Professor Robert Dingwall, consistently the most sensible of the Government’s scientific advisors throughout the pandemic, gave a belter of an interview to Sarah Montague on the World at One earlier. The gist of it is in the headline, but a very kind reader – Stuart Robertson – has transcribed the entire interview for us which we’re republishing below.
SARAH MONTAGUE: Well, Robert Dingwall is Professor of Sociology at Nottingham Trent University. He sits on a number of committees advising the Government on their pandemic response.
ROBERT DINGWALL: What we’re in the process of doing is managing the transition to understanding that Covid as an endemic, respiratory infection is really just like all the other 30 or so respiratory infections that humans have coexisted with forever, and that we shouldn’t be doing anything exceptional in relation to it in September, 2021, that we would not have been doing in September 2019. And that of course means taking on a lot of vested interests, it involves defusing the levels of anxiety and fear that had been generated in the population over the last 15 months or so. And that’s not, neither of those, is a straightforward task.
SM: Okay, so you have said we should stop publishing the daily numbers of cases, hospitalisations, deaths.
RD: Well the daily numbers are increasingly, increasingly meaningless. When we’re dealing with a mild respiratory infection. What is the point of knowing how much of it is there, there is out there. There is some value maybe in in tracking hospitalisations at the moment, but we’re not tracking seriously desperately ill people in the way that we were in January, they’re not progressing through to intensive care in the sorts of numbers that we saw in the spring.
SM: So is Covid now a mild respiratory infection?
RD: In a largely vaccinated population, and that’s a very important qualification. Covid is now really part of the 30 or so respiratory viruses that humans have coexisted with since time immemorial.
SM: In a largely vaccinated population, children, for example, aren’t vaccinated, I mean you have said, given the low risk of Covid for most teenagers, it’s not immoral to think that there may be better protected by natural immunity generated through infection, rather than by asking them to take the possible risk of a vaccine.
RD: Well, indeed I mean there are risks from the infection, there are risks from the vaccine, and the challenges to decide how to weigh those in the balance.
SM: In terms of the way we should be adjusting our lives, if we’re not to treat this any different than for example flu, should people stop being signed up to an app that might ping and tell them to isolate.
RD: Well, it’s very hard to see what are the benefits of that is, again, if the most vulnerable people in the population have had the opportunity to be vaccinated. And if those who are not vaccinated are confined predominantly to groups where the infection is, is a very low risk. What are we achieving by contact tracing, by isolation, by these various associated measures? Why is it relevant to me to know that somebody in my network has been infected, when I have been vaccinated?
SM: So is it time to lift all the restrictions, stop test and trace, stop bubbles in school, and of course, telling people to isolate in pubs and hospitality venues.
RD: Well I think we have to ask very hard questions about what these are now achieving, but we also need to recognise that there are significant commercial interests in prolonging things like test and trace, but from the point of view of public policy, we have to ask, well, we have never thought it was important to do differential diagnosis of schoolchildren with respiratory infections, if they’re not well enough to go to school, they don’t go to school, that’s the sort of equilibrium we need to be moving toward when the school year restarts in the autumn.
SM: Professor Robert Dingwall there.
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Seriously, the woman cannot say words for 10 seconds without her chronic ‘foot in mouth disease’ ( otherwise known as terminal ineptitude ) kicking in. Watch this mini clip and tell me why you wouldn’t want to endorse this woman…<FFS!>
https://x.com/Fynnderella1/status/1816441257205412018
It seems Biden is still alive and..erm, just alive, anyway, as he gave his much anticipated speech yesterday;
”Joe Biden’s speech from the Oval Office was so chock-full of outrageous lies and slurred gaffes it’s hard to know where to start when fact-checking and dissecting it. But one thing is certain: when NBC called it a speech “for the history books,” they were spreading even faker news than usual.
Biden’s economy is an utter catastrophe, with still-rising inflation and dropping real wages. His supporters continue to riot and celebrate Islamic terrorists, soon after someone took a shot at Donald Trump, Biden’s GOP opponent. And no one believes Biden is actually the functioning leader of the free world.
Then, Biden, who has prolonged the war in Ukraine and funded the Palestinian jihadis fighting the war with Israel, asserted, “I’m the first president in this century to report to the American people that the United States is not at war anywhere in the world. We’ll keep rallying a coalition of proud nations to stop Putin from taking over Ukraine and doing more damage.” Without once denouncing pro-Hamas leftists currently destroying monuments and burning flags in D.C., he called for a choice between “hope and hate, between unity and division,” and for “honesty, decency, respect, freedom, justice and democracy.”
I think we’re all doubting at this point if he has a heart and soul, but when Biden, the trampler of liberties, again claimed the People control America instead of dictators, it seemed particularly laughable. “You just have to keep faith,” Biden muttered. “Keep the faith and remember who we are, we’re the United States of America and there’s simply nothing, nothing beyond our capacity when we do it together. So let’s act together. Preserve our democracy. May God bless you all and may God protect our troops. Thank you.”
One can only wonder how the parents of Hamas’s hostages and the American troops killed in Kabul during Biden’s disastrous Afghanistan withdrawal, or the family of Americans murdered by illegal aliens, felt about that speech. Joe Biden, dementia-ridden as he is, remains a serial and heartless liar.”
https://pjmedia.com/catherinesalgado/2024/07/24/joe-bidens-speech-n4931045
Biden, with a gesture that suggested that he was holding an imaginary bowling ball, said several times, with as much gravity as the old vegetable could muster, and summing up the Zeitgeist perfectly, “America…is an IDEA.”
No, Jojo, it’s not an idea, it’s a country. It’s very concrete. It’s a distinct area of land with borders, a form of government, laws, a culture, and people whose families have been living here since the 18th century.
“An IDEA,” though, implies that, as effortlessly and quickly as a passing thought, TPTB can violate the borders, ignore the laws, subvert the government, destroy the culture, and replace everyone whose roots are here with tens of millions of dodgy illegal aliens. Because THAT’S WHO WE ARE.
Unburdened by what has been, I can’t even recall the quote age delivers it that poorly. She’s an effing idiot!
“What can be, unburdened by what has been” is a quote popularized and primarily used by Kamala Harris, the current vice president of the United States and 2024 Democratic presidential candidate.”
I don’t have a source but read a comment saying the perp is a Nigerian immigrant;
”Magistrates have remanded a man in custody following the serious assault of a soldier in Gillingham.
Anthony Esan, 24, of Mooring Road, Rochester, appeared at Medway Magistrates’ Court today (Thursday 25 July 2024) charged with attempted murder and possession of an offensive weapon in a public place.
He will remain in custody ahead of his next appearance at Maidstone Crown Court on Thursday 22 August.
The charges relate to an incident in Sally Port Gardens at around 5.55pm on Tuesday 23 July where a soldier in uniform suffered injuries consistent with stab wounds.
The victim, a man in his 40s, remains in a serious but stable condition in hospital.”
https://www.kent.police.uk/news/kent/latest/policing-news/suspect-charged-with-attempted-murder-of-soldier-in-gillingham/
Fancy that, I’m shocked.
Presumably he is a prince and the poor soldier didn’t buy into his amazing money-making offer.
The guy came from Italy initially where he was on Italian Police radar. It seems as if he was on a mission and it was worse than just stealing benefits.
Yep, I’m the one who shared that titbit yesterday.
See, I never miss your posts Mogs.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/07/25/anthony-esan-charged-attempted-murder-soldier-stabbed/
It’s amazing how so much previously unknown mental illness is now realised to have been caused by the sudden realisation that one’s ancestors’ country had been colonized by evil white supremacist slave traders, and that the best treatment is available in the traders’ descendants’ country. Perhaps this goes back to Blair’s “Rivers of Reparations” speeches around 2007 (perhaps even Bristol 1997-ish?).
The British Empire was so awful that the colonised, realising what shit holes their countries had become without us decided to up sticks and put up with any amount of hardship in order to travel across the globe just to sample the real deal. Unfortunately, they forgot to leave their barbarism behind and so we must do the decent thing and return them whence they came.
And promptly.
Translation – I make it up as I go along, don’t expect consistency.
Yes.
….unburdened by brains.
And another gem… today is what yesterday was tomorrow, and tomorrow will be today, tomorrow.
Is she right in the head? Oh no it does not matter she is only standing to be President of America.
I have to keep reminding myself she’s a trained lawyer and did that as a career for a number of years whenever I hear her speak, therefore she can’t not be intelligent. It’s not the sort of profession you can just blag your way through training then wing it. You’d get called out as a fraud and incompetent pretty damn sharpish. So the only thing I’m left with, especially when I hear her talk, is that she appears drugged, like highly medicated. She definitely seems to slur her words sometimes too, but not in an alcohol-induced type of way because her eyes are still clear. The rest of the time she talks gobbledegook and appears to not have understood the question she was asked in an interview. Just my impression of her though.
I am not sure about that as a few women are described as hot shot lawyers who turn out to be duds, Mrs Clooney, the Italian woman with the England football manager and now the diversity hire.
She is also too lazy to read her briefing notes concerning world events and geography so I would place her in the Megan Markle range and a similar operator.
I have over the years worked with lawyers and intelligence is decidedly NOT a common attribute. They are however universally badly organised and have such high opinions of themselves that they believe they can wing any brief after a two minute chat. Very similar to doctors.
Two nieces are lawyers.
“I have to keep reminding myself she’s a trained lawyer“
Same as David Lammy. I yield to my learned friend Mogwai, I rest my case.
Haha, yes. I didn’t know that actually. And then there’s Sadiq Khan and Keir Starmer, of course, and they’ve got quite the chequered history, as I recall. Defending some decidedly dodgy people and preventing scumbags from being deported..
I just always presumed training and becoming a successful lawyer was incredibly difficult and only the brightest of the bright would ever achieve success in that profession. I suppose, much like the doctors during the whole scamdemic debacle, they’ve definitely come down significantly in my estimation, to put it politely. Although not everybody’s downfall can be put down to their level of intelligence though, as many are just plain corrupt and/or cowards, the latter particularly with the doctors.
IME of lawyers I think they need to have good memories (at least as far as case law and precedent go in the UK) and be good with words so that they can make connections that not everyone would make in support of their case. I don’t think they need to be objectively clever but they do need to be able to think quickly and make the aforementioned connections in a confident manner so that the audience believes them to be true even though the truth may have been embroidered somewhat.
Too much Colombian Marching Powder.
Based on her behavior, I think edibles or benzos is more likely, although I couldn’t possibly speculate.
Sounds like a David Brent quote…
The Democracy they want to bring to USA is Rule by the Democrats, not Rule by the People.
I got the impression, watching his speech, that he was strapped to the back of the chair to keep him upright, that his head was similarly fixed in a set position and that someone else was working his arms from behind, but I am an old cynic.
However his speech was absolutely genuine Biden.
He does remind me of a wax work when I look at his picture and a ventriloquist’s dummy when I see him speak. Yes people talking about body doubles and whatnot is a step too far down ‘Conspiracy Avenue’ for me.
Sounds like the Soviet leaders of old….
“But it is easy to see why the Democrat big brains put their money on Harris. Her name is on the campaign already as VP, so she is able to use the Biden campaign money for her candidacy.”
Not according to this short video. Court has decided she cannot have Sleepy’s campaign funds.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Dz1IXIw651k
Her campaign will get the money somehow
Her name was on the campaign and in all the filings sent to the FEC. She was a “candidate for election” as specified by the FEC regulation. But even if Trump would be successful in his claim to the FEC, it would not matter as the FEC takes an age to determine the worth of any complaint. She’s got the $91M or so and she’ll use it. Hope this helps.
Thanks for the update Tony. Much appreciated.
Since it seems most likely Trump will win, and because it has become more about the dire state of the US economy, society, the very real increased prices, and US standing abroad all on the Democrat’s watch, no candidate is likely to tip the balance away from Trump.
So a sacrificial lamb is needed, and probably other possible candidates don’t want to be it. Harris however is stupid enough to go willingly to the slaughter.
It’s a shrewd move by the Democrats as they lay the foundations for another steal. They’re busy expanding their arsenal of weapons to avoid investigation. Harris is black(ish) and, critically, a woman. Want to question how such an obvious Trump victory turned into a defeat? Well, that’s because you’re misogynist or a racist… or a misogynistic racist. Then there’s the many women who will vote for her for no other reason than to show sisterly solidarity. That’s the thing with the left – they’ve always got a plan.