- “Covid outbreak throws London G7 summit into chaos” – The Prime Minister is defending the decision to hold the G7 meeting in person after two members of the Indian delegation fell ill, according to the Telegraph
- “Pneumonia and flu now kill more people than Covid” – The Times reports that Flu and Pneumonia are killing more people than Covid
- “Almost a third of recent Covid deaths in England and Wales not caused by virus” – The weekly ONS data shows that nearly 33% of people included in the official Covid death count died primarily of other causes, with the virus simply mentioned on the death certificate, the Telegraph reports
- “The ‘Covid deaths’ which are not caused by Covid” – “We have become conditioned to hearing frightening daily death figures,” writes Ross Clark, commenting on the ONS figures for the Spectator, but “the wider picture is of overall mortality running only slightly ahead of a normal year”
- “The new care home scandal” – Writing in the Spectator, Kate Andrews highlights the new scandal in care homes – residents living in ‘prison-like’ circumstances
- “Britons fly via Turkey to avoid costly quarantine” – British travellers in ‘red list’ countries are stopping off in Istanbul to avoid border quarantine and the £1,750 bill, according to the BBC
- “Shame of Starmer, the Covid lapdog who didn’t bark” – Lockdowns were Starmer’s big opportunity to “live up to his core responsibility as Leader of the Opposition”, says Bill Wright in the Conservative Woman, but “he was just not man enough”
- “The Criminalisation of Dissent” – “One of the hallmarks of totalitarian systems is the criminalisation of dissent,” writes CJ Hopkins in Off-Guardian, and “Germany has been leading the way”
- “Boris, stop frittering our money on lockdowns – it’s time to listen to the science and let us out” – “We’re in £2 trillion of trouble now and the overwhelming majority of Britons want the freedom to earn our own livings,” writes Emily Hill in Mail+. “Not in 13 days or two months. Now.”
- “Covid Vaccines: Necessity, Efficacy and Safety” – Off-Guardian republishes the latest update from the Doctors for Covid Ethics after it was censored by Medium
- “Forgotten victims of the NHS Covid response” – Dan Astin Gregory and Professor Karol Sikora discuss the toll that prioritising COVID-19 patients has taken on people with other diseases, including cancer, for the Pandemic Podcast
- “As a society, adults are responsible for looking after children, not the other way around” – Watch Dr Ros Jones explain to Mark Dolan why she thinks healthy children don’t need the vaccine on talkRADIO
- “From Pandemic to Endemic” – The latest ZOE app data
- “Germany calls for ‘global reset’ to fight pandemics” – Heralding the launch of a World Health Organisation’s research hub, German Health Minister Jens Spahn called for a “global reset” in the fight against pandemics, Reuters reports. Yikes!
- “Serbia in ‘world first’ as citizens offered €25 to have Covid vaccine” – Euronews reports that Serbia will pay its citizens 3,000 dinars as a reward for getting the vaccine, a sum equivalent to around 5% of the country’s average monthly salary
- “Cabinet introduces Coronapass for access to venues after lockdown ends” – The Cyprus cabinet has decided to introduce a “Coronapass” for people to get into hospitality venues, churches, gyms, and shops, according to the Cyprus Mail
- “New Brunswick reports first death linked to AstraZeneca vaccine” – A person in their sixties received the jab mid April and died just over a week later, Global News reports
- “Lockdowns only delay COVID-19 cases, witness testifies at hearing on Manitoba’s restrictions” – Dr Jay Bhattacharya was an expert witness for a group of churches challenging lockdown restrictions in Manitoba, Canada, according to CBC. He argued that lockdowns only delay deaths from Covid, they don’t reduce the overall quantum
- “In critical shift, US now backs patent protection waivers for COVID-19 vaccines” – The Biden Administration has said that it supports waiving intellectual property protections for COVID-19 vaccines, ABC reports
- “Imperial College Predicted Catastrophe in Every Country on Earth. Then the Models Failed” – “COVID-19 has produced no shortage of doomsaying prophets whose prognostications completely failed at future delivery,” writes Philip W. Magness at AIER. “No greater example exists than the epidemiology modelling team at Imperial College-London (ICL), led by the physicist Neil Ferguson”
- “Is This Our 1914 Moment?” – In an article for AIER, Joakim Book seeks to reconcile his pessimism at the “long-lasting horrors that will come from last year’s authoritarian power grab” with his confidence in the world’s progress
- “The Liberals Who Can’t Quit Lockdown” – In the Atlantic, Emma Green examines the curious US phenomenon that liberals are more likely to be anxious about Covid than conservatives
- “Covid Vax Opponents and Rigid Proponents… Are Both Anti-Science?” – The U.S. pause on the Johnson & Johnson jab “illustrates deep issues with science communication”, writes Dr. Vinay Prasad in Medpage Today
- “Venezuela to begin clinical trials of Cuba’s Abdala vaccine candidate” – If the trials of the Abdola vaccine are successful, the Government of Venezuela is planning to produce enough doses for four million people according to Reuters
- “The Government seem only to be looking at the harm caused by Covid rather than the harm caused by lockdown” – “If the Government is going to set itself up as the nation’s doctor they ought to follow medical principles,” says John Lee on talkRADIO – one of them being “First do no harm”
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The short answer is ‘Yes’!
The main conclusion from the pandemic is that governments should have done very little at all. If they had done so, fewer people would have died, and we would be in much better shape economically.
The progress of the virus has been remarkably uniform throughout the developed world, regardless of what governments have done.
Historical comparisons are real, modelling is the substitution of imagination for reality.
I don’t think it’s been as intelligent as imagination.
Who says imagination is intelligent?
Or, in this case, that there weren’t false assumptions fed into the modelling?
“Should We Have Relied More on Historical Comparisons, and Less on Epidemiological Models?”
Does a bear sh*t in the woods?
My response when I saw this last week was that it is basically the final vindication for all those who (correctly) characterised the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic as basically flu.
It’s a cold rather than a flu, but the significant point is that it is basically just another typical pandemic irruption of a seasonal respiratory virus, blown into a huge catastrophe by panic overreaction. Shame on them all.
“The infectivity and severity of SARS-CoV-2, whether assessed by statistical parameterisation (basic reproduction number and adjusted case or infection fatality ratios, respectively) or synoptic description (household attack rate, time to epidemic peak, and excess all-cause mortality rates), are well within the range described by respiratory viral pandemics of the last few centuries (where the 1918–20 influenza is the clear outlier)”
If those who hysterically shouted down the wise men and women calling for calm and pointing out that it was just another flu were honest, they would be apologising.
They aren’t, of course.
And yes, obviously policymakers should have looked at history rather than at manipulative, fantasy modelling results. It’s not as though we are short of precedents where panic overreactions based on modelling nonsense have led to costly disasters.
Can you think of any that didn’t involve Ferguson?
I agree, but I do believe one thing was different this time around. The French built the lab, the US paid for it, the Chinese released it and the UK helped to cover it up. That warrants some different actions – none to do with management more to do with the hangings.
Three of your four assertions are correct, but read this long article – https://www.unz.com/article/the-flying-pangolin/
Well – a statement of the bleedin’ obvious.
But – a well laid-out argument of the bleedin’ obvious is still worthwhile.
Bluntly – only the brain dead would place any faith in epidemiological modelling after the series of massive miscalculations that have occured.
Even in terms of the immediate history of this epidemic, a forecast based upon that reality is far more accurate than computer gaming.
When Vallance forecast the notorious ‘4000 deaths a day’ in the autumn, I deliberately wrote down (to avoid kidding myself) my own forecast based simply on trends and previous patterns. It was just intelligent use of historical real data – not at all sophisticated. It was essentially an intelligent guestimate.
The result was massively more accurate than any of the mathematical models.
Dominic Cummings has since confirmed that the Government did abandon its original plan at the last minute. He claims, “No10 was made aware by various people that the official plan wd lead to catastrophe.”
“Various people”? And “catastrophe” for who exactly? Was this the point they crawled out of their own little bed, and into another much, much bigger bed?
Those various people have clearly been proven wrong by Sweden, South Dakota, Florida&co.
But as nothing changes- to the contrary, they are doubling down on lockdowns et.al. as the only permitted response henceforth and are ready to sign away all their sovereignty here to the WHO in November- it is now very clear that they were and are following a totally different agenda with all this, and also that DC was and is neither in the loop nor as smart as he thinks he is.
it is now very clear that they were and are following a totally different agenda with all this, and also that DC was and is neither in the loop nor as smart as he thinks he is.
Cummings deserves a lamp post of his own, though of course lots of lamp posts will be needed.
Have they back-tested any of Prof Pantsdown’s predictions to see if any of his guff has had any merit at all, ever?
Just look at how ENORMOUSLY wrong IC was on vCJD prediction
… and the rest.
Ferguson from the Bill Gates’s Imperial College simply provides the numbers that his masters and government want. He is just a cog in the wheel, nothing more.
Exactly. A corrupt puppet.
A very rich corrupt puppet.
One can only hope he bumps into someone who can give him the attention he needs.
So long as they clean up afterwards.
“Should We Have Relied More on Historical Comparisons, and Less on Epidemiological Models?” How can this even be a rational question? Of course this should have been the case. Ferguson et al., have a lot to answer for. To then use poorly designed and disproven models as ‘evidence’ for future planning policy, borders on the insane and is at the least a sacking/resignation offence. To then continue with a policy that has wrecked lives, the economy, livelihoods, education, hospitality, psychological equilibrium, is most certainly criminally negligent and worthy of a custodial sentence.
Time to go Johnson, Hancock, Gove, Whitty, Vallance and Ferguson.
I wouldn’t count on any resignations, they’re all smug in their fantasy that they’ve saved hundreds of thousands of lives.
You’ve missed Farrar, Semple & a couple of other criminals.
Sorry for repeating, but the modelling has been done to support the required messages that created the psyop that was necessary to bring about the public response to the strategy already decided. The modellers might have over-sized egos, but they are foot soldiers, they have done what their masters paid them to do.
Of course the application of brains and a bit of historical perspective would have been better. Actually the output of a community of chimpanzees would have been better. but spending much time on this misses the point.
There is absolutely no way, given what we know about the early timeframes for such things as the Drosten RT-PCR test, that this was an accident of history, a cock-up, a mistake covered up ever since, or even just a combined effort of useless individuals. This was planned and executed, albeit with the usual errors en-route of any grand stategy. If it was any of the afore mentioned cock-ups it would have been wrapped up and swept under the carpet last summer.
Exactly. The headline and article are disingenuous.
I keep on recommending it, but the Council of Europe report on the swine ‘flu non-pandemic really is essential reading, in so far as you can see a template for what actually happened over Covid.
It’s blindingly obvious – but I bet that if you do a search of the archives for the past two years, you will find no mention in the media – a mark of the raddled nature of current journalism. Any proper investigative journalist would have been showing it like a rash.
Indeed & this is how I ended up connected to Dr Wolfgang Wodarg, who pretty much shot the last Plandemic in the face.
The problem is that much of the population (and indeed, even especially our governing classes) lacks any historical knowledge of anything before yesterday. The little they do know is that our ancestors were bad, and stupid, and that we are much, much better than them in every way. Year zero advocates must always libel the past.
‘We’ were the victims of psychological, economic and biological warfare.
It’s easier for politicians to do something rather than nothing. Bunch of cowards.
Make that, criminals.
Your headline fundamentally equates to, ‘should we use knowledge and experience or go with guesswork?’
^^^THIS^^^
No sh*t, Sherlock.
GIGO
Well as we already know it’s been a case of garbage fed into the models and consequently we got got garbage out. Too many incorrect assumptions were made by the modellers who were too arrogant to correct the mistake preferring to keep repeating the mistake instead. Most notably the assumption that 100% of the population are susceptible and that our immune systems wouldn’t work.
And that it would kill a higher proportion of those infected than it actually did.
Should we have relied more on knowledge and experience and less on the guesses of narcissists?
The answer should be obvious.
You think? Modelling is no better than medieval alchemy or fairground fortune telling. We really are going backwards.
It didn’t matter what they did as the entire episode was & remains fraud
To me, a unreconstructed non scientist, it appears that the “modellers” and “Sage” and other ( malign) influencers are at their core politically motivated, on the Brexit side of the divide, in thrall to “big” organisations such as the EU and the WHO and therefore their psychological allegiances and bents infect their allegedly professional functions – this is illustrated by the people on “independent” SAGE and it is impossible not to see their mindset/direction of travel. I include career politicians in this description; they all have skin in the game. None of them are brainless but I can imagine that once they decide on how to impart their so called knowledge and experience wrapped round their true aim, they do not do a lot of..” now am I right here, is there something I have missed, I will seek another opinion ” or listen to the little man ( old norse meaning ) on their shoulder. They also know they are currently untouchable – how often do they stare down the barrel to justify their output. Having started on a course of action they know full well is wrong, none of them have the personal integrity to admit they might be wrong – their agenda/narrative prevents that, and the politicians need to get re -elected. Kings/queens new clothes for sure or ” Breaker Morrant Syndrome”. For this reason, I cannot see that powers acquired will be handed back, July 19th regardless, without something happening that forces this to happen….