- “We have lift-off for summer holidays!” – The Daily Mail says the Government are due to relax foreign travel restrictions on June 21st, making it possible for Brits to visit ‘green list’ countries without having to take two Covid tests on return
- “No Reopening Please, We’re British” – Joseph C. Sternberg in the Wall St Journal says the reason Boris isn’t reopening quicker, in spite of Britain’s impressive vaccine rollout, is because he’s terrified of the new, all-powerful medical panjandrums barking at him from the sidelines
- “Did Covid cases plateau in March?” – Writing in the Spectator, Ross Clark considers the implications of the latest data from Imperial College’s React study, which suggests the decline in infections levelled off last month
- “The hidden death toll of lockdown” – In this week’s Spectator Diary, Professor Carl Heneghan highlights some alarming data about the cost of the lockdown
- “Pub staff will check drinkers’ phones to prove they have registered with Test and Trace” – According to the latest guidance, pub staff will be expected to check customers’ phones to ensure they have the NHS Test and Trace app, the Telegraph reports
- “Covid vaccine passports at the FA Cup final would be ‘discrimination’, ‘wrong’ and create a ‘slippery slope’” – In an interview with iNews, former Wolverhampton Wanderers goalkeeper Carl Ikeme has urged the FA not to adopt vaccine passports
- “Boris on liberty: the PM has always been against ID cards – until now” – The Spectator has published a round up of Boris’s various attacks on identity cards dating back to 2004
- “Herd immunity is within reach. So why won’t ministers talk about it?” – Herd immunity “is not just possible, but probable”, writes Fraser Nelson in the Telegraph, but “ministers still won’t be frank about their strategy”
- “Ministers are sleepwalking into a ‘zero Covid’ strategy” – Ministers claim to have rejected ‘Zero Covid’, but their plans for twice-weekly testing and vaccination of twentysomethings suggest otherwise, says Patrick O’Flynn in the Telegraph
- “Vaccine certification: when intolerance meets hypochondria” – “It is time to stop allowing fear to rule our lives,” writes Tom Moran in the Critic
- “Vallance and Whitty, kings of bad science” – Above all others, Vallance and Whitty have “shaped our political leaders’ reactions to the Covid virus”, writes Kate Dunlop in the Conservative Woman. Regrettably, they have “revealed public health science to be bad science”
- “A very convenient pandemic” – Daniel Miller poses a question in the Conservative Woman: “If the pandemic had not been assumed to exist, and the reckless and cynical interventions against it had not taken place, how would anyone know there was one?”
- “The Faucian Bargain” – Omar S. Kahn reviews Steve Deace’s book, Faucian Bargain: The Most Powerful and Dangerous Bureaucrat in American History
- “Handshakes and hugs are good for you – it’s vital they make a comeback after the pandemic” – In the long term, the benefits of handshakes and hugs may outweigh the risks, say Kimberly Dienes and Simon Nicholas Williams in the Conversation
- “Communicating the potential benefits and harms of the Astra-Zeneca COVID-19 vaccine” – Commentary on the AstraZeneca benefits and harms graphs that were shown at Wednesday’s press conference from the Winton Centre for Risk and Evidence Communication
- “Dr. Mike Yeadon” – James Delingpole interviews the Ex-Pfizer scientist for the Delingpod
- “Can lockdowns ever work?” – Mike Yeadon comes to the Pandemic podcast, hosted by Dan Astin-Gregory
- “ECHR rules obligatory vaccination may be necessary” – Deutsche Welle reports on the ruling by the the European Court of Human Rights that the Czech health policy requiring compulsory vaccination of children against nine diseases, including diphtheria, tetanus, whooping cough, hepatitis B and measles, does not violate the European Convention on Human Rights
- “In Israel, vaccine passports are already redundant” – When out and about in Israel “you barely ever, if at all, get asked to show your pass”, says Anshel Pfeffer in the Spectator. In fact, he suggests, it was not meant as a condition for entry but “as an incentive so younger people would feel they were going to get something out of being vaccinated”
- “Legault enforces 8pm pandemic curfew for Montreal” – Montreal, Gatineau, Lévis, and Quebec City are all facing renewed Covid restrictions, the Post Millennial reports
- “GraceLife Church shuttered by authorities after months of flouting COVID-19 rules” – Metal fencing has been put up around GraceLife church, Alberta and, according to the Edmonton Journal, it is to stay there until the church can prove it will abide by public health restrictions
- “Texas has fewer Covid cases than Michigan – despite nearly 20 million more people, and no restrictions” – In spite of the alarmist predictions made when the state lifted its mask mandate, Covid cases in Texas are at a record low, the FEE point out. In Michigan, meanwhile, they are surging
- “Covid’s vindication of free movement” – “The Covid pandemic proved conclusively that people and knowledge must flow freely,” says Peter C. Earle at AIER
- “AstraZeneca woes grow as Australia, Philippines, African Union curb COVID-19 shots” – More and more countries are curbing their use of the AstraZeneca vaccine, Reuters reports
- “The developing world can’t afford lockdown” – “Lockdowns are hammering the developing world,” say Spiked, highlighting research that indicates the global middle class shrank last year for the first time since 1990
- “Why should we hate ‘vaxports’” – Bridget Phetasy tells Freddy Gray why she hates the ‘vaxport’ in the latest Americano podcast
- “There cannot be any doubt we have reached herd immunity” – “That’s why there was a vaccination programme,” says Dr. Clare Craig
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“Burning electric cars must be dunked in baths of water to stop fires spreading”
…or perhaps we ought to have a moratorium about vehicles that spontaneously combust. Perhaps this isn’t the right technology to build our future on.?
They’re not so carbon neutral when they go up in flames, are they! Not to mention all the water needed to put them out. Probably equivalent to growing a couple of avocados for an eco activist’s brunch!
I’d like to see them get a lorry back builders skip and a 20ton crane into and underground car park! The ceiling is only 7ft high at best! Or, all this on a ferry or halfway down the channel tunnel!
“Richard Curtis regrets the way he wrote about women in his films”
I regret the way that Richard Curtis has curled up and died under pressure from his child about the use of the word ‘chubby’ to describe overweight people.
Chubby Checker, Fats Waller, King Tubby, Fats Domino…men who really couldn’t care less about such monikers of corpulence!
The article by Major General Charlie Herbert is a must-read. At last, we hear an expert voice on how the ground assault will not solve anything.
The move into Gaza will produce the desired, planned effect..
A global war..
This is The Great Reset Part 3….
If anything, it will be the breeding ground for even more radicalised terrorists. War begets war, only peace begets peace.
Very powerful piece by Scott Ritter;
https://www.sott.net/article/485173-Why-I-no-longer-stand-with-Israel-and-never-will-again
“Sir Patrick Vallance says release of full diary entries would breach human rights”Funny- he didn’t give a dam about human rights a few years ago.
‘Why has the Gaza ground invasion been delayed since Friday?’
“To achieve victory we must as far as possible make the enemy
blind and deaf by sealing his eyes and ears and drive his
commanders to distraction by creating confusion in their
minds”.
Mao Tse Tung, Protracted War, 1938
Hammas cares so much about the citizens they’re blockading the roads so they can’t evacuate South. More explained in this short video;
”The Israel Defense Force (IDF) slammed Hamas terrorists for blocking Gazan civilians from evacuating south as the IDF readies expanded operations in the strip, calling the move both “sinister and vile.”
“Hamas has both issued warnings to their civilians not to evacuate, and when people didn’t listen to those warnings of Hamas, they have actually stopped civilians, and have stopped convoys of Gazan civilians trying to flee from the situation,” IDF spokesman Lt. Col. Jonathan Conricus explained in a daily briefing shared to social media.”
https://www.breitbart.com/middle-east/2023/10/15/sinister-idf-blasts-hamas-stopping-gazan-civilians-evacuating/
This author explains how he thinks the Hamas attack was down to mainly incompetence and that the conspiracy theories are just that;
”Finally, Israel is a small country. A whole lot of people know each other and are related or friends with each other. This conspiracy theory requires you to believe that military personnel who had friends and family living in these communities decided to ignore calls for help and sit around playing cards while they were being butchered. Not to mention ignore attacks on their own bases and allow their fellow military personnel to be murdered, tortured, and taken hostage.
But since it is out there, let’s address it.
Most forms of this ‘trutherism’ claim that Israel’s security is so great and its intelligence apparatus so solid that there’s no way that the Hamas attack could have happened without some sort of complicity.
Sorry, no.
Libertarians, of all people, should know that governments are incompetent. Israel’s security is pretty compared to the United States because it actually tries to secure things. But it’s a long way from being secure. The best evidence of that is how many times it has failed.
Israel’s intelligence has been hyped a lot, but it’s mostly offensive intelligence. That means it’s pretty good at doing what it does now, learning the locations of enemy targets and taking them out. Its defensive intelligence has been a mixed bag at best. Israel’s track record at preventing terrorist attacks using intelligence is only a little better than ours.
Ask where a particular terrorist is and they stand a good chance of being able to answer, ask where the next terrorist attack is coming from, and the answer is no more useful than our color-coded homeland security alerts. There’s usually ‘chatter’ and some ‘sources’ say something, but ‘other sources’ say something else. Analysts pore over it and then someone higher up settles the debate.
Without having boots on the ground, Israel was relying on passive intelligence collection and on sensors and cameras, rather than on human intelligence sources and people who were actually paying close attention to what was going on.”
https://www.jihadwatch.org/2023/10/the-hamas-inside-job-truthers-dont-understand-israel-or-war
Lots of Israelis injected other Israelis with the experimental untested gunk.
Yes and that’s one good reason just in and of itself why Netanyahu has shown total disregard for the people of Israel, he turned that place into ‘Pfizer Nation’ and went full ‘Nazi’ on the citizens regarding the restrictions too, and if a bomb dropped on his head tomorrow I’m sure there’d be a party on the streets over there. I’m wondering if there was a poll just what his popularity would look like these days. If this current epic disaster is ‘political suicide’ then it’s a tragedy that he’s had to take so many innocent civilians with him, but he’s the one who at least still has breath in his body.
Struck by how the down-tickers have yet to explain why the don’t like your post. Can’t help feeling we all need to stand back and look at the bigger picture, the history and context of what’s going on. None of us can know the full details and social media just exacerbates the fear-mongering and division. So many lies, speculation and hatred that does nothing to help ordinary Israeli or Palestinian people, or humanity in general
Yes exactly. I just keep an open mind and listen to all angles really. Straight away I didn’t discount the idea it was an ‘inside job’ and found it hard to believe the IDF would not have had intelligence or let their guard down, so to speak, so that such a slaughter could ensue. Then when I heard Efrat Whatsername speak, who also is very doubtful this was just incompetence on the part of the military, I gave her more credence because she’s both Israeli and has served, whereas the above chap is American and I’ve no idea what his military expertise is, if any. However, he is allowed his opinion the same as anyone else, popular or not. But as you say, none of us know and it’s all just conjecture at the end of the day. Will the truth ever come out? Either way Netanyahu is finished.
‘U.K. lockdowns were a policy ‘failure’
No cost benefit analysis…..over £400bn spent with no cost benefit analysis…..bungling incompetence is far too generous an assessment. But it would be the triumph of hope over experience to expect this inquiry find in favour of criminal negligence…..which it so clearly should……
‘…..the Scientific Pandemic Influenza Group on Modelling (SPI-M-O)….failed to adequately assess the negative consequences of a nationwide lockdown.’
“The harms of the social distancing measures – particularly lockdown, the economic harms, the educational harms, the harms to access to healthcare, the harms to societal wellbeing … just the way we all function … mental health – were not included in any of the work that SPI-M-O did and, as far as I could tell, no one else was doing it either,”
“The question of how to avoid lockdown was never asked of us and I find that extraordinary.”
‘I think it’s fair to describe lockdown not as a public health policy, but as a failure of public health policy. [Lockdown] is what you do when all those other things you know you can do haven’t worked, it’s a last resort and it should always be that in my view.”
Reminds me to post this link to an excellent and succinct talk by Nick Hudson of Panda reviewing the evidence on the lockdowns and vaccines from an actuarial standpoint.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=hNcWbO1tY_E
Interesting 2min vid. It’s not all about the land therefore giving them more land is not the solution.
https://twitter.com/Lionroyboy/status/1714076217760981108
Double warning, by J Campbell: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_lyeO9IqJzc&list=WL&index=1 About the emerging abuse of power by the WHO & others.
This is very concerning – Reiner Fuellmich has been arrested:
https://celiafarber.substack.com/p/breaking-reiner-fuellmich-taken-from
https://www.europereloaded.com/reiner-fuellmich-taken-from-german-embassy-in-mexico-on-passport-errand-flown-to-frankfurt-and-arrested/
Indeed, very concerning especially as most judges in the West are corrupted.
https://www.bbc.com/news/health-67125230
Oh dear, showing copies of his written diary entries will contravene Unbalanced’s human rights, yet arresting someone – and looking towards prosecution – of someone just having thoughts, doesn’t?
Strange world.
I want to see the diary entry about the exponential growth graph. Is he so thick he believes epidemics grow exponentially never mind the laws of Maths nor the prior art from 1927 onwards.
Then butt out of Syria, Joe, and stop stealing their oil.
Hamas are terrorists. FACT
Ah, but facts can be partial. BBC