This feels like a pivotal moment.
Boris could listen to the doom-mongers urging him to impose tighter rules after Christmas, just as Nicola Sturgeon and Mark Drakeford have done. The modelling team at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine predicts the number of daily Covid hospital admissions will rise to 7,190 in January, but that’s far from the most apocalyptic scenario. Not to be outdone, Neil Ferguson and his team at Imperial College have estimated that Covid deaths are likely to rise to 5,000 a day without further restrictions. Hardly surprising, given the virus’s “exponential growth”. According to the Prime Minister’s scientific advisors, the number of daily Omicron infections is doubling every two-to-three days. Or is it every two days? Or every one-and-a-half days? They’re certainly growing very, very quickly. And it isn’t just Chris Whitty screaming in Boris’s ear demanding he do something – anything! – to stop this tidal wave engulfing our beloved NHS. Health Secretary Sajid Javid told Parliament earlier this month that the number of new cases could exceed one million a day by the end of December. That’s in a week’s time. Crikey Moses!
Or Boris could look at the actual data, as several members of his Cabinet have been urging him to do. The data from South Africa suggesting Omicron is 80% milder than Delta. The data suggesting that, far from doubling every couple of days, the number of daily infections is plateauing. The data suggesting that, for whatever reason, the link between Covid infections and hospitalisations has been broken, with Covid hospital admissions remaining largely flat over the past two weeks in spite of the uptick in daily infections. The data on the length of time Omicron patients stay in hospital, with one South African study showing the average hospital stay had been reduced from 8.5 days to 2.8 days. The data – endlessly reproduced on this site – showing that non-pharmaceutical interventions do little or nothing to suppress Covid infections, with every wave following exactly the same trajectory, regardless of the severity of the restrictions, or whether any containment measures are imposed at all.
The reason this is such a momentous decision is because it will set the pattern for every subsequent response of the Government to the emergence of a new variant, of which there will be many. If Boris can hold his nerve over the next week or so and the Omicron fire shows signs of burning itself out without the need for any further measures, that will leave the gloomsters of SAGE looking very silly indeed. It will be obvious to everyone, even the most fanatical lockdown zealot, that they’ve been crying wolf. It might even permanently break the spell they’ve cast over the nation for the past 22 months.
But if Boris capitulates and imposes ‘Plan C’ – or whatever name he gives to another hodge podge of non-sensical, incomprehensible, completely pointless restrictions – and the Omicron plague fizzles out, Neil Ferguson et al will say, “See! We’ve saved the day once again. Just as well you listened to us, Prime Minister.”
On every previous occasion when Boris has been faced with a decision like this – should we lock down to prevent the NHS being overwhelmed by Covid patients? – he has capitulated. True, he didn’t listen to the crystal-ball gazers who prophesied armageddon if he lifted all restrictions on ‘Freedom Day’, but that was a different scenario and an easier decision because his scientific advisors and their outriders in the media hadn’t hit the panic button with quite the same shrill intensity as they have in the past couple of weeks.
But I’m more optimistic that this time he will hold firm, not least because senior members of the Cabinet are actually poring over real-world data for the first time instead of just reading SAGE’s memos. And even though the chorus of lockdown enthusiasts in the mainstream media is still in fine voice, the number of dissenters is growing by the day and includes a lot of people who’ve been keen on previous lockdowns, such as Christopher Snowdon, Dan Hodges and Tom Harwood. Even Owen Jones is now a lockdown sceptic! And the polls suggest the public is genuinely split over the merits of further restrictions – even leaning against for the first time. Are the people awakening from their slumber at last?
I hardly dare say it, but it feels like the tide is beginning to turn – that the points we lockdown sceptics have been making for the best part of two years are finally beginning to land. For what it’s worth, this site had 108,597 page views yesterday, the second highest it’s ever had and more than double the day before. Stick that in your “exponential growth” pipe, Professor Whitty.
Maybe I’m wrong to hope. God knows, it wouldn’t be the first time Boris has let us down. But this feels like one of those moments when the political plates suddenly start to shift. So keep the pressure up, dear readers. Write to your MPs, sign petitions, debunk irrational nonsense in the media with your incisive comments below the line, tell the triple-jabbed hysterics in your peer group flapping about ‘risky behaviour’ to belt up. Push hard enough and we may end up getting the best Christmas present we could possibly have – a decisive victory over the astrologers in lab coats.
Stop Press: In an earlier version of this piece I referred to SAGE scientists as “Cassandras in lab coats”, but as many readers have pointed out, Cassandra made accurate predictions that weren’t believed, which is the exact opposite of the SAGE modellers. I’ve therefore changed it to “astrologers in lab coats”.
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And down here in Australia, Mt Hotham in Victoria has just reached -7 degrees overnight, a record low for the state in the month of November.
In Central West NSW we had snow last week, and tomorrow’s maximum is 11 degrees.
Remember we’re nearing summer.
For the media luvvies, record cold is also due to burning fossil fuels, and can be prevented by signing up to whatever Klaus Schwab and the UN tells us to.
It can’t be true..! Antarctic’s population of Polar Bears has been decimated, just like penguins in the Arctic. Its proof of Man made Climate Change. Irrefutable proof…
<sarc>
For a moment I thought you were being serious, because, as we know, warmer than average temperatures are proof of global warming, and colder than average temperatures are proof of climate change.
Now you know that’s not true. They heard Al Gore saying that the Arctic would be ice free in the summer by 2012, so they all swam north in the Great Polar Bear Migration filmed by the BBC and David Attenborough. They just wanted a suntan and some vitamin D to ward off ursine covid.
Wonder when they will wise up and all migrate to Hawaii?
You may remember a few years ago when the Climate-tards boarded a ship and sailed into the melting Antarctic ice sheets…and got stuck. A 2nd ship to rescue them the same. It took a 3rd and helipcopters to rescued the idiots who lost no time in saying that due to warming their models predicted more ice….when in fact they were looking for the opposite.
There is no ‘science’ to this scam. The Arctic was to be gone in 2014. Greenland ice cores reveal that the current sheets are the most in 400 years. Antarctica expands. Attenfraud and friends will drop charges into crevices at the poles or in glaciers, remote detonate them and then declare that they are melting or calving. Fraud is now ‘the science’. Or maybe it is the $2 Trillion money sloshing around.
Climate change – like Rona,a cult of absolute stupid and corruption.
Had to look up ‘Rona’, hadn’t heard the term before. Quite true though. In the seventies the ‘scientists’ were saying we would be 6 feet under ice and snow by now and starving in our millions.
We are witnessing the birth of a new religion and I very much fear that no amount of facts or reasoning will deter those who are determined to impose this new religion on us.
It follows a familiar path building on the ideas left by the religions that have preceded it.
At the heart of this new faith is the notion that the human being is a flawed creature. We destroy the planet, we carry diseases that we spread to each other, we are bigots by nature that oppress each other.
But salvation is at hand if we openly accept our impurity and our inherent flaws and are prepared to change our ways.
As with other religions, those in authority and power seize control of the religion and use it as a means of controlling the population, imposing on it a series of behaviours and rites dictated by them.
I can imagine now better than ever what it must have been like to be part of some primitive society living a free life and then have some group of people come along, tell you are a sinner, that every Sunday you have to go and listen to a man tell you how to save yourself, that instead of choosing a partner with which to create a family as you might have done earlier, you now had to follow a special ritual that allowed you to do that. Your offspring also had to follow a series of rituals to make sure they were properly imbued with the ideas of the religion.
It’s probably an uncomfortable comparison for those who have religious faith. But the parallels are undeniable.
…and then the man in the pulpit puts your money in his pocket…
Sounds very much the same.
And molests your children.
Actually, now you mention it…
We need to have the courage to voice our convictions in a non-confrontational way, not stay quiet. Little things like using cash I find helps boost morale.
And ofcourse in all religions you must give “offerings”. Except in our religion we decide for ourselves what we put in the collection plate. But with the globalist religion the government decides for us what ges in the plate, and we are not even allowed to not attend the church of global warming, because if we don’t attend our money still goes in the collection plate anyway. Climate Change then is a compulsory religion where even the heretics must contribute.
Maybe now. I don’t think adherence to religion was very optional in many places in the past, say, Spain in the 16th century, or in some places in the present like Saudi Arabia or Iran.
I don’t think what you said should be uncomfortable for those who have the right kind of religious faith, because there is good religious faith and there is bad religious faith.
The parallels (at least to Christianity) are even stronger than you’ve stated.
We used to live in paradise, the Garden of Eden or some pre-industrial society that was magically in tune with nature.
We desired knowledge, either by eating the fruit of the tree of knowledge or through the enlightenment and the industrial revolution.
This led to our fall from grace and the end of paradise on Earth.
A select few have be vouchsafed knowledge that can lead to our salvation, either the true followers of Christ or scientists with their “all knowing” computer models and the eco-zealots of extinction rebellion, JSO etc.
We are facing the end of days which will see the 4 horsemen of the apocalypse:-
famine, pestilence, war and death as described in the Book of Revelations.
Alternatively climate change will lead to mass crop failure (famine) the spread of diseases such as malaria (pestilence) societal breakdown and competition for scarce resources (war) and the population being reduced to 1 billion or less (death).
The only difference is that environmentalisms preaches that the end days can be avoided and salvation can be had in this world, whereas Christianity preaches that the end times are inevitable and salvation can only be found in the next world/afterlife.
I can actually remember the first Earth Day in 1970….we did a project at school!!
https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2020/04/23/happy-earth-day-none-of-the-eco-doomsday-predictions-have-come-true/
Happy Earth Day! None Of The Eco-Doomsday Predictions Have Come True
Plus ca change!!
This is surely “conspiracy theory” and cherry picking of data. Because I have seen for myself on the SKY NEWS Daily Climate show the little digital thermometer at the back of the presenter ticking up up up up up slowly ticking upwards as we face this apocalypse and viewers can see the “global temperature” on their TV set steadily climbing. We must act now and save our grandchildren. We must spend one and a half trillion on Net Zero. We must get rid of affordable energy and replace it with unaffordable energy. We must pay a trillion to poor countries to help them do eh do eh. , well I am not sure what exactly they are going to do with that money, but we must give them it anyway and only then will the planets thermometer on SKY NEWS start to slow down and we will have saved the planet.
What is perhaps disappointing is that so few of the Nett Zero-ers have realised that if we are nett zero, we reduce CO2 emissions by about a sixth of China’s annual rise, or Indias annual rise. As China and India are promising little and doing less, anything we ‘save’ is pointless as whatever was going to happen if we didn’t get to Nett Zero is still going to happen, with or without our ‘contribution’.
Indeed no-one seems to ask the question, if we are all to die in a fiery famine in 20 years time, why do half the world not seem to care. Do they know something we don’t..?
If something is “pointless” and will have no effect on global climate then why do it? ————-The answer is very simple. It is not and has never been about the climate. It is about the worlds wealth and resources. The climate is just the excuse for the eco socialism
Well, earlier this year, Queen Elizabeth sat on her own, mourning the death of her husband.
Meanwhile, back in Downing Street, Boris, Carrion and a host of Civil “Servants” were partying.
Someone knew that all the restrictions and shroud waving were bollox. Now, would that be our beloved Queen, or our Beloved Leaders?
Zero Covid, Zero Carbon.
Two cheeks of the same gargantuan, flabby, stinking arse.
Very good article – thank you.
They told us we were facing a climate apocalypse. They didn’t tell us it was going to be a cold one.
I’m wouldn’t be in the least surprised if climate alarmists sounded the alarm bells because they couldn’t find any polar bears in the antarctic…
Oh I see that point has been covered already…oh well. In that case, they might get upset to find absolutely no evidence of penguins in the arctic!
Grand solar minimum will occur from 2025 to 2053, this will create cooling of ~1C average for the planet. The first effects will begin to be felt after the solar maximum of solar cycle 25 which is expected in mid-2025. So far cycle 25 is fairly weak, the weakest since the early 20th century. Cycle 26 looks likely to be weaker still.
Wrap up warm!
12,000 years ago, North America was under hundreds of feet of ice and sea levels were 350 feet lower than they are today. Without any help from humans it warmed up a whole bunch which allowed humans to thrive. What actually causes the Earth to get warmer and colder? The distance from the sun as its orbit changes. Yes, it will get very cold again and there is nothing humans can do about it. It is pretty silly to believe humans can alter climate to any significant degree… Even if you believe the alarmists, they are talking about a sea rise of 4 to 12 feet at most and temperature increases of less than 10 degrees… that’s nothing. We will be happy to be starting from there when we go into the next ice age.