Would that journalists and broadcasters paid as much attention to places with no restrictions doing fine as they do to the latest places experiencing a Covid surge.
All eyes are currently on India and especially Delhi where, after a year of little impact, the virus is making its nasty presence felt. But as Ivor Cummins points out, India for whatever reason has a long way to go to catch up with countries in Europe and the Americas when it comes to Covid deaths. The country is not a good comparison for the UK where the virus is endemic and substantial population immunity is now present.
If only our media would spend as much time telling the population about how Florida lifted its restrictions back in September, how South Dakota never had any, and how Texas and Mississippi reopened in full at the start of March, as they do telling us about how many people are in hospital in Delhi. The latest positive-test data for these open states is in the graph above, along with two other light-restriction states, South Carolina and Georgia. Note the conspicuous lack of surge despite being basically back to normal. What more evidence do our politicians and scientists need that the threat from the virus is overblown and does not warrant social restrictions or emergency measures? Is the Government interested in data which contradict their preferred narrative?
The Telegraph today is reporting that as of June 21st – another seven weeks away – Brits will be permitted once again to attend large events without anti-social and uneconomic distancing requirements and hug one another. Our ultra-cautious scientists are advising that these things might just be okay by then. Though in case you might have thought they would then end the seemingly endless state of emergency, they have said measures such as staggering entries to venues accommodating large groups and good ventilation will still be required. What part of normal don’t they understand?
Nor is there any indication of a move to return international travel to normal, as the country faces more limitations on travel this summer – when most of the country is vaccinated – than last summer – when nobody was. What this has to do with following the science is, as ever, unclear.
What’s strange is that even in America where parts of their own country are living free and showing that the measures aren’t needed, state governments, with popular support and backed by federal agencies, just carry on with their restrictions, lifting them only very slowly and with no obvious commitment to bringing them finally to an end. It’s as though people don’t want to know. Too much has been invested in the lockdown narrative, it seems, for people to be able to cope psychologically with the trauma of facing the truth that it is fundamentally false. Too many reputations are at risk. Too many interests coincide.
Are we doomed to live forever in this Covid state of emergency? I confess it is hard to see what will prompt governments to bring it to an end, now that we live in permanent fear of the appearance of variants and believe we must continually top up the whole world’s antibodies through rolling annual programmes of vaccinations. One of the most depressing thoughts is I find it almost impossible to imagine Boris Johnson facing the camera and announcing: “My friends, our ordeal is over. The data is clear. The virus is now one among many hazards with which we daily must live. Vaccines are available to the vulnerable, as are effective treatments, and we will continually strive to find the safest ways to protect those at risk from this and other illnesses. It is time to resume our old lives. I declare the state of emergency to be over.”
Will we ever reach a point where we no longer even think about whether some activity is “Covid secure”? Where we no longer see our fellow human beings as sources of infection? It would be good to hear much more often from the Government that this is where it believes we are headed, sooner rather than later.
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There are always unintended consequences. They never learn.
Sometimes, with progress, things do get better, for example, when I was boy, many children wore leg irons to counter the effects of polio, their legs were weak. There was one boy at school, we called him popsy, because of how he walked. He came from a football family called Rush, and popsy became the only footballer in the world to ever play well wearing leg irons. I’m not shitting you. I know you would not believe it was possible, but it was. And his brother became an Anfield legend called Ian who is to this day Liverpool’s leading goalscorer. So sometimes things occur without the side effects being worse, and one thing was polio vaccine. I’m sure the covid19 vaccine is another in the vast majority of cases.
The polio vaccine was actually a vaccine though. Well, the original one was. The new oral one that doesn’t need refrigeration – not so much. In fact that one actually causes polio. Wasn’t Bill Gates involved in that one?
https://journal-neo.org/2020/09/28/gates-vaccine-spreads-polio-across-africa/
But we can’t compare covid to polio, they are nothing like each other.
“when I was boy, many children wore leg irons to counter the effects of polio”
A few did – not many – and most of the decline in the incidence of polio had actually happened before the invention of the vaccine. As with most infectious illness, the key factor was improvements in public health.
This pattern is true of most vaccinations, useful though they may be in specific circumstances.
The situation re. SARS-CoV-2 isn’t remotely similar to these instances.
Pretty sure the destruction of the youth is intentional social engineering.
Well you can always give them more vaccines. And lovely profitable drugs.
Apart (so far) from vaccine, it seems impossible to take any measure that does not have some unintended consequencesthat turns out to be equal to or worse than the original problem. For example the dearth of flu over the last year (a supposed good effect) is likely to be offset in some future flu season when our collective loss of immunity will be revealed. I expect there will be moves to find a catchup vaccine to attempt to undo some of the loss of immunity, but I fear any such patches will only add to our debt to nature even more. In any case , I hope we will be done with lockdown in the near future, it has been an act of naive madness.
The risk/benefit analysis is at the heart of almost every prescription.
What has been different with Covid is that measures (basically of poisons, like lockdowns, masks and testing) have been prescribed with no proper risk assessment and, in many cases, in direct contradiction of previous strategic evaluations.
Unknown ‘vaccines’ have been given with no proper assessment of efficacy or risk.
We haven’t lost ‘flu it has simply been renamed – Covid 1984.
Lock up children. Hide human faces from them. Knicker their own faces. Jab them with monkey gunk. Forbid interaction with other kids. Stop school. Forbid sport. Forbid play. Blight childhood.
All worth it to make zombie cretins feel safe.
Methinks the covid period will go down in the history books as the stupidest time in human history.
If they had PCR tests for witches . . .
When our daughter was seven and being treated for cancer at the Children’s Hospital her oncologist mentioned that childhood leukaemias had increased 25% in a generation. The theory was that this was reaction to the fact that children were living in much more sterile environments, less contact with other children, less play outdoors, less dirt, less exposure to germs, and hence poorer immune systems.
Well of course. I mollycoddled my precious first born in the most ridiculous (I now see!) way. It was bleach-central in my house for about 12 months. Then when the little ming vase went to nursery I was flabbergasted to find that despite the breastfeeding forever and the general ‘healthful foods always’ mantra, she was ill all the damn time! Unlike the crazed covidians though, I realised the error of my ways and can now laugh at my madness and see it for what it was – that I was veering into mental health problems. Veering into mental health problems with absolutely no self awareness seems to be where most of society now is. And I hate to denigrate my own cohort but mums are some of the worst. Most of this stupid mask-shit and ‘we can’t see granny as you’ ll kill her’ shit is frankly child abuse.
Yes. I was delighted that a slight cold has just run round my four-year-old’s class, despite masks (adults), open windows, bubbles, distanced drop offs etc.
My daughter had a slight chesty cough and husky voice for about half a day; other children are a bit worse (perhaps because I’ve ignored as many restrictions as possible & continued seeing family throughout, so better immune system?).
It never crossed my mind not to send her into school. But for the other mums – ah, WhatsApp’s been lighting up with the opportunistic virtue signalling. The competitive shoving of tests up infant noses, the debating over appropriate testing protocol and where best to procure tests from, the days their little darlings have been kept home “just in case”. Bonkers.
The week our daughter went to nursery for the first time there were cases of hand, foot and mouth (which she caught) and impetigo in her class. She, and we, were ill for pretty much the next three months while we all caught all of the various bugs her classmates had. She seems pretty robust now healthwise.
Power of the media….needs to be repressed.
File this under ‘well dur’
New Zealand and Australia are going to suffer this problem in spades. And not just in their children either. Think of all of those strains of influenza and rhinovirus and indeed coronaviruses they are not being exposed to. And how devastating it could be for them if any one of those viruses arrives in the country if they continue cutting themselves off from the world for several more years.
And isn’t this just exactly as sunitra Gupta said!!!! Oh but government knows best!
“RSV can spread when an infected person coughs or sneezes, releasing contaminated droplets into the air. Transmission usually occurs when these droplets come into contact with (or inoculate) another person’s eyes, nose, or mouth. RSV can also live for up to 25 minutes on contaminated skin (i.e. hands) and several hours on other surfaces like countertops and doorknobs.” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Respiratory_syncytial_virus#Transmission)
If the NPIs did materially curtail respiratory syncytial virus transmission, are we clear why they can’t work for SARS-CoV-2?
I’m not sure of your point? I believe that covid has only “killed” three(?) babies in the UK, all of whom were already seriously ill. RSV is indistinguishable from a common cold to you or I – yet historically it’s responsible for the deaths of around 80 babies per year in the UK. They do their best to keep it out of neonatal ICU, and we as humans do our best by not kissing and cuddling our friends babies if we have symptoms of a cold.
But what else is there? Should we all isolate at home forever to save these 80+ babies? It is a shocking number but until now no one seemed to care. Perhaps we should?
I know that if were an expectant parent I’d certainly be cheesed off if the maternity unit expected to screen me for asymptomatic covid which is unlikely to be a serious threat, and yet simultaneously not be bothered if I actually had symptoms of RSV.
Worlds gone covid crazy.
“It is too early to know for certain”
Of course. But, as a hypothesis, it is in line with everything that is known about the development of the immune system.
It’s not too early, however, to know that there is absolutely no evidence to support the use of lockdowns, as opposed to the harms caused.
It is also too early to know that the vaccines have net benefit. But that seems not to matter.
Not just the development of their immune system that is damaged by the fanatics.
Perhaps someone at New Scientist can look through the archive editions back to 1979/80. I’m pretty sure there was a front cover shot around that time of a couple of cloth capped urchins poring over a puddle with a Glasgow tenement block (or similar) in the background with a caption along the lines of “Please leave me alone while I build my immune system”. Those were the days!