A Government investigation into the potential impact of a vaccine passport scheme has concluded that the measure would have a negative impact in halting the transmission of Covid. The report has put forward the unintended consequence of those unwilling to comply with the mandate attending more poorly ventilated venues instead of larger, more open space ones. In addition, the report dwells on the economic damage of such a policy, acknowledging that businesses would need to fork out more money into policing the entrance combined with a decrease in the number of customers. The Telegraph has the story.
The Telegraph has seen an internal analysis of the economic and social impact of Covid-19 certification, written by the Department of Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS).
Across the 13 pages, marked “official sensitive” and dated from early September, are a series of concerns about how the policy would work and its knock-on implications.
One section of the impact assessment responds to whether the policy could have “any displacement effects to other types of venues not included for certification”.
The document reads: “There is potential displacement between live events venues and hospitality venues. A core concern in the sector is that certification could displace activity and business away from music venues to, say, pubs with music and late alcohol licences, etc. which could be counterintuitive and potentially counter-productive.”
It goes on to state: “Similarly, if certification displaces some fans from structured and well ventilated sports stadia, this could lead to them attending unstructured and poorly ventilated pubs instead, where they will have access to more alcohol than if there were in the stadia. Evidence from the Euros showed spikes in cases associated with pubs even when England were playing abroad.”
Worth reading in full.
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Mass gatherings with picnics and live music advertised for Saturday
https://mol.im/a/8314605
Real or spoof? The comments from the frightened sheep are as pathetic as they are predictable
And one on Manchester
https://twitter.com/4FreedomsSake/status/1260588924910686209
“By anti-vaxxers” I ROLL MY EYES
MAYBE THEY JUST WANT THEIR LIVES BACK??
(Actually tempted by that Manchester one)
Many of the sheep’s comments suggest attendees will be mainly ‘Brexiteers’, you have to laugh….
The feeble minded have to call out anyone that disagrees with their herd mentality. Calling names is what they do and it makes them feel so much better.
Can’t attend myself, regrettably none are within easy distance for me, but if I did they’d soon see that not every lockdown sceptic is a brexiteer. We’re a broad church here and proud simply of the anti-tyranny view which binds us all together.
It’s quite simple to me. If you are scared to death of the lockdown being lifted, nothing would stop you from barricading yourself away and letting everyone else get on with their lives
True, but we need to stop indulging this behaviour. If Rishi keeps paying them to be scared to death…..
Yep, they are as ‘scared’ as Rishi is paying them to be…terrified of having to go back to work is the truth
Maybe that will be the 2nd wave… huh? Harsh to say, that’s true, but might not be such a bad thing.
Exactly what my wife said to me after one of the covid walking dead shouted at us for not being a metre away on a busy city centre street. Short of jumping into oncoming traffic how can you possibly avoid these selfish cowards. I refuse to pander to their irrational infantile fears.
Like with those very validly questioning the shaky models justifying the Climate Change Complex, the lamestream media will label those raising genuine concerns on vaccines whose trials are being rushed through as the outcasts. And as night follows day, they’ll once again declare that “the science is settled”.
Sheffield. I’m going.
Definitely going to one of them… just got to work out which one will have the bigger group of people I know.
Shame about the bampots, but I’m not going to let that stop me.
Shame about those who repeatedly brag about their financial donations, but I’m not going to let that stop me.
Everyone who cares about this issue should put their money (however much or little they can afford) where their mouth is. It’s the only thing that really makes stuff happen.
I completely agree. Slagging off those with similar ideas about the lockup, not so much.
I don’t care who is behind these gatherings, I think all lockdown sceptics should support them. I will be in Hyde Park at midday on Saturday.
That’s my opinion too. A lot of other protests get co-opted or organised by the Socialist Worker Party but we don’t see that being the headline. It’s about who attends rather than who organises, and we need people with well-presented facts to be there who can talk to the media.
I may have work on Saturday, if not I may see you there.
Yeah, I thought the same, but word going round on Twitter now is that the people organising it are the Britain First lot…
https://twitter.com/MxVivianWulf/status/1260752524715401217
It gives me pause, but my FU instinct says that there’ll be two dozen of those nutters, and hundreds or thousands who simply want our lives back, and we shouldn’t be deterred from at least going and seeing for ourselves.
I’d say the first assumption about any such claim should be that it’s probably a smear put around to try to discourage attendance.
That said, the fact that such smears are effective tells you something about the limits of our democracy. It’s just a (tiny) political party and as far as I’m concerned it’s like any other party – I don’t have to agree with any of its policies or like any of its personnel or sympathisers to accept it as part of the general political landscape. Sadly, all too many are prepared to accept that certain positions are to be forbidden and excluded from discourse just because they don’t like them or feel threatened by them.
People who don’t like a campaign will always try to attack it by pointing to unpopular people adopting that position and trying to embarrass or manipulate others out of supporting it by smearing them by association and calling for them not to “share a platform” with the taboo groups or individuals. It’s dishonest, it’s irrational, and it’s highly damaging to any remaining pretence of genuine democracy and freedom of conscience and expression in this country.
You persuaded me of the case yesterday, Mark
Good oh! Though this seemed like an apposite place to make the point again….
I’ve been receiving so many abusive messages for sharing these events in an anti-lockdown forum. The sheep are now actively coming after any arguments against their new cushy lives.
Dunno if it is real or a spoof, however it can be made real by people attending!
Going to pop along to the one in Edinburgh during my lunch break.
“what I see during this lockdown are crowds driven by anxiety; that is a form of hyper-rationality that causes total passivity. People who are rational (i.e. clinically normal) see risk and are prepared to live alongside it (“Okay, I COULD die of BSE; but I’m still going to eat beef because I like it”); but people who are hyper-rational (i.e. suffer from anxiety) can’t let go of that slim statistical chance that they might be the one tragic case to die/suffer from X. So rather than mad crowds full of violence and action, we’ve ended up with hyper-rational crowds that don’t want a fight… they want to hide! You can deal with mad crowds by bringing out the army. But how do you deal with hyper-rational crowds? Reasoned argument won’t work, because ultimately, they can turn any fact, model or statistic around and show you that, actually, statistically, they’re very vulnerable and could very well die/suffer at any moment. This type of thing has been bubbling away in millennial cancel culture for a while now (to “cancel” of course being to undertake an entirely passive action that prevents engagement with anything you perceive as having the potential to “harm” you). For me, what’s changed during this coronavirus outbreak is that governments have suddenly started to feed this hyper-rational anxiety like never before: “You could die. You might die. We understand. It’s okay to wet yourself. But wear PPE. Sure, stay at home. Hide. Under the bed if it makes you feel better. Here, have some free money. Bleach your carpets. Cry. Sob too. Buy a ventilator. Ebay do them. Stay safe. That’s an order.” And what’s resulted is an utterly dysfunctional society that will give some people a free pass from being proper members of society for years to come.”
That’s fantastic observation and analysis. Whoever your correspondent is, he’s pretty convincing there, imo.
Batman vs Superman:
“He has the power to wipe out the entire human race, and if we believe there’s even a one percent chance that he is our enemy, we have to take it as an absolute certainty.”
Hollywood are in very good touch with the zeitgeist.
Note how it hinges on a fearful belief, not a demonstration or any external validation test. This is how the Police defend themselves when they shoot an unarmed man:
“I was afraid for my life.”
Thus is the state the great moral teacher of our time. For me, though, Nietzsche said it best:
“But the state lies in all the tongues of good and evil; and whatever it says it lies; and whatever it has it has stolen. Everything in it is false; it bites with stolen teeth, and bites often. It is false down to its bowels.“
Social media and 24 hour rolling news coverage is surely the seed of this hyper sensitivity?
By mid March my Facebook feed was starting to be flooded by people sharing posts about how we were all basically going to die of CV19. As we got closer to Lockdown Day the panic being spread on FB was infectious. I could feel my own anxiety levels increasing. So I deleted FB. I actively avoided watching or listening to the news apart from getting a news update no more than twice a day. Whereas before I would have the radio on in the background all day (Radio 4 or LBC usually) I lived in glorious silence.
And low and behold my anxiety levels dropped away. After three weeks of my personal lockdown away from it all I felt I had a balanced view of the reality – mirrored perfectly by this page and the articles linked to – and ventured back onto FB, to find mass hysteria and panic and fear. Yep – hyper sensitivity in all it’s hyperventilating hyperbole. There seem to be few of my friends who haven’t been totally infected. Perhaps I would be too, if I’d remained in the boiling pot with them.
There would be no global lockdowns if we did not have Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp and rolling news coverage.
That’s true. But that’s all thanks to the Internet. We couldn’t possibly have lockdown without the Internet. At the same time the Internet gives us access to information that at one time would have had to be searched out in university libraries. Yet so few people seem to take advantage of that aspect of the Internet. Instead it’s used to turn 7 billion human beings into 7 billion sheep.
The internet has given us access, not only to the equivalent of university libraries, but also to wonderful information sites like this one!
Unfortunately most people love drama and FB is the perfect platform for them to play the isn’t-it-dreadful game. Aided and abetted by the MSM, cool reason stood no chance back in March – and is still struggling now.
There was no social media during WW1, yet young men were presented with white feathers if they were too sensible to volunteer to be cannon fodder.
Exactly. People who believe all the hype about this virus and the lockdown that has robbed them of living a full meaningful life but can’t be bothered to find out anything about it other than the lies and propaganda spoonfed them by politicians and the media really anger me. There’s loads of information out there but they don’t want to know.
There’s loads of great info out there but trouble is it is buried under crap, try to find information on anti-health and safety organisations in the UK, all you get is health and safety advice pages. Whatever was worth finding is buried so deep that you won’t find it unless you know where it is.
Dan Wooten on LBC has come around to ending the lockdown soon.
Every Monday Peter Hitchens obliterates Mike Graham around 1130am on Talkradio. Every weeknight Tucker Carlson tonight ridicules the reaction to the virus by our fearful leaders.
I did exactly the same thing and my anxiety levels dropped too. I could then see clearly precisely what was happening.
This is a great collection of observations – what is the source of this chunk of text may I ask?
See Toby’s piece above. It’s an extract from correspondence with an unnamed “dissident academic”.
Toby also published an essay by him (under a pseudonym, apparently), here:
https://dailysceptic.org/covid-19-and-the-infantilization-of-dissent/
So the treasury says we’ll spend £300 Billion fighting Covid-19 this year. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2020/05/12/exclusive-treasury-blueprint-raise-taxes-freeze-wages-pay-300bn/
Taking Imperial Colleges worst case scenario of 500,000 dead from Covid-19. Subtracting the 50,000 excess deaths we’ve already had this year gives us 450,000 lives potentially saved. £300,000,000,000 (£300 Billion) / 450,000 = £666,666 per life saved. If a more conservative 50,000 lives were saved, that would give us £6,000,000 (£6 million) per life saved.
The NHS in 2019, on average, spent £35,082 per course of 3-6 months treatment, per cancer patient. So if all cancer patients required 2 courses a year that would be ~£70,000 per patient.
So the government is willing to spend somewhere between £666,666 and £6 million to save a ‘theoretical’ life which might be lost to Covid-19 but only £70,000 to save the life of a cancer suffer who is definitely going to have a less favourable outcome.
You can’t put a price on a life, but this is absolute madness!
You also have to bear in mind that even Neil Ferguson admitted that statistically, up to 75% of Covid victims would have died this year anyway, which makes the whole thing even more insane.
Just to clarify a mistake, Neil Ferguson said up to 2/3rds rather than 70%.
I applaud your maths, Sir.
It is, indeed, batshit bonkers.
(actually I read something written by an an insurance assessor the other day, he was absolutely incredulous at the complete lack of practical risk assessment seemingly being performed by our leaders and the media- and then promptly forgot to post it here ofc)
NICE calculate treatment and drug approvals on QALY (quality adjusted life years), and will fund treatments at £30k per QALY. Drug companies all use this calculation when balancing R&D vs profit, and whether health services will adopt the treatment on a cost per QALY basis.
And bear in mind the 510,000 was the “no action” case, when nobody anywhere was proposing “no action”. In fact the government was already following a mitigation strategy, which Imperial had as resulting in 250,000 deaths.
Taking off 50,000 deaths that did occur, as you say, would give 200,000.
So even on the maximum figure of lives saved (certainly hugely overstated), and the “best case” cost scenario of £300b, the cost comes out at £1.5m per life, so to pass NICE criteria those people who would have died would have to have been expecting on average 50 years of decent quality life. And bear in mind that the vast majority were already over 60 and mostly quite ill.
‘You can’t put a price on a life, but this is absolute madness!’ – NICE has been doing it since its inception.
You have omitted the fact that over 45% are over 80 and 25,000 cancer diagnoses are being missed every month so on top of the sums you calculated they are also refusing to spend ANYTHING on those cancer sufferer, some of whom will inevitably die as a direct result.
That photo of the children is horribly dystopian. Those chalk boxes resemble psychological prisons.
I think our children have been put in a psychological prison. They are such social animals. I worry about the damage this will be doing to them.
I remember someone saying to me that children now are constantly mollycoddled and that their parents have a pathological fear of germs so with this crisis the mollycoddling and pathological fears have increased 100 times!!
It is worrying how much this has damaged children and hindered the development of social skills and ability to cope with adversity.
Friend in Paris has small kids who were looking forward to returning to school this week. Only for it to be cancelled at the last minute as the teachers refused to work and only 50% of parents willing to send kids in. They are all absolutely gutted.
The 2 metre social distancing ‘guidance’ is crippling all possibility of returning to normality. The exposure time element of 15 minutes has been lost – (see https://publichealthmatters.blog.gov.uk/2020/03/04/coronavirus-covid-19-what-is-social-distancing/ ). WHO recommendation is 1 metre so either they are incredibly reckless or the current UK 2 metre rule (which ignores the 15 minute exposure time) is massively over-cautious- both cannot be correct as that would violate the laws of physics. Can anyone point me at the science behind these guidelines?
A socially distanced restaurant table requires at least 25 sq m…ridiculous
I couldn’t agree more: now that the lockdown is lifting, it is this 2 metre malarkey that will destroy us socially and economically. I wrote to the Chancellor about this as soon as I read this article:(sorry, it’s the Telegraph, so behind a paywall but you can get the gist from the title, and I have cut and pasted the most relevant bits)
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2020/05/07/government-has-terrorised-britons-believing-coronavirus-will/
“Prof Dingwall said he had been told by a senior public health specialist that “we knew it was one metre but we doubled it to two because we did not think the British population would understand what one metre was and we could not trust them to observe it so we doubled it to be on the safe side”.
He said: “If you think of it as a circle around a person that you are trying to protect, if it is two metres, that circle is 12 square metres, 1.5 metres that circle is roughly seven square metres, if you come down to one metre it is three and a bit square metres.
“You can immediately see what difference that makes to any shop, any leisure or retail place. As you reduce the distance, the area that is sterilised shrinks quite dramatically.””
Toby if you have any contacts who are antilockdown and supply the kind of services that are primarily online rather than local (so probably not appropriate for your geographic businesses section), it would be great if you can supply them here (obviously, assuming they are willing to be outed). I would rather use an antilockdown graphic designer, programmer, web services provider etc than one who is with the majority view, right now.
Teachers aren’t the only education professionals wimping out. University management teams are being coawrds too, despite many of the lecturers* and researchers* wanting to get back to jobs they love. Would be good to have some level of movement to get university research restarted again, every day it is delayed is a day less progress towards a better understood and better medically and technologically equipped world, and a chance for other (braver, more rational) countries to make new discoveries before us. Imagine how many lives could be saved if people studying thrid world non-covid diseases, or cancers, could get back to work and get on with developing cures, and all being held off by a pesky coronavirus which poses barely any risk to anyone.
*Those in the sciences don’t fit the typical “left-wing” description so often stereotyped for arts Profs, in the sciences we couldn’t give a damn about politics until some idiot politician starts nanny-stating in the way of our work
TBH I can imagine lots of researchers are loving it if they can do their work from home (and most can with a decent internet connection). They hate teaching heh. Any excuse not to teach and just concentrate on their own research.
So if they’re still getting paid for research only, no teaching. They’ll bloody love it.
Not all the ones who need to be in a lab to get things done, we f*cking hate it.
That’s not most of you though…..
Nonetheless, some of us HATE it, and by heck do we REALLY HATE it. We hate being trampled on by all the cowardly management, who, having scarcely ever any real work to do and taking no pleasure in that which they do complete are the ones just loving this WFH nonsense.
Working at a university sucks. Less active researcher, more social care nurse, having to deal with fat, moronic, self-entitled students all day. A total fucking nightmare. I’m hoping I’ll be made redundant due to COVID-19. Unlike my students, I’ll be able to fill in all the forms at the job centre.
Wow man. Maybe you should change careers.
My partner is a security guard at a university but was told not to go in. Still getting paid at the moment but for how much longer if they’re not going to reopen for a while? Obviously the professors will be quite enjoying all this time to do research from the comfort of their sofas, but we are on the breadline anyway – if my partner looses this job we have no fallback & will probably get evicted. Terrified.
Just quick a recommend of the ‘No Agenda’ podcast which has been deconstructing the mainstream media for years. This site has had more than a few mentions on the last few episodes, Like minded fellows.
Look at that picture in Toby’s daily report
Children at a primary school in France playing alone in chalk ‘isolation zones’ to maintain social distancing
It must be the best example ever that common sense has been the prime victim of this virus and it’s deadliest aspect
Exactly – they are not even ‘playing’, they are just sitting or standing – just existing.. all but one don’t even seem to be attempting to communicate with any of the others; they look totally confused, unsurprisingly..
The technical term for such goings on is ‘fucking obscene’.
“As Dominic Lawson wrote in the Sunday Times, it shames the nation. Heads must roll.”
And surely sooner or later we must confront the issue that Johnson’s head must be one of them.
I just cannot imagine going into the next election with a choice between on the one hand the supposedly conservative PM who thought copying China in putting the entire population in house arrest and empowering policemen to arrest people for sitting on park benches was even a remotely acceptable policy response to a glorified flu, and on the other the latest incarnation of Blair leading the Re-New Labour Party.
He must go.
Given that as far as I’m aware no senior member of the Conservative Party stood up to be counted against lockdown (happy to be disabused if anybody knows of one), who is the least damaged prospect for a replacement?
I’m more disillusioned than ever. If a conservative, supposedly libertarian PM oversaw this new socialist police state, we can only imagine the alacrity with which it would’ve proceeded under a labour administration. Makes a mockery of our supposed democracy. The only opposition we’ve seen is to how the lockdown has been handheld. Where is the opposition to the whole thing? Seems like they’re just keeping up appearances to keep the lie of democracy alive.
Boris Johnson has never been “conservative” in any deeply philosophical sense. He’s a Hollow Man, traversing that same conviction-free path first marked out by the likes of Clinton and Blair. Indeed, I think there’s a quote out there somewhere from one of Clinton’s advisors, talking off the record to a journalist during his first presidency in the 1990s. “Oh, sure – he tacks this way and that,” the advisor said, “depending on the way the wind’s blowing. But he’s got a plan, and he sure as hell knows where he’s going.” “Where’s that?” replied the journalist. “Back to the White House for four more years.”
Correct, but where exactly was the opposition, and where was all the pressure? This has all been completely manipulated from the start, am sure of it.
I would look at other countries and their lockdowns… and the fucking masks.
But, unless I hear the words ‘masks will be compulsory’ from his mouth, then I am sure he is stoking up the population to push back and take our freedom
I won’t protest against masks, uncomfortable and close to useless, but if they make the sheep calm down and take back all their other liberties (and their livelihoods) then that is ok by me. If a piece of cloth over the face is the price for getting back everything else then its an ok price to pay. This compares to a foolish lockdown which simply drags out the period of suffering, ruins quality of life and will likely lead to many more deaths in its aftermath than COVID could, lockingdown so as to “save” the tiny numbers COVID is a threat to is NOT worth that price.
Sadly many of the politicians need to go. They didn’t nip this crap in the bud.
It’s almost like we need new political parties, all of which reduce the size and influence of government.
Oh and of course stop all funding of the BBC
We need our own Salvini, however the FPTP electoral system makes rocking the establishment boat virtually impossible. We are truly, drones
Please don’t abandon FPTP. We did here in New Zealand and IMHO it results in political paralysis. This is because under a proportional system no party ever gets 50% or more of the vote and has to do deals with centrist parties.
Would Maggie have rammed through her changes with the Lib Dems?
I should say that having bigger parties forced to do deals with anothr party would be good for helping parties which support an under-recognised cause (individual liberty and anti-authoritarianism in our case) get into a power-broekr position. We must remember than it was the Lib Dems in the 2010-2015 coalition who help the crimes-against-humanity of the snoopers charter at bay until the tories got a majority of their own in 2015. Having little parties to moderate the big oens is good, makes dictatorships harder to establish.
In short, get rid of FPTP and switch to something which gives a better say to everyone, prop rep or single transferrable vote or additional member systems.
They are all, cynically, attempting to preserve their own political skins – a disgusting display, not a single ‘leader’ on the Front Bench, tragic
Looks like I’ll be spoiling my ballot for the 10th election in a row
Sad that you feel that you have to spoil your ballot paper, but I fully understand why you feel you cannot support the current crop of prospective politicians.
If just one MP would stand up and say this is wrong, it may give us, the electorate a glimmer of hope.
Current crop? Sadly I have never voted for anyone in my life. I’ve never felt able to.
As I said somewhere before I’ve always felt like a Labour voter from the 1970s lol
And that Labour Party is long dead. Long, long dead (killed by Blair).
I share your sentiments but many people died to get you that vote. You should at least go and write something derogatory on the ballot paper.
I’ve always voted for someone; not usually an easy choice and often best of the worst. Next time, though, I think I’m with you Farinances – none of the above (unless Toby, Peter Hitchens or Lord Sumption are in the running…)
We haven’t had a ‘conservative’ Government this side of Mrs Thatcher
And she put a lot of this stuff into motion.
I just refuse to vote unless I can truly vote FOR someone as opposed to against someone worse. People say I’m naive. I like to think I’m idealistic.
Do make sure to register to vote and then spoil your vote then, spoilt votes with slogans on them saying what you would vote for have to get read by MP candidates, they aren’t worth much but they show that at least someone somewhere considers a particular issue worthy of deciding their vote. Not voting at all just gets fully ignored completely and doesn’t show why you think all parties inadequate.
See above
That just adds to the turnout, impying that you support this phony democracy. It’s one big puppet show and whoever’s in charge, be it Boris, or Sir Max Headroom, they’ll just be reciting someone else’s script.
I was always generally a Boris fan, even loved the HIGNFY , Boris and the elephant trap sketch. Back when hignfy was funny!
Anyway massively disappointed in Boris now and majorly pssed of with the Conservative party.
As you say above. Who do you vote for. At this rate no one.
I have yet to meet any Eton College alumni that I feel able to trust
Steve Baker did at least speak against it..
David Davis (he has always been my favourite tory) is now on board with us. But only recently.
He’s no doubt seizing a chance to backstab.
I hope he succeeds.
If the world ever returns to sanity, the people reponsible for this should face Nuremburg style trials. Sociopathic gobshites the lot of them.
I think the likes of Ferguson and MSM stalwarts like Piers Morgan should be punished for helping bring this country down on its knees and ensuring that we will be picking up the pieces from the socio-economic fallout from this for many. many years to come.
Anyone ex military types on here up for forming a Morgan snatch mob?
The SAGE committee people who advised deliberately terrorising the population should face criminal charges too.
Yes to all the above
Rory Stewart?
Haven’t heard his take on it. He’s always been a bit curate’s egg for me – quite well informed and sometimes very astute, but far too keen on silly post-imperial adventures.
But beggars can’t be choosers and if he were to come out antilockdown that would be good enough for me atm.
It sounds like the serelogical tests are being released tomorrow, and won’t be good news according to leaks – 10% in London and 3-4% outside on average, giving us a high IFR in the UK; 0.8% in London and 1.5% outside – although these need to be weighted by the demographics of the people who are getting it.
Strikes me that 2 things are strange – firstly that London is lower than the rest of the UK – elsewhere urban centres tend to have higher IFRs. Secondly that they are so much higher than the Swedish results from Stockholm.
I guess we’ll have to wait and see – the leaks could be wrong.
Lol how many people did they test? 12?
I think we can probably trust the ONS and Oxford Uni to get a representative sample.
I don’t trust the ONS for shit after what they’ve been doing to fiddle the death figures.
Oxford however…..
Well, I don’t!
Assuming those numbers are correct (and that there’s minimal lag; in reality testing turnround time + seroconversion time is probably longer than average time from infection to death), the high IFR would most likely be explained by the insane care home discharge policy.
Say ~50% of deaths in care homes and the IFR for the remainder looks much more in line with other areas.
10% seropositive would be in line with other hard hit areas. It also does look likely that the threshold to keep R below 1 is much lower than 1-1/R0 in any case, maybe 10%-20%.
Do you think that Re would be below 1 even without a lockdown in London then?
Yes. Considering the R is supposedly lower than 1 in Stockholm where they NEVER HAD LOCKDOWN.
Depends on lots of things, including heterogeneity and susceptibility. London threshold is probably going to tend higher than most places because of the enforced contact on public transport etc. but on the other hand those same factors might give inherently lower susceptibility.
Actually yeah good point. If the R is supposed to be lowest now in London (because they were ahead), then 10% atnibodies would seem to marry that up. But TBH I’m questioning literally all the figures, the R number nonsense, and just about every ‘offcial’ number now on the basis that they’re saying people with terminal cancer are dying of covid.
” they’re saying people with terminal cancer are dying of covid.”. Which is very deliberate I might add.
A lot of people have forgotten everything that they suspected and knew way back in March about the virus. Everyone has probably got it, already had it. It’s really that simple.
The next time you see some stupid media ‘scare story’ saying child/granny/anyone died ‘of’ covid after something bad happens, witness the hysterical comments boards of those infected by Fear.
Then simply ask the question – what if dead person already had covid before said ‘incident’..?
Sow the seed of doubt as you go…
Yep you are dead right. I think the total world fatality increase for this year will be zero? There is no excess mortality.
Don’t you think the younger folks who didn’t get to A&E in time with appendicitis etc would increase the numbers?
Well there is a bit – SO FAR. Over the whole year I suspect not so much.
What would be REALLY interesting would be the drop in numbers dying of other causes, eg. heart attacks because of course no-one ever dies of anything but covid
I also forsee an increase in non-covid deaths going forward resulting from the lockdown and paranoia, it’s going to be hard to unpick
And counting deaths in hospices as covid.
Is this a leak as it seemed to be in the news on Monday:
https://uk.news.yahoo.com/boris-johnson-coronavirus-192546668.html
If the lockdown has been a success, there’s no way we could have caught the virus and developed antibodies. We can’t win, can we?
Well, it’s not the full paper.
Younger demographic in London? Or perhaps that healthcare is so much more accessible? (Speaking from personal experience).
“This is probably the most expensive series of errors in the country’s history.”
It’s always a “mistake”.
I know, I know, it’s psychologically incredibly painful even to contemplate that these things can be done deliberately. but the oldest question of criminal investigation is this:
“cui bono?”
Who profits?
Who profited from the monstrously inflated number of deaths due to the policy of seeding elderly care homes with already infected patients? Who massively increased their financial and political control over the population? Whose crackpot clay models were (admittedly very partially) vindicated thereby? Whose extreme power grabs, e.g. trying to rush through legislation giving extraordinary police powers to invade your homes and places of businesses without due process of law, were justified on the basis of the death toll on our elderly relatives?
Instead of cowering in our beds we ought to be rioting on the steps of parliament.
A mistake?
No, a crime.
It is indeed, but who are the big players most likely to benefit?. Not the government specifically is it? This has been almost every government in the world
As with anything: follow. the. money…
As you say, follow the money.. Which American eugenicist and vaccine promoter has basically ‘bought’ all the main players – Neil Ferguson, Patrick Vallance, Chris White and Matt Hancock, to name just a few???
They also changed the abortion law with no Parliamentary debate, despite Matt Hancock saying in Parliament that they had no plans to do so and that the inclusion of that particular clause in the coronavirus act was a clerical error. As soon as Parliament had closed, they went back on their word and that clause went through..
Jesus, what’s the new law?
Given that teachers are supposed to be intelligent, sensible and be able to be rational, do we really want these hysterical teachers teaching our children if they cannot see how the illusion of deadly lurgy is being forced upon them ?
I’m a teacher and I’m totally up for school resuming!
Thank god for you Bob
Well done indeed!
It’s the teachers’ unions, not the teachers, who are spouting this terrifyingly cowardly and uninformed crap.
Does that mean we’ll see them all back at work in june?
The scared headteachers carefully chosen to testify on the Beeb can’t be helping.
Total GLOBAL CV19 deaths about 280k ( remember these include anyone with a cough who died of cancer) = Total panic By governments and the media
Total global deaths from malaria. 435k. EVERY year. = give a shit-o-meter equals zero
crazies wearing masks while driving cars on their own.
If the public sector, MPs, House of Lords were all sitting at home on 80% pay capped at 12500 per year maybe there would be more of an out cry.
Seasonal flu deaths, globally between 290000 and 650000 each year (verified numbers). This years flu season ended 4 weeks earlier than it has ever ended before, ever, ever ever ! That just tells me a lot of flu patients are being written up as covid patients. (perhaps it’s more profitable to do so)
Exactly. In the uk Flu deaths this year are exactly zero.
https://off-guardian.org/2020/05/05/covid-19-is-a-statistical-nonsense/
Have a read of this to see the nonsense of the recorded deaths in the uk
Interesting yes. We can assume some of them are flu, simply because our government reported the flu numbers to the WHO.
This link is to the WHO flu monitoring site.
https://apps.who.int/flumart/Default?ReportNo=12
Select the UK for the country, and dates between week 1 and week 20 of this year. The flu cases have been reported, they could be compared to the previous year to see if they’re in a similar range of values. These are not deaths, just reported cases, I’m not sure how they report deaths but obviously some of these could be deaths
After a brief check myself, this years flu numbers are about 1/4 of previous years.
Yes daily mail screaming 400+ more deaths “announced” today. Who announced? They are simply passing the buck rather than looking up the numbers.
https://www.england.nhs.uk/statistics/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/05/COVID-19-daily-announced-deaths-13-May-2020.xlsx
NHS England reporting 244 “yesterday”
“Yesterday” means actual 40 yesterday.
The rest are dating back to March 27th.
Handily broken down to age groups.
Zero below 40 yrs
40-59= 1
60- 79= 15
Over 80 yrs old =24 deaths
The majority of older people are the poor souls expelled from the hospitals prior to lockdown “to save the nhs”
Expelled back to the nursing homes where no medical treatment was available or no GPS were visiting.
Shameless and disgraceful situation by a the government.
Yes the charade continues and the whole country locked up and business crippled.
Who bothers to report that they have flu? Surely only the hospitalised ones get recorded?
Is there a CQC points mean prizes thing going on with covid, like there is with everything else?
It simply means front loading the numbers into one huge death curve. Lockdown will only be loosened for quite a while.
The time needs to be spent wisely, gathering support against this total nonsense. bit by bit until the masked gimps are in a tiny minority.
But – they are! How many of them do you see in the Commons these days?
Possibly you missed the bit about capped pay!
Lol
Denmark not expecting 2nd or 3rd waves
Looks like they are going for a aggressive track and trace.
https://www.thelocal.dk/20200512/second-wave-very-unlikely-says-danish-health-chief/amp?__twitter_impression=true
Denmark, together with the UK is another country which has very suspiciously low flu reporting figures for this year
Not that suspicious at all… Unfortunately this is a long political game being played on a world scale. The most important part of it is actually us, going out there about our normal lives as much as possible. It’s that simple.
And… this is the important bit, not get (too) angry or mad at people locked in their Fear prison. They will lose (god knows how they can cope with this), just try and bring them out of it if you can. Some will be a lost cause.
The sooner you do it the better
Ooh…..interesting, people being urged NOT to attend. Who is up for going?
https://www.thescottishsun.co.uk/news/5590580/coronavirus-scotland-police-covid-19-lockdown/
& Also….more fear & doom reporting on Yahoo (again)
https://uk.yahoo.com/news/kawasaki-disease-teenager-dies-london-093207625.html
At last. I will be at the green on Saturday.
FREEDOM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
If I didn’t need a mask to visit the supermarket for the last 5 weeks, why on earth should I need one now?
Move to Wales – we don’t need them here
We aren’t allowed to cross borders, so can we turn up illegally and claim asylum?
It works at the Channel ports!
A pair of underpants (ladies or gents) make an ideal face covering, why over-complicate?
Washed first I trust.
Or wear them inside out?
Omg. Tempted to give up my no mask policy for this
You don’t. It’s that simple
No masks worn by customers in my supermarket tonight. Unusually, the cashier wore one – she gelled her gloved hands too. She must be new, the regulars stopped doing that after the first week!
https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2020/04/commentary-masks-all-covid-19-not-based-sound-data
Please, please could someone influential send this to She Who Must Be Obeyed and ensure that she reads and takes note?
Masks are a waste of time!
Grubby scarves, home made coverings for nose and mouth and dodgy surgical masks bought on ebay don’t do any good.
And chucking them anywhere but a bin is not a good idea.
O please can we grow up and regain our sense of personal responsibility and independent thought, based not on panic and virtue signalling but on rational judgement.
And the NHS is not a divine entity, worthy of unquestioning sacrifice and adulation; it’s a public service which is valuable but not infallible.
It does not require clap fests, excessive emoting or slavish slobbering paeans.
If so,you could always ‘resurrect’ it…
But better wait for the third day – makes it more religious!
Leave a few more, and keep leaving them.
Another song suggestion: Cliff’s “Sing a Song of Freedom” – “It’s the time for liberation so pass the word around”
Or, ‘We’re all going on a summer holiday’?
Or ‘Living Doll’, if the lockdown goes on indefinitely…..
I like that one, because I certainly am! Even if I have to swim, drive or walk all the way to Greece.
“Many of the group organisers appear to be conspiracy theorists who question how serious a threat coronavirus poses, and are angry at the imposition of lockdown rules. ”
Hey, we resemble that remark!
Daily Mail talking about the organisers of mass anti-lockdown parties apparently planned for this Saturday, whilst doing an excellent job of advertising them!
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8314605/Coronavirus-UK-Mass-gatherings-picnics-live-music-advertised-Saturday.html
It will be interesting, since my house overlooks one of the parks apparently chosen for these parties (I won’t say which one, for obvious reasons). My betting is if this gets any traction they’ll close the park.
“Mass gatherings were banned by the UK Government on March 16 as the crisis intensified, one week before the full lockdown was imposed on March 23.
Politicians said at the time that the risks of transmitting the disease at mass gatherings was relatively low, but banned them to avoid burdening the emergency services by having to attend the events.
These rules have not changed since the lockdown was eased today, despite people now being allowed to meet one person from another household in a park.”
And just spotted that in the Mail article.
Laws introduced on one pretext and then kept in place long after that pretext has ceased to apply? Gosh, who’d ever have thought a government would do something like that, eh?
Maybe you should take a horse and claim it’s Cheltenham Festival?
I really object to being called a conspiracy theorist when it is plain as the nose on everyone’s face that the lockdown is just plain bonkers.
It’s one of the commonest of the various smears used to delegitimise, demonise and discredit dissent from the mainstream. You get used to it after a while, if you are in the habit of not toeing the line.
I used to really object to being called a conspiracy theorist following 9-11, when it was as plain as the nose on everyone’s face the official explanation was just plain bonkers.
Welcome to the club, Annabel.
Amazed that the “media” is making such a fuss about recent economy figures. That the economy has shrunk is broadcast as a sudden revelation. What will they say when the figures for April to June are published.
Yet another case of sudden media realisation of the blindingly obvious. What world have they been living in??
Once we’ve bottomed out we should expect phases of successive leaders saying how much of an improvement each one makes. Well when you’re at the bottom there’s only one way to go
I seem to remember one T.Bliar saying that!
Economic Recession Due To The Corona
Er no. Due to the LOCKDOWN.
Dear Toby Young
Thank you so much for running lockdownsceptics.org site which I enjoy every day. You have it bang on. The virus has introduced a modest element of risk into life and British public have been scared out of their wits. We have become so frightened as to accept extraordinary repression of our basic freedoms, and extraordinary damage to our economy of which we are merely in the foothills. We have lost the courage of our wartime grandfathers, and become overwhelmed by fear. Part of the problem is that people are unable to digest the risk. This site does a great job of helping people get things into proportion.
Extraordinarily, as you and many others have said, we still have little idea of how lethal SARS-CoV-2 is. With such a wide range of estimates of the Infection Fatality Rate; and we have little idea of when the epidemic would naturally peak since neither do we know the herd-immunity-threshold. According to ONS website
(https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthandsocialcare/conditionsanddiseases/bulletins/coronaviruscovid19infectionsurvey/england10may2020) the first results of the ONS Coronavirus (COVID-19) Infection Survey are due on 14 May 2020 (see ) which may shed more light on the IFR.
“Peter Hitchens: End this lockdown lunacy NOW! Britain MUST get back to business before it’s too late
Why does the Government continue to cower in fear of the virus? By not letting business get back on its feet, Boris Johnson is single-handedly strangling the economy, argues our columnist”
Peter Hitchens on good form!
https://www.mailplus.co.uk/tv/60-second-sound-off/6839/peter-hitchens-end-this-lockdown-lunacy-now-britain-must-get-back-to-business-before-its-too-late
This man was a sort of bete noir when I was a student, you hated the tories and you hated Hitchins. I’ve come to really admire him through this, he’s stuck to his principles, never insults anyone, takes enormous amounts of flack, and just keeps on trucking, he doesn’t even mind if people disagree, if they’ll debate him civilly. How prominently is that feature plugged by the Mail?
Story about Hitchens.
Same. When I was a student you hated The Daily Mail, all Tories, and the ‘middle classes’. (Last one always made me laugh considering most people who said this sort of thing went to private school and where I come from noone who goes to private school is middle class. They are rich.) I was always a little sceptical of this attitude. But every time I saw Peter on TV he genuinely pissed me off.
However. I went to my university’s media awards. Peter was a guest. Being a combative little stropper, I marched right up to him in the bar afterwards and began being an arse basically. But Peter was actually very nice, he didn’t lose his cool with this idiotic teenager. We ended up having a heated but very productive discussion about all sorts, after which he bought me a very expensive cocktail.
It was that episode – and indeed Peter himself – that taught me never to judge people on the expectations of others.
Lord Sumption is mine. Closely followed by Peter.
And Toby actually! How can we forget him! Thankyou Toby!
I honestly feel like I’m being rebuilt from the ground up, a massive recalibration of values, ideas, ideals, everything. In fact I’ve realised (over this, and over brexit and many other things over the years) that my ‘beliefs’ are in fact largely emotions, wanting to be in the ‘right’ crowd, and generally based on quite shocking political ignorance! I have a great deal of time for civil debate, good natured argy bargy, civility, critical thinking it turns out, no matter who says it.
My dad is upper middle class Tory, paid up member, he’s Tory in the same way he’s church of england, rugby not football, etc etc, that’s just who he is. When I was a teenager and student, I said some vile, hideous things to my dad, I just thought he was a tw@t. I feel a bit the same way now about what I used to think about Peter Hitchins. I had absolutely no idea what I was talking about (which I hope is a realisation that hits a few young lockdown zealots in about 15 years!)
And haha re ‘middle class’, I do remember sharing many a black cab ride with those dudes, and how they called the driver ‘mate’ and dropped their aitches. Fooling absolutely no one.
Not sure how much they are pushing it because I’m not that familiar with the Mail, I only found this because I’ve been following his blog during this crisis.
I’ve always quite liked him, because he’s broadly on my political side and he was upright in opposing the Iraq War which all too many on the right were not. But I don’t agree with him on everything, and actually only found out about his stand on this covebola panic when my son, who likes him and reads him regularly, flagged it up for me back in early March I think.
I can definitely understand your slightly conflicted feelings about Hitchens here, because I had similar feelings over some upright figures on the left when I found them sharing the trenches with me in opposition to the various wars we’ve been dragged into. It’s usually the ones, like Peter, who are respected but generally outside the power structure, precisely because they are men or women of principle rather than slimy greasy pole-climbers.
Yeah me too. And I had no idea he opposed the Iraq war, the only political demo of my life was that one! Although don’t hate me, I’m starting to think he’s got a point about morality (God, what is happening to me???).
“the only political demo of my life was that one”
Mine too. (We conservative types aren’t big on demos.)
“I’m starting to think he’s got a point about morality (God, what is happening to me???).”
You’re …. growing up?
[ducks for cover]
You know what the Americans say: “if you aren’t a liberal when you’re young, you have no heart, but if you aren’t a middle-aged conservative, you have no head.”
Haha, I’m not a simpleton I promise, always been a thinker, but it’s a bit like something has happened to the magnetic field and north isn’t where it used to be.
And my dad just used to laugh at my rants and say ‘you’ll agree with me when you’re older’. I have a horrible feeling the old bugger might be right.
I think more than anything, just becoming more pragmatic, and seeing life how it is, rather than how you’d wish it to be.
I have a feeling your dad’s going to be insufferably smug for a while, after you get drunk one Christmas and let all this spill out…..
when i was an apprentice in the 80’s i hated the lefties. I hated how they all went to college on the tax i paid on my low wages while they sneered at people who supported Mrs Thatcher. I always smile to myself when i see some 40 odd year old finally work out they were conservative all along only they couldn’t admit it then because they didn’t have the balls to admit to their friends for fear of being hated.
Disagree it’s lack of balls, it’s just frame of reference, plus it’s kinda normal as a teenager to rebel against your parents, so if they say black, you say white. I agree about the sneering, my mum grew up absolutely rock bottom poor, on a scale people today would find shocking, that side of the family are brickies, plasterers, roofers, market traders, so always had a foot in both camps (and come up against some hideous snobbery from posh people for not being posh enough, and some pretty awful reverse snobbery from ‘working class’ people for being too posh, couldn’t win). None of us are immune from wanting to belong, I don’t think.
Surely theye’re not cowering in fear of the virus but are afraid of losing face?
Hey All,
Just a wee reminder. Tomorrow night (Thursday) at 8:02pm is the Tweet-Bomb. I‘ve been pushing and sharing it as much as I can, but it will only work with your support.
Further details here: https://twitter.com/WeWillBeFree82
(Apologies Toby for hijacking your blog to drum up support, but this really needs a huge number of people to make it effective).
If this is successful, I also have some other sneaky activist plans to put pressure on the government. All legal I might add.
Cheers
R Dawg
I do not know what you have planned, but please could it include actions that are possible for people who do not have Twitter or other social media?
Hi Carrie,
This is a very good point. Before the lockdown I refused all social media because I personally hate it. I only set up the account as a campaigning tool – a kind of necessary evil. In the short term, I’d recommend setting up a Twitter account (takes less than 5 mins) purely to support this campaign. You need only use it, for the mass Tweet, and nothing else.
However, I will get thinking about other campaigns we can do. However it is v hard to communicate and gain traction without social media in 2020. In fact, it’s arguably social media that is perpetuating the fear and panic for lockdown zealots.
All suggestions welcome. If we come up with something ethical, clever and not illegal, I’m sure Toby would support it…?
Stickers work quite well, I think you need to check what adhesive, as it counts as ‘littering’ or flyers under windscreen wipers, could do the supermarket carpark, back of loo doors in Sainsbury’s, etc etc. Create a template and people print them off. Letters to the editor of local papers also good. Or, in an ideal world
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZwMVMbmQBug
I’m getting myself some t shirts printed with anti-lockdown messages on them. Whenever I’m out I can be advertising our cause.
What’s your slogan on the t-shirt?
I don’t use Twitter but I know that MPs do, so it’s the best place to start.
Asia with its massive population has a very low death toll compared to Europe and America, why is that ? Is it because they are counting just Covid deaths, where we are getting mixed up with flu, pneumonia etc or do they have immunity from previous outbreaks or are they just healthier ?
Think this needs looking into from bigger brains than mine.
Difficult to get good data, but, India in particular is anomalous. Last year they did a few thousand flu tests every week (wk 5 to wk 20) which returned a few hundred positives.
This year the rate of testing was only a few hundred per week (wk 5 to wk 7) which returned a low number of positives, but there has been no flu testing since wk8 onwards.
I’ve used the WHO flu monitoring site here https://apps.who.int/flumart/Default?ReportNo=12
Chances are they are testing more thoroughly, so they know that huge numbers have it and therefore the proportional death tolls are pretty low. In Europe and the USA only the serious susected cases, hospital worthy, have been tested for it, so it looks like our IFR is higher because we know about less of the mild cases which are happening all the same. Looking at Uk figures we’ve seen 33K deaths but only 230K positive tests, however with an IFR assuemd between 0.1% and 1% we can expect that between 1.6M and 17M people have had it.
Thailand has done hardly any testing and has had 3k cases and 51 deaths. I just think they are reporting actual figures, their flu and pneumonia numbers are on track to be average.
Despite that, they are under curfew and you get your temperature taken at the door of the shopping centre. Oh, and you have to wear a mask to be allowed in.
It’s done no harm to the very unpopular military ruler there to impose a completely pointless lockdown. So many places around the world have had there anti government protest movements cut off at the knees.
Yes… and THIS is the critical point. They have created a subservient nation. Whereas, here in UK (and some other countries) you are allowed to choose.
Don’t forget this, so simple choose to go outside, without a mask, and do what you normally do, but observe the only thing required of you : 2m distance.
You can talk to others, thats the point
For now …..
It could also be due to genetics – the flip side of what seems to apply to those with very dark complexions; combined with, I suspect, a much lower level of obesity.
In the famed ‘inject yourself with bleach’ Trump conference he was actually responding to a doctor who had been up before him, who among other things, said the virus was basically instantly killed outdoors at 26c or higher. Funny how that bit of information was neglected in favour of more Trump bashing. Especially as half of America would have such a climate.
Is it posible that Trump in his incoherent childlike way expresses what is being said in briefings. Apart from the injecting bleach part, a lot of what he says is in line with what a lot of scientists are saying. For example, that corona virus is no worse than seasonal flu and that like seasonal flu it will go away. Dr Birx explained his bleach comments saying that the President’s remarks was his way of processing the information he was getting. The anti Trump US media like to portray people like Fauci as the “adults in the room and that Trump should just be ignored and that lambasting Trump for contradicting his own team. What if it was the other way round.
Donald Trump’s warning on March 23 will always ring out: “we cannot let the cure be worse than the problem”, as he put himself into the hands of his experts.
The ‘wodka and saunas’ approach has scientific basis ? Cool.
One of my sons lives in Hanoi so I’ve visited Vietnam several times in recent years and travelled around with him and his family. The first and most blatantly obvious difference is that you will struggle to find many elderly people. The Vietnam War is in large part responsible for that, followed by an explosive level of growth in more recent years. Elderly people exist but there are very few as a proportion of the visible population, the vast majority of whom are under 45. Secondly, you will struggle to find anyone who is obese. Thirdly, the diet does not consist of fast food and microwave meals. Fourthly, Vietnam is a one-party state and was able to introduce its measures extremely fast. Whether those measures will generate a sustainable solution to the virus is another matter. Those will do for starters and some or all play a role in other Asian countries, for example Cambodia where the bias to the young is even more overwhelming. As you can see, such countries miss out on most of the key factors now thought to be behind deaths in western countries.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-05-13/coronavirus-vietnam-no-deaths-success-in-south-east-asia/12237314
Australia also has a very low toll; 97 deaths in a population of 25 million. Very hard to make sense of it.
Toby has done it again. He links to the Daily Mail to prove children do not transmit the virus. He then uses this to say schools can open with no trouble. May be schools can open but it’s not because children don’t transmit. Take a look at Nature which sets out where we are – inconclusive.
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-01354-0
We are getting in to camps -Unions who stupidly say “It’s unsafe by definition” then the Toby’s who say children are inherently safe and Ferguson is a left-leaning moron. Neither are correct.
The ins and outs of the virus itself are far more difficult and unknown. R? Who the hell knows what it means in reality? It’s just a term in a complex mathematical model. Anyone want to debate alpha for shares? R is a distraction here. Rubbishing the science of covid and the epidemiologists is of little use. The issue is defining the damage the lock down is doing. This can be evaluated in terms of losses of lives right now and in the future. Also, we have very little said about real risk levels for people which vary massively from the risk of infection to the risk once contracted. This is where the argument is won. Social distancing on a walk in the country (near zero risk even if walking past others) is very different from getting on a tube train.
I’ve had enough of people who say “We’ve all had enough of experts.”
I am so happy that you object because the whole point is to maintain civilised discussion.
I think the point about children is that the lack of school is enormously detrimental, especially to those who are disadvantaged already. In order to inflict this damage we should have proof of efficacy and, despite people actually looking, there is no evidence that children transmit or suffer from the virus. The photo of the chalk circles points out the complete lack of basic humanity in a response that is supposedly all about humanity.
And even if they did, according to Sage’s own assessments, closing schools has no public health benefit, only cost, no impact on transmission and no impact on ultimate deaths. Whitty gave a lecture in 2018, How To Control a Pandemic, saying that, ditto airports, and events. The sage minutes leading up to lockdown also say that. It did have, however, 90% public approval.
Sooner or later those children must, we hope, decide on rebellion, they’ll decide that the panic caused to any zealot teachers when they should, shock! horror” hold hands!, will be very amusing for them. And they’ll all be doing it. If not maybe their parents can give them some encouragement.
But the experts in this case are just computer models. That’s why they shoved Ferguson out the way as he was destroying the credibility of the lockdown motivation. He was basically a meme. There are many actual experts vehemently opposed to this but they are removed from all mainstream outlets as it’s against Ofcom guidelines to contradict WHO.
But if I remember correctly, the WHO never said to lockdown. They did say to track and trace and that 1m was enough for social distancing. They also said masks are a waste of time for the general public.
All good points. I agree that the biggest issue is the damage caused by the lockdowns, and I don’t think they are the right strategy whatever the properties of this virus or epidemic are across a very wide range of plausible values.
The second biggest issue I believe is where we are in the course of the epidemic. If we’re near the end (as I strongly suspect but I may be wrong) then protracted periods of “new normals” and endless silly rules become doubly frustrating.
If we were (or are) at the beginning I would even cooperate with TTT provided that the app was properly engineered to get around privacy concerns.
I said in an earlier comment that TTT cannot work when the infection is already so widely spread. But this isn’t true. If you get the infections low enough you just start tracing anyone as soon as they show symptoms after that point. In theory it can work. But you have to know they are that low and also that the reason they are isn’t just that the epidemic is already over.
Hi guy153, can TTT still work when there are so many asymptomatic cases?
In theory yes, and also in practice, because it worked in Iceland and in some other places (Taiwan, for a bit in Singapore, probably others too). You don’t need to catch every infection– if you successfully find say half of the active infections you will reduce the transmission by enough to damp things right down (R < 1). I think they reckoned in Iceland they achieved about half. If you do TTT of course you don't need a lockdown.
But doesn’t it come back to the same issue? Is your health service over-whelmed? If not is there any benefit to prolonging the time period over which the outbreak lasts?
Genuinely curious!
Yes you’ve put your finger on the problem… it’s assumed you do TTT until you have a vaccine, which might be never.
TTT is much much less disruptive than a lockdown but can be a bit of a PITA. In South Korea they go around closing restaurants and things in affected areas and generally jumping on top of things.
The odd thing is when we look at the Spanish flu pandemic in USA we’re often shown how cities with lockdown fared better than cities that didn’t. But this was at a city level, not entire countries. How have we got to a point where closing down an entire country is seemingly the most intelligent way to deal with a virus?
You cannot stop a virus. We will need to live with it. The ones with good immune systems will be able to recover easily most of the time. I say most of the time because thousands of people of all ages die each year from influenza, with COVID the young do not die.
If we do not get children back to school and the economy going the deaths, misery, hunger and mental health will be massive.
You can stop a virus, if you contain it REALLY EARLY. The authoritaians of the Chinese Communist Party didn’t do this though, instead they arrested the doctors who reported on it on grounds that they didn’t want “rumours” spreading up the chain of command and making the local officials look bad. As things stand today however we cannot stop covid-19, because it has spread too far, it is endemic everywhere now, we need to get used to that and accept it as an extra risk to add to the pile of them that exist in normal lfie anyway. Our ancestors would be thrilled to have a world where the most worrying disease is something so mild as covid-19, they kept on living and working not only through epidemics of much worse diseases but in a world where truly nasty diseases were common at all times. The comparison proves what cowards we have become, great figures of history wold laugh at us, then wonder why they’d ever tried to make a better world.
‘ I was quite surprised to read that, given the recent slew of evidence that children don’t transmit the disease. But the real jaw-dropper is that Anneliese Dodds, the shadow chancellor, told the Times she would keep her six year-old son at home unless the Government provided evidence to show that going to school would not risk harming others. Does she not realise that children under 10 aren’t infectious? Across the entire world, there hasn’t been a single case – NOT A SINGLE CASE – of a child under 10 infecting someone else’.
There is NO evidence that children do not infect others. I looked at the case review commented on by some Daily Mail journalist, which Toby appears to have swallowed uncritically. The studies do not address this question at all. They do record various observations about the mildness of symptoms in children, many asymptomatic, absence of fatalities, apparent presence of antibodies in babies delivered by C section to Covid mothers, etc.
On the other hand, as any fule kno, children merrily pass around all infections to each other and their hapless parents. Otherwise how did us oldsters all get measles, mumps, whooping cough and chicken pox before we went to secondary school? schools are hotbeds of colds and flu, and most parents and teachers of small children routinely experience 2/3 such infections every winter. Children in school WILL catch and pass on Corona virus, at very little detriment to themselves. Andprobably little detriment to their parents, those who are fit and under 70, anyway. Ditto teachers.
So I’m a bit saddened to see the chorus of thumbs downs for Boneyknees’ entirely reasonable comment.
I too was horrified by Annelies Dodd’s attitude.
There is NO evidence that children do not transmit the virus in the case reviews put together by Alastair Munro’s bunch. It was not a question addressed in the case reports. Don’t know why Toby uncritically swallows some Daily Mail journalist’s comment to that effect, either.
On the other hand, as any fule kno, children merrily pass round every bug going between themselves and their hapless parents. And teachers. Otherwise, how did us oldsters all get measles, mumps , whooping cough and chicken pox before we were 11?
Children in school WILL transmit Corona virus indiscriminately – at very little detriment to themselves. Or their parents, probably, provided they’re fit and under 70. Ditto teachers.
So saddened to see the harvest of thumbs downs for Boneyknees entirely reasonable comment.
That’s not true actually, there is data and studies now that children do not transmit it, there is not one case worldwide where they were better at track and trace, where a child gave it to an adult.
The way I heard it is that there is a strong suggestion that children do not transmit, but that statistics show school closures (unlike total lockdowns) have nonetheless had some effect on slowing the spread, perhaps when open the spread happeend between parents at the gates or between teachers. The fact is that the virus is proving mild though, so we should consider the harms of closure, and the difficulties it poses for any workers who are parents, as severe enough to be worth reopening despite any spread this will cause.
Yes. A lot of votes down because I don’t express my concerns about the lockdown in the “right way”. I don’t rubbish Imperial College or imply that one man – Prof Ferguson – convinced most governments round the world to lock down based on no evidence whatsoever aided and abetted by lily livered politicians who were delighted to crash their economies. I object when Toby calls him Dr Strangelove. I am not even anti schools opening. I just object to Toby making definitive statements that are false to justify his position. You can hold many of Toby’s views without that tabloid crap that Toby spouts complete with tabloid cross-references.
I’m not at all sure we need to get primary school children to school now. I support it if it can be done with little added risk. There’s actually little school time left. Why aren’t the government talking about catching up? Teaching over the summer or even… Saturday school? They are 6. They are about to be off for 6 weeks or so. I just see the government blurting out dates with no real planning – it’s being done now but some basic facts are missing. There are other ways to solve this problem a little later when things might be clearer.
Around two months school time left.
Flippant, but I’m beyond caring:
Loses Ones Credibility & Kudos Deliberating On Wasteful Niceties.
So who thinks we would be in this mess if the Brexit Party had won the last election?
Alternatively, who will be voting for the Reform Party (or whatever they will call themselves) next time?
We need a Reform party – that is truly conservative too.
No, we need a reform party that is truly libertarian. Classic conservatism is too vulnerable to restricting freedom in cases where it thinks doing so would aid it in enforcing some idealised vision of the past.
First post so be gentle
A couple of points from my own little (mostly unread) blog..
The first is why has so little attention been paid to the fact that the Government’s own advisory body ( The Advisory Committee on Dangerous Pathogens) downgraded the status of Covid 19 back on the 19th March? That was before the lockdown when they said:
As of 19 March 2020, COVID-19 is no longer considered to be a high consequence infectious disease (HCID) in the UK.
https://www.gov.uk/guidance/high-consequence-infectious-diseases-hcid#status-of-covid-19
I thought we were meant to be following the science?
Secondly, all this hysteria and panic is made even more alarming by Joe Public’s inability to assess risk.
Even if you accept that at the time of writing there have been around 33,000 deaths associated with Covid 19 (there have probably been less as anecdotal evidence is that Covid 19 is being put on death certificates without supporting evidence) this is not serious. At this stage the frightened rabbits will poke their heads out of their burrows and tell you how ‘every life is precious’.
Well if it is so fecking precious love why the feck have you, prior to this, been driving your car everywhere and contributing to the culling of at least 40,000 (more recent studies say 64,000) people every year from air pollution? The Royal College of Physicians’ report ‘Every Breath We Take‘ points out that ‘Each year in the UK, around 40,000 deaths are attributable to exposure to outdoor air pollution which plays a role in many of the major health challenges of our day’. I often use this fact when talking to people who tell me how serious this killer disease is, before they scurry off home to tell their partner about the nutcase they met with with no gloves or mask.
And if their life is really so precious (and we know that Covid19 particularly affects those with conditions like obesity and diabetes etc.) why the feck have they been stuffing themselves with junk food and clearing the supermarket shelves of booze for their incarceration rather than taking the opportunity to lose weight and get super fit to fight this ‘scary killer’?
In reality no one will bother to take the opportunity to reduce their risk factors; they will still be stuffing their faces with high fat foods whilst ‘snitching’ on their neighbours who take more than the permitted exercise whilst waiting for the government to protect them. By the way we are still not allowed to exercise away from our homes here in Wales – apparently ‘off licences’ are essential but a solitary walk in the Brecon Beacons is lethal.
I hear your pain and frustration.
The people who accuse others of being selfish and irresponsible for downplaying the seriousness of this virus make me cringe. I’ve seen some even try to claim that if you pass on the virus it’s tantamount to murder if they die.
Yet when I point out on the same basis that we’re all probably guilty of passing on the flu at some point in the past and ultimately somebody has died of it they have no reasonable response. This is not flu, it’s far more deadly. That may be so but passing on flu still kills people, so why should it be considered any different?
Except it’s not far more deadly tbh
It’s currently slightly worse than flu but that’s mainly because we’ve all been exposed to flu varients for years so there will likely be higher resistance to it. And there’s a vaccine for the more vulnerable so the death toll is reduced.
Given time I would think the deadliness of CV19 to be on a par with seasonal flu as people build up resistance and there may eventually be some sort of vaccine.
Drive to Waitrose in Hereford (or say that is what you’re doing if anyone asks) then stop off for a walk in the Herefordshire hills on the way back.
Don’t forget the coolbag.
I hear you. Obesity also kills around 30k people pee year in the UK, and yet many are horrified that the UK spends around £6bn trying to tackle it.
They say only 11% of people want lockdown relaxed but if the pubs opened tomorrow I guarantee more than 11% of the population would be in them. Of course most people don’t want lockdown to end they get to sit at home and still get paid. Take the money away and watch attitudes change.
Yep extending furlough til October was a DUMB MOVE
Seeing that made me worry slightly that we could potentially have some sort of lockdown until that time. I really hope it’s just can-kicking from Sunak, delaying potential (and by that point, likely inevitable) redundancies, rather than anticipating that the disease will be still raging by that time. Still, October is just the start of flu season…
If I was being positive, it might well be needed to tide over a few businesses that might be last to get going, such as holiday firms, some pubs, airlines, ferry companies and the like! Of course we shouldn’t be in this situation but there you go…
My husband believes that the extension is simply a way to ensure that by October a significant percentage is more or less back at work and to lessen the unemployment stats. At least Sunak admitted that the government won’t be able to save all jobs.
Agree totally. I think they realise they dropped and massive clanger here.
If they release everyone tomorrow and say “ah sorry looks like it’s not that serious”
Then most companies will lay off most the staff as there is no Market left. Everyone too frightened.
Hence yes us will take months to unwinds.
Biggest economic disaster ever
I’m afraid that there are many small businesses which won’t be able to get going again for some months, much as they would like to, as they won’t have customers (eg think of companies servicing major sporting, theatrical or exhibition events).
Without the furlough being extended, they may have no option but to shut up shop, (probably through CVA or administration to get the state to meet the redundancy cost), making all their staff redundant, with the hope of a buy-back of the rump of the business later in the year.
Sunak is clearly leaving it up to those employers who can re-open, to cajole their employees back to work. Unfortunately, through the social distancing rules, his colleagues have created the perfect scenario for a new “elf’n’safety” culture; this, combined with an extended furlough, make the ‘cajoling’ a hard task.
He’s clearly a smart guy, but he can’t win this one.
Another great update, especially enjoyed this one. The picture of the French children in the chalk squares is just horrifying. The damage this lockdown is doing to children, in lost education and social interaction during their most formative years, as well as exposing them to constant fear-mongering and teaching them to treat everyone as an enemy, must be astronomical. I sincerely hope that we get back to the ‘old normal’ as soon as possible, for their sake – young children are adaptable and if we can get ourselves out of this insanity quick enough then they can hopefully bounce back.
However, I read today that Manchester University has announced that its first term next academic year will be totally online. Given it’s a widely-renowned RG uni, I can see other institutions following suit. This truly breaks my heart – I feel so sorry for all those 18/19 year olds who are at low risk (and will be living amongst low-risk people at uni) and are being robbed of the fantastic and unforgettable social experience of freshers’ year. They’ve already been denied the closure and commemoration of leaving school. Maybe they can reschedule events etc. for January, but that’s still a third of the year gone (and university years tend to be very short, having recently attended uni myself), and no doubt the unis will be charging full fees for patchy online access and a few PowerPoints.
Seeing things being cancelled/modified until the end of the year like that also fills me with dread – is this how long this lunacy is really going to last? Again, I feel like it’s an artificial prolongation of the agony, and the ‘social distancing’ measures begin to justify themselves purely because ‘everyone else is doing it’. If we all just came to our senses and actually gave the economy the chance to open up, rather than stifling it with all these insane jobsworth regulations, then recovery may well be ‘V’ shaped, instead of ‘L’ shaped like they’re now saying.
It’s good that the policy of discharging elderly COVID-infected hospital patients into care homes is now getting more media traction. I remember reading about it back in mid-April but no-one was talking about it back then. Hopefully now it’s a bit more in the mainstream, people will read the UK deaths in that context and also realise that deifying ‘our NHS’ at the expense of everything else has ironically caused more deaths and been a policy disaster.
Good on Switzerland for accelerating its opening plans and accepting the risk – this is precisely what we should all be doing. I sincerely hope that the dreadful YouGov poll where 46% of masochists say they’re actually enjoying virtual house arrest is imbued with a hefty dose of bias.
“the French children in the chalk squares is just horrifying”
That’s surely a spoof setup isn’t it? I mean I know we constantly see humanity descending to new depths of inanity over this coronapanic, but surely nobody, not even in France, would actually do that….?
I was thinking it could be fake but at this stage, I would honestly not be surprised if it weren’t.
BBC news this morning interviewed a couple of primary headteachers. One mentioned marking squares in the playground. The photo looks too dystopian to be true but I’m afraid it could be the real deal. The headteacher also pointed out that the lunch break would take four hours. How do you make a hungry schoolkid wait till 3 pm for their lunch and how do they socialise if they’re 6 ft apart?
This is very cruel. Kids need to play with their friends.
That’s pretty disturbing….
Having lived in France for the past 15 years sadly I would not be surprised if the photo is genuine.
Also over here ALL children I have spotted sofar in supermarkets or other shops are wearing masks…all but mine that is.
Good for you, Michel.
Just got back from the park. Loads of kids, not a mask to be seen.
A fully online term is going to seriously f*ck over students on subjects with practical elements to them. All the bio-sciences, who are the ons we need to be training up to fight the next pandemic (there could be something actually serious waiting around the corner unlke COVID today), all the physical sciences (chemistry and physics involve learning lab techniques you can’t practice digitally), some of the earth sciences (geology involves closely examining rocks for yourself), quite a bit of computing/engineering subjects as not all tech is internet connected thesedays… Right now students have barely lost teaching time, it ended before the lockdown lunacy began, only lost some exams which got shifted to more career-relevant coursework type activities anyway, but if idiocy remains in Autumn that will be ruinous.
Fully online university has an agenda and an effect obvious to anyone familiar with David Goodhart’s work. No more leaving the family home and experiencing a totally new environment as part of growing up, so no more “Anywheres” being made. Instead we are all born, and remain, “Somewheres”. It’s what the right wing want.
Or, you could be someone of many somewheres…..
That sounds interesting. I’ve always been on the right but I’ve never come across that one. It makes a kind of sense superficially – no more “rootless cosmopolitans”, to use a phrase with an unfortunate history. Is that what they are getting at?
For myself, and everyone I’ve spoken to and read that I can remember on my political side, it’s mostly been a matter of believing that the best way to generate people on the right is to get people to encounter hard realities, rather than being coddled at home. “A conservative is a liberal who’s been mugged” and all that.
I’ll have to look up this Goodhart chap.
Good point, ruined by the left/right nonsense. Aren’t we past that yet ?
I agree with the sentiment, it was getting to university that enabled me to escape my dying, dull hometown. It was that or the armed forces..
My hometown centre is mostly University. If they go online, the town will die completely. It was the University that dragged us out of the abyss when the textile and engineering industries were hammered by the Thatcher agenda.
All online courses…hahaha
I bet the students will all still be out on the piss. Madness
Lets have a little more thought on care homes . There are in the UK more than 21,000 care homes which cater for a diverse clientel but most are elderly , frail and often with significant cognitive impairment. Life expectancy for a resident is depending of course on need but on average about 2 years. The coronavirus would have entered anyway unless you hermetically sealed them off from the world with double valve entry as lots of the staff have been asymptomatic carriers.
Many of the staff of care homes are bank , working in several care homes in a week. The staff ,many from the Phillipines or other foreign countries often share accommodation.
The striking thing is that about 10,000 or more homes have suspected covid infections but only 8.000 residents have died. Today we see in Spain a 113 year old woman survive covid19 .It really isn’t that fatal to the very elderly and frail so what are all the millenial bed wetters doing ?
The way it is playing out in care homes is the same as I have seen with a winter flu virus over the years .
That’s a very, very good point.
My preferred strategy would actually have been to do what some care homes did do off their own backs – test the staff (if possible) regularly whilst having them live in with the patients, having absolutely no people coming in or out for a few weeks. Not sustainable for three months obv but if they had instigated this über-shield policy as soon as lockdown began, it could have had real impact.
Also not ejecting everyone out of hospitals into care homes would have the best idea.
I like this idea. Sort of like what the Queen has. Her own personal care home with live-in staff.
Many of them are on multiple pharmaceutical drugs (polypharmacy), severely nutrient deficient, dehydrated, not very mobile, no exposure to fresh air and sunlight = perfect recipe for disaster.
It is shocking to read that they currently do not have access to GPs/hospitals. We treat our pets better.
Out of everything, lack of pallation for end of life really, really, really upset me, particularly as we all piously celebrated VE day, whilst the people who won it, died alone, with no help. No doctors, no fluids, no syringe drivers, no treatment, no morphine, no one to hold their hand, no love. If nothing else comes out of this, I truly hope that respect for our elders is it.
Yes. Totally inhumane treatment!
You might not have spotted this, Toby, because it’s on (what’s left of) the sports pages, but this is a surprisingly sensible article by Matthew Syed:
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/is-it-fair-to-put-lives-at-risk-for-football-on-balance-yes-287m2gxx2?
Excellent information and analysis today, thank you.
I formerly worked as a teacher and am disgusted with many in my profession. Of my teacher friends, one is working hard at home, delivering lessons online.
Another is not working at all. He happily receives full pay. He sends his own children to school, since as a key worker he can. He takes advantage of key workers shopping hours. He spends his time sending round the union petition against reopening. He contacted me, suggesting meeting for a socially distant coffee, because he was bored.
The hypocrisy! Every teacher should be working full time to earn their pay, even if some at home. We have made a huge mistake giving them money for nothing, so they can use their time promoting far left union causes to wreck our lives and our economy, all paid for at our expense.
I’d never normally say this, but for the greater good, can you tip off a newspaper? Or send it to Toby with this absolute idiot’s name and get him to do it? People need to know this is happening. Our oldies are dying, kids are suffering (only 5% of kids on social services’ at risk register are being checked), child food poverty has quadrupled, child sex abuse tripled, ditto domestic violence (90% of which is witnessed by children), the attainment gap is now a gulf, and on the data, pretty much accurately predicts the trajectory of a child’s entire life, and the only place, many, many children are safe is in school and this absolute selfish b@stard is doing this? PLEASE grass him up!
Unfortunately, apart from being an arse, he isn’t doing anything illegal or breaking his contract.
I assume Bec’s point is that it would make a good newspaper story to make people realise the kind of thing that is going on, regardless of whether it’s illegal or not.
Exactly, this government are scared of public opinion, that story would change people’s opinion.
But surely the people shouting loudest about maintaining the lockdown are probably the ones who are enjoying a paid holiday? You won’t change their opinion until their livelihoods are threatened. Those who are worried about their jobs and income are wanting to go back to work – or are already back.
Unless we have paranoid bosses and idiot management so paranoid about this pandemic that they’re unwilling to open up. Then there are plenty of workers being kept away from their jobs. End the health and safety state! This nannying is what’s doing the damage. Also you have people who want to work but can’t because schools have shut and they’ve nowehere to send the kids while they’re out all day.
At the school where my daughter teaches, teachers’ children are only accepted during the week the teacher is physically working there. Headteacher decision, I guess.
Some teachers’ mindset seems to be ‘What about Fred/Doris (teachers) – they have asthma/diabetes/rheumatoid arthritis, schools should only reopen when they are completely safe.
No-one anywhere, ever, has been completely safe. Covid-19 is a small risk in the grand scheme of things, we should be glad that our modern world has managed to wipe out much worse diseases before and get on with living properly while we wait for science to crush this fairly mild new virus.
Agreed Wilfred.
Although science has yet to crush the common cold …
I posted the other day about the Sage document which said that some people don’t feel threatened enough by the virus and I quote ‘the perceived level of personal threat needs to be increased amongst those who are complacent by using hard-hitting emotional message’. They suggest using the media to ‘increase the sense of personal thereat’. They also suggested turning encouraging ‘social disapproval’ ie getting the public to turn against each other.
This could actually be defined as an act of terrorism under the Terrorism Act 2000
“The use or threat of action which is designed to influence the government the public or section of the public and is made for the purpose of advancing a political, religious or ideological cause. It is terrorism if the act endangers a person’s life other than that of the person committing the action or creates a serious risk to health or safety of the public or a section of the public.”
Clearly the fear propaganda that has caused the lockdown has caused many elderly people in care homes to die because they did not receive medical attention when they were ill. Others have died with heart attacks because they were too afraid to go to hospital and as for cancer patients, the lockdown has certainly ‘created a serious risk to their health and safety.
Does anybody know any lawyers willing to comment on this?
They succeeded so well to scare people into oblivion and now they are scratching their heads on how to unlock us. Yes, that certainly is a massive crime and done intentionally.
As someone who studied law at university and who will be training as a lawyer next year, I think there are very legitimate human rights arguments to be made against lockdowns. Barrister Francis Hoar wrote a wonderful piece about how lockdown breach the ECHR and HRA https://ukhumanrightsblog.com/2020/04/21/a-disproportionate-interference-the-coronavirus-regulations-and-the-echr-francis-hoar/.
Sadly, I imagine that a large section of the public see legal issues as rather abstract and so they don’t really register with the same immediacy as the possible health risks of the virus.
Our Leader of the Opposition is a former human rights lawyer. He must know!
Stephen thank your your post the other day about the Sage document mentioned on the UK Column Report. I watched the report and I am quite disturbed by how effectively the government shapes public opinion through the compliant media; quite blatantly through the tabloids and more subtly through the broadsheets.
The government’s policy in this area is discussed (among other matters) here:
https://www.ukcolumn.org/ukcolumn-news/uk-column-news-13th-may-2020
The propaganda has been Goebbelsian, deliberately enlisting the press and TV to spread fear. By any reasonable definition, yes, this is terrorism. According to that livestream, the Army has also been co-opted in the propaganda effort.
(As an aside, I advise anyone to throw out their TV set. Ours went in 2005. Besides saving, by now, thousands of pounds in BBC-impost, we have been spared much poison and are infinitely happier as a result. If I listen to BBC radio news at all, it is only to gauge the current level of lies and omission, which I find a useful exercise for my mental health. And of course it goes without saying that social media is even more pernicious than the TV.)
Tried to engage with a BBC radio listener a few days ago, tried to explain the harms lockdown was doing and how it hadn’t been necessary anyway. tried to point out the deatsh caused by cancelled surgery. The listeer proved themselves a moron when they declared that the denied surgery deaths would have happened anyway if we hadn’t locked down, and proceeded to make up any argument necessary to protect their world view. Would not listen when I pointed out Sweden’s inspiring example. Hot the hell to we unbrainwash these sheep?
Well said Simon !
The television is the single most powerful weapon of the bad guys. And the most gaping hole in the mental/psychological/emotional immune system of the people.
640k cases
https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/05/12/leaked-chinese-coronavirus-database-number-cases/
BREAKING NEWS: Preliminary results of Spain’s seroprevalence study #ENECOVID.
>60,000 participants
Antibodies for #SARSCoV2:
5% of Spanish population
11% in region with highest incidence (Madrid)
So far from herd immunity in country with 2nd largest number of cases after U.S.
There must be a shit tonne of people getting this and fighting it off without forming antibodies. Or being exposed and not even getting it.
I don’t know how they can say it’s ‘highly infectious’ otherwise.
I was thinking that the MSM seems to want to both have its cake and eat it – both claiming that this is highly infectious, but then that hardly anyone has it and we have a long way to herd immunity. If infection levels are lower than anticipated, it’s only because the lockdowns have artificially slowed the natural spread of a disease through the population, which was the purpose of the lockdowns all along – to give time to increase the capacity of healthcare systems.
I remember reading about a seroprevalence study done a few weeks back where SARS-CoV-2 antibodies were more present in older members of the population, and that very few young people had these antibodies. The suggestion was that younger folks have ‘killer T cells’ which clobber the virus before the antibodies even need to kick in. Of course I’m not a virologist so I can’t verify this claim myself but it was interesting to read nonetheless.
So… it can be that highly contagious then surely? I thought we “all had it / will get it.” But if these are the figures from Spain, maybe not?
“Can’t be that highly contagious!” Oh for an edit button…
So about 1.1% IFR in Madrid and in the country.
I should say, assuming that it’s a current percentage (actually it’ll be from at least 4 weeks ago). Assuming also that all deaths are being counted properly. Again quite high, similar to the UK – other reputable studies are showing a lot lower.
I can’t find much information about when that study started, but I think you’re on the right lines, if you cast that back about a month (so assuming time for sample collection and antibody development) I got a rough figure of 0.7-0.8%, which as you suggest is closer to some of the other studies!
It started on the 27th of April but is ongoing. The results are not that surprising given that Spain has been under a draconian lockdown since the 15th of March. It Will be interesting to see more results of tests taken as restrictions are gradually eased. Of course the conclusions being drawn from this phase of testing are, you guessed it, no normal until vaccine.
Spain has also had one of the strictest lockdowns anywhere merely delaying the inevitable spread and preventing herd immunity. i believe this study was conducted by the government, a government that is not to be trusted. They’ve done little but spew out disinformation and propaganda since the start of this fiasco.
When Prof Sikora did antibody tests on staff they found a rate of 6 % but little in the under 40 year olds . So either they never caught it… unlikely or they fought it off with no antibody production.
It is probably much more complicated immune response in Covid-19 infection and antibodies might not be the whole thing. The virus attack T-cells and there is bound to be cellular immunity involved hence how important antibodies is in the overall protection is unknown. There seems to be other resistant mechanism involved in the population otherwise we would have much more exponential increase worldwide. I thought that actually when the epidemic curve goes down by definition you have achieved herd immunity whatever level of antibodies you have . The lockdown leaders would of course say that because of the effective lockdown blocking the chain of infection we have not achieved herd immunity hence their concern of low levels of antibodies (and the need to lock us down when the second wave is coming). I think they are grossly overstating the effect of lockdown and stating we haven’t got heard immunity. The lockdown was instituted very long down the slope of the epidemic curve and would have marginal effect of lowering the herd immunity. There was also still significant spread during the lockdown, how else can you explain that 60% of the new hospitalisation in New York city came from the home directly although they had been locked down for seven weeks. But the next scare story would be the low herd immunity low level antibody and the need to lock us up whenever it suits them.
Covid sceptics have been over-confident and making mistakes.
They thought that all-cause mortality wouldn’t rise above bad influenza years, thus showing that C19 was over-hyped and exaggerated by mis-attribution on death certificates. But they weren’t counting on the lockdown itself killing people, the timing in the year exaggerating the rise against the average, nor the policy of emptying hospitals of old people they would previously have kept alive and sending infected people back out into care homes. Put it all together, and ‘C19’ gave us the highest rise in excess deaths ever – or that is how it is interpreted.
Their next mistake has been in the over-confidence that antibody testing would show the ‘people who have had it’. Again, this will be used against them. Early results such as the Diamond Princess indicated that the level of people with antibodies for an epidemic that had burned itself out could be 15%, but that this might be higher or lower depending on circumstances. This should have been noticed. It could well be that the assumed ‘R0’ is wrong, or that a proportion of the population is already immune, and that people can fight off the virus without becoming infected, or that if they do, they don’t produce long lasting antibodies. The net result is that antibody testing might strengthen the case of those who say that the lockdown has worked, herd immunity has not been achieved and most of the population is still vulnerable and yet to be exposed – possibly the exact opposite of the truth.
Oh, and that the lethality of the virus looks much higher than it is, because it reduces the denominator to only the people with antibodies.
BUT. BUT.. BUT!!!
Sweden isn’t comparable with the UK. It’s got a smaller population density. It has no cities, only small villages. It’s well known that Swedish people never socialise. Totally different culture. Plus people there have also died. Plus there has also been a drop in their economy! People are dieing! Just wait and see… Hundreds of thousands are yet to die in Sweden, and it will all be your fault. People like you are literally killing people. I hope that you like the feel of the blood on your hands!!
Ah the glorious world that we live in, where comments like this are what a majority of people seem to be posting on places like Reddit / Facebook. (Pointing out the above this was irony, it may have been difficult to spot)
Population density of Stockholm: 13,000/sq mile
Population density of London (Greater): 14,550/sq mile
Population density of London (City): 7,700/sq mile
Also they only compare Sweden’s data toll with its Scandinavian neighbours. Nobody else’s.
Yeah that’s my favourite, have you noticed that they always use absolute numbers, when Sweden has something like double the number of people?
If Sweden were to have a few more covid-19 deaths than us, or more per population… It would be absolutely worth it because by not locking down they have spared themselves the horrors of: draconian tyranny, cancelled surgeries for non-covid conditions, undiagnosed cancers, mass job losses, huge food price rises… In the long run all these lockdown triggered horrors kill more than covid-19 can. Do pro-lockdown zealots somehow think that the deaths of everyone killed, over the coming decades, by lockdowns are somehow not as important as deaths to covid-19? Are the vakeus of lives determined by the causes of deaths?
This is an old trick of statistical manipulation used by drug companies in clinical trials. In trials of the statin drug Lipitor the absolute difference between the treatment group and those taking placebo was 1.1. The relative risk was however, 33%. guess which one they went with.
“Plus there has also been a drop in their economy!”
That’s always a particularly irritating one. Yes, of course Sweden has seen a big economic hit. Some of that is from drops in business due to its own distancing measures (though clearly a fraction of what we’ve inflicted on ourselves), but a large part of it is undoubtedly due to the massive global disruption caused mostly by lockdowns in the big customer and supply chain economies that Sweden is hugely interlinked with (Sweden’s export ratio is close to Germany’s at nearly 50%, whereas the UK’s is more like 30%).
Even so, for Sweden we have (FT):
“The European Commission forecasts that Sweden’s GDP will fall by 6.1 per cent this year.
The Riksbank, the country’s central bank, has an even gloomier outlook, estimating that GDP will contract by 7-10 per cent, with unemployment peaking at between 9 and 10.4 per cent. These are disastrous figures for the Scandinavian country.”
And for the UK we have (Daily Mail);
“The respected IFS think-tank said the scale of the nose-dive due to coronavirus lockdown will be like nothing seen before, while the NIESR forecast that UK plc will shrink by 25-30 per cent in the current three month period. The dire assessments came after official statistics this morning showed GDP was down 2 per cent in the first quarter of 2020 and plunged 5.8 per cent in March – the largest monthly fall on record. But although the three-month fall was the worst since the end of 2008 at the height of the credit crunch, it is just the tip of the iceberg as it includes just one week of the full lockdown. IFS director Paul Johnson said the scale of the downturn was huge. ‘It is a mega-recession. It is a recession to end all recessions, in terms of its scale,’ he told BBC Radio 4’s World at One. The NIESR figures are in line with the scenario from the Bank of England that GDP will slump by 25 per cent this quarter before bouncing back. The 14 per cent over the year would be the worst recession in 300 years, since the Great Frost swept Europe in 1709. Former chancellor Lord Lamont has said much of the economy cannot recover until social distancing ends. ”
What’s really comical about these UK outlooks is that there seem to be so many people who are actually surprised by them! I mean, what did they expect?
There’s also the fact that Sweden haven’t needed record borrowing to keep things going.
A bit more thinking about slogans for t-shirts or campaigns -KEEP CALM AND GET BACK TO NORMAL is very subtle, shouldn’t offend too many non-sceptics.
And an idea for the back of a t-shirt you can wear when you are stuck in a queue outside B&Q or wherever – I FEEL SAFE WITHOUT SOCIAL DISTANCING THANK YOU. The person behind you reads it and if they are like minded they can choose to stand closer to you – like a normal human being (apologies I use this phrase a lot, but that’s in response to my feeling that social distancing is just very weird). If the person behind you is a lockdown-lover, they should respect the tone of the message (hopefully) – it doesn’t say social distancing is bonkers (which WE all know it is), its just that you personally do not feel the need for it.
We were discussing this on yesterday’s post, I’ve worked on lots of campaigns professionally, tone is absolutely key. The note you need to strike is ‘would I buy a used car from this person?’. Most Brits, when thinking straight are sensible, small c conservative, and in the ‘middle’, don’t make a fuss, and are generally polite. Anything fringe won’t work, it just needs to be really moderate, easy to understand and non-aggressive.
So what would be, in your opinion, the best few short slogans for us lockdown sceptics. They’d be useful info for us to work from. I fear some of the slogans I’ve been thinking of might be too cofnrontational to really help the situation. I’d personally be all for things about how quality of life is so much more important than quantity and that a life in lockdown is a miserable existance not worth having, but any attempts to say that in short form sound rather callous despite what we are trying to mean.
I hear you, it is really tricky to get right, and we’d probably need to brain storm it. What we are trying to communicate is it’s safe, it’s kind, it’s logical, it’s common sense, to stop lockdown. And also that we’re not out to get anyone, and it’s because we care, that we think what we do. Also, some proportional concept of risk. I quite like your ‘I feel safe without social distancing’. I dunno, will have a think, but what I keep telling people is ‘there’s nothing to fear’. I also think herd immunity got a really bad press, I’ve been mulling a ‘put the UNITY back in herd immunity’ or a ‘safety in numbers’ type of message.
On the data, it seems to me, if we care, and we want to protect the vulnerable and old, and if we feel loyal to our country, then the most loving, civic minded, kind, patriotic thing we can do is ‘get on with it’, not make a fuss, have a bit of stiff upper lip, there’s some pun or saying in there somewhere …
Can someone sense check this for me? If we’re really looking at a IFR of 1-2% (spain and ONS serology tests) then with our current hospital death data for England (about 250 per day die) which is about 2/3 of total ONS per day, so lets say 400 deaths a day at the moment. If we take our IFR of 1% then there can only have been around 40000 infections 2-3 weeks ago. How does this work with the current estimation of 138’000 currently infected?
Is something up with the serology results?
Infections last more than 1 day. 40,000 infections per day is a lot more than 40,000 infected at any one time.
That said I’m pretty sure the IFR will end up lower than 1-2% across the population.
Hi Steve – I’m not suggesting 40000 per day, but each day there must have been a proportional number of people infected to the number of people who died? So to get 400 deaths today on average there must have been 40000 unique infection events at some point between 2-3 weeks before today?
400 deaths per day at an IFR of 1 would suggest an average of 40,000 infections per day, but each infected person remains infected for longer than 1 day. Hence, “current infected” > 40,000.
I don’t think they tested enough people. In all seriousness. Although. No. I’m talking crap cause the sample should just be ‘representative’ ?
I don’t get it. Especially if R was supposed to be higher than one back then.
Regardless of the true data, I’m pretty sure the most negative data will be used to put us back in lockdown and scare the shit out of people as usual to force home the vaccine is the only option message or we’re all dead. Given how contagious this thing is supposed to be, I can’t possibly see how so few have been infected. Only about 130,000 in the communuty currently infected now according to Vallance? No chance.
so Whitty has changed his mind or is he just a liar ? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y9romNO55yo
What?!! He is literally telling us lockdown wasn’t needed. I’m also coming around to the idea that Boris does indeed want us to lead the way out of lockdown. His new “regulations” are so loose, the police have already said they cannot enforce most of them, so ….. it’s time for us to get moving now and show the way out of this nightmare.
Was it Whitty or Valance that also said in the same briefing that the herd immunity level for Covid is much lower than previously thought? I was told they said around 10% rather than something like 60%. I didn’t watch it but was told this.
He did a lecture in 2018 called ‘How to Control a Pandemic’ – he said (and sage’s own minutes for this also say) there’s no benefit to closing schools, airports, large events, as they have zero impact on transmissions and deaths. https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/874290/05-potential-impact-of-behavioural-social-interventions-on-an-epidemic-of-covid-19-in-uk-1.pdf
And https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/882718/21-potential-impact-behavioural-social-interventions-04032020.pdf
Youtube has removed the video, “for violating community guidelines”!
It might be part of this lecture:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rn55z95L1h8
He’s been bought off:
https://www.bitchute.com/video/JlhZHZ3grGg3/
All very incestuous between gates, Fauci, Birx, Whitty, Vallance and Ferguson.
France has been heavily affected by the SARS-CoV-2 epidemic and went into lockdown on the 17 March 2020. Using models applied to hospital and death data, we estimate the impact of the lockdown and current population immunity. We find 3.6% of infected individuals are hospitalized and 0.7% die, ranging from 0.001% in those 80ya.
https://science.sciencemag.org/content/early/2020/05/12/science.abc3517
“As cruise ship passengers may represent a different, healthier population than average French citizens, we run a sensitivity analysis where Diamond Princess passengers are 25% less likely to die than French citizens ”
You can just chuck that ” scientific ” paper in the bin . It is full of selective bias to make sure France stays in lockdown for eternity.
Greetings from sunny Pasadena:
Yesterday the New York Times published this Timeline of the Coronavirus.
https://www.nytimes.com/article/coronavirus-timeline.html
Does anyone have a link to a fuller timeline that is also less sanitized and tilted?
Theme song: Two Months Off by Underworld
Some concerning news from Spain:
https://www.eldiario.es/sociedad/Illa-Yotti-presentan-resultados-seroprevalencia_0_1026798049.html
This appears to show only around 5% prevalence overall. The study says it was done on April 27, so we’re looking at deaths around two weeks before that, and infections around the end of March.
This gives them an IFR of about 0.7%. The map is also rather interesting. My theory is that if infections (and deaths) are fairly evenly spread throughout a country then the overall immunity must be high.
You can’t evenly expose only 5% of an entire country (Ferguson’s numbers are consistent with only about 5% exposure in the UK). That would be like trying to make toast by setting fire to a piece of bread, letting it burn for a bit, and then blowing the fire out. The result would be very charred regions where the fire started and other completely unaffected regions, not a nice piece of uniformly golden brown 5% toast.
As a fire spreads the places where it started slow down as they start to run out of fuel, and the other regions catch up. At the end when it’s all burnt through it is quite even (although with an epidemic the final equilibrium will have higher infection rates in the more crowded areas where R0 is higher). So you can get a feel for how far you are through the epidemic by looking at how spread out your deaths are.
I had a closer look at Germany’s daily testing from early March until now day by day and it’s very interesting to see the infection spreading out, starting from a few centres– Munich, Stuttgart, Heinsberg– until it covers the country very evenly. It continued to spread happily after they closed schools, and after the lockdown, appeared to reach saturation, and even started to go down again in the North.
We don’t have any such data for the UK, except we can see now that our deaths are pretty much everywhere, with higher PFRs in the more metropolitan areas. Perhaps it’s a little bit less established in the West Country, but on the whole it looks very even. This gives me hope that we’re closer to herd immunity.
But if we look at that map of Spain, it seems to have all started in Madrid and not made it that far out.
Another point I will make is that herd immunity grows very rapidly in the middle of an epidemic. It takes about as long to get from 0% to 5% immunity as it does from 5% to 50%. So 14% infected in Madrid at the end of March means they probably are immune there now. Even if they were only at 5% in other places at the end of March, they would probably be immune in those places by now if they hadn’t had a lockdown.
But this is the first evidence I’ve seen that appears to show a lockdown having “worked”, although it looks more like a quarantine of Madrid effectively.
So I actually think Germany and the UK may be close to herd immunity and the much lower deaths from Germany are because they are counting them differently. But if the IFR is so high in Spain, why are there not more dead in the UK, Germany, and of course Sweden?
It really is very hard to make sense of all the figures and try to reconcile them. Clearly there’s a lot of unreliability around. Presumably one explanation would have to be that the infection tops out at quite a low prevalence, wouldn’t it?
Or that it’s strongly seasonal in some way, contrary to what at least one study has said, iirc.
If Germany and UK are at similar points then there’s a factor of 3 or 4 difference in the death counts. But that can actually be explained if Germany are counting “deaths of” rather thnn “with” which I think I heard they are.
Spain’s way of counting deaths is known to be more “generous”, but I wouldn’t have thought much more so than the UK.
Another reason for high IFR is nosocomial infections. You may have a situation where people are coming into hospital, catching Covid there, and then dying (of Covid or not, but certainly with it). This way you will end up higher rates of infection inside the hospital than outside it. I suspect this may have happened in NYC and possibly in parts of London (Hertsmere stands out). Care home deaths are nosocomial by definition, and are very loosely related to the infection rate outside the care home.
And another reason may of course be actual different treatments in the hospital, whether they’re intubating too early, or too late, etc., this could make a real difference.
Interesting, thanks.
Reassure me,it isn’t just me – the situation is genuinely pretty confused at the moment….
It is. But not so much that lockdowns become anywhere close to being a good idea
Also this is just a news report so far. I want to see this Spanish study published properly with details of whom they tested, when, what the sensitivity of the tests were, etc.
I’ve had a look at PFRs (population fatality rates) in different regions of Spain and it confirms the picture.
PFR is around 0.13% in Community of Madrid, and neighbouring Castile-La Mancha and Castile and Leon.
But in Catalonia (which contains the big city Barcelona) it’s only 0.07%. And in Valencia, which is also relatively densely populated, it’s only 0.03%.
So assuming they’re destined to catch up to Madrid levels or close to they have a few more thousand deaths from each of those regions to go. There may of course be other reasons why those places have a lower equilibrium. But it also may be that they aren’t at their equilibrium yet.
The lockdown likely had an effect on transmission, perhaps assisted by the layout of Spain which has a lot of distance between these relatively more built-up areas.
So although I think they certainly should lift their lockdown some precautions in the less-affected provinces would be sensible. Maybe TTT, although I’m now wondering how much more effective that is than people just staying at home for a couple of weeks if they get a cold.
Surely if, like us, they are well short of exceeding normal healthcare capacity they should just be lifting lockdowns, returning to solely voluntary measures apart from protecting vulnerable groups, and getting it over with?
Which is what we should be doing, imo. Now.
That’s all any country should ever have done. TTT has to be voluntary anyway. You can’t go around making people install tracking software of any kind.
I think the TTT software was non-compulsory even in Singapore. But being decent people they cooperate
Germany is NOT counting deaths differently. They’re doing what the UK and Italy and other places are doing, namely, counting test-positive deaths as Covid-19 deaths regardless of the cause:
https://translate.google.com.au/translate?sl=de&tl=en&u=https%3A%2F%2Fswprs.org%2Frki-relativiert-corona-todesfaelle%2F
Yes but in the UK we do’t even need a diagnosis or a doctor’s visit to call it covid, let alone a test. Pathologist Dr John Lee:
“Care home deaths are being reported by care home providers…. A care home provider can call something covid [for the ONS]….without it being mentioned on the death certificate, without it having had a positive test, and without actually having had a medical diagnosis of covid”
https://www.buzzsprout.com/1013854/3675205-episode-4-dr-john-lee-part-1?client_source=twitter_card&player_type=full_screen
From ~21:00
Correct. Germany may have fewer “suspected” cases, however, because they’ve been testing a lot more.
guy153 suggested that Germany was only counting “dying of” deaths rather than “dying with”. I’m just pointing out that Germany is counting both types as Covid-19 deaths.
Fair enough. Just saying that Germany counting them differently as the explanation for their lower death rate could be either way – them under-counting or us over-counting.
Or more aptly, I suppose, them over-counting and us over-counting even more.
Yes, your last sentence sums it up well.
Though now I see they are releasing figures separate from the ONS totals as “deaths confirmed with a positive test”, which would be deaths from and deaths with combined.
Currently showing 33,186 “deaths confirmed with a positive test” and 36,591 “cumulative registered deaths” from covid, which is 9082 more than the tested figure for the same date.
Yes and that’s good to know, thanks. I just want something consistent that you can compare between countries but I think there’s little hope of this anyway even if they are apparently counting the same thing. Death counts in different regions of the same country however may be more meaningful as a relative measure.
Similar results from France I read yesterday, around 5% of the population infected.
On first glance it looks worrying as it would mean that if the UK were in a similar position, herd immunity would be some way off. However, I plugged the French numbers into a spreadsheet that I created for the UK (what I do for a living) and projected the IFR for various age groups based on population age distribution. I came out with:
Overall UK IFR – 0.6%
0 to 44 – 0.01%
45 to 74 – 0.40%
75 to 84 – 2.93%
85+ – 8.56%
There are a few assumptions in this model, but it’s likely indicative.
Actually, ignore this. The French data gave me a bum steer. I’ll recalculate and post up later.
People with low functioning immune systems (lack of vitamin D, lack of nutrients, dehydrated, junk food etc) will obviously have a massive chance of getting reinfected with the virus. Many have not really recovered from the first infection.
On the other hand people that take responsibility for their health will be ok
I think this simplistic idea about antibody testing is wrong on many levels. We don’t know that real humans respond as they do in Neil Ferguson’s model.
1. Not all humans are going to become infected when exposed to the virus. Some will have innate immunity – up to a certain level – possibly from being previously exposed to similar coronaviruses.
2. We don’t know that for those infected, the illness isn’t different with different doses (‘viral load’). Maybe low viral load tends towards aysmptomatic, lower contagiousness.
3. We don’t know that all those who test positive with a PCR test while infected also produce persistent antibodies.
By pinning your hopes on antibody tests you have left yourself open to claims that herd immunity has not been reached at, say, 5%, and that the fatality ratio of the virus is huge, because you’re allowing for only a small proportion of the country having been exposed/infected as the denominator in the calculation. The truth may be a far more rosy picture. I would bet that a form of herd immunity may well be reached with only a small proportion of the population having antibodies. If we lost the social distancing it might creep up a bit, but not enough to overwhelm the NHS. If we trusted ourselves to make the right measurements with an open mind, then as a society we could give it a go. But it won’t happen, I’m sure.
This appear s to be the case in Spain. The Health Minister has said that 5% of of those with antibodies nationally means that there is no herd immunity and never will be. Thhs based on the results of the first wave of testing that started during the strictest part of the lockdown.
The results from the Spanish study show huge variance among different cities and regions of the country. Madrid, unsuprisingly, given its demographics was one of the first areas to be badly hit and again, unsuprisingly, has 11% of the population with antibodies compared to a national figure of 5%. Madrid and Catalonia account for more than 50% of all corona deaths in Spain, many in care homes.
You’ll be delighted to know I’ve had an email from Avaaz:
Dear friends,
Something beautiful has happened in the last few weeks — I think we’ve all seen it.
In the face of a vicious pandemic, when it would have been so easy for fear and selfishness to rule, we’ve found our shared humanity again.
But there’s a danger that as we beat this pandemic, the tenderness of this moment will fade too. We can already see it in the divisions being redrawn for political gain and the conspiracy theories going viral.
The spirit of compassion, wisdom, and unity that millions of us have felt amidst this horrific crisis is a fragile thing that needs to be defended.
That’s why, with the help of Avaazers across the globe, we’ve curated ten of the most beautiful stories of this shining new humanity. It’s to remind us of who we really are when it matters most, and that we really are capable of meeting the biggest threats we face — together.
***
Meanwhile, I was chatting to my fellow freelancers about what we’re all up to, one is urgently seeking grant funding, for young girls in Uganda (children) having to prostitute themselves for food, due to lockdown, truly beautiful, does your heart good.
*vomit*
AVAAZ … now where have I heard that name before? O yes, Prof. Ferguson’s broad-minded ‘friend’ works for it. Golly, what a coincidence that this curious organisation is fully paid up with all the right-on causes of globalism.
https://secure.avaaz.org/page/en/
They don’t much like Bashar al Assad either. But they think the White Helmets are great.
hopefully it makes Avaaz (and some other feel a bit better) – Absolute nonsense. That is what they want the masses to believe.
It’s just so middle class isn’t it? Beautiful stories of humanity, my arse, tell that to the woman on zero hours, now with no childcare, so now with no income, because a bunch of whining, affluent, utterly indulged parents refuse to send their kids to school. Or the huge increase in big game wildlife poaching, as all the money that paid for conservation came from wildlife tourism. It’s like some covid version of ‘Made In Chelsea’.
Good read this, might send it to my SNP worshipping cousin so he can have some bed time reading
https://www.effiedeans.com/2020/05/scottish-independence-just-died-from.html?m=1
Some people find it strange that the different UK countries have different lockdown rules. I find it odd that a single set of rules applies to every part of a country. Each town, city of village in these islands has its own Covid-19 profile, R-number, infection rate, etc.. Elgin is as different from Edinburgh as Ludborough is from London. But because of the “one-size-fits-all” approach of the different governments, the good citizens of Wick and Thurso remain in full lockdown whilst Londoners can go to work on the tube.
Very true in many sense, trouble is that the division in the UK of what level of un-necesarily draconian regulations are appleid is separated along administrative boundaries between nations rather than along rural-urban-megacity lines. The differences are due to the politics of regional leaders wishing to present different messages, all of them with messages that in hindsight will prove very wrong compared to copying Sweden, for individual gain in their personal political agendas. So London and Ludlow get the same, and Glasgow and Gretna green get the same. Even though London and Glasgow are clearly the most similar of that pair.
I live in NW London and from what I can see with my area its definitely getting busier. Sure there were less people today in the park as the weather wasn’t exactly great – dull skies and a bit of chill but no-one couldn’t care less about social distancing and there were no masks either.
Another thing I have noticed while litter picking (unfortunately my area isn’t great) is the amount of masks and gloves that I pick up, its amazing that the environmental hazards of these aren’t flagged up. Not to mention their uselessness and being used to virtue signal. My brother-in-law posted a photo of my 2 nieces wearing them, they didn’t look cute, they look creepy and sinister (for the sake of family harmony I didn’t say anything or reacted).
Good for you for litter picking. You should be given a medal.
Thanks. It all started because the only decent place I can go for a walk is the local park but it was just strewn with litter and graffiti which was depressing. I also complained to our local council and thankfully two weeks ago they acted on it and the park looks better. Not great but its a massive improvement.
Well done Bart. There’s a lot of strife in families I think. My brother and sister-in-law are completely signed up to the MSM as far as Covid goes. You can tell them all the evidence that it’s nonsense, but it just goes in one ear and out the other. They along with many others simply cannot conceive that the MSM would give out at best misleading information, and at worst, downright wrong guidance that goes against all evidence based science.
Thank you. I did have a bit of argument with my sister (she lives overseas) when I told her how MH issues will be a problem as well as DV, child abuse and people dying from conditions that could be cured due to early intervention. She pretty much accused me of wanting people to die.
To which I replied that don’t be shocked if she reads about a spike in suicide rates in the developed world and deaths from malaria, TB and possibly famine in the developing world after this. Its really appalling how many people have developed a tunnel vision over this and fail to see the bigger picture.
looking after the environment agenda is suddenly no longer important if we look at the littering by ‘protective’ gloves (won’t decompose easily in nature and possible land in the ocean) and masks (made from various materials). Ah well!
Exactly. And while this crisis shows that a plastic free world is impossible as plastic does help perversely with maintaining hygiene standards and avoiding food waste (ex. bread stored in plastic keeps their freshness longer), the masks and gloves being thrown away negates whatever “environmental progress” has been made.
Well considering a not uncommon government response around the world has been literally spraying disinfectant around – basically intentional pollution – it’s pretty clear fear of disease has won out over fear of environmental damage for the moment.
I’ve just registered to first of all, say a big thank you to Toby and all involved with this site…thank you.
I also would like to raise a question. Why are the number of flu cases not being talked about more?
If a death is registered as possible flu or CV19, then I believe it will be recorded as a CV19 death, but not flu. That would mean should I be right, flu has either gone up during lockdown due to some being counted as CV19 (above 5 year average), or is tracking along the 5 year average, if the ONS numbers are correct and I’m wrong.
Whether flu is up or not, it’s not down and IF the lockdown were to be working for CV19, would it not also be lowering cases of flu? Can flu be used as a benchmark as to whether or not lockdown works?
Thanks again
Your
Chris
stay safe :p
The monitoring of flu rates is something CEBM commented on recently:
https://www.cebm.net/covid-19/what-does-rcgp-surveillance-tell-us-about-covid-19-in-the-community/
Clearly, social distancing and its extreme coercive form, the lockdown, “works” in the sense of reducing the transmission of infections, to some extent. The questions are to what extent, at what cost, and is it worth it?
These are complex questions, though I think it’s pretty much incontrovertible that there is no plausible case in which the costs of the coercive lockdown are not significantly greater than any costs the disease itself could have inflicted. Those who doubt that simply have not properly understood the costs we are incurring by the lockdown.
We had a very mild seasonal flu coming into this season too, it has been argued that some of the Covid deaths were delayed seasonal flu deaths.
I look on other forums, and this is a classic from another forum: ‘Things don’t smell right in lots of countries. Whatever the real failings, the UK Govt must be royally peed of at the flack they’re getting for the large numbers of deaths when any basic analysis suggests that the figures in so many other countries are nonsense. Russia for example is ridiculous. Even Singapore something doesn’t seem right. How can they have so many cases and virtually no deaths. Surely different country characteristics can’t make that much difference? Unless we really do have millions of asymptomatic cases that we aren’t testing for.’
Well it’s a very simple explanation that the death rate from Covid 19 is no worse than a normal flu. Amazing how blind some people are to reality!
I must admit Singapore is curious…but then so many aspects of covid19 are strange. Singapore is a rich wealthy city state, highly advanced with a mildy authoritarian system of government. It has 23,000 cases of covid19 yet only 20 deaths .This gives a cfr of less than 0.1 %. This indicates the cfr is ten times less than the modellers and Dr Chris Whittey uses.
I would argue it’s the opposite. Their figures are closer to being correct because they are attempting to accurately record corona deaths. Ours are being massaged upward with falsification. The gvt. Can’t ne that pissed off or they wouldn’t be sanctioning this. — They are trying to cover their arses because they know the lockdown has been calamitous.
The Telegraph is becoming more skeptical, it seems
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/05/13/revealed-educated-guesswork-uncertainty-lead-britain-lockdown/
Compulsory read for everyone who suffers from Coronapanic:
“Analysis: How the danger of coronavirus compares to the risks of everyday life”
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/05/13/analysis-danger-coronavirus-compares-risks-everyday-life/
“But just how risky is a low level of coronavirus in the community compared to the risks individuals take every day through activities such as driving, drinking or crossing a busy road?
After all, the 25,000 serious injuries caused by road traffic accidents in Britain each year could be prevented by banning cars, but we do not take that step because people need to get around. Likewise, we could prevent the 17,000 flu deaths each year by observing social distancing and keeping a lockdown in place to prevent community transmission. “
Most people have limited concept of risk and statistics in general. It’s why a lot of people play the lottery because they believe it could be them.
Try having a reasonable debate about risk and there’s a 92% chance you’ll be told to tell that to the families of the people who’ve died.
It’s an old discussion, but I’ve always held to the view that playing the lottery can make sense provided it’s affordable for the individual (and I have a university maths education). The point is that what they are buying is hope.
But yes, obviously it isn’t a good investment in financial return terms.
It is IF you win
I’d say it was still a bad investment (in financial return terms). You just got lucky.
A matter of perspective I suppose.
When told to “say that to the families of the dead” remind them that lockdown has been killing people too, then accuse them of undervaluing lives lost to non-covid conditions. If they want to get emotional then two can play at that game, except the stats are backing us, not them.
“The avoidable mortality rate in Britain, which includes accidents, unintentional injuries and some preventable diseases, is currently 228 people per 100,000, or 0.2 per cent.
But the risk from coronavirus for the general population does not rise above that until people hit their 50s – so for anyone under that age the disease is less risky than the general underlying chance of death from preventable causes.”
And I think at that they’re talking about the risk given you’ve already caught it.
The shocking thing is just how cavalier this lockdown decision has been. The Professor at the head of the government’s modelling admitted that there had been no planning for it;
“Scientists in charge of predicting the next pandemic to hit the UK failed to advise the government on how to prepare for a national lockdown, Prof Medley admitted.
Planning documents prepared by his own SPI-M committee had never explored how and why the British public should be kept in their homes.
“The biggest surprise so far this pandemic has been the public health response,” he said.
“If you look at these SPI-M documents, nowhere does it talk about lockdown. Nowhere does it talk about a nationally coordinated reduction in contact rates.
“A much overused word, but this really does have no precedent nationally, let alone to be repeated globally.”””
And I don’t believe for a second that there was any meaningful assessment of the costs of the decision. So how can they claim to have carried any kind of cost/benefit analysis? Which makes this basically one huge unjustified gamble with the nation’s well-being.
How can they claim that this was justified even if the worst Imperial predictions were born out? What happened to the “precautionary principle” the lefties always go on about when it suits them but seem to forget for their own proposed policy leaps?
“If you look at these SPI-M documents, nowhere does it talk about lockdown. Nowhere does it talk about a nationally coordinated reduction in contact rates.”
Wow!!
Because our “Tories” are pretty lefty themselves.
i hope lots of the corona cowards refuse to go back to work leaving opportunities for working people like me who work a pretty dull job for not a lot of money and would welcome some new employment with better wages
Absolutely. I’m an aircraft engineer so I’m facing almost certain redundancy after Boris’ most recent irrational announcement.
I’d love to take a job from a Corona coward! In fact, I think the government should mandate it. “Stay home. Give your job to someone who wants it. Save lives!”
But we’re facing the first virus in the history of the world that doesn’t go away ever and has the potential to kill absolutely everybody. The workplace is too dangerous to ever return to. Kids can never go back to school. The only sensible response is to cower under our beds until we die of starvation.
And as any lockdown zealot will tell you, a long lingering death of starvation with no hope of any form of freedom, family or jot before the end is perfectly fine. But anyone, even someone in terrible pain from another illness or having totally lost their self to dementia, slipping away painlessly with hypoxia from covid-19 is a terrible tragedy.
Newsnight tonight eviscerating the government’s care home policy.
Rightly so frankly. There are a few possibilities about the policy. But it’s very strange that a very similar if not identical policy was implemented in the US, that is taking cov pos patients back into the homes with THE most vulnerable to dying from this virus.
Ostensibly this was done to avoid critical care being swamped in hospitals.
Either they truly believed that these elderly patients could be sufficiently isolated amongst the vulnerable or they didn’t care because they were afraid of strains on hospitals, or they encouraged it based on bad advice which would juice up death rates and ensure this looked as dangerous a situation as they portrayed even if this just rolled over like a bad flu season.
I doubt if an elderly patient had flu they would send them back to the care home. It stinks whichever way you look at it. While I don’t think using the word “tragedy” constantly about aged deaths makes sense. It does make sense to call it tragic when it’s the result of a terrible policy.
But of course it also helps to take attention away from the elephant being ignored in the corner of the room, that is the data. Who dies, in what proportion and at what cost a policy of lockdown in the long term has vs targeted protection.
Of course failing so explosively to protect our vulnerable from the get go is HUGE ar,our pricing ammunition to those calling for protecting the vulnerable and releasing the rest of us.
Maybe that was the plan from the start.
“is HUGE armour-piercing ammunition for those calling for protecting the vulnerable and releasing the rest…
But Newsnight went on to show an article about a factory preparing for a return to work. The reporter is standing in an enormous space, addressing the audience and wearing a mask. If that isn’t brainwashing I don’t know what is! Funny how up to last night, all interviews have been carried out at 2m but with no masks.
From the BMJ:
It appears that a large proportion of the excess deaths being recorded in the community have nothing to do with Covid-19: “Of those 30 000, only 10 000 have had covid-19 specified on the death certificate.” (And we know that listing it on the death certificate doesn’t necessarily mean that much, either.)
https://www.bmj.com/content/369/bmj.m1931
This is not surprising at all.
I enjoyed watching Starmer grilling Johnson at PMQ’s. Starmer asked why the government stopped comparing the number of U.K. COVID deaths with other countries, and Boris mumbled some nonsensical reply.
The answer should have been: “I can’t compare the numbers that we have manipulated to keep the U.K. citizens in fear with the real COVID deaths across the globe.”
Good link. This is my concern (not all the conspiracy theories and junking Ferguson etc. The article states:
“David Leon, professor of epidemiology at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, agreed. “Some of these deaths may not have occurred if people had got to hospital,” he said. “How many is unclear. This issue needs urgent attention, and steps taken to ensure that those who would benefit from hospital treatment and care for other conditions can get it.””
You don’t have to quibble about death certificates. The politicians are uniquely focused on covid and ignoring the wider issues even when they are death too.
The walls are now falling down.
Nevertheless, we will all be told and most will be conviced that it was the lockdown that prevented the mass extiction of the human race.
Just like Y2K, BSE, Swine Flu, MERS SARS, the financial crashes (except on steroids).
I am looking for an explanation for these out of proportion responses. Could it be;
1/ Because the two world wars, where millions, not thousands died, are now so far back in history that nobody now has first or second hand knowledge of what a real humanitarian disaster is?
2/ Is it because we have been the beneficiaries of an era which was moulded by our grandparents where peace and prosperity prevailed and now we have no understanding of an alternative scenario?
3/ Is it because we have become so used to 2/ plus the State protecting us with the best health care and social protections which have ever existed and we now see them as an inalienable right even to the point of the State suppoting us while we do not work or contribute to this utopian society we have inherited.
4/ Is it none of the above but we have allowed ourselves to be manipulated by the media so that they can sell more newspapers or news programmes by terrifying us all.
5/ Is it that the media themselves are controlled by people with a hidden agenda (a bit conspiratorial that one).
6/ Is it just that social media is such an amplifier of emotional rather than logical response that the real issues, fact and truth are lost in the fog?
7/ Or is it something else? I would love know what put us where we are.
Any Ideas?
Unfortunately I believe it is due to shear incompetence of our leaders
For me, it is two things:
1. Social media multiplier effect causing widespread panic.
2. ‘In office but not in power’ (Norman Lamont on John Major administration), by no means confined to this country.
Yet to be convinced by 5 above but a mix all the others. Trigger was doomsday predictions from Ferguson & a weak/clueless UK govt.
Lack of moral fibre, contributed to by most of those factors, and others.
BobT, it is 3 groups of actors and 1 large passive audience:
1. The press whip up fear (they need sales and ad revenue, and fear & shock sells).
2. The government responds to the fear generated in the press (they aren’t in it for ideology or for the citizens, they are in it for the votes).
3. The 3rd group is everyone who can capitalise on what the government is responding to that has been generated by whipped up fear in the press. This includes Big Pharma who say that only drugs and antibac products will save us (they own both) and they then grab piles of that government budget. This includes the NHS management who see this as an opportunity to claim larger budgets now and in years to come, so they cry wolf about PPE and ventilators, and they act like their wonderful, talented and kind staff have never seen a dying person or handled a busy period before. The care homes realise that instead of the usual and humane practice of letting their infirm residents die in situ, the hospitals now have to take them, so they offload their residents into hospitals who then have to be seen to be trying to prolong the lives of people who should have been allowed to die in peace. (Yes, this was the fear of overwhelming the NHS, not from some huge proportion of the general population going into ICU, but from elderly flu victims who usually die at home or in care homes.) This includes almost every business who scrabble inelegantly at the grants and furlough money (whether truly needed or not) whilst implementing these inhumane social distancing practices in order to sell more during lockdown and beyond. And, all of these businesses together give alarming stories back to the press who use them to induce more fear. Fear that the government responds to in order to gain more votes.
So, who is the large passive audience? It is us. Us who don’t speak up at work but go along with the unnecessary furloughing activity, the grant snatching, the Perspex screens. Us who don’t even protest peacefully for fear of judgement from our neighbours and social media. Us who are not involved in national nor local politics and who wouldn’t know how to start to influence anything even if we wanted to.
This was never a conspiracy from the beginning. But, a circle of groups that feed into each other. Increasing the fear and thereby the response to that fear. And it is all watched by us, a passive audience, compliant by our inaction. The heroes are those who speak out, and they are few. Everyone else, they gotta pay their mortgages and rent, hey.
Great post, thank you
I mean, we have known since day 1 that we would go into a brutal recession, probably the worst in history, but people seem to be blind to what ‘bad’ looks like. I guess that to many people, a relative dieing is as bad as it gets. The thought of many people, even thousands is horrific. There is no concept of proportionality due to points 1/, 2/ and 3/.
As a 24yo, I can confirm that points 2 & 3 are 100% accurate for my age group (okay 100% anecdotally, the fallacy of using personal experience as evidence is why we are in the position that we are now)
I’ve read these two books below over the last couple of weeks to try and get some understanding of how this all happened. In short, we’ve cultivated a culture of irrational fear for the last 20+ years. Instead of risks being calculated by assessing the nature of the risk multiplied by the likelihood of it happening, we now simply look at the possibility then overreact. We have become obsessed with safety, e.g. safe spaces, health and safety, safeguarding etc at ANY cost. Both books are well worth a read.
Scared to Death: From BSE to Global Warming: Why Scares are Costing Us the Earth –
https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/0826486142/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o03_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1
How Fear Works: Culture of Fear in the Twenty-First Century –
https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/1472972899/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o08_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1
Thanks
I have a simpler outlook:
1. Most people don’t understand relative risk.
2. They do understand both a herd mentality and circling the waggons against perceived threats. That stuff is hardwired.
3. We all have our price. About 80% of salary appears to be the sweet spot.
Very good points – I strongly agree with nos 2 and 3
There’s also the relentless 24/7/365 news culture – unfortunately CNN and Ted Turner have opened a Pandora’s Box and its going to be hard to roll it back to the old days when the news was only broadcast at 6am and 10pm.
Social media also has a lot to answer for. Whilst they have made this lock down a bit bearable by helping us keep in touch, it doesn’t help if people we know constantly panic and fall for the apocalyptic narrative hook, line and sinker. Another positive bit though is what I call the “daylight upon magic” syndrome as social media allows us to see the people we know fully warts and all even if they continue to post pretty pictures.
In the end I think this is thee Chicken Little story in real life and how these real life Chicken Littles will react when the real life fox in the guise of unemployment, business closures, mental health issues and rising taxes looms over them will be interesting to see.
Common core education standards
Common purpose graduates infesting management everywhere
Sissified risk adverse culture
Lack of faith in yourself
Scared of dying so giving up on living
Feminisation of society
Is there a paper/study investigating why we have such significant differences in death rate? I would assume average age of population, state of health system and handling of crisis (i.e. sick into nursing homes) has a big influence.
I’d also say the state of health, UK and USA for instance have a lot of very obese people, we also are a very unhealthy bunch, but due to good medicine we limp along on polypharmacy for diabetes, high blood pressure, cholesterol, we survive strokes, we live a long time with MS and Parkinsons. In advanced countries, the elderly live much longer with multiple ailments, due to medical advances (as was the case in Italy, their health system is better than ours, and they cherish their oldies). Ditto profoundly life limited children (which are soon to be one of the biggest cohorts in hospices, along with the elderly frail) tend to live in advanced countries – all those at the edge of viability prem babies grew up (I only know this as I had to do a big research project re hospices for work, most are ‘future proofing’ now as cancer is soon to drop down the rankings as the main reason people need palliative care)
Good point and I have noticed that many off those who have died have been both obese and from African/Asian backgrounds, but not all.
And hospices must now be missing out on charitable donations; ours sends out local appeals which are well supported, but they’re bound to suffer a drop in income.
An early question but I hope it will be seen by the contributors soon:
it seems from various published results, that countries in Africa and parts of Asia have lower rates of infection and fewer fatalities.
Nevertheless, people from African, Caribbean, Indian, Pakistani and Bangladeshi backgrounds in the UK, have higher fatality rates.
What is the likely explanation? Is it a nature versus nurture conundrum?
Are figures from various countries truly comparable?
Is it an epigenetic effect? How many generations are required for such an effect to cause changes in susceptibility?
Does the human immune system show significant genetic variants and if so, do these variants adapt rapidly to a new environment? (I know about sickle cell and malaria resistance in some African populations.)
Is it that in many poorer countries, many infectious diseases are more prevalent, leading to the development of a more robust immune system ?
Several scientists contribute here, so I hope some suggestions might be forthcoming.
If these questions indicate a lack of understanding on my part, please bear with me, as I’m thinking this out as I write.
Regarding regional differences in susceptibility, interesting ideas from ongoing research here.
https://www.accuweather.com/en/health-wellness/higher-temperatures-affect-survival-of-new-coronavirus-pathologist-says/700800
Indeed; thanks for the link
Could it related to vitamin D levels? I’ve read that darker skin results in reduced vitamin D production but maybe that only becomes an issue when there’s not much sun (this country) whereas the population in hot sunny countries isn’t an issue, regardless of skin colour. Just a guess.
Yes, I’ve been reading about this; one of many contributors perhaps.
Dr Wolfgang Wodarg thinks it might be because treatment with hydroxychloroquine which has been very successfully used in treating covid 19 in many populations, is dangerous for people who lack a particular enzyme called G6PD. 20 per cent of sub-saharan populations lack this enzyme, probably because its absence makes them less susceptible to malaria. Use of HCQ can lead to haemolysis, ie dissolution of red blood cells, which makes you feel as though you are about to suffocate,. This is in fact what happens in severe covid cases. I don’t know how widely HCQ is used in Britain though.
A friend who has rheumatoid arthritis took it for a while, but unpleasant side effects meant she had to seek an alternative, although it is still prescribed for this and lupus.
https://www.bhf.org.uk/informationsupport/heart-matters-magazine/news/behind-the-headlines/coronavirus/coronavirus-and-hydroxychloroquine
It isn’t recommended for covid treatment as yet, if I’ve understood correctly.
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/chloroquine-and-hydroxychloroquine-not-licensed-for-coronavirus-covid-19-treatment
The French study is interesting, based on the Marseilles doctor’s research, although this has been widely criticised.
I believe it’s used in Russia
Dr Raoult seems to be the most honest of the nasty bunch surrounding Macron. In fact he barged out of the scientific council because they were unwilling to try HCQ which had been used successfully in SARS in China. He is hardly mentioned in the mainstream French media and when he is it is to try to discredit him. As far as he is concerned HCQ is cheap and it works. Dr Zelenko in the Bronx has also used HCQ successfully, but then his patients are mainly Jews, presumably Ashkenazi, so they won’t be lacking that G6PD enzyme. If you have the enzyme then it would seem to be fine in a covid crisis situation. But if it isn’t being used much in Britain that can’t account for the large proportion of deaths among black and ethnic minority people.
This is partly what prompted my initial questions; so I think there might be several factors in play-whether correlated or as direct causes.
And I agree about Dr Raoult’s shabby treatment.
At least Dr Raoult was against the lockdown from the first -said it was like something from the Middle Ages.
A voice in the covid wilderness. I think we’re seeing an outbreak of ‘shoot the messenger’.
It seems likely that in 3rd world countries the age profile will concentrate on the young ages (I don’t have data to hand, but surely this must be true). Thus comparing 1st and 3rd world countries with such an age-dependent disease is almost bound to give the observed differences.
But some younger people have died here-from African/Asian backgrounds , so it still seems that there are differences between the UK and the other countries which cannot be entirely explained by age profiles alone.
Also, I know of a man in his forties, a bit overweight, not from an ethnic minority and no underlying health issues who has been in hospital for two months with a tube down him – even his family haven’t been able to visit him. I might have mentioned him before. Surely this was a case of panic in which the cure was worse than the disease. Was he given cortisone to begin with – an anti-inflammatory which shouldn’t be used for viruses? Would his shortness of breath have resolved itself if he had stayed at home and dosed himself with vitamin D and vitamin C? Would he have got better sooner on hydroxychloroquine? I can’t find any information about what treatments were actually used on patients turning up with serious covid symptoms in British hospitals.
They’re being very quiet indeed on that, Jane.
Could it be mismanagement of an underlying condition they were unaware of? There will always be outliers.
Not wanting to sound antagonistic but do you have any further info about them?
I’ve noticed that when they do those teeth-curling grieving family features on the news, the people involved are often noticeably chunky, to put it politely.
I reckon ‘Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds Part 2’ would make an excellent sub-title for TY’s book.
Mackay’s quote ‘Men, it has been well said, think in herds … ‘ was my first ever post on The Spectator forum, way back in March three days after the lockdown, thereby breaking my general practice of never posting on internet forums or social media. So peed off was I with our house arrest I felt I had to start making noises. I’m sure the ‘herds’ quote would make a fine epigraph for TY’s book. It wasn’t me who sent it to him – but anyone who knows of Mackay’s work will see parallels with today’s madness. I’m sure it would make a fine epigraph for his book.
I’ve been wondering whether, along with the theme tune list, Lockdown Sceptics has a reading list? Clearly, ‘Extraordinary Popular Delusions’ should be right up there, but otherwise here’s a few of my suggestions.
Edward Chancellor’s ‘Devil take the Hindmost: a History of Financial Speculation’ (1999), an entertaining account of herd-like groupthink, and stupidity, in relation to finance.
The sheer hysteria of the lockdown weeks is particularly well captured in the transcripts of seventeenth-century witchcraft trials – I’m thinking particularly of those concerning Salem, Massachusetts, 1692, and Bideford, North Devon, 1682.
Then of course there’s Philip Ziegler’s ‘The Black Death’ (originally published 1969), which I finally got around to reading a short time ago, in between dodging the local plod on my trips out. The description of the self-flagellants offers many parallels with the lockdown ethos. And in his chapter on the plague death toll Ziegler also gives a fine cautionary quote from Geoffrey Elton, a German-born constitutional historian whose family had fled to England in 1939:
‘Those determined to put their faith in “sophisticated” mathematical methods and to apply “general laws” to the pitifully meagre and very uncertain detail that historical evidence often provides … are either to be pitied because they will be sinking in quicksand while believing themselves to be standing on solid earth, or to be combated because they darken counsel with their errors.’
If only someone could have read this out at the SAGE meetings during that third week of March.
To your reading list I would add ‘The Devils of Loudon’ by Aldous Huxley.
A disturbing and unforgettable book; and as for the film! Also recommended: ‘The Madness of Crowds’ by Douglas Murray, which I’ve just started reading.
https://www.brainpickings.org/2015/03/06/crowds-and-power-elias-canetti/
And this : Elias Canetti on crowd behaviour.
I would highly recommend Murray’s book.
+1 for “Madness of Crowds”. Fantastic read!
I would also suggest “The Machine Stops” by E M Forster. I read this science fiction story at school forty years ago and have just reread it; people safe in their rooms, communicating by a version of Zoom, health needs met by medicine, artificial food, afraid to touch each other, beware of first-hand ideas!
Yes, I read it last year. Remarkable.
There is a BBC radio-play version floating around on archive.org too, very predictive of the lockdown dystopia of today. I can also recommend a story called “With folded hands” by Jack Williamson which shows the perils of over-valuing safety at liberty’s expense.
I read that last week. Very apt.
“The Day The Dam Broke” by James Thurber. Based on true events in his home town, Columbus Ohio, the townsfolk are gripped by blind panic based on a couple of random people running. Soon the whole town is racing down the Main Street “Go East! Go East!” The dam was perfectly OK.
The bit I like is at the end where he describes how for years afterwards there was an unspoken agreement never to mention the day the dam broke.
I would recommend “The Emperor’s New Clothes” or “Chicken Licken” (Chicken Little in USA). Maybe a mashup of the two – Chicken Licken’s New Clothes.
Several additional interesting books posted here already (none of which so far I have read). Such literature, historical and fiction, is surely a vital component of societal immunity against groupthink and hysteria, and even totalitarianism.
I don’t know whether TY looks at these comments, but perhaps it might be an idea to have a dedicated page listing such books as suggested by contributors to this site, maybe with a short explanation saying why the book might be relevant, and possibly with an apposite quotation or two.
A classic : Utopia by Thomas More.
Because some people clearly need reminding it doesn’t exist.
No more free travel on public transport from today in my area for NHS staff. The first steps from Heaven have been descended. The Thursday night applause will diminish now more people are returning to work and I give it two months until after pubs reopen that many of the attention seeking applauders are back to punching, hitting, spitting at and verbally abusing their NHS “heroes” in Emergency Depts up and down the land every Friday and Saturday night.
We can only hope. The penny may have dropped in government, as all the economies penny have gone down the toilet, that this lockdown has to stop.
I’ve never actually clapped – I think, like most of us here, that it’s a pretty stupid thing to do. Even if you admire what they do, clapping doesn’t help in the slightest if you are exhausted nursing dying patients. Of whatever disease. A nice thank you card from the surviving patients is probably appreciated more. But I do go out on my doorstep and wave to my neighbours. I like my neighbours, I don’t see them otherwise because they have hidden themselves away, and it’s not their fault poor dears that they are so in thrall to MSM. Whether they’ve noticed that I just smile and wave to them, but not clap like a seal, I’ve no idea!
The seals keep on clapping, even in the continued absence of anyone throwing them fish – isn’t that close to the definition of insanity?
I always go out and bellow anti-lockdown slogans in a park. Hope that for some small area around me they are louder than the horn honking coming from the high streets nearby.
Same here. I’ve had a lot of experience of the NHS this past two and a half years… bungling, confusion and incompetence with the occasional stand out individual. No seal behaviour from me.
My experience of 2 years ago was somewhat similar,although I was fortunate in that the 2 doctors, both women, who looked after me during a thankfully brief stay, were excellent; so much so, that I wrote a couple of thank you notes on the local website.
However, the nurses were awful; the bossy little so and so in charge, decided to subject me to the subtle ignore and neglect until the last minute treatment, while her pals mainly followed suit.
A couple were fairly pleasant, but on the whole disappointing: at least half were significantly overweight, some were rude and others just unable to listen.
My sister ,who is a neat and never changing size 10, was told by a particularly moronic female GP that she was overweight! This without utilising the evidence of her eyes and connecting her apparently well educated medical brain to her mouth.
Sister was astounded as was I!
Senior practice nurse at surgery -when I said that I would like drops for a recurrent minor ear irritation-asked if I meant drops to take by mouth! Erm, no, ear drops actually!
I’ve rejected all the screening invitations and got away with it to date
Bear in mind the percentage of their patient list who tick off these kinds of assessment is almost certainly among the targets by which their own practice is judged.
I had one of those. As my weekly kilometer swim took less than an hour I was assessed as moderately inactive. Had I been less fit and swum more slowly and the 1k had taken more than an hour, my level of activity would have been approved of.
Same for me,got badgered into a health assessment and even though I was doing a strenuous manual job eight hours a day the GP said I should think about going to the gym for exercise !.
I find the clapping more sinister. To me it is reminiscent of tools used in authoritarian states that encourage the population to police each other’s commitment to ‘the cause’. It also has the effect of suppressing the really serious questions that need to be asked about how the NHS has handled the crisis; see discussion on care homes, cancer treatments, empty hospitals, Ppe supplies etc etc etc.
That does not stop me appreciating the efforts that many employees of the NHS are going to in an attempt to manage their patient lists and try and work within the rules dictated to them.
Me too I’ve found it sinister from day 1. Social conditioning at its finest.
Where I live the clapping was every day at 8 o’clock often accompanied by a cavalcade of the “overwhelmed” public services, poilce, ambulances touring residential areas with siremns blaring and horns honking. They even have an anthem. A spanish language version of Gloria Gaynor’s I Will Survive”.
That’s seriously vomit-inducing!
I don’t clap as I think they’re being paid to do their jobs so why should they be any different from the supermarket workers, delivery guys, bin men, etc?
Whilst I agree that the frontline staff have done their best, what’s worrying is the NHS apparatchiks using this crisis to attempt to stop any attempts at reform.
” I didn’t experience much humanity…” I’m making a point that in the extremely unlikely event that I get a bad case of covid, when it is my time to catch it (not if, because evryone catching it and gaining herd immunity is the only way out), I will not by getting medical help. Hypoxia, in the unlikely event of a case getting that bad, is painless I hear. Whereas what they put you through to invasively ventilate you is horrific, and what you have to go through when being brought back from it and rehabilitated afterwards is terrible. Waking up paralysed with a tube rammed down a dry throat, weakened and not controlling your own breathing, then weeks of pain while your body’s systems are brought back a bit at a time.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-52655431
It’s only ‘complicated’ if the government and its quangos make it such.
Nanny State at its finest
It reads rather like a sketch from Monty Python.
Poverty won’t cure coronavirus… we MUST get back to work, writes hotel chain magnate SIR ROCCO FORTE
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-8317531/Poverty-wont-cure-corona-work-writes-hotel-chain-magnate-SIR-ROCCO-FORTE.html
Another celeb businessman comes out antilockdown like Elon Musk.
These people and their fellows need to put some real money into political campaigning in this issue.
What a great article. This needs to be spread far and wide over social media.
Yes – and look at how much hate is directed at him in many of the comments.
Looking at the comments it seems there are more lock-down sceptics than lock-down zealots to me. I’m going to be sharing this article around. I’m not fussed about any vile comments which may come back.
It’s the Mail. Goes with the territory.
That’s a great article. Let’s hope it’s contagious.
Good morning from Northern Germany. I have been reading this page for a couple of weeks now and it has become a part of my daily routine. Thanks Toby and everybody else posting here.
I decided to register and participate, share some news and developments from Germany. I hope you´re interested enough…
Today I would like to comment on two things;
1.) The open question of children being super spreaders (horrible word, but our beloved scientists use it in this context). It is indeed an open issue. There are two big studies in Germany looking into this; one in Heidelberg and a new one in Hamburg. The one from Heidelberg should produce some first results soonish.
Our enlightened leader in these dark times that have befallen us, the head virologist of the Charite in Berlin, Christian Drosten has published a study about two weeks ago, where he claims to have proven that the “viral load” at children is the same as for adults. So, lets see what come out of this….
Nevertheless, day cares across Germany are opening; in some states (we have a federal system) slower, in some they are completely back to normal. I have been sending my 2 year old back to day care for about 2 weeks now, a soon as I was allowed. He loves to be back.
In general the opinion and mood in Germany on this issue is different than in the UK, it seems. Most people want the children to go back to day cares, kindergardens and schools. Tons of experts have stepped out saying how bad it is for children not to be able to go. Our politicians all agree. But there is the black cloud of “how contagious are kids” hanging over everything. Therefore, these mentioned studies could bring a huge sigh of relief, or a devastating blow. Please keep your fingers crossed, I will let you know once the word is out.
2.) I find it weird that right now, the newspaper that provides the most unbiased and balanced reporting is the Bild; normally closer to being yellow press and therefore having a bad reputation (despite the fact that is has the highest numbers of edition in Germany by far), it now criticises the government openly, strongly requested a path out of lockdown and mentions different opinions by experts, who in the MSM are ignored. Since the Bild has a huge impact on German public opinion, this is a glimpse of hope for me.
I hope this wasn´t to long or boring for you guys.
Sorry for spelling or grammar mistakes, English is not my mother tongue.
Stay strong and sceptic. I will try too.
Till next time
Welcome Herman, and your english is fine
Thanks Herman. Welcome to the blog and please keep contributing. Thank you.
Thank you Herman.
Thanks this is good to know.
Thank you. Let’s hope the studies provide the ammo for Boris to order our kids back to school.
Hello Herman. Always nice to hear what’s happening in other countries. Great post hope you continue.
https://twitter.com/CNN/status/1260555428100026368
It will be interesting to hear what Greta tells us about COVID-19.
Surely she is an expert on epidemiology aswell.
Don’t worry, her sponsors and hangers-on will give her all the right lines to spout and help her to generate an even more hate-filled expression.
Im pretty sure she is there to push the idea that this virus is dangerous to kids and young adults too. Somehow this all is linked to climate change. Maybe she will have a story how she almost died by covid-19.
Isn’t she sponsored by Bill Gates?
I bet she can see the virus,just like she can CO2…..
Darkest winter ever ahead of us, if he trust this dude.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/powerpost/ousted-vaccine-official-to-warn-of-darkest-winter-if-virus-returns-without-better-response/2020/05/13/f19ba79a-953b-11ea-91d7-cf4423d47683_story.html
If they relock us down at any point, I will be ignoring those rules. Hopefully I’m not the only one.
It is damn sad if we fall into this lie again later on… This dude is mostly a vaccine industry worker, havent heard any good or hopefull news from anyone related to that industry. So im not too worried of him giving an honest opinion.
I think we might be spending the summer preparing protest organisations and working out where local antilockdowners really are in meatspace. What this lockdown has shown us is that real world things are needed to defend freedom, no progress has been made by merely talking online.
The Spanish government has been one of the most enthusiastic in pushing “The New Normal” and signs are emerging of how they want it to be. In the words of Vicepresident Carmen Calvo they want to prepare the country for a transition to sustainability, gender mainstreaming and a strenghtening of public services and the welfare state. In a sinister move the government is seeking to change the legislation around the state of alarm. The state of alarm is the mechanism underpinning lockdown. It has to be submitted to Parliamentary approval every 2 weeks. What they want is to introduce legislation which allows lockdown without resorting to the state of alarm in case of “future outbreaks”. Meanwhile, they propose extending the current state of alarm, which ends on the 24th of May, for a month, instead of the 2 weeks required by law. Some opposition parties have already claimed that the restrictions they imposed during the lockdown were not covered by a state of alarm, but rather represent a state of exception which has a different legal basis. It is abundantly clear that in Spain at least, that lockdowns have absolutely nothing to do with public health but are preparing us for a bright shiny new future which has already been decided upon. On a lighter note, in the northern Spanish city of Santander pólice were called to clear patrons from a bar. Outside seating is allowed albeit at 50% of capacity. People sitting outside on the terraza suddenly all rushed inside. The reason, it had started to rain. These sensible people were more afraid of getting a bit damp than coronavirus. God bless them. No social distancinhg either.
My “new normal” starts today. I will be going for a walk along a lovely riverbank with a friend, we will sit on a bench for a sandwich and a drink, then on the way driving home I will stop at a local shop, do some normal shopping, not bother about social distancing and pay with cash.
Good luck!
Enjoy!
Fingers crossed for you and your hopefully sane customers.
Terrifying! Is this a ‘crisis’ that is being made full use of or a manufactured crisis to serve a purpose, one wonders. I fear that this is in any case now to be the direction of travel in most countries.
That’s the big question.
Went out today and what a depressing experience.
British bulldog spirit? Perfidious Albion?
No, just a lot of scared, cowed, unthinking sheeple who are that scared of death they have given up on living. No questioning of Government, no independent research into things, ye gods it was depressing.
Ours is now such a risk-adverse, over-sissified HSE driven, dumbed down society this could happen very easily in a matter of weeks and that is what scares me most: how easily the world economy was destroyed, how millions of people in China “disappeared” without explanation and which has been documented in the UK and the USA on a lesser scale, how hundreds of millions of people will be in permanent poverty, untold dead from starvation, murder, self-isolation mental problems etc to supposedly give a few thousand already seriously ill people an extra few months of life.
Only 1 person spoke to me and that was when we had a laugh about a shop displaying a “cash only” sign as their card machine was broken. Very few going in, we agreed it was because they believed touching cash would cause the flesh to melt off their hands. He agreed it was all a crock as well so only ones with any balls are unbelievers.
The mini-hitlers in hi-vis bossing people around outside garden centres and pet shops we went to soon when quiet when I explained to them there was no scientific or legal reason to adhere to and follow the 2m social distancing so why were they doing it? Orders was the answer. The Nuremberg Principle says this is not a valid defence. They looked sheepish and let me in with lots of aghast looks by others in the queue.
Yes it is depressing,I thought things might actually change for the better this week but if anything most people seem even more brainwashed and scared,this madness and mass delusion is really off the scale now.I refuse to use any shop or business that is making it’s customers queue outside in long lines all stood compliantly the ridiculous 2m apart and as for the hi-vis Hitlers barking instructions at every person as they are graciously allowed to enter and spend money,argh !!!!.
I am also finding that people are even more unfriendly than usual around here,I try to say good morning or hello to everyone I meet but I would say about 3 out of 5 people ignore me or give me a dirty look.
I find its those wearing masks scary (especially those wearing both masks and sunglasses) – either they give me a dirty look or that of pity, probably thinking that I’m going to catch corona and die.
Yes! What is that about! I actually said to someone in Sainsbury’s the other day, that you couldn’t catch it by smiling! I have turned into a mad smiley women saying hi to all and sundry!
Long live the mad smiley women!
Toby has mentioned a few times a petition on Change.org about lifting the lockdown but it keeps disappearing – I’ve tried to sign it and it was gone. Wonder why? Look who invested in Change.org, it;s that name yet again that has links to everything and everyone that is involved with what going on at the moment:
https://techcrunch.com/2017/05/26/reid-hoffman-bill-gates-sam-altman-invest-30-million-in-change-org/?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly91ay5zZWFyY2gueWFob28uY29tLw&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAAMoz2DGtPICobYWkxx95Y-rmSPRU5scDL9tLrHsYcLiXlkwVjBEL9qCHmj5pMOxX0ArfS3IfIuqRWzks82q9uS8N5JMMGUK8HZcy5U80RBZH-E4UJvHKzQHkbhc2sjhjbapTUxkNZZ_vAAZjOBdXo_awHWO0ONZ33_UHSuMDcvkA
Reid Hoffman, Bill Gates, Sam Altman invest $30 million in Change.org
Katie Roof@katie_roof / 2:34 am BST•May 27, 2017
And also having access to all the information that was covered by ‘privacy statement’.
I unsubscribed from their emails last week. Some of the petitions are ridiculous.
Great. They failed to let us know when the petition against the Emergency legislation in the UK was pulled off overnight (disappeared into a big black hole).
There is definitely a pattern emerging and that’s left leaning media (like Newsnight’s Labour activist Lewis Goodall) being so on the ball regarding anything ‘bad news’ about this virus. I mean he retweeted that Spanish study result yet hasn’t bothered with any of the other studies from what I can see.
And it seems countries like Iceland and Sweden etc no longer exists to them.
I keep get angrier and angrier. I have posted the pictures of the children playing in chalk prisons, and other posts about the cruelty of what we are doing, and not a single person has replied. Not a single person has anything to say about it. I increasingly think this is led by a huge swathe of the population that are so anti-Tory and the Country after Brexit and Corbyn indoctrination ,that they just want to see failure, the means and cost is inconsequential.
NHS is the largest employer in Europe. I’ve not seen that mentioned once in the media, surely there is some culpability with their response rather than passing the buck continually.
Actually, apart from the nearly-to-a-man anti-tory MSM, I don’t think the hysteria is particularly anti-tory. If you look, for instance at the right-wing Guido Fawkes website, you will find plenty of unthinking support for Lockdown and rabid attacks on Lockdown sceptics. The MSM and government have simply terrorised much of the public who are incapable of independent thought on matters of risk and safety. This is how Project Fear was supposed to work with Brexit – an insufficiently successful project because people had already thought much about the EU and its effects on the UK.
It’s definitely the case that support for the panic, and the vicious attacking of dissent from the panic, comes both from anti-government types wanting to make things seem as bad as possible and blame the government for it, and from Conservative Party loyalists (and other just plain authority-clingers) wanting to protect the government from getting blamed for the whole panic, or as Barney McGrew suggests just resisting the scary idea that the Party or the government could be that unreliable.
Agree. We will not accept the so-called ‘new normal’. We need to get back to how it was. The Government should start reassuring people that they will not all die, in fact most will be ok
Yes. Time to put those expert propagandists and nudgers to work.
I agree with most of your post, but it’s not a leave remain split, as we’ve discussed many times here, if we want to win this argument, I think it’s important not to conflate it with another issue, as then you’ve got two arguments to win not one. I absolutely agree that the behaviour of the activist wing of the left is an utter disgrace, and many mollycoddled people want this to be worse than it is to score political points.
Yes, I regret mentioning Brexit yesterday – apologies.
Early on in this debacle, if anything I was looking for good news – that the virus wasn’t as bad as feared. I found it – there’s plenty of reason to think that the fears have been exaggerated. A weight was lifted off my shoulders. I told friends and family and pointed them to the evidence. But instead of this news being received as welcome, it was rejected. Why? Why is it that people want to believe the bad news? Why do they want to believe something that will trash the country’s economy? Why do they want to lose their savings? Why would they accept a dystopian future for themselves and their children?
I think it’s partly to do with *who* is telling them the news, rather than the the ideas themselves. If they were to accept that things could go back to normal then they’ve stepped into a world where the government’s competence or motives are called into question; where mainstream thought may be wrong. Maybe that is a heavier burden to them than the idea of a virus that’s trying to kill them if they step outside their front door. A world literally descending into Mad Max is less frightening to them than the idea that the authorities could be wrong.
A quick update on the situation in Spain. This push to allow lockdowns without resorting to a state of alarm comes hot on the heles of a leaked report from Spanish pólice which claimed that social unrest was highly likely. Nice to have legislation that allows lockdowns to be imposed more easily. They will claim, of course, that protests, riots risk another outbreak so justifying lockdowns whenever the government feels like it. They also recently introduced a basic living wage, I suppose to help the people that their policies have impoverished. Universal Basic Income anyone?
This and your previous post just now -Shades of General Franco?
Hello Old Fred. This time the people imposing this are on the left and the main opponent is a party nostalgic for the days of Franco who have called a protest for the 23rd of May. Left wing authoritarians Vs right wing authoritarians, what a choice.
Between a rock and a hard place, oh dear. A good example of the Horseshoe Theory – the extreme left wing and the extreme right wing share many similarities.
The people pinning their hopes on antibody testing have created themselves a ‘perfect storm’. They’ve implicitly accepted Neil Ferguson’s assumptions. They’ve assumed that herd immunity is only reached when about 60% of the population has been ‘infected’ (they’re accepting that R0=2.5).
In doing so, they’ve created a situation where, if random testing finds that only 5% of a population is showing antibodies, it will be interpreted as:
Herd immunity is way off
The lockdown has worked
The virus’s lethality is huge (all Covid deaths divided by 5% of the population).
Whereas, the truth is probably:
Practical herd immunity has been reached
The lockdown has made little difference
The virus’s lethality is much lower
The reason being that no allowance is being made for innate immunity, and gradations of immunity – some of which don’t result in antibody production. Even the dumb Ferguson model will show herd immunity being reached at a lower level if variations in susceptibility are allowed.
https://judithcurry.com/2020/05/10/why-herd-immunity-to-covid-19-is-reached-much-earlier-than-thought/#more-26133
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.17.20061440v1.full.pdf
Great post
My concern is what government do with the numbers. They’ll see what they interpret as low disease levels and use that to keep the lockdown. You can pretty much guarantee that they will not see the truthful conclusions you’ve stated. I’m tired of being cynical, but I have no doubt at all that they will follow the same Ferguson mantra and the low antibody levels will be used in a single conclusion – the disease it unbelievably lethal and you have to remain in prison until a non existent vaccine is produced, meaning for ever. I would be flabbergasted if they conclude different.
Exactly. There’s no winning! They can spin it either way!
Low disease levels –Oh shit, no herd immunity! Second spike! Quick everyone, inside, inside!
High disease levels — Oh shit, there are a million new cases! Save the NHS! Quick everyone, inside, inside!
If they’re gonna go with rhetoric, they better pick a side. But they want it both ways.
Surely that means we can spin it either way too?
Low disease levels – not as contagious as previously thought, might be much easier to control with Swedish-style mitigation measures and not full lockdowns
High disease levels – we are close to herd immunity and the IFR is far lower than previously estimated, making it a less dangerous disease that we originally thought.
I agree that this is continually overlooked, for some reason. Example for those who might not want to trawl through the articles:
Natural R0 = 2.5, hence crude herd immunity threshold (HIT) = 1 – (1 / R0) = 60%. At this point, each infected person will infect less than one other person on average because there’s a 60% chance that each person they encounter is already immune.
However, if say 40% are either naturally immune (e.g. cross immunity from other coronaviruses), or aren’t contagious if infected and may not produce measurable antibodies (e.g. some younger people), then 40% out of the 60% is provided by the natural immunity, so herd immunity through infection is reached at (60% – 40%) = 20%, as measured by seroprevalence.
So far as I’m aware, there is some degree of innate immunity to all known viruses.
I’m proof of this. My blood is CMV negative – which means I have no cytomegalovirus antibodies.85% of people do have these antibodies because they have developed them under the age of 40. – so either i have been completely cocooned from something most people catch- or I’ve never caught it because I have some kind of natural resistance. Alternatively I’ve fought it off without producing antibodies. There must be some degree of this in everybody, to varying levels. Some people will be more susceptible to flus, some to coronaviruses. It’s just… biology.
This is what’s astounding to me. The complete denial (and indeed denouncement) of basic biology. And subsequent rebranding of fancy guesswork as ‘The Science’.
And the RO value will be whatever they want it to be!
R0 isn’t a constant, it’s a probability distribution. Most infected people will affect zero others, but a few will affect >20, particularly at the start of the outbreak. That’s why those who are most likely to get infected are also most likely to infect others, because they tend to be very socially active and/or very mobile.
Those people then get taken out of the susceptible pot very early on, i.e. those most likely to infect are also most likely to already have either immunity or (by cross exposure) non-susceptibility.
As a result, Rt falls over time and hence the HIT also falls.
That’s the general gist of the paper by Nic Lewis which was linked by the OP.
Good post. I also think that, even if there is only 5% of the population immune (unlikely), this would mean that the virus is nowhere near as contagious as thought. If this is the case then the goal of ‘flattening the curve’ can more than likely be achieved with far fewer restrictions (Sweden’s point from the start) and we can dramatically ease the lockdown without fear of being overwhelmed. I’d imagine the relatively high death rate is solely due to the fact we’ve concentrated the infected into Hospitals and care homes (where the vulnerable are) whilst the fit and healthy sit at home safely watching Netflix.
It’s more fundamental than that. You are assuming that Covid-19 causes symptoms including lethal symptoms in some rather than it is indistinguishable from the noise of flu. I’d bet that there are probably only 500 people who have had unique symptoms that could be linked to a Coronavirus variant.
It’s because of how it all started – they didn’t demonstrate infection to symptoms. So all the data we are seeing is mixing a multitude of symptoms but importantly reacting with the same policy.
You can see it in the metrics:
– Wide range of symptoms i.e. little falsifiability
– Vague testing with false positives – again lack of specificity
– Broad brush attribution
In reality the causes are policy and perception of risk.
The breaking of the home-hospital-home cycle has caused more deaths to occur more quickly.
But also we are in fear of each other now for what exactly? Something that is beneath the noise of the flu, of which we do nothing about.
Health workers do not want to work on wards for the most part. Mostly because of the conditions and oppressive PPE.
To be properly sceptical you have to ignore all of the derived metrics, like serological effects and the like. You must first demonstrate that virus causes illness, rather than someone is ill and happens to have the virus.
Because we have lots of viruses in us all the time.
All the talk of herd immunity can only be a generalist idea – as in we don’t know what’s going on but it doesn’t look any different that the flu in overall effects so we’ll use the flu measures.
Remember there is debate that even influenzz viruses cause the flu. It’s the terrain versus germ debate.
V interesting
I keep wondering whether all this is simply down to us suddenly trying to quantify something that we’ve never bothered to before.
(Well. Not us. The authorities. Which is whats so sinister about it when you consider what they get out of causing everyone to fear something they didn’t even acknowledge last year )
Good points!
Plus according to team Kings, we’re underestimating infections by two thirds as we’re excluding a second clear cluster of diagnostic symptoms https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/two-thirds-of-coronavirus-cases-are-missed-app-expert-says-xqtl685px
“The population doesn’t want to be treated as moronic imbeciles. Most of us have the capacity to differentiate real wingnuttiness from fair and logically set-out criticism.”
Have we not yet seen enough evidence to the contrary? In polls, on FB/Twitter/Newspaper comment sections? In the behaviour of people lunging away from oncoming pedestrians into the road and cleaving to useless masks? Chuckle-muppets prattling about the ‘new normal’ as if this is all a fun new cosplay trend? Clapping the bloated, callous, sclerotic NHS?
I’m afraid the prognosis for our civilisation looks worse than it ever has & I no longer see the benefit in pretending otherwise.
I’ll be going to find out on Saturday if there’s any hint that my pessimism is misplaced. Because what else is there?
Sneaking into MSM and Foreign Affairs (a pro globalist publication)
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/sweden/2020-05-12/swedens-coronavirus-strategy-will-soon-be-worlds?utm_medium=social
The Perpetrators behind COVID1-19 https://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2020/05/14/who-created-coronavirus.aspx?
* Thousands of dangerous viruses and other pathogens, such as the bat coronavirus and the avian flu, have been collected, analyzed and weaponized in secretive, accident-prone labs like the Wuhan Virology Lab in China and the U.S. Army Lab in Fort Detrick, Maryland
* A growing arsenal of synthetic viruses have been lab-engineered, despite U.S. and international laws banning biowarfare weapons and experimentation
* A disturbing number of Biowarfare/Biodefense labs have experienced leaks, accidents and thefts over the past three decades
* To conceal their scientific malpractice and criminal negligence, Chinese and U.S. officials, Big Pharma, Facebook, Google and a network of global scientists are frantically trying to cover up the lab origins and diabolical machinations of the COVID-19 pandemic
* Our failure to investigate and directly address the origins of SARS-CoV-2 almost certainly guarantees our failure to protect ourselves from future, possibly even more deadly, pandemics
Funding for the reckless germ war experiments in Wuhan have included more than $3 million from Dr. Anthony Fauci’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), a division of the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH), with apparent collaboration, according to Boyle, from scientists at the universities of North Carolina, Wisconsin, Harvard and other institutions.
It is frustrating, and indeed alarming, that so few independent journalists, scientists, activists, and public officials have thus far been willing to question the “official story.”
In the meantime, please don’t believe everything you read in the corporate mass media, Facebook or even the progressive press.
Or so called celebrities.
And don’t forget Icke’s Satanic Elite & space lizards.
I hardly think following a money trail is akin to claiming aliens live inside people
Is only a few steps away.
“To conceal their scientific malpractice and criminal negligence, Chinese and U.S. officials, Big Pharma, Facebook, Google and a network of global scientists are frantically trying to cover up the lab origins and diabolical machinations of the COVID-19 pandemic”
How do I upload a picture?
Don’t have that available, sorry.
If you want a subversive slogan for lockdown skeptics it really should be Cold Fact. If you know the album by Rodriguez, and the role the LP played during apartheid, you’d think it plays beautifully for us
Love that album!
We’re discussing this down thread (thanks Fred!) but key to us winning this argument is messaging. Most brits when thinking straight, are small c conservative, sensible, and in the ‘middle’. Aggressive, extreme, or highly politicised statements (ie let’s not touch Brexit with a bargepole when discussing this) won’t work.
Can we brain storm it? First, what’s our argument? And how would you explain it on the back of an envelope?
– the cure is worse than the disease
– the virus is nowhere near as dangerous as they said it was
– the road to hell is paved with good intentions
– we’re killing more people than we’re saving
– your risk of dying is miniscule
– we’re not children, we don’t need to the government to remove our freedom to do the right thing
– economic depressions kill many more, we’re destroying everything that makes life worth living
– there’s no science for what we’re doing
– there’s no such thing as a risk free life, life is always a balance
Slogans, I’ll start, off the top of my head (literally, be kind!):
– respect your elders, put the ‘unity’ back in herd immunity
– keep calm and use your common sense
– choose life, not fear
– safety in numbers
– there’s nothing to fear
– F.E.A.R false evidence appearing real
– Hug your mum
– Safety without freedom is a contradiction
– Humans need hugs
Might all be totally off key, but you get the idea.
Facts Not Fear
That’s a good one.
Breathe the fresh air ,with faces bare
Show your face, greet with grace
Life is never without risk
Isolation is no fun
Socialising can be done
Boffins crunch numbers, humans go to parties!
Socialising is human (or humans are social)
No man is an island, isolation kills
Think of your futures
Life is for living and learning
One giant leap for mankind
We can do it again
If we make up our minds
Let’s go out again
Enjoy our lives again
See the world again
Businesses need us to survive
Renew our custom
So they may thrive
last one-
Panic is manic
Here’s my brain dump:
– How about something along the lines of ‘herd immunity – we can only do this together’? That’s of course the wrong wording, but it’s about striking the right tone. Humanity has only ever achieved great things by doing things together and not by separating and isolating people.
– Any messaging referencing ’freedom’
– Shake hands stop the pandemic – with letters ‘d’ ‘e’ and ‘m’ blocked out so they read as PANIC
– Give hugs, stop coronapanic
– Spread facts not fear
– Something with the words ’human friendly’ as social distancing is totally against any human instincts
– I was toying with the idea of using Tory Brexit slogan “Let’s take back control”!
Suggest not using tory brexit slogans as this is not a leave remain split, from what I’m seeing.
But yes that’s why I thought ‘put the ‘unity’ in herd immunity – safety in numbers’
And yes all mine keep arriving back at ‘human’ – the image that keeps (weirdly) popping into my mind is when chimps groom each other, and eat each other’s fleas! We are essentially social animals, hairless apes.
Agree.
When I try to think about what would be the opposite of a phrase ’social distancing’ I keep coming back to Human too.
Human friendly vs Social distancing friendly -that would make the messaging in the shop windows/cafes easy. Let’s not go that far this route though and allow the ’new normal’ to exist.
‘Not distant, but human’
No panty-wetting zone
I just remembered seeing a photo of someone wearing t-shirt saying ”EVEN THE BATS DIDN’T KNO THAT THE HOAX WOULD LAST THIS LONG”
https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.scroll.in/article/961017/an-ethnographer-tries-to-understand-the-anti-lockdown-protests-erupting-across-the-us
A HUG IS HEALTH GIVE ONE WHILE YOU STILL CAN
I’m not an advertising/campaigning expert, but I think that the right slogan can do two things:
– Help identify other ’sane’ people and perhaps give confidence to those who are afraid to voice their opinions
– Help spread the facts and rebel people against social distancing and unlawful lockdown laws
It’s easy to achieve the first one, harder to do both with one subtle message.
Great post
“Kill the vulnerable. Ruin the young. Destroy freedom.”
There, that should do it, shouldn’t it?
Or: Your country needs you to …. GET A GRIP?
Yes I’m trying to do that on a post, below. We need to brainstorm, it has to be gentle though, or sensible.
Watch and share this video of professor Dolores Cahill’s view on Covid-19 hoax. With owners permission. https://youtu.be/Avc6_ftzk3w
How long before govt relax the 2metre social distance rule? As others have pointed out, this is the key factor for avoiding economic armageddon.
New college of policing guidelines (they provide guidance to forces how to interpret the law) have told them only to enforce the actual law, social distancing is not law, it’s unenforceable. I am hoping this was a deliberate move by the Gov to make it impossible to uphold so those of us minded to can get on with it. Ditto the deliberate loop holes and contradictions.
For businesses the problem is unlikely to be the police, but in the first instance HSE and local government enforcers, and possibly later insurers, as well as potentially scared customers and members of the public.
But yes, seeing the back of that rule must be the first tactical priority.
Might be worth being mentally at least prepared for the idea that you might ultimately want to fight it in court, possibly with support from other antilockdownists if it becomes a cause celebre (like say the metric martyrs).
That’s not necessarily a good thing, but if you do end up going down that route, having excellent records of all actions and communications from the beginning might be very useful.
Absolutely, being a cause celebre isn’t something to be welcomed unless you’re the kind of person that thrives on attention, and it certainly doesn’t always end well. Best avoided if possible, but if you do end up in a confrontation best to be as well armed as possible. I hope none of this comes to pass and you manage a smooth return to business without any harassment at all from the authorities.
You should be running the country. We need an anti-boxticker to work to principles of getting things done rather than the cowardly jobsworths today who, when asked, all fall back on the Eichmann defence: “I was only following orders”.
“… as someone said (on this site I think), better to die on your feet than live on your knees.”
He’s woken up after a couple of millennia if he is on here – ’twas Euripides.
Just wanted to second what Mark said – switch your phone onto record and/or video for all dealings with EHOs. Another real person as witness even better.
I have just visited my local town. Plus side, very few people wearing masks and gloves but the downside is still the palpable fear of breaking the 2m rule. My local butcher, fab guy who has been extremely sensible and stayed open through this whole thing but his employees are anxious and swift to enforce their 2m rule. At the end of the day, I might realise that there is no evidence to support 2m but until the government says otherwise it’s not fair to expect a shop assistant to do anything other than what the government tells her is safe.
As for Ku1485, I think you might be doing a public service if you lead the way back to normality! Difficult in practice, you have my sympathies.
I had a lovely chat with the head gardener in the park today and commented that he didn’t have to leap 6 feet away as he passed me. He said he knew that he couldn’t catch anything that way but, as he was wearing his official logoed gear, he had to be seen to be “doing the right thing” or some busybody would no doubt make life even harder for him. We consoled ourselves with the fact that at least he doesn’t have to wear a mask while working.
Agree. As we know it should have been 1 meter (but due the the fact that we are too stupid to understand that they increased it to 2 meters). It makes it very tough for employers and businesses to ensure adherence of this arbitrary rule.
“Should” have been 1 yard, but for our supine acquiescence to the imposition of the Napoleonic system.
Great summary of data about asymptomatic cases:
https://www.conservativereview.com/news/horowitz-now-know-majority-contract-covid-19-asymptomatic-changes-everything/
That’s great ammunition. Thanks
Yep and destroy the future for the young.
Surely the Belarus situation sums it up. Belarus has had 146 deaths from Covid19 in a country of 10 million with no lock down or social distancing. Norway, about 700 km to the east of Belarus, has had 223 deaths with 5 million people and a full UK style lock down and a lot of social distancing.
In other words, a poverty stricken country with a climate and homogenous population similar to Norway, has a LOWER mortality rate per million citizens. A brutal, dictator therefore has more common sense than all of the uni educated, polical morons in the West.
It would be interesting to look at this in relation to the demographics of each nation, how many elderly with morbidities are packed into care homes in Belarus for example? I’d be willing to wager a good deal fewer than in the UK…
Dangerous to lean too heavily on the Belarus figures, too soon. Once we do so, I have no doubt we’ll very quickly start seeing stories about hospital chaos, cover ups, popular unrest and mass deaths in Belarus, And we’ll see those stories whether or not there actually are any of those things (caused by the disease) on any major scale.
But yes, if the present situation holds up, Belarus will join Sweden as a standing rebuke to the hysterics. Bearing in mind that latter category includes (rather surprisingly imo) the Russian president as well, that’s going to be quite a dangerous position for old Lukashenko to be in ….
I reckon he’d have cleared any response with Putin.
Oops, Norway west of Belarus…
Facts which should lead our eminent science led government out of their self-inflicted disaster
Nobody knows if symptomatic or asymptomatic infection always leads to an immune response in the form of antibodies
Nobody knows how important cell mediated T cells derived immunity is for immunity to Covid-19 hence people without antibodies could be protected by the T cells derived immunity (In vaccination against Hep A ,another RNA virus like Covid-19,even persons without detectable antibodies is protected against disease by the primed cellular immunity producing antibodies when exposed)
Nobody knows if the other 4 circulating corona virus we have give any form of cross immunity or mitigation of symptoms
Nobody knows if there are other factors in the population which gives a resistance to infection like genetic factors even blood groups (some RNA norovirus has that feature)
Nobody knows if the flu model used with R 2 and 60% herd immunity required to end the outbreak is also relevant in Covid-19 other scientist question that high figure of herd immunity in Covid-19
https://arxiv.org/abs/2005.03085
Nobody knows if super spreaders, so common in SARS, is not an important feature in Covid-19 and nobody knows how much that would affect the famous R factor
Nobody knows if Covid-19 randomly infects 2 persons (R 2) or other factors are involved selecting victims
Nobody knows whether the lockdown occurred in the right moment on the epidemic curve that is exactly where in the upward slope it stopped being exponential (that is the whole theoretical reason for interrupting the transmission ,lock down, flattening the curve) but we had many observations that we were already on the way down the curve when the lockdown happened thus the holy grail of flattening the curve did not happen at the right moment
Nobody knows how we can factor in asymptomatic cases in the elusive R factor which is going to guide us in these unchartered waters
Nobody has any clue to the numbers actually infected and we can’t be guided just by antibody testing and besides mass testing with PCR show thousands of asymptomatic cases around the globe and all this makes this an impossible calculation
How on earth can the government think they can be guided clear scientific evidence?
At best a guestimate.
Facts that we know
We know that the IFR is extremely difficult to calculate because we have difficult to assess all infected and can’t be guided safely with antibody test for IFR and therefore best guided by CFR in age groups affected
We know exactly that Covid-19 is lethal to elderly especially in closed care homes
We know that it hardly affects younger working persons and children
We have very clearly risk groups defined
We know there is an awful lot of asymptomatic transmission occurring which if in younger persons, would be helpful for herd immunity and in the long run protect the elderly
We know that lockdown or semi lockdown or snail like opening of society is ruinous for the economy and the public health.
In this crossfire between what we know and what we don’t know, you have to rely on something called common sense. That means taking a risk for the common good.
The NHS did not collapse in the first wave and it must be infinitely better to risk a supposedly second wave or spikes now in the summer when the virus transmits less, and at the same time ring fence care homes and advise elderly and susceptible younger persons to self-isolate voluntarily.
Why wait for a second wave in the autumn and winter together with a possible influenza in a ruined country?
End the lockdown and all social distancing immediately for all younger and working population and reserve mass testing for the care sector.
great post
It will be ironic if the ‘second wave’ that swamps the NHS is the accumulation of patients denied early diagnosis, intervention for non-Covid conditions who become serious/critical, and the second wave of deaths is theirs.
Also: quarantine has to be complete to stop transmission of infection; social distancing, gloves, masks, is as much use as carrying water in a colander on the grounds that not all of it has holes.
Pandemic means prevalent throughout a population. Exactly where it extends, who is/has been infected is unknowable, success or not unmeasurable, so ‘flattening the curve’ of infections during pandemic is like playing whack-a-mole with invisible moles.
But whacking those invisible moles is a great way for the boot to practice stamping up and down on a human face forever…
And surely it is time to call it what it is: anti-social distancing.
Remember when the government bought millions of antibody tests but found they ‘didn’t work’?
https://metro.co.uk/2020/04/16/uk-spent-16000000-coronavirus-tests-didnt-work-12567736/
What do we think to the possibility that when they tried them on people who had tested positive with PCR while infected, they found that they didn’t show any antibodies afterwards? Either the antibody tests were faulty, or it created a new possibility: infection does not necessarily equal antibodies. (Or the PCR tests were faulty).
Either way, this would be a tricky thing to explain – seeing as the government had implicitly assumed that Neil Ferguson’s model was correct, and had been touting the tests as a ‘game-changer’.
That’s exactly what did happen:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/04/15/uk-coronavirus-antibody-test-validated-results-show-under-40s/
However, there are other reasons that the tests could have failed to pick up antibodies, including insufficient sensitivity, or seroconversion time.
I haven’t read any studies that have specifically tried to test whether people who are exposed necessarily develop antibodies; but there are preprint studies focused on detecting antibodies among PCR confirmed cases (e.g. https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.30.20085613v1). It’s very possible that someone who has innate immunity won’t develop antibodies.
Great prescience from the WHO on page 39…
https://apps.who.int/gpmb/assets/annual_report/GPMB_annualreport_2019.pdf
Ooer. Some ‘interesting’ stuff in there.
“In addition to a greater risk of pandemics from natural pathogens, scientific developments allow for disease-causing microorganisms to be engineered or recreated in laboratories. Should countries, terrorist groups, or scientifically advanced individuals create or obtain and then use biological weapons that have the characteristics of a novel, high-impact respiratory pathogen, the consequences could be as severe as, or even greater, than those of a natural epidemic, as could an accidental release of epidemic-prone microorganisms.”
Accidental release???
Interesting historical perspective on the madness of the lockdown for healthy people:
https://www.armstrongeconomics.com/international-news/disease/the-stupidity-of-politicians-who-listened-to-neil-ferguson/
“Why would any politician listen to Ferguson alone? Not a single economist was asked what would happen if they locked everyone down on Ferguson’s recommendation.
Throughout history, NEVER has any government EVER been so foolish as to lockdown the entire economy…..”
Good article. Thanks.
Interesting read. Many thanks.
So New Zealand is now a police state
https://t.co/vjmELFZmw6
Can some enlightened person explain to this bear of very little brain why it is that if this virus can survive on a surface for up to 72 hours (ha ha ha) then how come we’re now permitted to share basketballs and tennis balls with another from an alien household but it’s prohibited to have a cup of tea with your parents or kids in the garden if you don’t live with them?
The best explanation I can come up with is 42
That what they want you to believe. I am sure the test was done in a controlled environment.
I happened to see a clip on TV in which they were saying that in the current approach to tennis only one person was allowed to do serving and handle the balls – the other had to use his racket to retrieve the ball and send it back to the server!
You couldn’t make it up !
Well, you unless you were a MSM reptile , or government PR operative, trying to confuse and frighten people even more.
I think this is an interesting thread for some of the bigger brains on here (me not one of them) to look at. Theory that we are experiencing the second wave now.
https://twitter.com/IcyApril/status/1258090533311991811?s=19
“Phylogenetic estimates support that the COVID-2 pandemic started sometimes around 6 October 2019–11 December 2019, which corresponds to the time of the host-jump into humans.”
Emergence of genomic diversity and recurrent mutations in SARS-CoV-2
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1567134820301829
Some doubts I have about this:
Why are we having a second wave if we already had one, but didn’t do any restrictions, and it was winter then so would have been worse? We should have just had one big wave.
The countries he identifies as having had bad flu seasons this year which might have been the candidates for a first wave are the same countries (UK, Spain, Italy) who seem to have got their asses kicked the most by this second wave. If there was a theory that Germany, who seem to have too few deaths, had had a first wave that would seem to explain more. Isn’t it more likely that those countries are just worse at dealing with flu for some reason, have older populations, or other factors like that?
I think the idea that Mimi suggested that we’re looking at the end of the first wave (I think probably at least the back 2/3 of it) might be the case. We have some evidence of these earlier cases, and we just would not have noticed if people had been dying in the winter when were still assuming Covid was just something bats got in China. We then caught up with this epidemic a bit late when we started testing.
The DNA being found in France is pretty good evidence but they did only find 1 sample (out of 14). If they tested another 140 and found 10 more that would be better. I haven’t read the “phylogenetic” study so can’t comment on how accurate a system of ageing that is.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/politics/come-boris-tell-frightened-nation-fears-proportion/?li_source=LI&li_medium=liftigniter
Allison Pearson is definitely a lockdown sceptic – hopefully the tide is turning as more people question the ridiculousness of the situation.
Great article. Love this quote: “Do our leaders really not understand how people think or how they live? All I can say is you know that men are in charge when the golf clubs are open and the hairdressers closed.”
I thought it was a plot to get the men out of the house.
Interesting point about conspiracy theories, as I’ve been called a conspiracy theorist many times now for daring to suggest there may be something more to our comedy response other than sheer bungling and incompetence. I have to say it: what other possible explanation could there be for the hysterical over-reaction by our politicians and their egregious clusterf**k of decisions that have often directly contravened the opinions and advice of many highly respected experts? Do we honestly believe they could be so stupid? It does not make sense at any level and I’m not buying it.
The automatic labelling as “conspiracy theorists” and the belittling those who think dark figures drive certain situations is actually the biggest threat to modern liberty it’s possible to have and generally driven naivety and self-preservation (“Noooo….? They wouldn’t do THAT to us, surely?! Gasp!”). Since when did mankind not conspire? Would we have had the Hillsborough disaster or Alderney Children’s Hospital situations investigated or WMD/Blair if “conspiracy theorists” didn’t exist? These people would (and have) got away with murder, but it shone a light on their potential hoodwinking and for the better. If those cases happened now would we silence and shame those who called out potential underhand activity by calling them “conspiracy theorists”? Would we believe those events were all caused by sheer incompetence? I fear we would and when that day happens we are all finished – for good.
Ask yourself: Why do we have MI5 and MI6? We have them precisely because our foes continually and insidiously conspire against the UK in more ways than any of us would ever know; and we sleep soundly in our beds at night because they work hard to foil plots designed to bring us down on a daily basis. Does the pursuit of power between countries stop at nation states and not filter down to politicians, or the man on the street or corporations? Anyone who tries to warn you against questioning the government on the basis it “sounds like a conspiracy theory” needs to either pick up a history book or learn a little about human nature, which basically consists of the following: mankind screws up quite a lot. And when it does it will try to hide it. Mankind wants to achieve it’s aims and often at any cost, and often using dirty tricks on those who stand in the way of it achieving those aims. Simple. Nothing mystical or Hollywood or particularly outlandish about it, it’s what mankind does and has always done.
So…this then brings us to the next natural conclusion: motive, intent and gain. Has the bungling debacle as created by the UK Govt simply been a “mistake” or series of errors of judgement? Boris Johnson is far better and brighter than that. So perhaps the answer is no.
Like any murder investigation you usually have to follow the money to get your man, and if the person hasn’t killed for money then it’s most certainly for power (which includes losing one’s temper, stranger murder etc), the former being buying someone off for an inheritance, and drug dealer killings spanning both camps. So imagine my surprise when I encountered dismay and gasps that it could possibly be the case that those with vested interests or agendas may have had just the teency-weenciest influence on our ridiculous and embarrassingly knee-jerk national response. Can you imagine a murder suspect saying to Plod at the Met, “Yes Officer, I do stand to benefit from my late mother’s manor house and £1 million in cash from the death of my brother, but honest Guv’nor he slipped and fell off the boat in the middle of the Atlantic at night because he was drunk”. Plod ain’t buying it, and nor are many of us.
It has been proffered much that characters like Kill Gates and the heads of big pharma stand to gain considerably from us sinking our entire nation in order to save around 50,000 people. Merely opportunist vultures, some may cry and they MAY be right. But whether we want to believe in the big bad wolf or not these entities have their sticky mitts all over the UK response because this is how big business works, and since Thatcher that’s who actually really runs the Government. When did we stop believing that?
The events around this stink like a butcher’s bin a heatwave….and if this was an insurance or murder investigation the Met would be all over it. The tens of millions in donations that have landed in Chris Whitty’s departments over the years, as well as Professor Pantsdown’s give us all an insight as to the influence these characters have been subjected to, and questions need to be asked.
Sound, bright people do not behave like this, Boris Johnson is not this stupid. Incompetence would be a great way of explaining it and make us all feel a bit warmer and fuzzier inside, but it is naive to believe undue influence has not been placed upon those who make policy and decisions.
“Sound, bright people do not behave like this, Boris Johnson is not this stupid. Incompetence would be a great way of explaining it and make us all feel a bit warmer and fuzzier inside, but it is naive to believe undue influence has not been placed upon those who make policy and decisions.”
The maxim “Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity” is actually a pretty good one, but it can’t be denied that there are malicious people around and there certainly are conspiracies. The question then is: are there conspiracies on the kind of scale you imply here. My experience of life suggests that’s unlikely, because human organisations are just not competent to manage such without a lot more fallout then we see.
That said, there clearly are both shadowy and open groups of very powerful people taking actions all the time, both covert and overt, in their own interests. And plenty of those spend their time thinking up ways to influence governments in the directions they prefer.
“Sound, bright people do not behave like this”
This is exactly how such people behave – when their reason is overcome by fear. That’s what panic is, and it is not defeated by intelligence or education, it is controlled by strength of character, discipline and wisdom, all of which contribute to and are buttressed by leadership. Things that do seem particularly in short supply in our modern global culture.
“Boris Johnson is not this stupid.”
Open to question, but not necessarily the important question. Not being stupid is of no benefit if you act in the grip of fear. In Johnson’s case, that could be either fear of the disease or fear of getting blamed for not acting, resulting in taking action in a panic without any proper cost/benefit analysis – basically a huge gamble with the welfare of the nation.
That’s what you get when you have a leader lacking in wisdom and with no moral fibre.
Good points and thank you Mark, but I’m not really talking about malice for most of it…I am simply referring to the possible reasons why seemingly intelligent people have chosen such a disastrous path, and who has been manoeuvring around in the background to have potentially influenced this, hence I referred to gain as being the main driver.
You are right about the “grip of fear”, but as we know Boris is not a man who is easily frightened. He is not given to flights of fancy of stories of bogeymen and never has been, it’s his once-held pragmatism I find hard to stomach disappearing.
I have followed Boris’s journalism and writing for years and having done so (as many have not who criticise him) I have noticed a total sea-change in his approach and philosophy. My question is whether this is driven by others or his own brush with death, which would support your fear assertion. Regardless, he is acting acutely out of character to his traditional Libertarian, free-market self and I think many of us are just wanting to know why.
I am definitely not defending Boris. but when my children were newborn I was far from rational in my approach to risk assessment. I think this and his own near miss must be key factors in this. It looks like conspiracy because it is not how we would have expected him to govern but in fact it’s just downright old-fashioned bad luck for us.
Others around him will all be pushing their own agendas and those are always up for debate.
I think we are where we are by Ministers know nothing about science listening to Ivory Tower scientists who know very little about the real world. This is revealed in The Telegraph article about the leaked lecture by one of the SAGE group scientists. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/05/13/revealed-educated-guesswork-uncertainty-lead-britain-lockdown/
“At the moment, we’re having to do it by making educated guesswork, and intuition and experience, rather than being able to do it in some kind of semi-formal way,” Prof Medley told his audience.
“But a half good answer given before the decision is made, is infinitely more useful than a perfect answer given after the decision is made.”
None of the official models relied upon by ministers yet include critical data on how Covid-19 might be spread in shops, pubs, gyms and hairdressers, he said.
“If we want to get an idea of when, for example, in the United Kingdom, we’re going to be able to open pubs – we’re going to have to understand how people might use them.”
Professor Medley and his team are also in charge of calculating the national ‘R number’, the most important of five tests that must be passed before the UK can begin to return to normal life.
But he admitted that making accurate calculations had been difficult because “many of the data streams immediately are missing”.
Strange that he doesn’t understand how people might use pubs. Maybe he should get out more!
He also said they struggled to get across to Ministers and Officials the evidence /science and were often met with blank looks. This is not surprising when most ministers and top civil servants studied PPE or some waffly arts degree (Boris did classics at Balliol, Oxford) and have no basic understanding of science. I was having lunch in Cambridge with a fellow Doctor two days before the lockdown and we both said that this would turn out to be no different to a bad winter flu and we have/ will be proved right. If they had someone advising them who had a good grip of science and some common sense (me, for example) we would have ended up like dear old Sweden. Shall we all move there?
What , and become neighbours to Greta?
I rather agree with that view – not least because it is hard to see why Sweden would be able to stand against such a great conspiracy whilst so many other countries have failed.
Sweden is the only country I’m aware of that let the scientists lead. I also learned recently that Norway went into lockdown against the recommendations of their scientists. It’s highly likely all lockdowns were politically motivated in the sense that no leader wanted to be responsible for the deaths that were sure to come.
If we let “scientists” like Ferguson lead, we’d be in lockdown until Christmas (2021!). Sweden were lucky in having a sensible scientist in charge rather than one with a sim-city model with rubbish code!
Maudboggins,
You make a good point about the prevalence of conspiracies against the common man throughout history. My problem with the Big Pharma idea is that there are plenty of other “Bigs” in the game – Oil, Aviation, Farming, Entertainment etc etc. So why would they let Pharma get away with trashing the world economy. Unless this is a conspiracy of all of the “Bigs”
Maybe you meant Alder Hey children’s hospital, Maud ?
As for
“Ask yourself: Why do we have MI5 and MI6? We have them precisely because our foes continually and insidiously conspire against the UK in more ways than any of us would ever know …”
Imho, we have MI5 to monitor us, infiltrate us, organise false flag events, and if necessary, blackmail us or expunge us.
You may not agree with this viewpoint, but if you’re going to analyse our current situation correctly, you should at least be aware it exists.
My small act of rebellion. Our local authority — Labour run Birmingham — very reluctantly opened our recycling centres after lots of reports of fly-tipping and rubbish piling up on the inner city and suburban streets. The re-opening is hedged with a list of do’s and dont’s as long as your arm — including a one in one out system which is causing queuing chaos on local roads next to the tips. Basically they don’t want to be open, and they don’t want people using them — they’ve even been turning people away who do not bring what is deemed by them as “essential” waste Out here in leafy Sutton Coldfield — we are fortunate to have a large garden and early on in the gardening season we have generated a lot of compostable material. We have 2 large compost heaps and various bins, but we are still overflowing with material and now have nowhere left to store it. It’s beginning to rot and pong a bit so I’ve been looking for a solution and yesterday had a moment of clarity. I’m now the proud owner of a shiny 90ltr galvanized steel incinerator. It’s been going full pelt this morning filling the pristine blue sky with plenty of smoke and ash and no doubt spoiling the mornings of my locked down neighbours tuned in to Piers Morgan and Loose Women. Do you know what — it felt great A proper 2 fingered salute to the all lockdown zealots and snotty bureaucrats.
Oh braaaaaavo that man! Having lived in Sutton myself I can just imagine the “Considerably richer than yoww” brigade going nuts at your insubordination! Love it! More please…..
Actually maud I loathe bonfires and have frequently railed against neighbours doing it in the past — we live quite close to the local recycling centre so no excuse normally to not go there in my opinion. And like most keen gardeners we’re actually very attuned to the environment, recycling etc. But my hackles rise when our local political masters impose stupid, pettifogging rules to satisfy their power grabs thus making life as difficult as possible for the people that pay them. I’d have needed to make at least 4 journeys to get rid of all the green waste with all the attendant emissions — not to mention the interminable queuing. 2 hours stoking my bonfire was just reward!
Good for you,we need more acts of rebellion !.The council here couldn’t shut the tip,and bizarrely the town cemetery,fast enough a few weeks ago.After a lot of complaints they very grudgingly opened the tip but insisted residents book a slot online before being allowed to go and very predictably being a council endeavour the website crashed very early on.
Blimey! Your poor neighbours.
https://dailysceptic.org/2020/05/13/latest-news-29/#comments
Just in from the DT
Ignore above. Copy and paste blunder
idea for a T Shirt or badge slogan – How about D not R
After 10 weeks of failing to exercise any common sense, BJ is now telling us to exercise common sense! Faced with nonsensical and contradictory rules that would effectively allow a stranger into my house but not a member of my family I think the common sense approach is to just ignore the rules altogether. I mean, who on earth writes this stuff? You couldn’t even make it up! I was in a shop yesterday and was asked to ‘step back’ while they scanned the large items in my trolley. When will this insane social experiment end, it’s so demoralising?!
In one of our local supermarkets there is sign instructing customers ‘not to linger in front of the cashier and to proceed quickly to the packing area of the checkout’,the stupidity of this is the fact that the card machine is fixed next to the till so you have to go back and ‘linger’ in front of the cashier !.Also,before you have even packed your bags they are spraying the whole checkout with disinfectant and the staff are wearing gloves and full face perspex visors that look as if they are doing a bit of welding between customers.Perhaps I am being touchy but I am finding this sort of thing to be quite insulting,treating customers as if we all riddles with bubonic plague or something.
Well here’s something that will cheer you up. I was standing in a small queue outside a supermarket today when I noticed a man (late 50s?) get out of his car, not far from the queue. He approached another car where a woman got out, they greeted one another and he kiseed her on the cheek. Twice. A man got out too and the two men shook hands and started chatting away, at a normal distance, without a care in the world. It was delightful. When I came out of the supermarket they were still at it. It didn’t seem like anyone had challenged them.
I was particularly pleased as I’d been ticked off 3 times in another supermarket a few days ago for standing in the wrong place!
In Ireland I have heard that if you go into a supermarket they bark over the tannoy ” No Browsing”
That spray could contain chemicals that is not good for us. Always ask for the ingredients or read the label, then tell them they are poisoning you.
He was telling you to go out there and speak to people, simple as that. Pretty soon the masketeers will be a minority. They certainly are where I am… but I don’t know if they are just hiding in their house and haven’t crept out for days/weeks. Might be an idea to knock on their door?
This has got a hell of a long way to go, that’s for sure. Almost the entire world has been brainwashed.
But watch every day as media starts turning out ‘lockdown is bad’ articles. Totally orchestrated.
Follow the money…
Honestly I used to enjoy food shopping, but I now actively dread it. I think these extensive jobsworth measures will be eventually ignored not because people stop being scared of the virus, but because they’re such a dreadful hassle and will make life an expensive, joyless labyrinth of rules.
I assume everyone has seen this?
https://www.manchester.ac.uk/discover/news/over-25-of-the-uk-likely-to-have-had-covid-19-already/
The Manchester team reckon 25% of UK population has already been infected!
I’ve run the numbers based on this and get an overview IFR of 0.2%. The age group breakdown would be:
0 to 44 – 0.005%
45 to 74 – 0.167%
75 to 84 – 1.222%
85+ – 3.568%
Dr Heald; “We show how effective Social Distancing and Lockdown has been. Though this is a tragedy, it could have been far worse”.
Well done, sir! A fine affirmation of the Official Truth dogma.
Good puppy! A pat on the head for you!
In which case, if 25% of us have been infected, then we are at herd immunity already. Didn’t Prof Whitty say the other day that the herd immunity level was considered to be lower for this virus and not around 60% after all, but 10%? He reckoned we were nearly there. Of course that brings up the question as to quite how they can know the immunity level is so much lower than other viruses . . . unless it’s another example of how “they” want us to unlock ourselves!
In any case you get from 25% to 50% (if that’s where you’re headed) very quickly. Assuming an R0 of 2.4, and herd immunity at 58%, once you hit about 5% the rate at which the number susceptible decreases shoots up.
Reading the media you would think this virus spread like a mofo and killed people exponentially but that for some reason getting to any level of herd immunity is some kind of massive struggle and we’re always miles away from the 80% or something they’re saying we need.
But if infections are growing exponentially (which they do at the start) so obviously does immunity because that’s all it is.
Thanks for the link. They actually conclude 0.2% IFR themselves at the end of the paper.
Basically they looked at how many people presented at their GPs with Covid, tracked this over time, and found the only pattern it matched was that of herd immunity growing in the population. So basically, it’s over, and the lockdown made hardly any difference.
I was looking for something similar in a much cruder fashion when the lockdowns started in Spain and Italy expecting to see some discontinuities corresponding to when they were imposed, but couldn’t find anything. But I was just using the Mark I eyeball. If I had found something it might have meant something, but absence of evidence wasn’t evidence of absence. What they’ve done is considerably more scientific.
It would be rather interesting actually to give all the Covid data from everywhere to a statistician and ask her if she could figure out from it when the lockdowns started and in what countries. For many of them she would probably say, “lockdown, what lockdown?”.
2020 with Covid19 is approximately as dangerous as living in 1971.
The is a fun but perhaps illustrative perspective that occurred to me. If anyone spots a flaw in the logic, let me know.
——————————————————-
Bear with me.. this is not an article from The Onion
At every point in our lives we have some probability of dropping dead from any cause. See [1] for probability table for the UK.
At 44.5 years old I have about a 1 in 279 risk of dying of something within the next year. That’s the risk we are all living with every year and obviously it increases with age.
Covid approximately doubles this risk at each age group for the duration of the main covid spread.
Since 1971 the mortality rate at all ages has decreased by nearly half due to improvements in medicine and wider society. (graph in [2])
So you are as much at risk of death from Covid in 2020 as you would have been of dying at your age from living in the UK in 1971.
References
1. Table 1 here: http://www.bandolier.org.uk/booth/Risk/dyingage.html
2. Figure 2A here: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/827518/Recent_trends_in_mortality_in_England.pdf
Protect us from the uninformed that gets quoted in the newspapers. Headline in Guardian “Coronavirus must be ‘eradicated in every continent’ by Gordon Brown.
Gordon, you cannot stop a virus. They have not been able to eradicate the flu virus for a very long time, how do you think they will eradicate the coronavirus?
Always reassuring to find Gordon Brown on the other side of an issue.
‘The Coronavirus’, all coronavirus’ or one coronavirus in particular?
I’m getting really tired of ill-informed ‘celebrities’ opining on something they know nothing about….
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/is-the-r-number-a-flawed-measure-
Really good article by Dr Waqar Rashid about the reliance on the R number.
He also mentions genetic variations in the immune response, which partially answers one of the questions I posed in this morning’s comment.
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/league-of-nations-the-race-out-of-lockdown
And another good one
https://www.conservativereview.com/news/horowitz-one-chart-exposes-lie-behind-universal-lockdowns/
looking at Dutch reports
Has Trump always been lockdown sceptic ? Telling reporters ” this is a disease that attacks age, attacks health” he wants the schools reopened so the country can reopen “young children and students just look at the statistics”
https://youtu.be/WK9aFqmBytM
He’s kind of flip-flopped about, sometimes saying good stuff, sometimes bad, repeatedly getting set up by the media who hate him. Pretty much as usual.
We’re going round in circles affirming what we already know.
This battle is lost, we have a war to fight. A war where no blood should be spilled but a war against woke, against the subjugation of facts over feelings, a war for freedom of speech where ideals are refuted by better ones and not no platformed.
Are we up for the fight?
Good post Paul.
This is not, nor imho never has been, about a virus. It is a coup against democracy, freedom, and our way of life.
To fight it most effectively, I would suggest we need , first and foremost, an accurate idea of what we are in the middle of.
It’s fairly easy to point out errors in the handling of the virus, the lockdown, the MSM’s behaviour, ‘ppe’, tests, masks, R, vaccines, ‘how other countries are doing’, etc. etc. Which, again imho, deflect our best and brightest from opposing the coup.
Tonight at 8:02pm. MASS TWEET
Step One: Tag @BorisJohnson, @DominicRaab and @MattHancock on Twitter.
Step Two: Type, “This lockdown is destroying our lives and our economy. There is no scientific justification or legal authority to allow it to continue. We demand our freedom be returned now.”
Step Three: Add the hashtags #EndLockDown #WeWillBeFree
Step Four: At 8:02pm, thousands Tweet it and it trends on Twitter.
MORE INFO AT twitter.com/WeWillBeFree82
I’ve just watched the daily lie update. Good god. Grant Shapps – I’m speechless. A high order twat if there ever was one.
Why are they persisting? After a man from Plymouth asked his question, you could see him laughing at the answer.
On the question of antibody tests, what use are they aside from disease prevalence data? Since we’ve already been told to get back to work, what good is confirmation of potential immunity? Surely its pointless as we have to work whether we’ve had the virus or not. Considering I don’t care about social distancing, does a positive test suddenly give someone who does care confidence to rip off their mask and dance down pavements?
https://shirtinator.co.uk/design/personalised-t-shirts/?userdesign=46233567
Here’s my suggestion for a logo that’s not overtly provocative but would provide an identifying symbol (would require a higher definition image to get the design less blurry, but it shows the basic idea)