Telegraph columnist Allison Pearson has written a cracking column in which she recalls how she was pilloried for being a lockdown sceptic, but increasingly her opponents are admitting she was right.
At the end of the Second World War, Gaullists and Communists insisted that the majority of the French people had played a part in the Resistance. Actual figures for those who actively opposed the Nazis vary between 400,000 and 75,000. Something not entirely dissimilar is happening now as the Government prepares to lift Plan B restrictions next week, and fervent advocates of lockdown try to distance themselves from its dire consequences. Scientists whose mathematical models persuaded anxious ministers to impose drastic restrictions on human freedom not even seen during the Blitz are suddenly keen to emphasise that these were merely worst-case “scenarios”, not something on which you’d want to base actual policy.
Did they mention that at the time, I wonder? Or has the Eddie-the-Eagle reliability of their predictions given rise to a certain hasty revisionism? Sorry, that’s unfair. Eddie the Eagle never predicted up to 6,000 Covid deaths a day this winter (actual number: 250).
Michael Gove, the Cabinet’s most hawkish lockdown supporter, admitted last week to the 1922 Committee of Tory MPs that he was a “bedwetter” who got things badly wrong (unlike Boris) when he called for further restrictions over Christmas. Wes Streeting, the shadow Health Secretary, now says that we must never lock down again without explaining why the useless, No-opposition Opposition party not only failed to challenge any of the destructive rules, but continually called for them to be stricter.
She recounts some of the insults thrown her way by the guardians of lockdown orthodoxy.
When the Resistance dared to suggest that some lockdown measures were disproportionate, crazy and unsupported by science, let alone common sense, we were reviled. That is no exaggeration. I regret to say your columnist was called, in no particular order, a Covid denier (I nursed my entire family through the virus), a granny killer (I didn’t see my own mother for 18 months) and a spreader of disinformation. When I protested on social media that putting padlocks on the gates of playgrounds was a terrible idea, back came a fusillade of vicious accusations: “You want people to die!”
With the help of her Twitter followers she has compiled a list of 50 of the most lunatic pandemic measures – “Lest we forget.” A taster.
2. “The one where you could work in a control room with multiple people for 12 hours then be breaking the law if you sat on a bench drinking coffee with one of them.”
3. “Forming a socially distanced queue at the airport before being sardined into a packed plane with the same people, two hours later.” …
7. “Not allowing people to sit on a park bench. My elderly aunt kept fit by walking her dog every day, but she needed to rest. Since that rule, she stopped going out. She went downhill and died last April.” …
12. “My bed-ridden mother-in-law with dementia in a care home where only ‘window visits’ were allowed. Mum was on the first floor. Had to wait for someone to die on the ground floor so she could be moved down there and finally seen by her family. After 12 months.”
13. “Two people allowed to go for a walk on a golf course. If they took clubs and balls, it was a criminal offence.”
14. “The one-way system in my local pub, which meant that to visit the loo you had to make a circular journey through the building, ensuring you passed every table.”
15. “My dad was failing in his care home. We weren’t allowed to visit him until the doctor judged he was end-of-life care because of one positive case in the home. We had 24 hours with him before he passed.”
16. “People falling down the escalator on the Underground because they were frightened of touching the handrails – even though you couldn’t get Covid from surfaces.”
17. “Rule of Six. My wife and I have three children so we could meet either my wife’s mum or her dad, but not both at the same time.”
18. “Nobody solved an airborne virus transmission with a one-way system in Tesco.”
19. “How about not being allowed for several months – by law – to play tennis outdoors with my own wife? We’d have been further apart from each other on court than in our own home.”
20. “On two occasions, I was stopped and questioned while taking flowers to my mother’s grave. One time, a police officer even asked for my mum’s name. No idea what he would have done with that information.” …
34. “It was illegal to see your parents in their back garden, but legal to meet them in a pub garden with lots of other people.” …
45. “The pallbearers all but threw my mother’s coffin in the grave and ran away. They had her down as a Covid death, but she died of cancer.” …
48. “Police breaking into our student house and pinning my girlfriend by the neck up against the wall. I said: ‘This is England – you’re not allowed to do that.’”
49. “Residents of care homes forgetting who they were during the long months when family were not allowed to visit them.”
50. “Dying alone. How many died alone? How many?”
Do add your own in the comments below the line.
Worth reading in full.
Stop Press: MailOnline reports that a heated Westminster Hall discussion took place on Tuesday about lockdowns, in which Conservative MP Bob Seely called the use of modelling a “national scandal” and argued SAGE’s projections created a “climate of manipulated fear”. He said:
Thanks to some questionable modelling, poorly presented and often misrepresented, I think it is true to say that never before has so much harm been done to so many by so few based on so little, questionable, potentially flawed data.
I believe the use of data is pretty much getting up there for national scandal. This is not just the fault of the modellers but it’s how their work was interpreted by public health officials, by the media and yes, by politicians and sadly by Government too.
Modelling and forecasts were the ammunition that drove lockdown and created a climate of manipulated fear. I believe that creation of fear was pretty despicable and pretty unforgivable.
Stop Press 2: Lots of nice comments praising Lockdown Sceptics and the Daily Sceptic below Allison Pearson’s piece.
Discussion
Comments
This week across the site:
To join in with the discussion please make a donation to the Daily Sceptic.
Profanity and abuse will be removed and may lead to a permanent ban.
Leaving aside that masks are totally useless the great mystery to me is that the fanatics believe they can be safely put aside when eating/drinking with others??
“Sorry, that’s unfair. Eddie the Eagle never predicted up to 6,000 Covid deaths a day this winter (actual number: 250).”
Nope. TEN a day from ***FROM*** Covid. ONS confirms
https://www.ons.gov.uk/aboutus/transparencyandgovernance/freedomofinformationfoi/covid19deathsandautopsiesfeb2020todec2021
“People do want their medical staff to be vaccinated.”
So when it suited it was follow that specious noun The Science; now that The Science however they package it can no longer support the narrative, it’s follow the people – those same people whose only knowledge is the fear propaganda pumped out for two years. Shameless.
My OH has, over the last few days, taken to reading articles to me which tell this very tale. He prefaces them by saying “I expect you already know this…”which is indeed the case. He’s now allowing himself to believe he always thought the rules were bunk but that isn’t the case. When the panic was happening he thought I was being ridiculous to criticise what was happening. His view was that you can never be too careful… My views haven’t changed but I haven’t yet said I told you so. It’ll be iterating to see what happens as more vaccine information becomes available.
There’s too much back patting and celebration going on. I’m not sure “we” won anything yet. Remember when you lift restrictions when infections are low then when they come back you can say it’s because you eased restrictions and bang you’re back in lockdown again with yet another jab looming.
Could this lull be so that when deaths and hospitalisations rise again we get another lockdown and a new vaccine for a new variant?
I don’t think this is the end of it. Not even the end of the beginning.
All of this should never be forgotten and I’m sure most people on here will make sure of that.
However, the biggest fight if our lives is only just beggining, the climate change nonesense.
And this is going to be very big and very hard and very dirty. But if we want to leave a country fit for our kids and grandkids to have good healthy prosperous lives fight we must.
And if we lose that fight we’ll be living in a truly dystopian nightmare, make no mistake.
NHS workers on the Covid wards at the height of it could visit the local sainsburys to buy their lunch but if someone was ill in their household, house arrest for ten days!
Allison Pearson is wise to record all these personal memories of the madness we experienced and the harm that was done. I am fortunate to be of a sunny disposition and let most of the unhappiness and frustrations of life fade naturally in my memory but these need to be remembered. Although they vary in severity, from the most devastating to the most inane, they were all incursions on our lives and liberty.
Are the scientists who now claim that their models were “only worst case scenarios” the same people who were on TV, radio and social media day and night demanding ever more draconian restrictions or have I got this wrong?
My friend’s husband was not allowed to go to hospital for his cancer treatment in case he caught covid. Guest what? His cancer killed him quicker.
At the Australian Open last year, spectators were forced to leave a match halfway through because of a new Victoria lockdown coming into effect at midnight. Even though they had been sitting together in the stadium for hours, this became an existential threat at 12:00:00am and they were ordered to disperse.
The eventual winner of the match, in front of a suddenly empty stadium, was ….. Novak Djokovic.
Ah yes, the good ol’ commies, our unblemished allies in a war against the nasty nazis.
Just to think that while such honoration was being gushed by the commies towards those fighting with them against their enemies, us lot were rallying up Russian and Ukrainian soldiers who begged for asylum and tried to flee from being returned to the clutches of good ol’ Uncle Joe.
Operation Keelhaul, they called it.
Meanwhile the terrible German public, women and children, were raped and murdered in countless numbers by the Soviets. This while thousands of their men were paraded through the streets of Moscow – few returned to Germany alive.
Gosh, I would have felt so proud to be recognised by the glorious communists as a good fighter for their cause.
I now know that Allison Pearson for the Telegraph feels the same!
I’m a competition sabre fencer of 20 years. Following the first lockdown and before the second, we were required to wear masks under our fencing masks.
This meant that many fencers’ glasses became steamed up, leading to people becoming disorientated with (admittedly blunt) weapons in their hands.
Furthermore, the referee — who’s job it is to stop a bout in the event of a sword breakage or other dangerous development — couldn’t be heard properly on account of also being masked up.
Still, what’s a serious injury compared to a virus with a 99.98% recovery rate, eh?
To be honest I will always have a small grin on my face when the long term consequences of the jabs come home to roost. All of my family said I was a fool, my youngest sister even claimed I was making up my own Science. They have changed every cell in their bodies. I have not. Touche.
Where are they at at the moment in terms of dawning realisation?
Maybe it’s the end of the beginning, but it could just be the start if WW3 kicks off and the war gets ‘hot’. (NOTE TO MILITARY PLANNERS: please make sure you do not use any weapons that might destroy the climate. Sticks and stones, bows and arrows – that sort of thing only please!)
I think people should stop using the term ‘Nuremburg 2.0’ though. If it is anything like the version 1 of the trial, then we can expect:
The money men who funded both sides of the war will be allowed to continue controlling the world by controlling the money supply A few token lower-level ‘leaders’/’puppets’ will be hung out to dry Ordinary people who were brainwashed into going along with all of this who found themselves in ‘the wrong jobs’ will be executed or imprisoned (I’m not saying they didn’t deserve it) Some scientists that were complicit will be completely let off and sent to work on the American space programme 2 might be the most interesting bit, but as long as 1 keeps happening not much will change.
“Judgement Day” is probably a better term – and there’s probably more chance of the biblical version of… Read more »
The most grotesque absurdity of them all was the initial one: believing always-wrong Pantsdown and his ridiculous ‘modelling’.
Especially when he had tried it all before with the Swine flu attempted scam!
Of course we were right – and right about so much more that still only a minority can bring themselves to accept as fact on here!
Lockdowns are just one of many means or tools to achieve a dystopian end for humanity – – so many still refuse to see and accept the truly dehumanising darkness of that end.
So we were right. Now watch:
Covidians pivot
Covidians turn into ‘long-time sceptics’
Covidians claim our credit
Covidians gain recognition for ending the scamdemic
Covidian rank and file never admit they were fooled
Covidians gaslighting/backpeddaling the whole world
Mass destruction of evidence and rewriting of history
In the end we cant even stop them lying about lying.
All we have is the truth, and only we can handle the full truth.
The others are just buzzards, and craven vultures.
Oh yes: it’s not even over yet!
Funny the number of people turning out to have been sceptics all along!
Sorry Toby but I must disagree. This article is garbage from the opening paragraph to the last word.
There’s no comfort in being (eventually) proved right after the damage is done. Conspiracy theorists have an excellent record of their predictions becoming true, but no one acknowledges it.
I think the plandemic has been a massive success for the conspirators, it’s frustratingly disappointing that the likes of middle class liberals such as the administration of this site immediately think of fictional James Bond villains when criminal conspirators of the political/ruling class are accused of crimes against humanity.
It only shows how effective deep state propaganda is. The neoliberal rules based order will only ever lead to incessant rule making, perpetual implementation of ever more restrictive rules. The west has become a fascistic technocratic regime governed by unaccountable NGOs, defended by the “educated” middle class. This is only going one way, and I don’t like its direction of travel.
The future is depressing & terrifying, there is nothing to pat yourself on the back for.
Yes, many people gradually come round to our way of thinking, but two serious matters tend to remain even then:
Uptick for Valiant-for-Truth. Been re-reading Mr Standfast lately.
I used to be a real believer in the system, work hard, pay your taxes and vote and everything will be OK.
My world-view was demolished as I witnessed Europe open its doors millions of “teachers and nurses” from the Middle East in 2015 which has continued ever since and more recently this obsession with BLM and diversity (I realise not everybody is on the same page as me on that one).
I still thought there was hope that the people would realise this system is completely at odds with their own interests. That too has been completely shattered, watching these idiots triple vaxx and double mask and realising…these people are allowed to vote.
My mother’s last few weeks could have been less unpleasant if I had been allowed to visit her in hospital. But they didn’t let me. They also lost her hearing aid, without which she was profoundly deaf, so she just lay there, aged 88, isolated, and wasted away. And I didn’t know.
Her remaining friends were anxious about going to her funeral and some didn’t attend. We were only allowed 25 attendees anyway, and no opportunity to meet up afterwards in the time honoured and very necessary part of the ritual to share memories. My sister who lives in the USA couldn’t attend as the restrictions and regulations were impenetrable, draconian and speaking pragmatically, expensive. She joined the ceremony by FaceTime.
The crematorium did not allow ‘committal’ proceedings. I could have watched her coffin disappear through the curtains standing outside on a TV. I choose not to.
To visit Tenerife in November 2020, I had to have a negative PCR test swabbed no more than 72 hours before checking into my accommodation, not for the flight, not for immigration. The logistics of actually making that happen are too long and boring to recount here, but happily the negative… Read more »
Sorry to hear about your experience with your mother’s treatment and death. My late mother was a similar age when she was admitted to hospital seven years ago and was subjected to much the same neglect. Fortunately, being pre-Covid, we had the opportunity to witness what was happening and managed to prevent her death at the hands of the ‘saintly’ NHS but it wasn’t easy being up against insipid institutionalised euthanasia.
Your comment about your mother’s hearing aid jumped out at me as another contributor on these discussion threads (The old bat – that’s their name, not my ad hominem description!) mentioned a day or two ago that the family had discovered that their late father in law’s two hearing aids had gone missing some time before his death during the so-called pandemic. Isolation and Alzheimers combined had, as in your case, prevented this being discovered sooner but the ‘misfortune’ would have certainly exacerbated any distress that the gentleman might have been suffering.
All I have deduced from hearing anecdotal evidence over the years is that the NHS as an institution seems to routinely revel in sadistic treatment of elderly folk.
Checking back in my emails I sent my first “this is madness, there is no need for lockdowns or restrictions” email to my MP at the end of April 2020 and have been sending emails packed full of contra-narrative data and information ever since then.
So my MP can’t pretend that there weren’t opposing views and can’t claim not to have seen the data supporting these opposing views.
For the last two years he has just sent back standard responses saying that the government is following “the experts”. Of course they were only following the experts who gave them the advice they wanted to hear – plenty of other experts with differing views were sidelined or even cancelled from social and/or mainstream media.
While there is clear evidence that those at senior levels in government were quite deliberate in their determination to impose lockdowns and restrictions and roll out the vaccines despite knowing they weren’t the solution and that they also weren’t safe, I think at the individual MP level, sadly many of them are just very low grade individuals with little or no ability to understand scientific, technical or mathematical issues and so were putty in the hands of… Read more »
I too have done exactly the same with my brown-nosing MP except I ended each email with ‘I am sending this information so that you can never say you were unaware’.
He doesnt even bother to send back the standard party line anymore but he does send out a weekly ‘news email’ in which he continues to bleat all the government misinformation and scaremongering and I’ve kept everyone of them as well.
He’ll just say that government had to show a united front, even if he personally was not always in favour of every measure.
Like PM Rutte here keeps bleating on how “we have to do this together, we agreed we would do things this way”. Obviously referring to the royal we, I know I never agreed to jack. Nor did all the shops and restaurants and sports schools he shut down for months on end, many of which have gone or will go bankrupt – while he and his buddies lost not one single cent. We – there are 2 ‘We’s’ in this debacle, he should note there are a lot more of us than there are of them.
Something amiss here.
According to this thread the war is over.
According to the News Round-up nothing has changed.
I can’t work this out.
I feel the same!! I read encouraging articles only then to see discouraging articles!
The hypocrisy and back-pedalling of the previous lockdown fanatics is indeed infuriating, but at least the tide appears to be turning in the U.K. Over here in Belgium, they are continuing to ignore the mounting evidence of the uselessness (not to mention the hazards) of the so-called vaccines, the unjabbed are treated as second-class citizens and politicians are seriously talking about forced vaccinations for all. Awful.
Look no further than Brussels. Useless vd Leyen giving pfisser ceo Bourla a big old cuddle, probably whispering in his ear a bless you for the ‘donation to her favourite charity’ as a thank you for her saying the EU would buy a gazillion doses of
poisonvaxx to ‘keep Europeans safe’.Brussels – the end of lobbying and paying off politicians across 27 countries and now only having to have a handful of eurocrats on board instead. Large corporations of the world thank mammon every day for the Brussels eurocracy.
They’ve got form, they’ve kept the flailing euro going, the behemoth that is Brussels, jabbing an unwilling population with useless, toxic sludge for years fits right in.
Spot on, I’m afraid. I did not vote for Brexit but the last couple of years has proved it to be the correct decision. Thank goodness we are now at arm’s length from the authoritarian hellscape that the EU is becoming. The covid madness has been ghastly enough in the U.K. but it is way worse here and I see no sign of improvement under current leadership.
Telegraph columnist Allison Pearson may written a cracking column but how much damage has been done by the Daily Telegraph not giving us the full facts behind PCR test, the Great Reset, or not mentioning the likes of Dr Mike Yeadon? There has obviously been a lot mire that could have been mentioned.
The only really criticism from the Telegraph has been that the Government overreacted a bit.
Please come and join our friendly peaceful events.
Thursday 20th January 5pm
Silent lighted walk behind one simple sign
“No More Lockdown”
Bring torches, candles and other lights
Meet by the Town Hall, Market Place,
Henley-on-Thames, Oxfordshire, RG9 2AQ
Stand in the Park Sundays 10am make friends, ignore the madness & keep sane
Wokingham Howard Palmer Gardens Cockpit Path car park Sturges Rd RG40 2HD
Henley Mills Meadows (at the bandstand) Henley-on-Thames RG9 1DS
Telegram Group
http://t.me/astandintheparkbracknell
There have been lockdown opponents in the Telegraph, there have also been Branch Covidians.
They shouldn’t be lumped together.
Well, I’m with Bob Seely on his summation of how wilfully incompetent this fiasco has been.
“Times they are a changin” as the great Mr Robert Zimmerman said…It would appear, as many in the sceptic/conspiracy REALIST club have posited for two or three months now, that the insidious narrative IS a changin! The few stones that started too skitter down the plandemic mountainside several weeks ago, have turned into a fucking great bolder! The mounting avalanche of evidence supplied by the apostles of truth could not be denied for ever, “you can fool some of the people some of the time” etc etc.
I’ve been saying for a while, 2022 is the year that the card’s fall. The monumental Luciferian evil of the group of psychotic bastards that has planned and then implemented “the biggest lie in history” is truly staggering. In my opinion it now goes one of two ways….The psychotic oligarchy has pushed the plan too far and too fast, they’ve made mistakes with so many elements, vax for kid’s, top up jabs, suppression of IVM etc, but the fundamental mistake was placing scurrilous, hubristic fucking idiot’s like Johnson, Macron, Trudeau, Vonderleyen, Andrews, Adhern, Biden and Fauci et al in charge of facilitating said plan! The plan now fall’s, the biggest bonfire of the… Read more »