- “Covid sufferers aren’t the only victims of the pandemic” – “Arguments as to who or what is to blame for the dramatic fall in cancer treatment over the past year is likely to rage for many years,” says Ross Clark in the Spectator. “But to blame it all on the pandemic rather than on the handling of the pandemic seems rather out of place”
- “Are MPs set to lose their favourite bar?” – The Spectator‘s Mr Steerpike hears that the Strangers Bar in the House of Commons may be set for closure, or a dramatic overhaul, in the name of Covid
- “Sniffer dogs could bolster screening at airports” – Scientists are exploring whether sniffer dogs might be used for Covid screening at airports and mass events, the BBC reports
- “Half of patients due for covid vaccine at Glasgow Hydro failed to turn up over the weekend” – As many as half of the people who were due to get jabbed at the SSE Glasgow over the weekend failed to show up, according to the Scotsman, and the local NHS service is trying to work out why
- “World’s oldest choral society accuses No 10 of strangling choirs with ‘draconian’ restrictions” – The Halifax Choral society has condemned the latest Government guidance, according to the Telegraph, because it limits indoor singing to groups of no more than six
- “Covid in Wales: Care home visiting restrictions eased” – Previously residents of care homes in Wales were only allowed to receive visits from two designated visitors, but the BBC reports they are now able to have anybody come in, provided it’s only two at a time
- “Public urged to enjoy freedoms but be sensible” – With Northern Ireland taking a step towards ending lockdown yesterday, the Irish News reports that Arlene Foster has urged the public to enjoy their new freedoms but “keep being sensible”
- “Why I will refuse to quarantine after my amber list holiday” – “I certainly won’t be locking myself away for 10 days and hiring someone else to walk my dog for me when I return from my amber list trip to Greece,” says this anonymous writer in the Telegraph
- “Dominic Cummings’ flawed lockdown fundamentalism must be challenged” – “The more Mr Cummings briefs against his former boss, and pours social media scorn on lockdown-sceptic arguments,” writes Sherelle Jacobs in the Telegraph, “the more he comes across as a vindictive former employee, vainly obsessed with his reputation and appearing intellectual”
- “What Cummings doesn’t understand” – Cummings paints Boris as a “lockdown-shy Libertarian secretly pursuing a heartless ‘herd immunity’ strategy”, but according to Freddie Sayers in UnHerd he is missing the point. The real question is how a “nominally libertarian Tory Prime Minister so easily confined his citizens to their homes for so long”
- “Facing up to fear” – “The use of behavioural psychology and specifically the weaponisation of fear were symptoms of a Government that had given up on trust and transparency,” writes Laura Dodsworth, as she describes the findings of her new book for the Critic
- “Black British Establishment Vaccine Evangelists Ditch Human Rights, Telling Black People to Get the Jab… Or Get Left Behind” – In an article for LeftLockdownSceptics, Rusere Shoniwa takes issue with a vaccine campaign video aimed at black people that warns them of the social consequences of not getting jabbed
- “How the vaccine can make Covid worse” – Writing for the Conservative Woman, Neville Hodgkinson summarises the evidence that the effect of antibody-dependent enhancement may cause the COVID-19 vaccines to worsen the effects of the virus in some people
- “The Prime Minister’s address on new Covid measures” – William Bradbury imagines a future Prime Ministerial address in a satirical piece for the Conservative Woman
- “Defenders of children need our support” – The Conservative Woman’s Kathy Gyngell reports on two initiatives mounted in the U.S. challenging the drive to vaccinate children
- “We have been lied to about vaccine passports” – “One does not have to be to be anti-vaccination to be concerned about the potential abuse of vaccine passports,” says Roger Watson in the Unity News Network. “This is something about which the U.K. Government has consistently and demonstrably lied”
- “Child Vaccination” – In episode 5 of The Pulse by HART, Dr Ros Jones and colleagues explain why they wrote a letter to the MHRA urging the regulator not to authorise the vaccination of children
- “Wearing of masks into winter may be necessary” – The Irish Health Minister Stephen Donnelly said in the Seanad yesterday that the Government needs to be able to impose emergency restrictions, including mask wearing, into the autumn or early Winter, according to the Irish Times
- “Saudi Arabia launches crackdown on anti-vaxxers” – MailOnline reports that Saudi Arabia is cranking up pressure on those choosing not to take the vaccine, with plans to bar them from pilgrimages, universities, malls, offices and from travelling overseas
- “Malta has achieved herd immunity with Covid shots, says minister” – Malta has vaccinated 70% of its adult population, becoming, according to the Health Minister Chris Fearne, the first European Union country to reach herd immunity. Reuters reports that the island has had an average of three new cases per day over the past week
- “Quebec lifts emergency COVID-19 measures while Newfoundland expands restrictions” – Quebec is creeping out of lockdown, the Toronto Sun reports, but health officials are placing communities in north-eastern Newfoundland on the second highest alert level
- “Trump says he is now certain Covid came from the Wuhan lab and U.S. intelligence agencies have not ruled out that it was a leak” – Former President Donald Trump says he has no doubt that SARS-CoV-2 emerged from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, the Daily Mail reports
- “Gretchen Whitmer apologises for violating Michigan’s Covid rules” – The Guardian reports that the Governor of Michigan has acknowledged her award as hypocrite of the week after she was photographed in a restaurant with a dozen others, tables pressed together. “Because we were all vaccinated, we didn’t stop to think about it,” the Governor said
- “New Melbourne cases one of city’s ‘more challenging’ outbreaks, experts warn” – Contact tracers in Melbourne, Australia have scrambled to combat one of the city’s “more challenging” outbreaks, 9 News reports. Dr, Todd Cameron says that test results will determine whether tougher measures are needed. So much for Zero Covid
- “Why are so many Canadians still in favour of lockdowns?” – A video by Anthony Furey on the True North website puzzling over the Canadian public’s enthusiasm for lockdowns
- “Wuhan lab theory: Revisiting past questions” – The lab leak hypothesis was initially dismissed as a conspiracy theory, but as this video from the Washington Examiner shows, those who once ridiculed the idea are now coming under scrutiny
- “Are they gonna now censor Fauci and pull him down off social media?” – Governor DeSantis has critiqued the tech giants for deplatforming people who advanced the lab leak theory, a hypothesis that is now recognised as tenable
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On the positive side, I have been away on holiday for the first time since September, and had a nice time not socially distancing with some friends. We actually attended a church service where there was not one single person wearing a mask! Takes me back to 2019. Be assured, there are groups who oppose all this nonsense and always will!
On the down side, we are still waiting for the rest of the country to catch up! If I want to go to a stadium to attend a sporting event this week, I have to wear a mask on entry (among other things). And even if I am mask exempt, I still have to wear a visor. Sod that for a lark!
And then there’s Ireland looking at imposing masks into the winter. I ask you!
And I’ll tell you something else. This no masks church announced an event to pray that there will be no “vaccine” passports. If only all churches could be like this1. Our nefarious government really have opened the gates of hell on us.
Yes, and the church leaders have walked straight through them.
Thats been my prayer for some time Hugh.
I also dont see anything wrong with saving up to move to Florida, vaccine passports are banned there.
Yes Hugh, it’s going to be a long and winding road.
A maskless church? One not occupied by Covid satanists?
God be praised.
A marxist saint? “For God and for Stalin”!
For God and for Satan?
One wonders what Britain has planned for June 18th. And then there’s the (ruin) Christmas special.
I feel more depressed than usual coming back from holiday. It was (almost) like normal for a few days, but it seems the world is still just as messed up as ever. I really do get fed up of this shambles sometimes.. Ah well, only a few more years to go…
2023 for ‘jab, trials to end and 2025 for the Apocalypse…
And yet people still don’t question how countries and States in the US are now without restrictions and not dropping like flies, all logic has flown!. They just carry on like brainwashed sheep.
Time to study Common Law.
Oui, revenons à nos moutons.
The Roger Watson article has no place ATL. His statement that the vaccines do not affect DNA is speculative at best. There are apparently studies which show RNA can reverse the normal path and travel into the nucleus of cells, the DNA.
Yes reverse transcriptases have been known about for decades!
Incidentally, the next legitimate U.S. President (Ron DeSantis) has signed an order which gives Floridians the legal right sue Big Lying Tech outfits for censoring their on line content.
Should be interesting.
I hope he has his back covered!! His is a name to watch for a future POTUS.
DeSantis has been thoroughly courageous throughout this covid insanity – a quality Boris Johnson never displayed once despite all his past talk about the values of proud historical traditions in this country of rights, freedoms and liberty going back to the Magna Carta etc etc etc… celebrating the spirit of Churchill, Thatcher etc etc etc …. DeSantis had what Boris completely lacked .. the courage to do what is right – to stand-up to the lockdown tyrants out there who want to run the country like a medical dictatorship.
DeSantis is a hero – the way things are going in Britain at the moment I’d move to Florida tomorrow if I could.
Hopefully (if the Americans see sense once again) the Governor of Florida will become President of the United States.
Sadly, despite Brexit (sorry) the foreseeable future doesn’t look bright at the moment for Britain which seems keen to turn itself into a fascistic bio-security state and with only two authoritarian candidates to choose from during election time both of which want to be the first to lead us into that nightmare techno-dictatorship.
I mean … Boris or Starmer?
What a choice?
Its like being asked if you want to be hanged or guilotined.
Yes, non- compliance is the only way..
As many as half of the people who were due to get jabbed at the SSE Glasgow over the weekend failed to show up, according to the Scotsman, and the local NHS service is trying to work out why.
Not an awful lot of “woking out” I would have tought! Expect they will blame the PO for so-called undelivered letters like they did a month or so back.
If the story is true, good to see people actually thinking the issue through.
These were described as ‘appointments’ which in my book means a mutually agreed arrangement.
I expect they were more like a summons
‘You are to report to the vaccination centre at 10.45 Saturday’.
Little wander half failed to show up.
Perhaps the special trains which were put on to take potential vaccinees to the Hydro* put off some people who have a good knowledge of 20th century history.
* I made that bit up.
Yes @karenovirus…..just in case it is not widely known in the rest of the UK, in our Gulag one does not make an appointment in the conventional way, one is summoned by letter, with about 4 days notice. We both had a 2nd letter on Monday, presumably with “we notice you did not attend your recent vaccination appointment, blah, blah etc….here is a further appointment, blah, blah.
Both went in the bin unopened; if I need to discuss any health matter with my GP I will give them a call in the normal way.
I get disappointed when a Daily Mail commenter starts with a completely reasonable statement such as
“Boris is a complete tosser” but then spoils it with “what he should of done . . .”
Yes, and those who say haitch instead of aitch.
“Under guidance issued last Tuesday by Downing Street only six choristers can perform indoors with thirty allowed outside. “
Anyone who thinks this government is behaving rationally in any way is suffering from a mental illness themselves.
1 in 666 people infected with coronavirus die with it (Ioannidis) and currently no more than 1 in 1740 people in the UK are infected with it ONS). Therefore the chance of someone dying from coronavirus in the UK at the moment is less than 1 in a million.
Restrictions need to stop – entirely – now.
Later today I have to take a thirty minute trip to the high street for essential provisions.
Can the Prime Minister tell me what provisions are being taken to ensure that I will not be endangered by
A. Slipping and breaking my hip.
B. Getting run over by a bus
C. Being attacked by a drug crazed axe wielding maniac.
D. Being struck by lightning.
I feel certain that the combined danger of these daily occurrences are more than ‘1 in a million’.
I think we went over this once before but it is worth repeating. I won’t challenge your chances of dying once infected, except to point out that Ioannidis is not the only person to have estimated the infection mortality rate and most of the others come out with significantly higher figures. But my main concern is your second calculation which I am sure is using the wrong method.
It is meaningless to talk of the chance of dying of something “at the moment”. You have to have a timescale. The probability of dying in the next second is close to zero. In the next two hundred years it is one. So I will take a year as an example. The current prevalence is irrelevant. The actual calculation is extraordinarily complicated. But as a rough approximation you could take the daily case rate (which of course will vary over the year, and has varied between 2,000 and 60,000 recently), multiply by 365 and divide by the population. Using a case rate of 2,000 I get that to be 1% or 1 in 100 chance of getting Covid. So the chances of dying of Covid over the next year are something like 1 in 66,600 (100 times 666).
I am a twit – there is an even more straightforward way of estimating your chances of dying of Covid in a year. Multiply the current death rate (about 7 a day) by 365 and divide by the population. Answer about 1 in 26,000. Of course the death rate will change – hopefully down.
Odd that Halifax Choir was the example.
If memory serves it was the revelation that several Halifax singers from two choirs had come down with Covid-like symptoms some weeks before Covid19 became a concern in the UK that started suspicion that Covid had been around longer than had been thought.
A partner of one of the choristers had been on a business trip to Wuhan and some people sang in both choirs.
Bizarre, they know it but are confident they can get away with it.
singing is now a subversive act it would seem
It’s allowed un Wales, up to 30 people (though doubtless knickered and socially distanced, how much space does that call for?). So you can sing in Rhuddlan but not in Chester.
Those who think that CCP is attempting to dominate the world, without military adventure, might believe that Covid ‘escaped’ from the Wuhan lab to damage the advanced economies, infrastructure and democratic governance of the West.
Africa does not have any of these things but what it does have is natural resources. The attached 15 minute YouTube shows how how CCP has captured these resources by turning all of the countries of Africa into colonies by means of debt*.
Replacing the European Scramble for Africa with the Chinese Monopoly of Africa without having to bother with conquering or administering those countries and with the added bonus of strategic military bases (doing to them what UK did to China with Hong Kong back in the day).
Many of the remarkably high number of replies, now 11k, are from African technicians and others in the know from the inside.
The gist is covered in the first two minutes but the video is well worth watching in full.
*with the sole exception of Swaziland.
Sorry, can’t do links from Android.
“In an article for LeftLockdownSceptics, Rusere Shoniwa takes issue with a vaccine campaign video aimed at black people that warns them of the social consequences of not getting jabbed”
A really excellent article for anyone concerned about the patronizing implicit insults hurled at the black community by ‘Uncle Tom’ Henry and sundry other gong-chasers using skin colour as an establishment weapon.
An interesting addendum to this article is that a rational letter responding to an article in the BMJ entitled “ Do doctors have to have the covid-19 vaccine? has now been removed.
Medicine is being corrupted on a daily basis.
I tried to read that lengthy article but it seemed to ramble on before getting to what I’m sure were very interesting points.
It’s a really good read….one of the things that I took as a positive was that Sir Lenny Henry is diving head first into his new role of “public health expert” with gusto.
Currently awaiting his response to the email I have just sent him regarding the infected, weeping sore on my left buttock that is steadfastly refusing to heal.
Maybe if we all bombarded these privelaged clowns with our medical issues, they would all crawl back into their Hampstead mansions and STFU.
“the infected, weeping sore on my left buttock that is steadfastly refusing to heal.”
That’s called a Hancock isn’t it?
The article is indeed quite splendid, and applicable to all other ‘refuseniks’ and all other cases of discrimination.
Very much worth reading in full for everyone!
Just to be very clear – people in NI are not enjoying “new” freedoms, we are simply getting the chance once again to enjoy freedoms we have enjoyed for centuries after having had them restored to us after a period of significant deprivation.