- “The Lockdowns Weren’t Worth It” – Philippe Lemoine has turned his magisterial anti-lockdown essay for the Center for the Study of Partisanship and Ideology into an op ed for the Wall St Journal. If you can’t get beyond the paywall, read the long version
- “Should we be worried about another Covid spike?” – With the introduction of mass testing for school children and teachers there is every reason to “expect a shift in the epidemic curve” write Ross Clark in the Spectator. “It would be better if we turned our attention instead to the hospitalisations and death figures”
- “Covid cases go up by 2.7% week-on-week to 6,753 after more than two million extra tests” – Testing goes up, as kids go back to school, and so do the cases, MailOnline reports. But it’s a remarkably small number, given the size of the population being tested
- “After lockdown we can expect a third wave – and No 10 needs to admit it” – Fraser Nelson in the Telegraph says that politicians need to get real about the risk of cases rising and Whitty and Valance need to help the public adjust to living with the virus
- “You only need to look outside to see no one’s obeying the ban on kids playing with friends” – A law that is routinely and conspicuously broken is not really a law, Jemima Lewis points out in the Telegraph
- “Sage’s Covert Coup” – Sonia Elijah investigates SAGE members’ connections to Big Pharma, Big Tech or the Big NGOs for the Conservative Woman. The first of a series
- “Government blames Covid as it delays full UK customs checks on EU goods until 2022” – The Telegraph reports that Michael Gove is blaming Covid for delays to “taking back control” of UK borders
- “NHS performed 40% fewer heart operations in January as waiting lists hit record high” – Heart operations are one of many types of treatment that people are waiting for, the Telegraph reports
- “The virus is in retreat. Isn’t it time the public is trusted to decide how to behave?” – It’s time people are allowed to exercise their own judgement, says the leader column in this week’s Spectator
- “The West has lost its moral high ground” – “Britain has navigated this pandemic with heavy-handed state coercion,” says Lionel Shriver in the Spectator. “There were other routes to managing this disease”
- “Effect of the pandemic or lockdown? FT gets into a twist” – Freddie Sayers is amused to read an article in the FT that seems unable to decide whether falling birth rates across Europe is the fault of the pandemic or the lockdown
- “There’s a youthquake coming” – Writing in UnHerd, Juliet Nicolson reckons that the end of lockdown will lead to a cultural revolution as a new generation bursts into action
- “COVID-19 Weekly Bulletin” – The latest bulletin from the Health Advisory and Recovery Team looks at vaccine passports, for and against
- “Poles apart: why the Polish community doesn’t want the vaccine” – Olenka Hamilton explains why so many Poles are not inclined to get the jab
- “Urgent open letter from Doctors and Scientists to the European Medicines Agency regarding COVID-19 vaccine safety concerns” – A letter from Doctors for Covid Ethics about the vaccine’s side effects
- “The town that didn’t lock down” – Reason reporter Christian Britschgi visited Paso Robles, California where many businesses defied state orders to close – and caught the virus
- “Private job openings increase to the highest level in a year” – US labour market is improving as lockdown restrictions reduce, writes Robert Hughes at the AIER
- “China Urges WHO to Let It Run Global ‘Vaccine Passport’ System” – Breitbart reports on China’s apparent interest in supporting a Global Vaccine passport system
- “Spain’s Ibiza reveals plans to run its own vaccine passport scheme for travellers worldwide” – Schengen Visa News reports that Ibiza is introducing vaccine passports and the rest of the Spain is likely to follow suit
- “Covid Prescription: Get the Vaccine, Wait a Month, Return to Normal” – The CDC is paralysed by fear, says Marty Makary in the Wall Street Journal
- “It’s every man for himself’: the Texans defying end of mask mandate” – The Guardian reports that mask-wearing is continuing in Texas, even as the mandate ends
- “GraceLife Church has been charged with violating COVID-19 public health orders” – Update from the Edmonton Journal on the case of GraceLife Church, whose pastor is in jail for breaking public health orders
- “Will the Tokyo Olympics go ahead?” – Seems that they will, but without spectators from overseas, according to Philip Patrick’s notes from Tokyo in this week’s Spectator
- Sebastian Rushworth’s book is now available on Amazon after an initial ban
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Note that Shapps is only claiming to have been against lockdown for Omicron owing to its reduced virulence. He is not rowing back on earlier lockdowns, adding it “wasn’t a decision that ministers would have been able to make earlier in the coronavirus crisis”.
…Pity you didn’t have a trade union to represent the cabinet’s views, Grant. It might have saved us the lunacy of the last 3 years since there seems to be so many scaredy-cat ministers unwilling to speak out. Shapps just has no credibility for telling the truth. He always blames someone else for his decisions … It’s the French, it’s Covid, it’s the unions fault … It’s the scientists, it’s the spreadsheets! Grow a backbone Shapps. You’ve been in government 12 years!
It’s only a matter of time before Boris writes in The Telegraph (that newspaper that did so much to report the truth and give dissenters a platform during the Fakedemic) that he was totally against lockdowns, fought hard to prevent them, but was overruled in Cabinet and by SAGE.
Soon it will be a wonder how lockdowns actually happened since everybody was against them and nobody for.
Maybe we just imagined them.
I’m sorry? The Telegraph? Global Health Security ‘sponsored’ by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation? with their ‘Editor’ Paul Nuki? These are the current headlines on the GHS page
The Telegraph, a ‘paper’ I used to be subscribed to is as culpable as the rest, they just did it with a more small ‘c’ Conservative tone but the fear was ramped up by their furnding partners and they played the tune.
Ever notice how comments are disabled on all GHS reports.
..and they are still at it right now, see above, fear, fear, fear.
You should have stopped reading or listening to any msm media two years ago. Fearmongering, lead to mass formation psychosis. MSM had a major role in this. So many other sources for well researched data and covid findings, by scientists and researchers who MSM did their best to suppress and censor.
Nobody expected The Inquisition, but that’s what we got or at least a taste of it.
I’m still surprised we didn’t see any actual burnings of non-believers.
Thankfully the Javid vax mandate for the NHS was stopped just prior to implementation by brave doctors telling Javid publicly, he’s an idiot – unlike these people in the cabinet rubber stamping the scientists plans. Many people resigned and threatened to resign, but it was actually law people could be sacked if they weren’t vaccinated!
We had the Shapps inspired Covid passports and ludicrous transport restrictions (while letting over all and sundry on small boats) like masks on public transport and supermarkets.
We had government appealing to people to snitch on their neighbours. Police and drones following people on their walks. We had police regularly raiding people’s homes without a warrant. Incredible what was allowed in the name of ‘public health’.
No, I’m not buying this. There is something else going on here. First Spineless Sino comes out bleating “I told them not to do it but they wouldn’t listen” and now Shameless Shapps tries to pretend he spent his lockdown evenings under a study light laboriously putting together his own spread sheets like a pre finals student.
Do me a favour.
What exactly is motivating the volte faces I’m not sure but the stories Shapps and Sino are telling are simply lies.
Is there some early backside covering going on so that when it become socially acceptable to talk about the abject failure (and danger) of the ‘vaccines’, they will have got in early, and positioned themselves to be viewed as sceptics from the off? I am keeping my fingers crossed btw, because six months ago you would be pilloried for suggesting lockdowns were a bad idea, I am hoping that narrative creep re clot shots will appear.
“Is there some early backside covering?”
No, I don’t believe there is. The story is being changed but I suspect the apparent arse covering is part of the new story. Arse covering is too obvious.
Quite. Why didn’t these senior Cabinet members actually speak out against the lockdown fanatics and do something about it at the time? It’s rather reminiscent of post-War Germany where it was virtually impossible to find anyone who had actually been a Nazi!
Yep, they all voted for the measures, and the stab mandates.
No way back in my book. Never forgive. Never Forget.
Seconded.
MPs who:
Voted for lockdowns,
Voted for Net Zero
Clapped Zelensky
Deserve to spend the rest of their lives their lives in prison.
Now We Know What Insulate Britain Really Meanthttps://www.atangledweb.org/now-we-know-what-insulate-britain-really-meant/
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Ok, so there is the beginnings of an attempt to try to pin it all on SAGE.
It will be interesting to see if it results in a pile on or not
I’m so angry about what has been done to us over since March 2020 that I would very much like to see some of the people responsible for it mauled in a very bad way.
But I also keep reminding myself that scapegoating means many of those responsible get away with it and lessons aren’t fully learned.
I suppose if the choice is between SAGE getting all the blame, their careers, lives and credibility completely destroyed or nobody facing any consequences (like Iraq, or the financial crisis of 2007) then I guess I reluctantly chose the former. But very reluctantly.
Baby steps
When Johnson kept insisting he was “following the science”, it was obvious he was covering himself not his Sage handlers
Johnson wouldn’t know ‘science’ from a horoscope. Never underestimate how dumb he is. Not that that’s an excuse.
“there was of course no instruction manual for dealing with the first pandemic of modern times”,
Yes there was, at least there was a well established plan, which got chucked out the window on Day 3. I wonder what changed..?
Schapps never lets a day go by without finding a way into the news. Perhaps if he had time he could sort out the DVLA. No publicity in that? Oh, well, don’t bother.
Little squirt!
For normal industrial product development we’ve also got ‘scientists’ doing really clever stuff.
We filter them through a layer of engineers who are really good at risk assessment. “This proton stream powered car is brilliant but what if someone crosses the road behind it?”
The pandemic was completely lacking the engineer layer that protects the population. Instead we had scientists giving advice to Classicists who wouldn’t have a clue how to interpret or question the information.
“Classicists who wouldn’t have a clue how to interpret or question the information”
Not sure about that – I never got beyond O Level maths and I worked out this was all nonsense in March 2020.
Ditto.
same here.
As an enigeering-scientist, ‘hear hear’ Thing is with engineers, it has to work. That’s a pretty stubborn task master at times, at least one which can’t be ignored.
Absolutely perfect analysis. Thank you
Shapps with his traffic lights that hobbled the transport industry is a See You Next Tuesday.
“There was of course no instruction manual for dealing with the first pandemic of modern times.”
BS[1]
And several other similar documents that are hidden in plain sight.
The trick was to rename Covid as an unprecedented, unknown alien life form, and hence to assert that traditional management along the lines of influenza could not work. Coincidentally, or not, the WHO declared influenza to be extinct[2] when they launched the new Covid product.
[1] https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/213717/dh_131040.pdf (2011) (especially section 4.15)
[2]
Funny how there were so many lockdowns when every politician was against it.
Funny how they kept completely silent in public about their opposition as well.
Sorry grant, too little too late. I was doing as I told is no longer a defense in court.
Just to be clear, this is the same Shapps who barely a year ago threatened people with 10 year jail sentences if they failed to declare having been in a COVID ‘red list’ country.