voting). However there is suspicious voting. I would put it down to one or more deranged individuals with multiple identities downticking everything they can. What a tragic existence.
I’d suggest upvoting anything that we see that is inappropriately down voted, and don’t be concerned if it doesn’t take the total up immediately – it just means the scumbag has been busy since you refreshed. Does anyone care about votes anyway, I never sort by popularity?