- “Boris can say what he likes, but trust in the Government may be damaged beyond repair” – Does the Government, and most specifically, the Prime Minister, now have the moral authority to make any rules at all? asks Janet Daley in the Telegraph.
- “Sainsbury’s tells staff to party after Christmas” – “Simon Roberts, Chief Executive, said he had asked all of Sainsbury’s teams to postpone celebrations until the new year on the grounds of ‘doing everything we can to protect Christmas for our colleagues and customers’,” reports the Times.
- “Allegra Stratton resigns after No 10 Christmas party video” – Boris Johnson “sorry to lose” spokesperson for climate summit who was seen in footage joking about party during lockdown, reports the Guardian.
- “The Christmas lockdown will become an annual tradition” – First, the press conferences come once a week, then twice a week, and then every day until we are in full lockdown until spring, argues Ross Clark in the Telegraph.
- “PMQs: Boris’ nadir” – “The bombshell at bay. That’s how Boris looked at today’s PMQs. Deflated, cornered, winded and lifeless. Gone were the chuckles and the mischievous jests, the punning quips and the poetic asides,” writes Lloyd Evans in the Spectator.
- “TUI says fears over Omicron is hitting winter bookings” – The travel firm said it is reviewing whether to cut the remainder of its winter schedule, as the U.K. announced fresh travel curbs on Covid tests in response to the Omicron variant, reports MailOnline.
- “They’re laughing at us” – The fallout from the Downing Street Christmas party has exposed the Government’s contempt for the public, argues Fraser Myers in Spiked.
- “The catastrophic costs of lockdown measures must be weighed against the risks posed by Omicron” – Working from home and school closures have had an impact that cannot be ignored this time round, writes Dr. Stephen Davies in the Telegraph.
- “Premier League grounds set for vaccine passports under Covid ‘Plan B‘” – “Fans attending sports events are expected to be required to have vaccine passports or proof of a negative test as part of new Government rules to tackle the Covid pandemic,” reports the Times.
- “TV show deletes poll after 89% oppose mandatory vaccination” – “ITV breakfast television show Good Morning Britain received backlash on social media after deleting a poll which showed a vast majority of respondents opposed mandatory Covid vaccination,” reports RT.
- “Plan Beached Whale in full swing as Boris attempts the mother of all diversionary tactics” – Could it be that when Downing Street wants to bury bad news of an illicit Christmas bash it removes the freedoms of 60 million people? asks Madeline Grant in the Telegraph.
- “Illinois bill proposes to strip the unvaccinated of their health insurance” – “Illinois Representative Jonathan Carroll wants to push through a change to the state’s insurance law that would mean health insurers no longer have to cover unvaccinated people who get Covid,” reports OffGuardian.
- “Three doses of Pfizer vaccine can ‘neutralise’ Omicron variant, lab test shows” – Two vaccine doses resulted in significantly lower neutralising antibodies, but a third dose increased the neutralising antibodies by a factor of 25, reports Sky News.
- “Why mandatory vaccination is such a terrible idea” – Forcing the vaccine hesitant to get jabbed will only make them more distrustful of public institutions, writes Rakib Ehsan in Spiked.
- “Finland’s Prime Minister apologises for clubbing after ‘missing’ a text to isolate” – Sanna Marin apologised after a gossip magazine published photos of her attending a Helsinki nightclub on Saturday night, hours after her Foreign Minister tested positive for Covid, reports MailOnline.
- “Omicron neutralization update” – “The fact that current vaccines are no longer effective against Omicron also means that any existing ‘vaccine passport’ schemes and vaccine mandates have become obsolete and have to be suspended immediately,” concludes Swiss Policy Research.
- “‘Untimely and useless’? Israeli questions need for fourth Covid jab amid Omicron spread” – “Israeli authorities are mulling the option of offering a fourth shot of a Covid vaccine to prevent the fifth wave of the virus,” reports Sputnik.
- “Obama academy vaccinated child without consent, mother claims” – “A California mother is claiming that Los Angeles’ Barack Obama Global Prep Academy gave her son a Covid vaccine without her consent, bribing the child with incentives like pizza,” reports RT.
- “Germany’s risk obsession empowers antivaxxers” – “There is a danger that the emerging tribal divisions between Germany’s vaccinated and unvaccinated will deepen, with lasting consequences for the country’s politics,” says Oliver Moody in the Times.
- “Would we rise up against another lockdown?” – Restrictions are back, but following ‘partygate’, an exasperated public might not play along, argues Fraser Nelson in the Telegraph.
- “Christmas time, cheese and wine, Tories acting out of line” – The Government demanded that you follow its restrictions and guidance but forgot to invite you to last year’s Downing Street Christmas party.
— Spoofed (@spoofed_uk) December 8, 2021
Boris denies Downing St Xmas Party
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So when the Fascist pigs want to terrify their own people, each scariant is deadlier than the last, including the Kentiscariant. But when Macron wants to score a point against Britain (how very novel for a French leader!), our Fascists suddenly find that the Kentiscariant is a tame lapdog.
Well well.
I am not giving Macron a ‘pass’ here, he should have resisted the enormous pressure from his ‘experts’ that sometimes make SAGE look like poodles. But in his speech he was careful not to phrase reference to the Kent ‘variant’ as if it was a ‘britsh/brexit’ issue, which is how most of the UK MSM and this article are painting it. This doesn’t help anyone.
I agree that the almost linear rise in ‘cases’ is more a function of increase tests than anything else, but its also reflected in numbers of hospitalisations and ICU admissions, again in a linear increase.
This is highly unusual behaviour for a virus. There is no explanation I have seen for this.
I suspect some of the numbers are very suspect, and are part of an attempt to convince at least part of the 50% of the French population that are saying no to vaccination.
If people will need a booster jab in September that’s billions more in profit for big pharma and another reason to reintroduce restrictions if there is a seasonal rise in cases before everyone has their booster. I wonder who is lobbying who to push the largely nonexistant dangers of all these variants.
Since viruses continously mutate, and presumably have done for hundreds of millions of years it seems obvious that the immune system would evolve to be able to fight variants of a virus as well as the strain that is currently circulating. Any organism that was immune against new variants and not just the old one would have a competative advantage and be more likely to pass on the genes for developing this immunity. This is another reason why it would’ve been better to allow the virus to spread among people at low risk of serious illness. Natural herd immunity is likely to be better than vaccine induced immunity. Sadly this is one more basic principle of biology/virology that the “experts” seem to have ignored, for reasons only they can know.
Not yet.
A few months ago someone leaked the contract. They can choose to make a profit from July, if I recall correctly
It depends on who gets to call the end of the emergency at which point
1. AstraZeneca can start charging market rates.
2. Authorisation for use under ’emegency’ provisions must surely be called into question ?
… which gives the rationale for continually upping the ante in terms of new Scary Fairies, and continuing the suppression of possible cheap prophylactics like Ivermectin.
They are experimenting on millions of subjects for free, whilst getting lots of coverage, that’s a nice win-win
Your link to the PHE study is hilariously, embarrassingly wrong.
It is actually the link to a BMJ study (March 10) concluding that the Kent variant is indeed much more deadly.
Please provide the correct link.
Yes – even in the report written by the “Swiss Doctor” there is only a link to an article in the Daily Telegraph. The study seems not to have been published (or peer reviewed) yet, and its existence is only known due to a press conference at 10 Downing Street.
There could be an easy explanation for increased hospitalization rate not accompanied by higher mortality rate. The propensity to admit could have been increased compared to the first wave ie less sick cases admitted. The health care sytem did not collapse in the first wave might increase “overhospitalization” ie doctors admit more,knowing it would have less effect on the system. Really the excess mortality and the the true C-19 mortality is the only way to estimate if a variant really is more dangerous.
The Swizz doctor is a bit leaning to van den Bosche scenario saying if neutral antbodies are affected as above could be problematic although they allude to something called T-cells immunity. But another study published a few days ago,again showed that T cells have a broad immunity incl. against variant.
One would bet that natural acquired immunity ,is the most effective T cells response as known by everybody pre 2020 and that an artificial immunity like vaccine can never come up to that level. The article above is down here
https://academic.oup.com/ofid/advance-article/doi/10.1093/ofid/ofab143/6189113#.YGTXD75sdDQ.twitter
CD8+ T cell responses in COVID-19 convalescent individuals target conserved epitopes from multiple prominent SARS-CoV-2 circulating variants
This study examined whether CD8+ T-cell responses from COVID-19 convalescent individuals (n=30) potentially maintain recognition of the major SARS-CoV-2 variants suggesting that virtually all anti-SARS-CoV-2 CD8+ T-cell responses should recognize these newly described variants.