The Observer splashed this morning on the news that the Government is secretly planning to roll out ‘Plan B’, in spite of repeatedly claiming that it has no intention of doing so.
New evidence has emerged that the government is paving the way to implement ‘Plan B’ measures in England to combat the spread of COVID-19, amid warnings from health chiefs that a “vortex of pressures” is encircling the NHS.
In the clearest sign to date that Whitehall is actively considering additional measures, the Observer has learnt that the U.K. Health Security Agency (UKHSA) contacted local authorities on Friday to canvass their level of support for the “immediate rollout of the winter plan – plan B”.
The disclosure comes as senior doctors warn that operations are already being cancelled due to NHS staffing shortages and scientists warn of “a triple whammy” of respiratory illnesses this winter, with Covid, flu and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), which causes cold-like symptoms but can be serious for children and older adults.
You can read the whole story here.
How much should we read into the fact that the UKHSA – the successor to Public Health England – has consulted with local authorities about implementing ‘Plan B’? Is the agency just preparing for every possible scenario, just in case, or is it doing the Government’s bidding ahead of new Covid restrictions being imposed?
The former, according to Chancellor Rishi Sunak, who was asked about the story on Andrew Marr this morning. MailOnline has more.
Rishi Sunak insisted there was no need to move to ‘Plan B’ to cut Covid cases today – after health chiefs discussed whether there needed to be an “immediate rollout” of tougher measures to combat a surge in cases.
The Chancellor insisted that the data shows that bringing back working from home and introducing mandatory Covid passports was not yet required.
His comments to the BBC’s Andrew Marr programme came after it was reported that the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) contacted local authorities on Friday to canvass their level of support for the “immediate rollout of the winter plan – plan B”.
An ‘official – sensitive’ document seen by the Observer sought opinions from the leaders and chief executives of councils across England to be fed to the Cabinet Office before then [sic] end of the day.
But Mr Sunak today said: “The data does not suggest we should be immediately moving to Plan B.”
However a leading Government scientist said “some kind of Plan B” was needed immediately.
Professor Adam Finn, who is on the Joint Committee of Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI), said COVID-19 hospital admissions and deaths are rising, and warned against complacency in what he said is a “worsening” situation.
Meanwhile, the Labour Party is ratcheting up pressure on the Government to reintroduce restrictions, seemingly indifferent to the fact that the burden of such measures fall disproportionately on the least well off. MailOnline has more.
Shadow Chancellor Rachel Reeves said the Government should introduce its ‘Plan B’ to tackle the rising rates of coronavirus now.
Speaking on Marr, Ms Reeves was asked what Labour’s position was on reintroducing restrictions such as the wearing of face coverings and working from home.
She said: “Labour as a responsible opposition have always said that we would follow the science, and we’ve seen today that SAGE (Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies) are saying that some aspects of Plan B, like wearing masks on public transports and in shops, and also working from home more flexibly should be introduced.
“I think the first thing is the Government have got to do more to make Plan A work.
“If the scientists are saying work from home and masks, we should do that. So get A working better because the vaccination programme has been stalling, introduce those parts of Plan B.
“But there are also things not in A or B that need to be done, like paying statutory sick pay from day one and also better ventilation in public spaces.”
Asked directly whether Plan B should be introduced now, she said: “Yes, but let’s not let the Government off the hook with Plan A either.”
You can read both stories here.
The pressure on the Government to introduce ‘Plan B’ – and then, no doubt, another lockdown – is coming from the same sources it did this time last year: the NHS, SAGE, the DHSS, the Labour Party, the trades unions and, of course, the mainstream media. The Government is resisting the pressure for three reasons: (a) Matt Hancock and Michael Gove are no longer in the ‘Quad’ lobbying Boris and Rishi to lock down; (b) Boris is reluctant to squander the political capital he’s built up by supposedly avoiding the need for further restrictions by successfully overseeing a mass vaccination programme; and (c) the public mood has shifted a little, becoming marginally less pro-lockdown, as evidenced by recent polling.
But I’m not at all confident the Government won’t implement ‘Plan B’ – or worse – if infections, hospitalisations and deaths tick up again. Even though there’s zero evidence that mask mandates, vaccine passports and working from home do anything to suppress the virus, if daily infections climb above 100,000 the Government will calculate that it needs to be seen to be doing something, even if it will make no difference and cause enormous collateral damage. Consequently, we should all pray that infections start to tail off this week, as we know they will before long, just as they have in every previous wave regardless of whether the state introduces further restrictions or not.
Discussion
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Only teh Dead in a Coffin with a Masked Brain did not see it coming !
Never forget Bismarck’s famous aphorism: “Never believe anything until it has been officially denied”.
As usual the “Politician’s Syllogism” gets prominence:
The people who decide on our fate should keep in mind that that’s what’s known as a logical fallacy. It’s inherently wrong thinking. There is ALWAYS the option to do NOTHING.
Dr Merritt has some interesting discussions on her website. She is remarkably clear-sighted, and characterises Covid as an act of war against the population. It makes more sense seen this way. She believes that all the “variants” are simply the effects of the vaccine programme, and that the “virus” is an injectable/transmissible bioweapon.
https://drleemerritt.com/
Merritt is correct in the sense that the death waves in all countries followed rapidly after the deployment of the vaccines. Some countries were free of Covid until vaccination started.
Repeated booster programmes will mean that the “virus” will never disappear. So more stringent social controls can be implemented and the screw repeatedly tightened.
Personally, I like Dr Merritt even though I am not always sure about her interpretations in detail. Her military background gives her a real start in seeing how bioweapons programmes have played a major role in the thinking and planning of this initiative. Kennedy talks about the CIA and how they have researched the steps required to destabilise a country and replace its institutions.
Robert Kennedy also talks about the removal (at a stroke) of American constitutional rights – jury trials, free speech freedom of movement, religious freedoms…coronavirus is just a smokescreen… Read more »
If at first you don’t succeed, just repeat the same cockameemy crap again and again until you can achieve Herr Scwab’s ambitions. Divide and rule…
Re: face muzzles, have our politicians not seen this?:
https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/47-studies-confirm-inefectiveness-of-masks-for-covid-and-32-more-confirm-their-negative-health-effects/
There is NO credible scientific support for them, and even the govt’s own mandate could only speculate.
The huge rise in covid cases was from testing schoolkids. See ONS statistics (its buried at the bottom of the latest release). Expect cases to drop significantly this week…how do I know? It is half term so there will be no covid testing going on in schools and there has been no apparent rise in cases from adults of any age
Nothing new then. Promise one thing and do the opposite. Typical gaslighting to destroy our minds. Now is the time for every good man and woman to just say NO. We can work very well without this establishment. We can also work very well by not paying our council tax anymore.
As Godfrey Bloom pointed out, only around 25% of the population actually pay council tax. The majority get financial help and therefore do not need to pay. If the 25% decided to collectively stop their payments the councils would fall and we could organise our own bin collections and deals with electricity companies for street lighting.
It is worrying when politicians are left to work out healthcare plans. Bill gates, Jamie demon and others dropped in for dinner a few days ago. Guess what. That is who Boris takes his orders from. Expect the worst folks. Nothing to do with a virus, a vaxx. Just plain greed.
“If the scientists…” Rachel Reeves).
Which scientists? Those scientists linked to the pharmaceutical industry which has made a concerted effort to influence politics? (See here) Revealed: Big Pharma’s hidden links to NHS policy, with senior MPs saying medical industry uses ‘wealth to influence government’ | The Independent | The Independent
Labour really shouldn’t be collaborating in the screwing over of the poor by big business. Then again, if they really cared about the poor, they would have opposed the lockdowns that have caused such suffering in the third world. Bunch of callous political ideologues.
I’m still quite sold on the idea (à la Ernst Wolff) that an economic catastrophe is going on in the background and this is the mother of all smokescreens. They way things are currently going this would be preferable. If the aim is indeed vaccine passports and an endless treadmill of boosters just to participate in society, then of course we’re in real trouble. But it does feel to me like there’s an underlying crisis we can’t see and is frightening the shit out of the policy makers. We know it’s a crime – we need to work out motive.
Hyperinflaton coming:
https://www.fox35orlando.com/news/twitter-ceo-jack-dorseys-dire-warning-hyperinflation-will-soon-change-everything
and:
https://kingworldnews.com/china-to-launch-digital-currency-backed-by-gold-in-4-months/
As planned, Plan B is the real Plan A
Discussion from Stew Peters show of the vaccination of people who are so young they clearly shouldn’t be given the shot, as they call it there
https://rumble.com/vo3b0f-fda-announces-mix-and-match-boosters-death-cocktail-for-masses.html
I’m issuing a BBC-type advance warning: this programme may contain distressing information.
We should pray. Imagine if we’d hit the bottom end of Sage’s most optimistic scenario after lockdown was ended in July. England would be like New South Wales by now.
We need to have relatively long uneventful period for government fear mongering to lack all semblance of credibility. It is in such periods that people, one by one, might come to their senses.
Winter is always tough though, so hold onto your hats folks.
Recent COVID developments
This is obviously no guarantee that the people faking the casedemic have exhausted their resources yet, but nevertheless absolutely not what’s supposed to happen when infections with a hyperinfectious, deadly virues are soaring and supposed to grow expentionally (demonstrably never happened).
Hope you’re right, but doesn’t it generally tail off at weekends, with Tuesday’s being catch-up day and the highest point of the week?
What’s the point of this factually wrong statement?
I think what Jane G is saying is that the new ‘cases’ reported are usually fewer at the weekends, due to there being less testing and less admin. resources around to collate the test results throughout the UK NHS. As a consequence, bigger numbers are reported on Mondays and/or Tuesdays as a catch-up. This is even more noticeable for the reporting of deaths.
What this means is that the best indicator of any trend is to compare one day’s numbers with those of the same day one week ago. But in this case the news is, arguably, better than you reported above, namely that the number of cases reported last Sunday (17th) was 45,140 – hence today’s 39,962 is a reduction of 11.5%, and, most importantly, sees the first decline in the 7 day moving average trend since the beginning of the month.
Of course this may be no more than a reporting artefact, but, given that yesterday’s numbers were a mere 3.6% higher than the previous Saturday, the trend was already showing signs of serious slowing down.Tomorrow’s numbers are going to be important. If they are down again, we can start be a bit more positive.
Why is… Read more »
I think what Jane G is saying is that the new ‘cases’ reported are usually fewer at the weekends, due to there being less testing and less admin. resources around to collate the test results throughout the UK NHS. As a consequence, bigger numbers are reported on Mondays and/or Tuesdays as a catch-up.
I didn’t ask what demonstrably wrong assertions she was implying (the numbers are public, after all) but why she was doing this. For starters, Friday is not a weekend day.
What she was ‘implying’ was that the mid-week numbers go up and down on a day-to-day basis, without any predictable pattern, but they do usually fall over the weekend (for reasons stated above). Her specific reference to ‘Tuesday’ was a bit of a red herring, but she was right in principle, and was effectively cautioning against reading too much into a mid-week fall in case counts. I agree with that.
I am a bit confused by your annoyance at what was a minor error in that she specifically stated “Tuesday”, when the catch-up could be on Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday – see Wales for example, who have reported nothing on a Saturday for 2 or 3 months now, with large catch-up numbers on a Monday.
Oh, and who mentioned Friday?
In any event, the case count today is down by over 12,000 on last Monday’s. However, today’s numbers don’t include Wales’, which, last Monday, were 6,398, so, assuming no change for Wales when the numbers do arrive, today’s case count for the UK will be about 6,000 lower than last Monday – which is a fall of about 12%.
And that is good news, is it not?
Public opinion out of sync with the mainstream media? Shurely shome mishtake! If that’s true, it won’t last for long.
Points a) and b) sound too much like Kremlinology.
Expect surprises – perhaps focusing on flu, the water supply, the techno offspring of Track and Trace, delta plus (or son of the same), or China.
Order of battle-wise, it could be that the propaganda top boys have their hands full with COP26. Unlikely. Just a thought.
Is that a Scottish accent I detect?
Nothing surprises me anymore, if I’m honest I wasn’t at all surprised by government’s response to Covid-19 back in March 2020. I am however disappointed in my fellow brit’s response to it.
“Consequently, we should all pray that infections start to tail off this week …”
Sorry – but I don’t do myths generally, Covid or God bothering.
But it is also beside the point, and I sense a bit of incipient government worshipping behind that remark.
Whether ‘infections’ rise or not, the shit-show measures should not be repeated by this shambolic excuse for a government – who will use any excuse. They need to be challenged on the basics of their policy whatever happens.
I was chatting to a guy at a local art exhibition. He was masked and we discussed them as Isaid I didn’t bother with any “precautions” and hadn’t for ages. He explained that he has been double vaxed, then had an extremely bad case of Covid and said thanks to the vaccination he hadn’t died, but he wanted to avoid infecting others and will be getting his booster (hes infection was 2 months ago). I said I thought the government had misled us over the vax and many other things. He didn’t agree and said they were doing it for our benefit. The battle is lost with people like him.
I hope the guy’s health holds up. A booster, after actually getting a bad case of the virus post-vaccination before? That’s pretty mental. Has he not heard the saying about madness being a tendency to do the same thing multiple times expecting different results? He probably doesn’t know much about the immune system and antibodies and stuff.
And Daddy Boris was on the telly getting injected after he went to intensive care too, so it must be the right course for the People. We all know that Telly Dads love us so much. Indeed only a dirty enemy of the people would even question that.
Well done for trying to open his eyes but these people have gone now. It’s either a case of can’t or won’t hear anything outside of the MSM narrative. All you can do is accept their opinion but always stand strong in you beliefs. A good piece of advice I heard the other day is don’t foist your opinions on others unless they ask you for yours first. Then give it kindly…with both barrels!
Another brainwashed and brain-dead zombie. Shame you wasted breath on him.
Occasionally inaction is preferable….
There is a huge level of propoganda, misiformation circulating right now from government and the MSM. Scare tactics, exaggeration, false flags, you name it.
Be discerning, don’t fear.
Hold the line folks, there are more of us than them.
Everything they say an ddo is based on the lie that Covid is a ‘pandemic’. It’s not.
Just say no.
I agree.
I thought analyses were about tests but some sites and comments no longer seem to think so. Did I miss something or is propaganda etc spreading?
“We should all pray” – we should do no such thing, what we must do is tell them to F off!
They know and have always known that infections rise and then fall – high peak and rapid drop, low peak and slow drop, in the end it makes no difference. After almost 2 years, the health services – in whatever Western country – should be up to the job, enough money has been thrown around on all manner of unnecessary things. As they are not, then they may as well let people take ivermectin or HCQ if they so wish.
They’ve been talking about new measures here as well – just started in the last few days, strange timing… Some virologist bint was on telly today saying they should announce measures tomorrow, not wait until 5 November when the next briefing is planned.
Timmermans, EU bloodsucker extraordinaire, was quoted last week as, part of his climate change scam, that to achieve real change, you have to scare people.
I’m on board with that – it is clear that to achieve change those who are abusing their powers need to become scared of us, the people.
Exactly, well said!
As I recall the NHS has a budget of around £159 Billion? There are currently 8238 so called ‘covid’ patients in UK NHS hospitals, that makes £19.3 million for every current ‘covid’ patient. When an organisation with that much cash fails to cope with 8238 ‘covid’ patients we should not lockdown the public, more correctly we should lock up or at least kick out the failed and miserable NHS top brass. Why are they not ready for this? why has such an obvious turn of events and such a small number of patients caused such a problem to such a well funded organisation?
And why is the idea of restricting the General Public being considered as the cure for this failed NHS management. I have managed to live 67 years on this good earth with never a previous thought that health problems and failed management problems should be solved by whipping and restricting the general public but suddenly it is the only game in town. Balderdash and piffle as my old Grand-dad would have said.
Don’t kick me kick the NHS top brass and give them an ultimatum get this sorted or get out.
“Boris is reluctant to squander the political capital he’s built up by supposedly avoiding the need for further restrictions by successfully overseeing a mass vaccination programme”
LMFAO. That’s the vaccination program that has increased all-cause mortality, covid “cases”, “hospitalisations” and “deaths”? The one that was so good we have to do it all again (boosters) or we’re screwed? I think I prefer the vaccines we had this time last year when covid “cases”, “hospitalisations” and “deaths” and all-cause mortality had reduced/returned to normal.
“The Government is resisting the pressure for three reasons: (a) Matt Hancock and Michael Gove are no longer in the ‘Quad’ lobbying Boris and Rishi to lock down”
Ah, that will be the Matt Hancock who was replaced by Said Javid, the person who is busy wrecking the care home sector and the NHS by mandating pointless, evil vaccine mandates. So that’s OK then. For fuck’s sake. Talk about grasping at straws. Almost as bad as my deluded friends who fantasise covid will be over by next year (it’s always next year) but can’t explain what will change between now and then. Desperate for it to be true, but they really known it’s not.
Neil Oliver: ‘Hey Government, we are not stupid’
Sadly, the trusting and obedient sheep/ lemmings are demonstrating otherwise.
That is because the Labour Party in indifferent to the least well off.
I’ve no time for Labour or the MSM or the Unions or anyone else, but the Prime Minister has a huge majority and he is In Charge. It’s on him.
They are actually now subscribers to the theory of the ‘deserving poor’. They are 19th century Tories.
It is because Labour are communist, just like lockdown.
Labour is no longer concerned with the less well-off, apart from those they consider a victim of real or imagined intersectional discrimination.
Labour has not been concerned with what is left of the working class for years, which is why they lost Scotland and finally the Red Wall which bozo is in serious danger of losing. The only question being is who to?
He may well be forcing them into the arms of the fabled ‘far right’ for want of an alternative. It’s happened before, elsewhere, and he might just make it happen again but this time here. What a tosser.
At the risk of swimming in a sea or red down votes, I would much rather Corbyn be in charge than these dishonest slags. If you are going to have a government that implements big state policies combined with ludicrous amounts of spending and Chinese style surveillance, better it be done by somebody who actually believes in it. I’m not a Corbyn fan at all, but at least he has his own principles and sticks to them.
Neither Boris nor Corbyn are strong men. Corbyn has shown evidence of convictions in the past (not ones I agree with; mostly not anyway) but he would still have been railroaded into lockdown and so on by Sage and the Starmers of this world.
That said, I think it would have been better if Labour were in charge, purely because the Conservative party could then have been free to criticise the government.
The Republican party is in this position in the US, and I’m looking forward to the Democrats being wiped out in the mid-terms.
It wouldn’t have mattered who was in charge. Both parties have been in lockstep since the beginning.
If you’re talking about Piers, then yes.
“Consequently, we should all pray that infections start to tail off …”
This is your best advice, Mr Young? That we should pray? What a stupid thing to say. You’re lucky I haven’t hit the gin yet …
Forgive me for asking Prime Minister but why do the protected need to be protected from the unprotected by forcing the unprotected to use the protection that didn’t protect the protected in the first place?
Straight out of the horse’s mouth (pun intended)
Two Different Classes of People (Vaxxed and Unvaxxed) in New Zealand? “That is what it is, so yep!”
Always worry when a politician say “ nobody wants this to happen but…..”
Followed by “it is with heavy heart . . .”