- “Could the Indian variant slow unlocking?” – “For months, we have been told that we must ‘learn to live with’ Covid,” writes Ross Clark in the Spectator. “The rise of the Indian variant is going to be a big test of this”
- “Boris sends Army into hotspots as he presses ahead with indoor drinking and dining despite SAGE warning” – MailOnline‘s summary of the SAGE forecasts and the Government’s actions
- “Pfizer and Moderna vaccines cut the risk of getting sick with COVID-19 by 94%” – The CDC compared vaccination status of 623 healthcare workers who tested positive for COVID-19 with 1,220 who tested negative, and found that those testing negative were five times as likely to have had the jab, the Daily Mail reports
- “Could the Indian variant mean AstraZeneca jab will be used for under-40s?” – If infections start to surge, the risk calculus may swing in favour of giving the AstraZeneca vaccine to young people, according to MailOnline
- “The nation needs to get out of lockdown, not linger in fear” – “Masks and social distancing have to go,” says Camilla Tominey, the Telegraph‘s Associate Editor
- “People in Wales asked not to travel abroad” – The people of Wales will soon be able to travel to a small list of countries, according to the BBC, but the Welsh Government is asking them to resist the temptation
- “Fines rescinded for Ashfield councillors accused of breaking lockdown rules” – The two Ashfield councillors who were fined for for breaking lockdown rules after they were seen posting leaflets through people’s doors have had their fines withdrawn, Chad reports
- “St Paul’s faces closure as pandemic decimates tourism cash” – St Paul’s Cathedral is facing its worst financial crisis in 300 years after the building’s income dropped by 90% in 2020, the Evening Standard reports
- “We’ve probably lost another summer” – Culture Secretary Oliver Dowden has said that Government-backed insurance against cancellation due to Covid for the events industry will only be considered once further lockdown restrictions are lifted on June 21st, according to the Independent
- “The focus on variants is becoming an obsession” – “We need to question if this constant fixation on new variants is helpful or productive,” writes UnHerd‘s pseudonymous doctor, Amy Jones
- “Have You Had Your Jab, Yet? Part 1” – In LeftLockdownSceptics, Phil Shannon wonders how things have reached such a pass that “getting vaccinated has become a political purity test rather than a purely medical issue”
- “One Day in the Life of Ivan Dennison (Covid Marshal Grade 2)” – A sardonic take on the life and work of a Covid marshal, from John Ellwood in the Conservative Woman
- “And How are the Children?” – “We have to keep returning to the question,” says Christine E. Black in Off Guardian. “And if the children are not well, we must change course to stop harming them”
- “Lockdowns and the Greater Good” – Rev Phill Sacre dispels the idea that lockdowns are for “the greater good” by taking a lesson from the movie Hot Fuzz
- “Fears loom in Spanish tourism industry as restrictions in Britain, Germany threaten summer rebound” – Continuing reluctance in both the U.K. and Germany to allow travel to Spain is putting the country’s summer tourism season at risk, El Pais reports
- “Church of God in Aylmer, Ontario to be locked, pastor and church fined” – The Church of God in Aylmer, Ontario is facing $48,000 in fines and $69,000 in legal costs, Global News reports
- “Coronavirus is airborne so stop disinfecting everything: expert” – Stop cleaning and start ventilating, says Michael Brauer, a professor in the School of Public Health at UBC in an interview with CBC’s The Dose
- “Alberta Health Service finds no Covid cases from anti-lockdown rodeo” – There was a ‘No More Lockdowns Rodeo’ in Bowden, Alberta over the Mayday weekend which drew more than 4,000 people and which the Alberta Health Service tried to stop, according to the Western Standard. Two weeks later they say they haven’t found any cases linked to the event
- “Liberals Turning Against the Lockdown Left” – The left “has always pushed a hysterical approach to both Covid spread and severity,” writes Michael Fumento in an article for the AIER, “but chinks in the armour are now appearing”
- “Vaccine Passports and Medical Paternalism” – Birsen Filip argues for Mises Wire that the great classical liberals of the past would have had no truck with vaccine passports or medical paternalism
- “Singapore Announces Lockdown-Like Restrictions As Local Covid Cases Flare Up” – Singapore is about to introduce its strictest curbs since last year’s lockdown. According to Forbes, dining in restaurants will be forbidden and outdoor gatherings restricted to just two people until at least June 13th
- “Japanese towns cancel plans to host Olympic athletes as Covid fears mount” – Towns across Japan are cancelling plans to host athletes before the Tokyo Olympics, the FT says, meaning athletes may have little opportunity to acclimatise
- “The Irregular Actions of Public Health Agencies and the Widespread Disinformation Campaign Against Ivermectin” – A statement from the Front Line COVID-19 Critical Care Alliance on the resistance to recognising the value of ivermectin in treating Covid
- “The World Health Organisation Endorses Lockdowns Forever” – Jeffrey Tucker spells out the implications of a recent WHO report for Real Clear Markets: Lockdown whenever there is a pandemic
- “Investigate the origins of COVID-19” – “We must take hypotheses about both natural and laboratory spill-overs seriously until we have sufficient data,” says a group of 18 scientists in a letter to the journal Science
- “Dr. Bhattacharya Discusses Covid and Lockdowns with Dennis Prager” – The Great Barrington Declaration Co-author makes an appearance on The Dennis Prager Show to discuss the ineffectiveness and costs of lockdown
- “DeSantis Exclusive: Pro-law, safe reopening, anti-Big Tech” – Appearing on Spicer and Co by Newsmax TV, the next President explains how he responded to the pandemic and warns of the dangers of allowing scientists to dictate policy
- “Tucker Carlson, the model GB News should follow” – Tucker is airing questions that just aren’t being asked in the U.K., says Kathy Gyngell in the Conservative Woman, as she highlight the broadcaster’s recent discussion with Dr. Peter McCullough about why U.S. doctor’s still don’t have an official treatment protocol for COVID-19. The interview is on YouTube and there is a summary on Fox News
- “The cure might be worse than the disease” – Appearing on Kevin O’Sullivan’s talkRADIO show, Toby explains why the inquiry needs to look at how SAGE came to enjoy so much influence over the Government’s decision-making. More here
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To start on a lighter note. Yesterday LS reader TheFacistCoronaFraud took exception to a video claiming to ‘factcheck’ Mike Yeadon.
In checking the link the video was overwhelmingly downvoted (most unusual for YouTube) and the comments are universally in support of Mike.
Several other readers expressed an interest in making the factcheckers day worse so attached is an update before it sinks into oblivion.
He’s quite articulate but just makes sweeping generalisations which fail to refute Mike Yeadons work.
(To be fair the main subtitle errors “Mikey Eden” are not his fault, that’s YouTube’s effort).
Winston Smith was a fact checker in 1984
Fascists’ predictions prove totally wrong. Lying Fascist tyrants contradict themselves every couple of weeks. Nobody notices. Good work, Ministry of Truth.
For globalists. The past is fluid, but the future is fixed.
Pointless trivial question, but I wonder if there is anybody actually called Winston Smith?
I really must try and get a life.
Oh, sorry, I forgot, the government won’t let me!
Any zombie would do just that
‘Home visits for essential carers’
I was initially confused by this rather good but sad Guardian article until I realised ‘essential carer’ = loving relative coming to visit.
So it has come to pass that a petition (signed by 225k to date) needs to be raised so that limited visiting rights by a single relative has to be enshrined in law.
In many cases it will be that relative who is using their life savings or home equity to pay the bills and wages of the little Hitlers running some of these ‘care homes’.
£50,000 a year to be kept in solitary confinement.
Get your elderly relative into jail. It’s free, and prolonged solitary confinement of prisoners is illegal.
Covid Anxiety Syndrome, Telegraph.
Don’t expect sympathy from me; stay home, wear you face panties, jump out of my way in the shop but don’t use it as an excuse to throw an extended sickie when told to go back to the office.
The Telegraph is giving this nonsense a veneer of respectability by quoting a couple of professors who originally identified and named Covid 19 Anxiety Syndrome, no doubt eyeing a lucrative lecture series and a few books in the future.
I do have sympathy for the children of CAS ‘sufferers’ however.
You underestimate the induced mental illness. Don’t let Covid make you blind about the reality of it – it’s serious.
Agreed RickH, Lockdown induced Repetative Behaviour Syndrome, a form of Autism would not be much fun.
Another crime for bozo, ferguson and the rest to answer for.
The profs are just ensuring the grants continue to roll in. They are just making sure the research-granters know they’ll publish any facts they pay for.
‘Other countries are restarting travel, so should we.’ Daily Mail.
Downvoted commenter Oldlandtory might have hit the nail on the head without realising it.
“All international travel should be banned on environmental grounds. The mass population of the world should only be allowed to move within their own country or region for work”
Whoops, millions on the move,encouraged by the UN
‘The absurd cost of testing for holidaymakers’ Telegraph.
We have all read tales of woe from returning travellers stuck in limbo because the results of their overpriced tests have not arrived and then being refused a refund.
How some of these cowboy companies got to be on the governments approved list will come to rival the Cash For Curtains imbroglio.
The Telegraph reports that Grant Shapps has been ‘cracking down’ to reduce the price of these tests from £300 to sixty quid.
Dippy Doo, a week or so ago when some MP was complaining about the expense of universal twice weekly testing he guestimated that these would each cost the government a tenner.
Why anyone should ever believe a word perpetually-smirking one-time get-rich-quick scheme merchant Michael Green, aka Sebastian Fox, aka Grant Shapps says is a mystery.
Anyone who wants a stick stuck up their noses and mouth’s weekly and for travel (and pay for the privilege) must be mentally ill, deranged and totally brainwashed. I’m off in my private jet with none of this hassle to a secret island.
‘£322m on adverts till 2022’
Hugo Talks (YouTube) is always spot on. No surprise they took down his previous channel.
We may not like YouTube (except for the orangutan vids) but it does have way more reach than other video platforms.
I completely missed this Hugo Talks Some More shoutout to Lockdown Sceptics last week
‘China Weibo mocks India Covid ‘crisis’ BBC
Apparently showing a Chinese rocket launch alongside Indian workers in Hazmat suits burning bodies is mocking and offensive. I hold no view on that.
Has anyone yet told the great British public that burning bodies in al fresco cremation is normal in India, it’s what Hindus do with their dead, covid or otherwise.
Gates divorce ? Do tell, I’m not generally into celebrity gossip but would make an exception for those two.
Ed, just seen it on Hugo Talks Some More YouTube.
the comments below the Mail article were hilarious
‘has she tried turning him off and on again’ etc
I can’t see a link to that Mail article but will seek it out later.
They don’t count as mere celebrities, they are politicians.
Plenty of people are speaking out against lockdown and coerced vaccinations – especially of children
…but it hasn’t made it into the narrative yet. The narrative is driven by the government and the media of which the BBC is the most important
How do we get the narrative changed? He who pays the piper calls the tune. Its time for the oil companies to get off their arses, get their wallets out and start doing what they’ve always been accused of. Who’s the boss here? Big Pharma or Big Oil? Only one way to find out…
Big oil is over, they are well invested in renewables and the Great Reset. In fact, they are the primary drivers of carbon neutral. Trump was the last gasp of any such (outmoded) movement. Any counter movement will come from a faction of the tech industries, software, retail or from the people and political class itself. Oh, and possibly the military or services.
The first question is who is the more evil one of the two?!
David Thunder sums it up eloquently and precisely.
The only wird I would delete is ‘harsh’ – any flu season will do, I firmly expect a repeat of Fall/Winter 20/21, each year until the money has run out completely, aka the currencies been reset and government debts been eliminated through hyperinflation.
Someone also suggested to remove ‘peacefully’.
I won’t endorse that, yet, but doubt it can be achieved without doing so.
The relative liberty in the UK masks what is going on in other countries like Germany or the USA.
Wonder if Sterling will survive
“aka the currencies been reset and government debts been eliminated through hyperinflation.”
Belief in that is like belief in masks and lockdowns. A mistake in thinking.
Government debt is a Gilt. A Gilt is a saving instrument – held largely by pension funds. Therefore all that is happening is people are saving a lot, paying back their private debts and generally improving their balance sheets.
The hyperinflation you are looking for will not happen because all government is doing is offsetting saving and debt repayment. When people are saving, not spending, it’s very difficult for prices to go up.
It all becomes clear if you think of it as private saving, not government borrowing. Just as you do with a bank where the bank is borrowing from you when you save with them. Yet you never hear about the terrible levels of bank borrowing causing hyperinflation.
So you think people REALLY are over-saving and that’s pushing interest rates below the lending risk level?!?
They’re dividing assets. That’s all. It isn’t very exciting. At a certain point, joint wealth is more of a liability than individual. It’s just sound business.
That’s the interesting thing in itself. You don’t normally divide assets unless you feel there are potential threats.
The distance from your head to your elbow is a lot less than from your head to your hand. Just sayin…
“Rosa Silverman investigates why some cling fearfully to the isolation of lockdown for the Telegraph”
You don’t have to agree with everything in that article to see a vivid illustration of how the Goebbels and Mengele Memorial Brigade (SPI-B) has induced a wave of illness far worse than actual Covid.
It cites some extreme examples – but ask yourself how familiar are the basic symptoms.
Was in a queue this morning, outdoors, standing as I’d normally stand. Woman, about 40, in front turns round and demands that I retreat because she ‘doesn’t feel comfortable’. I say, in that case she can go and stand behind me. She doesn’t. Apparently, the risk of death from my polluted proximity is less terrifying than the risk of losing her place in the queue.
CCP’s-China mocking cremation in India is horrible. But the backlash misses the point. Most of the cremation were not alleged covid19 victims. India has suffered due to lockdowns and excess deaths are due to lockdowns.
Epidemic in India has passed (it reached heard immunity at which point epidemic began to slow down and then it finally stopped in January, 2021 if not before). Made-up stories of new variants that are way more deadly and can bypass acquired natural immunity are (sorry) just crap. If people cared about India they would care about several hundred children dying each day (and every year) of diarrhea and tuberculosis (mainly children and younger people) and a lot more people dying in 2020. and 2021. because of the lockdowns.
Another point that is missed about China is not so much that it hid the information about the virus in the beginning (the virus probably was all over he world in Q4 of 2019), the point is that China intensly propagandized lockdowns at home and all over the world.
Just listening to the World at One on Radio 4 (I don’t know why I do it to myself – I really don’t.) And I quote… “India has reached 20 million cases – the only country other than the United States to do so…” Failing entirely to mention that their population is more than 4 times that of The States.
Apparently it’s the same in US.
https://twitter.com/AlexBerenson/status/1389556856419405826
ps. interesting article in Indian newspaper (from the above tweet): “30% of beds occupied with people with mild symptoms who don’t need them. they are using political connections to get the medical care.”
So the people whose health has been severely damaged over the 2020. by lockdowns and who suffer now from various causes including any number of respiratory pathogens (also possibly including now endemic covid19) and/or high pollution in Indian mega-cities – there’s no room for them in the Indian health system that was never able to provide good care for everyone in the first place (otherwise there would not be so many deaths due to diarrhea, tuberculosis, etc.)
*the same in US regarding media hysteria about India.
The link third from the bottom should not be buried.
Think about the findings of this poll. If you can, try to picture how massive these numbers really are, how vast the levels of misery the lockdowns caused really is ….And lockdown skeptics are considered “cruel” and “selfish.” Excerpts from poll findings:
“U.S.-based polling company Gallup, which surveyed 300,000 people across 117 countries, found that half of those with jobs earned less because of COVID-19 pandemic disruptions. This translated to 1.6 billion adults globally, it said.
“Worldwide, these percentages ranged from a high of 76% in Thailand to a low of 10% in Switzerland,” said researchers in a statement.
The poll also showed that one in three people surveyed lost their job or business due to the pandemic – translating into just over one billion people globally.
My comment: 1-in-3 people! Over ONE BILLION people globally.
“…. The COVID-19 crisis has hit workers across the world, particularly women, who are over-represented in low-paid precarious sectors such as retail, tourism and food services.
“A study by the international charity Oxfam on Thursday said the pandemic had cost women around the world $800 billion in lost income.
“These figures also varied across nations with lower income countries such as the Philippines, Kenya and Zimbabwe showing more than 60% of respondents lost their jobs or businesses, compared to ….13% in the United States.”
My Comment: So “only” 13 percent of Americans lost their jobs or businesses …. which is “only” 43 million (!) Americans
Important point: It wasn’t the virus, which poses significant health risks only to a small percentage of the population (those who have largely already lived a full life), it was the response to the virus that cause this mind-boggling scale of economic misery and carnage. Where’s the compassion for these 43 million Americans … and BILLIONS of people around the globe?
The political and bureaucratic “leaders” who mandated the lockdowns that produced this economic devastation are celebrated as enlightened, as more caring and and “compassionate” than those who questioned all these “lockdown” measures. But who really has more “blood on their hands?”
“First do no harm” is the main tenet of the Hippocratic Oath.
Who can plausibly argue that these lockdowns didn’t create massive harm to massive numbers of world inhabitants? And this harm is still being inflicted on people today.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-global-workers/one-in-two-people-globally-lost-income-due-to-the-pandemic-gallup-idUSKBN2CK0BX
Has she caught him with something he shouldn’t have, like “missing” kids on his trans-legal private moving island AKA “yacht”?