Johan Giesecke, an advisor to the Director General of the WHO, former Chief Scientist of the EU Centre for Disease Control, and former state epidemiologist of Sweden, returned to UnHerd yesterday to resume his discussion with editor Freddie Sayers, adjourned a year ago. He was one of the first major figures to come out against lockdowns last spring, saying they are not evidence-based, the correct policy is to protect the old and the frail only, and the Imperial College modelling was “not very good”.
While he admits he made some mistakes, he believes that history will judge him kindly, and says: “I think I got most of the things right, actually.”
He gives a solid defence of the outcome in Sweden, ably batting away the “neighbour argument” that says Sweden failed because Norway and Finland did better.
The differences between Sweden and its neighbours are much bigger than people realise from the outside – different systems, different cultural traditions…If you compare Sweden to other European countries [such as the UK, France, Spain, Italy, Belgium] it’s the other way round. On the ranking of excess mortality, Sweden is somewhere in the middle or below the middle of European countries. So I think it’s really Norway and Finland that are the outliers more than Sweden. … They’re more sparsely populated. There are less people per square kilometre in these two countries. There are also much fewer people who were born outside Europe living in these two countries.
He is also rightly dismissive of the charge that Sweden is currently the worst for infections in Europe. While positive cases are up, so is testing, and besides on the most important metric, excess deaths, Sweden has been far below average since the start of February.
Giesecke is direct in his unflattering comparison of the UK’s outcome with Sweden’s:
They’re very similar. And yet one of the countries has had three severe lockdowns and the other has only had voluntary or mostly voluntary measures. That tells us something I think. That lockdowns may not be a very useful tool in the long run.
He admits that he misjudged how quickly vaccines would become available, and is now quite the enthusiast. He has had the AstraZeneca jab and wants everyone to have it: “If we really want to get down to small numbers – we won’t eradicate it, but to small numbers – then I think even children should be vaccinated… I can’t see why not.” He sees vaccines as providing a way out:
If you are vaccinated with two doses and wait the right number of weeks, then… you should be able to live like you did before the pandemic. This disease is sometimes seen as something supernatural, mystical, mythical – but it’s a viral disease like all other diseases. More dangerous than some of them, but it’s not unique, Covid. So a proper vaccine used correctly protects you and means that you don’t infect other people as well…. No vaccine is 100% effective, but we don’t have this discussion about any other vaccine.
He is full of praise for the Swedish approach, and in that his liberal motivations are clear.
Look at the good things with the Swedish system…. One is the schools: we are not destroying the future for classes of children. Another is that Sweden kept to its international agreements — for example in the EU you are not supposed to close your borders with other countries, but that has happened in several countries in Europe. We have made it possible for small businesses like cafes or bicycle shops to survive the pandemic. We have kept democracy. We have trusted people. I think there are a number of benefits from not having a severe lockdown and more of them will come as we do research on this in the future.
He is dismayed by how readily people surrendered their liberty – even in Sweden. A new law has recently been passed giving the Government the power to lock down in the future if it deems it necessary.
People were willing to give up more freedom than I thought they would. It worries me — there are many democratic rules and freedoms that have been curtailed. I think that may be one of the dangerous results of this pandemic.
There is a new law — a pandemic law — which gives the Government more power than it had before, and curtails part of the freedom of the Swedish population… It’s shifted power away from parliament to some extent, which is a new thing in Sweden at least in peacetime.
During the interview Giesecke makes a number of concessions, some of which are more understandable than others. He accepts his predictions about population antibody prevalence were too high, which is fair enough. But he still appears to regard antibodies as the definitive indicator of spread, despite the considerable evidence that a significant proportion of people are exposed or infected but do not develop antibodies because they fight it off with other parts of their immune system, such as T cells. He also seems oddly unfamiliar with the scientific literature on the ineffectiveness of lockdowns, appearing to accept that they may make a difference.
One of the things I got wrong a year ago is the rate of spread of this disease. I thought it would spread quicker. And I also thought it would be more similar in different countries. We can see now that there are big differences in the rates of spread in between countries. It may have to do with lockdown, it may have to do with cultural things in these countries. But there is a big difference between countries.
He also argues that Sweden effectively did lock down, just voluntarily, saying the country had “severe restrictions”.
Sweden has had rather severe restrictions, but we based them on voluntary participation by the inhabitants instead of using laws and police. A lot of people in the world seem to think that Sweden did nothing about the Covid pandemic. That’s wrong. The entire population changed their way of living and it had profound effects on daily life for millions of Swedes, even though you weren’t fined if you were in the wrong place at the wrong time. So I would still advocate the Swedish model, even knowing all that.
The problem with this argument is that it essentially accepts the lockdowner position, that “severe” lockdowns are necessary and effective, and that the only reason Sweden could get away without one is because they did it without being forced to. It also suggests going back to normal will be fraught with risk of resurgence. These ideas are not supported by evidence, such as the evidence from US states that reopened last year and stayed open throughout the winter.
Giesecke also seems to concede Sayers’s bizarre claim that Neil Ferguson’s forecasts – of up to 510,000 deaths in the UK from an unmitigated epidemic, 250,000 from a mitigated epidemic and 20,000 with a suppression strategy – were accurate. “You may be right,” he says. “There is quite a difference between half a million and 130,000 – but, yep.”
There certainly is a difference between between 510,000 and 130,000 – a multiple of four in fact – and it’s mathematically illiterate for Sayers to suggest otherwise. Unless, of course, you assume that the lockdowns have prevented hundreds of thousands more deaths. Which lockdowners do believe, naturally, as a fundamental article of faith, despite the clear evidence from places like South Dakota and Florida that did not lock down that they are mistaken. Indeed, Ferguson’s modelling was applied to Sweden by a team at Uppsala University and the predictions were laughably wrong – they predicted 96,000 deaths by the end of June if Sweden stuck with its current policy; the actual figure was 5,333. Sayers makes no mention of this modelling embarrassment, and Giesecke does not draw his attention to it.
But perhaps Giesecke was just being polite to an interviewer who, for all his admirable open-mindedness in who he is willing to interview, does not seem to have developed antibodies to the evidence-free lockdowner ideology. Sayers even claims at one point that the Infection Fatality Rate for the UK and Sweden is as high as 0.9%. A recent meta-analysis by Professor John Ioannidis concluded that the IFR in Europe is more like 0.3%-0.4% (0.15% globally). Sayers doesn’t say where he gets the 0.9% figure from.
The interview is well worth watching in full.
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“The New ONS Study Claiming Masks Cut Infection Risk in Half and Vaccines are Better Than Natural Immunity is Riddled With False Truths and Propaganda…”
There fixed it for you Toby
https://www.lewrockwell.com/2021/09/joseph-mercola/covid-jabs-are-killing-two-people-for-every-person-saved/
Can’t think what film they’re referencing there?!?
dear downvoter, have a look at my moniker and look at the picture, a cartoon of They Live.
bet you never knew it was a documentary. Notable that JC never made a good film after that.
The New ONS Study Claiming Masks Cut Infection Risk in Half and Vaccines are Better Than Natural Immunity is a Load of Old Bollocks.
I’ve had a go at fixing it as well.
This is one of the reasons why I pay no attention to anything the Government and its lying scientists and statisticians say. If what they were saying were true, the human race would have become extinct aeons ago.
A shocking lie, and evil lie. But excess death soar after the jab
EXCESS DEATH IN UK SINCE JULY? 9,000 / BIG EXPLOSION IN GOTHENBURG
https://www.bitchute.com/video/r5locXz3ImDX/
Upcoming peaceful Stands by the Road with yellow banners
plus other anti lockdown events
don’t expect someone else to do this on your behalf
Wednesday 29th September 5.30pm
A322 Downshire Way/Twin Bridges Roundabout
Bracknell RG12 7AA
Saturday 2nd October 2pm
GRAND STAND IN THE PARK BERKSHIRE
– with a couple of guest speakers and a stroll thought the town centre at the end
Reading River Promenade
Reading RG4 8BX
Saturday 16th October 1pm
MEGA Hold the Line Stand by the Road event –
Combined Berks/Bucks/Oxon/Surrey/Hants
Bring your Yellow Boards and other banners –
Stafferton Way
Maidenhead
SL6 1AY
Saturday 30th October 2pm
SPECIAL STAND IN THE PARK WINDSOR
Alexander Park (near Bandstand) Stand in the Park
Barry Rd/Goswell Rd
Windsor
Stand in the Park Make friends – keep sane – talk freedom and have a laugh
Bracknell South Hill Park Sundays 10am & Wednesdays 2pm
Wokingham Howard Palmer Gardens RG40 2BX Sundays from 10 October 10am
Join our Telegram group http://t.me/astandintheparkbracknell
Reading River Promenade Sundays 10am
Join our Telegram group https://t.me/standindparkreading
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2021/09/28/bomb-swedish-apartment-block-targeted-witness-gang-trial/
immigrant
immigration
islam
or muslim
all missing (and I guess from all MSM narratives on the bombing), so you have to be online to know that the gang wars are all imported
Sweden has seen the sharpest rise in gang crime in Europe over the past decade, with its rate of lethal shootings climbing over the past two decades from one of the lowest in the region to one of the highest
This Telegraph article at least leaves a clue.
Sweden’s cultural revolution
In case you missed it when it was linked here a few days ago.
“I mentioned Rochdale and Rotherham once, but I think I got away with it.”
Biden gets his booster live. But on set!https://theconservativetreehouse.com/blog/2021/09/28/it-is-all-a-potemkin-village/
Problem with the image is that in the movie, They Live, the alien people are those in power. They were something more akin to Zionists and/or Freemasons. The mask wearers we encounter in everyday life are more like victims in the movie Invasion of the Body Snatchers. It’s like they’ve got an alien parasite latched onto their brains, telling them what to think.
“Modelling” Definition: telling a lie using a computer and dodgy maths.
Bollocks model 1 is used by bollocks model 2 to feed into bollocks model 3.
The results are therefore complete bollocks.
The only remarkable thing is the existence of three bollocks rather than the standard one or two.
I hear fascist dictators tend to have only one (apparently)…
To what extent are they cumulative, though? If the level of bollocks is amplified each time it’s fed through a model then that explains why they are doing it.
It depends on what kind of math is performed on the numbers: A real world measurement is alway composed of two parts, a signal part and an error part and this has to be taken into account when working with it: Adding measurements adds the error component. Multiplying them multiplies it. And so on.
But as these people had no measurements to begin with, just anecdotes, ie, stories people told them whose truthfulness can’t be determined, that’s a bit of a theoretical concern: There so-called data is nothing but junk.
So, in other words, it’s based on the s”h*t in, sh*t out” principle.
Climategate all over again.
Can someone explain why there are no error bars on the value for the reference group in all these graphs? For the other groups the CIs are quite large
Oh dear, just when you thought that you couldn’t distrust The State any less….
Same with the Zoe app and Spector
A great summary, thanks Will.
The ONS used to be good, I was thankful for them because they provided the data that kept me sane at the start of lockdown. Genuinely really sad to see their downfall.
Yes…….throughout 2020 and onwards they have provided a genuinely valuable service.
This is shocking.
Their raw data – eg, excess deaths – still looks accurate to me. It’s when they warp it to suit the imposed narratives that obviously it all falls apart.
I think you’re right. Clearly, tampering with base data becomes too obvious when there are so many using it on a historical basis.
They’ve been got at too. It shows just how far this country has sunk!
Same with the Zoe app and Spector
I share that dismay. When was it that the head of the service made that appearance that put him in the middle of the political frame?
It was a sad day in the creeping politicization of public agencies.
I think it’s unlikely the ONS will stop producing the only data that we can rely on, namely the all causes death rates, which will continue to show the truth. That’s the data that we should continue to focus on:
“How The Media Made 2020 Look Exceptional For Mortality”
http://participator.online/articles/2021/09/how_the_media_made_2020_look_exceptional_for_mortality_20210925.php
Interesting to see the ‘Smokers Paradox’ in there.
The Smoker’s Paradox is the annoying finding that smokers on average survive and recover from heart attacks better than non-smokers. It’s been a solid finding in all studies, no matter how hard the medical establishment have tried to disprove it, so now it’s just tacitly ignored and never mentioned.
However, being a smoker seems to give you a little bit of immunity against Covid as well….
Re smoking offering some protection against Covid – that is what some French researchers discovered right at the beginning of this plandemic.
… and massively increases mortality from serious causes. It’s a typical case of abuse by partial data. (Confirmation bias for addicts and the tobacco industry)
But never for the others, right? I mean, they certainly didn’t have a preconceived a political agenda they’ve kept pushing for for half of a century. No chance of confirmation bias here.
NB: A more recent example would be the tea vs coffee debate. Some people are obviously interested in proving that tea is healthy and coffee harmful. They haven’t yet managed to get the numbers for that, but within 50 years, they may well be able to find some.
Recent studies contradict it.
What do people here think is going to happen in the next year? Jab No 2 is valid for only 12 months maximum. How many people will have received Jab 3 by September 2022? How many children aged 12 and up will have had their 2nd Jab?
How many 6 months – 12 years kids will have been jabbed at least once?
What will we be using our Vaxx Passes for? They are already in use for international travel, that is a fact.
The ‘fully vaccinated’ will never be fully vaccinated.
Jabbing healthy people for cold and flu viruses offends nature.
We have seen many serious reactions to jabs – but the state ignores it.
What is going to happen to peoples’ bodies if they are jabbed multiple times with something that their immune systems just do not need?
It is criminal.
The State is ignoring the facts because digital passports and microchips are their goals, our health is of no importance.
People don’t need any ‘nanobots’ in their blood, or microchips under their skin – a simple credit-card sized card with a microchip in it, as your ‘vaccine pass’ is all that’s required.
In fact, it could even be your bank card, if your vaccine status is linked to your bank account.
Contactless entry to all manner of places – shops, hospitals, doctor’s surgeries, buses, trains, any building, every time you need to deal with a Government authority.
In Finland we pretty much have this system already – access to social security, unemployment benefits, health services, tax department, etc. – all done via our bank accounts.
All that needs to be done is to invalidate your bank codes if you refuse to ‘get vaccinated for Covid’. This flick of the switch can be made by people who couldn’t give a toss about ‘lawyers coming for them’ or ‘Nuremburg 2’.
Yes it seems like a ‘race’ is on between contactless cards and smartphones. Easier and cheaper with cards, but are the apps on phones more malleable? Real social credit systems need the apps I think.
France health cards ( the green ‘carte vitale’) are going to be replaced by an app. This links to bank acount, tax, social services etc. Easy job to include covid stuff and the national social credit app is in place.
I’ve been watching a few videos which say these jabs lose their potency after 6 months. I cannot see people eagerly rolling up their sleeves every 6 months. Continually stressing out your own immune system with these boosters will also have a disastrous effect on your health.
Lots of countries have closed their dedicated injection centres and staff have been made redundant due the lack of uptake by the public.
The cost of these centres was just too high, and civil servants doing the maths and then presenting it to the politicians are finally seeing the light. It is their taxes and pensions being spent on this as well.
I found an alternative ONS source for collating all deaths by years of age since the data for 2020 is still not available. I had to combine male and female numbers into one and then split them into cohorts 0-19, 20-39 and 40-59.
Elephant in the room?
And another
And another
Covid deaths in 2020 for these cohorts
Something feels odd about these figures – the difference between the with Covid and without Covid figures seems small, given the known over-counting that we have seen.
Good, if depressing stuff. Maybe this shows a massive level of Denial of Service?
As well as denial of service for acute conditions, it’s likely that mental illness / suicide and general ill-health caused by lockdowns and the consequent stress and financial impacts are also significant.
And that’s not likely to be all of it either, as chronic conditions (especially cancers) will in many cases take a year or two to cause death.
19 months already of being denied proper medical care is going to see swathes of people die – not from Covid, but, hey, slap ‘Covid’ on the death certificate to bump up the ‘cases’ and to scare the sheeple into more worship of the ‘vaccines’.
All working well – reduce the population, get rid of the elderly and save all that pension money. Swimming pools don’t come cheap, you know, neither does heating for horse stables.
I would love to see the figures for 2021 so far, guess we’ll have to wait for those a few months
Thanks for your efforts NC – interesting charts.
I assume that “Covid Removed” for the year 2020 means deaths that are not attributed to Covid by virtue of a positive PCR test within 28 days of departure? If neither Covid nor the vaccines account for the spike in 2019 and 2020 – do you attribute the rise due to people not getting hospital treatment – or to something else?
MY NUMBERS SEEM TO BE OUT. THE 2010 TO 2019 DATA WAS COLLATED MONTHS AGO AND I DID NOT DOUBLE CHECK THOSE NUMBERS WERE 100% ACCURATE BEFORE POSTING TODAY. PLEASE IGNORE THE ABOVE GRAPHS.
SEEMS LIKE MY DATA FOR THESE GRAPHS IS INCORRECT SO PLEASE IGNORE THEM. I’LL POST UPDATED ONES IN THE NEAR FUTURE BUT PLEASE IGNORE THE GRAPHS I POSTED TODAY.
Why would anyone get a Covid test?
I don’t think the treatment is any different for Covid. It is mainly treatment for symptoms, which are the broadly same for all respiratory viral infections. The advice for all such is to avoid contact if the symptoms are bad and most would want to retreat to their beds anyway. The only possible advantage is if you are admitted to hospital and you are might be given a specific drug.
Otherwise the only thing you won’t be able to do is wear your “I’ve had Covid” badge.
Virtue signalling seems oneof the main reasons – “Look at me, aren’t I a caring person because I get checked every five minutes so that I won’t pass the virus on to anyone else!”
Seems to be likely. I’ve had a couple of people say to me that they have a LFT prior to visiting relatives or because a child of theirs caught a cold and they did it ‘to be on the safe side’.
Social groups e.g amateur choirs local to me are asking for members to do a LFT before attending meetings.
The testing rate will never reduce at this rate: our guardians have instilled neurosis into people such that requiring all this self-examination is seen as the ‘right’ and ‘responsible’ thing to do as a thoughtful citizen. It’s become standard etiquette and normalised; non-conformity is probably going to be likened to drink-driving and smoking in cars containing children.(all normal practice when I was a child)
Spot on. The sociopathic psychosis is at slow-burn hysteria levels, given that we are looking at an infection with minimal real levels of prevalance.
It’s not just LFT testing – it’s the continued wearing of masks and anti-social distancing.
In Germany people will have to pay for tests (about 20 Euro) from 11th October onwards. Children, health sector workers will still do them at school/work for free. Employers still have to offer them for free I think as well, so the business has the costs.
Of course this is to push people to get injected, uptake is about 65%. Many public buildings/events only allow injected or recovered, even a just done test is not good enough, although we all know these people are the “most safe”, if the test is accurate.
Try telling them it’s not in their own best interest: The idea that anyone can permanently hide from an endemic virus (or that anybody hid sucessfully from it since 2020, for that matter) without completely removing himself from society is laughable — you are going to get COVID, no matter what. Then, you’ll either die or don’t. May sound harsh but it’s just a fact of life. And the sooner you’ll find out, the better, as it leaves more time for life after COVID.
Good news: Chances are you had it already and didn’t notice.
I got one while ill with covid, mainly because I wanted to check if it was ‘officially’ covid, but also because I could then tell my employer I’d had it ‘officially’, and that meant they were ok when a doctor signed me off for a further two weeks.
It’s also allowed me to opt into the government antibody testing scheme so I can get a free antibody tests (which BUPA charge £65 for). This means I can prove I’ve got antibodies and immunity if work or other organisation give me hassle over not being vaccinated.
Just remember – it’s the jab that’s the target. Not immunity.
I know. I was hoping to be able to go through this madness without having to have a test or wear a mask. Unfortunately I’ve had to do both recently due to Covid and having to have a scan in hospital (the same hospital I’m sure gave me covid!)
My husband refuses to test and he is still booked in for an eye operation next week. They have procedures for refuseniks.
Plenty do. I know one who goes for weekly tests for something to do, and because their customers expect it (?!?) Another went to see if they’ve “got it” yet (?!?)
My wife and I have a test once a month as part of the ONS scheme. We’ve been doing it for about a year now and I was happy to take part for two reasons:
Why would anyone get a Covid test?
Here are a couple of reasons:
If your symptoms are none or mild then it is handy to know if you are likely to infect someone who is more vulnerable and if you are likely to get worse. (Covid is most infectious in its early stages).
It is useful to know if you have acquired natural immunity.
Possibly relevant to this. Claire Craig has just posted the Scottish figures re faxed/unvaxed infections. Seems little, if any difference. Except for the under 40’s.
Could it be confirming the anti body honeymoon period, post second dose? If so, then it’s at best 12 weeks, just as others reported months ago.
vaxed ( not faxed ) obviously!
Did the people who made this crap up, send pictures of their members to Dick Emery when they were younger?
Not hard to see what the purpose of all this is though – preparatory work for vax passes (with prior infection not valid), and for another muzzle mandate. It’s so fucking transparent, but what can anyone do when the MSM is fully on-board with it, and most people will believe the MSM?
I was banned from FB again yesterday for saying the BBC should be nuked from orbit. But, that is precisely what is required.
It might not have been a good idea to give them a reason for excluding you.
People have the chance to fight back, but then the 77th come along and say that if any violence is used then that will just give the ‘authorities’ the chance they’ve been looking for to clamp down on dissenters.
It does seem that few are willing to actually do anything physical, so it’s back to looking for nanobots in the ‘vaccines’ and endlessly analysing graphs, statistics and pie charts, in the hope that that will… err… do something.
And if people are going to go into a discussion on ‘Climate Change’, well, that’s a never-ending topic full of lies, nonsense, half-truths, speculation, theories, conspiracy theories, and more graphs and numbers of figures all of which can’t be proved not disproved, and takes us away from the subject of Covid and the lockdowns.
What will happen if access to the Internet is only allowed if you’ve been ‘vaccinated’ for Covid?
Wouldn’t that be lovely, to be completely and utterly disconnected?Can’t get us then, with their fear and lies, which affect the cynical and awake as much as it does the normies. Can’t be part of the Beast system either. We’d survive.
Interesting to see another National Institution crap on their own reputation by turning out Susan Michie’s communist agit-prop to Princess Nut-Nut’s orders.
At least some of the population trusted some of the policy based modelled evidence making, some of the time.
Now, like the MET Office, the Royal Society etc etc with their great enthusiasm for the Glowbull Warming scam, they, like the old Russian joke, prove “There is no Truth (Pravda) in The News (Izvestia) and no News in The Truth.”
This forum is excellent at times in documenting the COVID fraud but I cannot pass links onto *slightly* sceptical friends who are *very slowly* waking up to the lies, damned lies and statistics. If they see references to a ‘global warming scam’, they may stop reading the entire blog, even if the COVID official data *is* as useful as a chocolate teapot.
Not even I believe there’s a climate change scam, although there’s considerable groupthink. It can’t be denied that 250 years of the first industrial revolution, burning large quantities of coal, and cutting down forests, have had an effect on greenhouse gas concentrations and CO2 has gone from under 300 to over 400 ppm.
It’d be better if academic researchers were encouraged to argue things out in the open. Same indeed is true with medicine, i.e. as opposed to being told by pharma what you will think and say if you want your career to go anywhere.
“This forum is excellent at times in documenting the COVID fraud but I cannot pass links onto *slightly* sceptical friends who are *very slowly* waking up to the lies, damned lies and statistics. If they see references to a ‘global warming scam’, they may stop reading the entire blog, even if the COVID official data *is* as useful as a chocolate teapot.”
This is a real issue, but there is real danger in pursuing the moving target of respectability. I’ve seen numerous lively platforms for genuine free discussion turned into sterile lockstep establishment organs by following that route.(You could argue it’s basically how the near entirety of social media became the propaganda force for elite dogmas that it has become).
Imo the “best” compromise is controlling terminology and discussion atl, while allowing complete freedom btl, and accepting that you will be smeared with the contents of the latter. Pushback should be against snowflakes who get all flouncy about what btl contributors write, and those who object should be written off..
Culturally, we need to push back against the idea that we should not tolerate real dissent
“Not even I believe there’s a climate change scam, although there’s considerable groupthink.”
This is mostly just a semantic difference, isn’t it?
It is a massive mistake to conflate the issues around climate and ecology with Covid. Plays right into the hands of the Narrative.
You need to undertake a lot more research into the climate scam if the above is the extent of your knowledge.
Are you aware that CO2 makes up just 0.04% of the earth’s atmosphere and without it there would be no life on earth?
Are you aware that C02 is pumped into greenhouses to increase production?
The simple answer to the climate scam is that we have to expect climate changes by virtue of the fact that we live on a planet whizzing through space and we are regulated by the Sun – not the newspaper BTW.
Anthropogenic Global Warming is an absolute bloody myth. We cannot regulate the planet’s temperature like an oven:
“Turn it down to Gas Mark 5.”
Interestingly none of the nutjobs in on this caper ever discuss what we would do if we faced global cooling.
Probably build more duckin windmills.
I wonder what caused the Thames Ice Fairs in the 18th century
?
Funny old world.
All those questions have alternative answers, or are irrelevant. Not at all like the plain deception of the Covid scam.
I remember Gordon Brown complaining, during the Blair government years, that nobody trusted the “official” statistics from government and so he was going to set up a new independent body to publish national statistics, a body which would be unimpeachable in its authority and truthfulness.
Its name? The Office for National Statistics.
… which it was for some time. But corruption is easier to seed than integrity to preserve.
The real messages:
> Winter is coming we need to control you again – put a mask on
> Masks work – anyone who doesn’t wear one is a cunt (especially as they are more likely not to be jabbed)
> People who wear masks are likely to be jabbed – therefore it can’t be them who are spreading it around
> We need to control you because we have to hide the fact that the jabs don’t work – they don’t prevent transmission, and they might even make deaths worse
> We have paid the news media to do as they are told, and they are lapping it up
”And we need to keep the ”be afraid” message going to make everyone believe there is still a ”state of emergency” because we’re going to renew the Coronavirus Act.”
”We have paid the news media…..” Anyone remember this from way back in 2020?
Absolutely.
Why no news or comment today on the parliamentary vote on extending the Coronavirus Act powers?
Has Toby been got at too?
Seems I was wrong…….they’re not even going to have a 90-min debate, or a vote.
There is no news about this anywhere.
Looking on the HoP web-site, it says ‘Parliament is in Recess until 18th October’.
Can anyone explain what is going on?
Time to count their fat profits?
Parliamentary democracy has sunk to a new low now. This is the Coronavirus Act for heaven’s sake!
Toby can’t find out what is happening either?
See my comment above. It’s a relief to me that democracy has not failed yet, but the lack of news about the extension vote is still disturbing
“democracy has not failed yet.”
I would love you to explain that one.
Perhaps I should have said it has not completely failed!
My comment did not appear for some reason (!) so I have recommented
See my comment above
I have looked very hard and can find no news either on this very important vote
Finally found out that there will be a debate and a parliamentary vote on the Coronavirus Act 2020 after October 18th 2021 when the House of Commons sits again. This is referred to in the ninth two monthly report on the CA 2020 on the website assets.publishing.service.gov.uk. It makes interesting reading, the government’s going to offer to allow a number of provisions to expire or be suspended in order to ensure the agreement of the House to another extension.
I posted a comment on here about half an hour ago but it has gone for some reason! There will be a debate and a parliamentary vote in October 2021 in the House of Commons on an extension of the Coronavirus Act. This is referred to in the 9th two monthly report on the assets publishing government website. It makes interesting reading
As Neil Oliver said: They are getting desperate and you can smell their fear.
That’s just another line to give people hope. The fact is that many people have been jabbed once, many twice, and some are about to get a third jab. Children aged 12 and above are now being jabbed, and the ‘vaccine passports’ have arrived, and proof of ‘vaccination’ is required for travel and keeping your job (unless you prefer jumping through many hoops at your own expense).
A miserable situation, but here we are. It’s quite clear that ‘Covid’ has been the Con of the Century, but it is the gift that keeps on giving.
If you’re not sure whether the members of the SAGE committee and your MP are ‘fearful’, why not pop round to their home and ask them for yourself?
I always counter these kind of things with the undeniable observation that the infection curve has NEVER changed when ANY country introduced masks – it continued to rise on it’s merry way. The data is in from most countries. If you make a change to a dynamic system, some change is expected. Otherwise it’s deemed as ineffective.
Mask wearing on trains positively annoys me because if somebody is sat next to me, their breath is directed sideways straight into my face 1′ away. Would be far better to expel it forwards into the seat back.
Well I’m hoping its stays as it is, very few muzzled up now, those who still do, good luck to them, their choice. Since humans appeared on the planet we have never had to be muzzled to survive.. in fact to the eugenicists who are trying to convince us they are benevolent, it rather ruins their argument
Even mask fanatics don’t claim that masks prevent infection inbound. So if any projected statistical model shows that, then it is wrong.
And if it is wrong on that, then what else is it wrong about.
Models are very susceptible to GIGO. And their prevalence is due to the widespread availability of computing power that is far in excess of the number of people competent enough to model using it.
Especially so models that were constructed expressive to present the opposite finding of reality, like these and all vaxx and lockdown related ones.
All the warming is modelled and overcomes the thermometers recording cooling.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pvuhxv1Ywd4
models that use the outputs as inputs for the next time series are susceptible to “exponential error” (IIRR there used to be a wikipedia on it but it got deleted).
This means that near perfect in = garbage out.
Correct.
A case in point, Professor Pantsdown. My Great Grandson has a better grasp on computing than Neil Ferguson and is usually pretty honest.
Although, where has that bar of chocolate gone….
The comment section under the Mail article is quite encouraging though. People are definetely seeing through and calling this BS, and that at a ratio of 100:1!
And those few who don’t, make such stupid comments that they must be from the 77th.
I’ve not looked but bet the Guardian and Times commenters will still be lapping it up!
Sample bias. The majority will either not notice, or believe it.
“ … whatever relative risk reductions there are for the various categories, the absolute risk reductions are small, less than 1%.”
Of course, this is a foundational error of the whole mythology – the vast exaggeration of real risk. I always judge the veracity of studies on two key factors : the circumstantial evidence of a dodgy source (unfortunately, the ONS has gradually been sucked into the web of politicization), and the prominence of ARR figures.
Not that the ARR is the only relevant data – but it is a key piece – a litmus test – that tends to reveal the degree to which findings are edited.
“…whether the ONS Infection Survey sample was really fit for purpose.”
That is an underlying concern. Firstly – it blithely takes test results as the dependent variable measuring ‘infection’ – a known error that was established a long tie ago, and whose persistence is a key marker of the scam. Then there have been massive issues around sampling and other assumptions.
At the very beginning, the derived figures of prevalence had some credibility (if expressing numbers at the high end of what might be expected in the real world) , but this credibility gradually waned as ‘adjustments’ began to appear – always in the same direction.
I frankly can’t be arsed to follow Will in the tedious process of crunching these numbers, since the variance from even ‘positive’ studies of mask effectiveness should have immediately thrown up questions that need to be bottomed for any credible researchers.
Basic premise of any good statistical analysis (like any good medical diagnosis) : First – just f.ing LOOK.
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2021-09-tracking-pandemic-favour-nowcasts.html
You can guess this is how they want to keep the scare going
Both claims are rubbish. Far too many experts NOT in the pay of Bill Gates and his globalist acolytes say the opposite. My immune system is keeping me safe. I have been quite healthy and I tested my Vitamin D levels the other day and they are ‘sufficient’, nevertheless as autumn has arrived I have upped my vitamin levels anyway. Natural Immunity is our best defence and we should take care of it.
There’s lies, damned lies and statistics. As usual, the civil servants make them so difficult to comprehend that they can (and have been) be interpreted to ‘prove’ anything the author wants.
I seriously doubt if the ONS reports would ever meet the requirements of the Plain English Campaign’s crystal mark. Nothing new, of course.
Those models sound like Asimov’s three laws of robotics.
Let’s remember that mask mandates remain law in Scotland. High school children are masked all day. It’s highly unlikely you’ll see more than 2 or 3 unmasked faces in a busy supermarket at the weekend. Obedience is almost total.
Yet Scotland has the highest infection rates in the UK and Europe.
Or didn’t the ONS decide to have a peak north of the border?
Same for Wales where we have a Labour government led by an over-cautious and somewhat ignorant old man in a wrinkly suit.
His wisdom fills me with confidence – not!
Tweet from Carl Heneghan
https://twitter.com/carlheneghan/status/1443171793582366722
No protocol, no peer review, no accounting for confounders, selection bias and reporting bias you couldn’t make it up – actually, it seems you can.
Statisticans have no reputation to destroy. The simple reason for that is that x% of the members of our one-off (as always) test group had property Y does not mean the probability of some other person not in the test group having property Y would be x%.
Assuming that Y would be randomly distributed among the entire population (and it isn’t) the relative frequency of Y being found when randomly examining people for it (which isn’t being done) would approach the probability of Y occurring as more and more randomly selected people are examined for it. But it’s not guaranteed to come anywhere near the actual probability for any small subgroup of the entire population: One could – by mere chance – have selected only people with Y. Or only people without Y.
No amount of junk pumped out by interested parties will ever chance this fundamental shortcoming of their so-called method: It’s literally at odds with basic math.
Good to see Mr Heneghan increasingly putting his head above the parapet again after many months of I presume enforced silence.
Me too!
I guess he didn’t want whatever happened to Tim Spector to happen to him.
A key flaw is the data set, which was based upon drawing ‘random addresses. If a household is willing to take part in this type of survey, we realistically know the demographic they probably fit into (mask wearing, lockdown loving etc etc).
How many times do you get stopped by somebody on the street wanting to do a survey and actually take the time to do it? Never pretty much, as it has 0 interest to you.
Also, surveys are just generally one of the most flawed quantitative forms of data there are, especially with how they have undertaken it:
Could go on and on. If this was peer reviewed it would be pulled to shreds. No surprises how SAGE utilizes it as data however, as it’s sheer nonsense.
For the record:
During the summer there are usually about 9,000 deaths in England and Wales each week.
Over the last two weeks reported by the ONS (week 36 and 37), there were about 11,000.
About 1000 or these 2000 “excess deaths” were probably directly due to COVID
Less than 50 of these 1000 deaths were in fully vaccinated people (5%)
About 5% of NHS beds are occupied by those suffering from COVID; another 5% are empty.
About 2/3rds of the “non-COVID” excess deaths occurred at home
Where does the 1000 come from, and what was the vaccination status of that 1000?
The number of COVID inpatients is the NHS’s fault. How many NHS beds would be occupied by COVID patients if, since the start of the “pandemic”, the NHS hadn’t been refusing to provide early treatment, and the medical establishment hadn’t been scoffing at the very idea of early treatment and sabotaging clinical trials?
To give you an idea of what might have been, here’s a paper from Spain https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7833340/#!po=34.9057 describing two nursing homes where almost all the 84 elderly residents caught COVID in the first wave in 2020; none of them died and none of them even needed to be sent to hospital. Because the doctors actually bothered to treat them before they became really ill. With extremely cheap medication, with known safety profiles. Without treatment, typically an outbreak like that would kill 20%.
The retoric always changes to fit the narrative. Why can’t people see this.
It loses me. Ffs.
Enough
In the US those who pop their clogs within 14 days of being pricked are counted as unpricked. Is that happening here?
seems to be
Of course non-medical masks don’t stop virus spread. Even if they did, it would simply weaken our natural immunity. The scientists and politicians actually told the truth at the beginning of the panicdemic by asserting that masks were useless. I have noticed a lot more people are no longer wearing these muzzles. Perhaps sanity is beginning to return.I still can’t believe how mindblowingly stupid the global response to Covid has been. However try Australia and New Zealand for stupidity on steriods.
Absolutely right. A year or so ago I read the BSI standard on this topic, and they were a bit scathing about the idea of ‘face cover’ gadgets. All should note that many of them sold to the public have tiny labels round the back that admit that they not ‘masks’, so as to avoid being done under trading standards legislation (in English english anyway; might be different in America). https://www.bsigroup.com/globalassets/localfiles/en-gb/product-certification/personal-safety/bsi-guide-for-personal-safety-equipment-0520.pdf
Perhaps they should rename the department from ONS. Office for National Bxxxxxxx (ONB), maybe.
There has been some reliable research (sorry, I can’t recall the reference) in an American medical establishment that showed that those who had caught covid-19 naturally had zero reinfections compared with the group that had been vaccinated. I think the total numbers in the study was something like 3000. Obviously how long the immunity lasts after natural infection will only be known after a period of time. But if you look at SARS 1 infections (covid-19 is SARS 2) people who had this illness continue to produce an effective immune response 16 years later.
So we need to add the ONS to the organisation such as SAGE and others setting up models to give false information to suit the government agenda. Is there any organisation left that we can trust to give accurate information based on unbiased data rather than useless models that have nearly always proved to be wrong and mostly because they are set up to give the answers that the originator wants rather than unbiased truth.
The only benefit from this rubbish is that people who take the trouble to research the truth will never believe these government appointed charlatans again. I only wish more people would search out the truth and declare this kind of rubbish as what it is.
Studies, such as this one published by the ONS, need to be policed. Science needs a police force to protect the discipline and the public. It is not right to censor these publications but they need to be scrutinised and any discrepancies or misleading information exposed for public and patient safety. They should be policed objectively and the media should be obligated to publish the findings.
Thank you Will Jones, Carl Henegan, Claire Craig and all the mathematicians/statistical analysts who are trying to ensure that we, the public, all get a fair, honest picture of what the reality is.
Something else to point out :
The report states people having regular lateral flow tests (LFTs) are more likely to test positive, but states this may be correlation rather than LFTs causing Covid, eg high risk people may simply have tests more regularly. The report states people not wearing masks are more likely to test positive, but fails to state this may not be causal, eg mask wearers may be more attentive to hygiene measures. It’s unclear why the report highlights the correlation vs causation distinction for LFTs but not for masks.