Matthew Syed’s latest article in the Sunday Times is titled “Now we know our ministers did OK against Covid, but I hear no apologies”. And while Syed may not have chosen the title (that was probably his editor), he did write this: “The truth is that on the whole, and with only a few exceptions, ministers did their best in unenviable circumstances.”
Syed’s basic argument is as follows. The recent WHO report reveals that, in terms of excess deaths, Britain “is roughly in the middle of the bunch when compared with similar nations”. Therefore, those who slammed the Government for its handling of the pandemic were wrong, and really ought to apologise.
The article isn’t all bad. For example, Syed skewers those unhinged left-wing commentators who accused the Government of pursuing ‘eugenics’ for not locking down sooner, and chides his fellow journalists for asking ‘gotcha’ questions, rather than trying to get useful information out of politicians.
Yet for every swipe he takes at those who say the Government didn’t do enough, he also takes a swipe at those who say the Government did too much. And his basic argument – the one I outlined above – doesn’t work.
Syed writes: “Websites such as Lockdown Sceptics rose up like cancers, metastasising across the internet, sucking rationality from the debate like intergalactic debris into a black hole.” This rather lurid comparison is ironic coming from Syed, who spends much of his article lamenting the “shocking decline” in standards of public discourse.
Hint: if you’re concerned about declining standards of public discourse, you may wish to avoid comparing your opponents to metastasising cancers.
Anyway, why doesn’t Syed’s argument work? To begin with, his premise that the WHO report tells us something we didn’t already know – that it provides “new evidence” – is false. Decent estimates of excess deaths in various rich countries have been available for months.
Ariel Karlinsky and Dmitry Kobak’s estimates were published as far back as January of 2021, and they’ve been continually updated ever since. Likewise, the ONS published estimates for most of the countries in Europe in November of last year; and the rank order of countries hasn’t changed drastically in the interim.
Okay, that’s a minor point. And it’s true that Britain winds up somewhere in the middle when you compare rich countries on excess mortality. But this doesn’t mean our ministers “did their best in unenviable circumstances” – not by a long shot.
Excess mortality is only one metric you can use to evaluate government performance. And on other metrics, Britain did much worse than average.
According to the latest figures published by the ONS, Britain saw the second largest increase in government debt out of all European countries. From Q4 of 2019 to Q4 of 2021, the U.K.’s general government gross debt (as a percentage of GDP) ballooned by 19 percentage points.
Likewise, when the Economist ranked 23 rich countries for overall economic performance during the pandemic, Britain finished second from bottom.
From the very beginning, lockdown sceptics have argued that we can’t just look at Covid outcomes; we have to consider things like the economy, education and civil liberties as well. And this still applies today.
Saying that Britain “did OK” in the pandemic, while ignoring everything other than Covid deaths, would be like saying the U.S. “did OK” in the Iraq war, while ignoring everything other than U.S. military deaths. (Although America lost fewer than 5,000 troops, the war ended up costing almost $2 trillion, and sparked a decades-long insurgency.)
It’s also worth pointing out that our ministers threw the Government’s own pandemic preparedness plan out the window. As you’ll recall, the plan states that attempting to “halt the spread of a new pandemic influenza virus” would be a “waste of public health resources”.
A genuinely praiseworthy pandemic strategy is the one followed by Sweden – which boasts lower excess mortality than Britain, and far better economic outcomes (not to mention greater respect for civil liberties).
If our ministers did “their best”, I’d hate to see what their worst looks like.
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No, they did not ‘do okay’. It was an appalling exhibition of abusive, incompetent and coercive behaviour.
Just to get us used to the “New Normal”from politicians only complete fools would ever vote for again – but then that will not be a problem will it?
Why did politicians dump the well researched and documented national and international procedures written to deal with a viral pandemic? Sweden was the only western country to follow their national procedures and they came out better than the rest of the hysterical west.
Viruses cannot be fought they are far to small and numerous, you just live with them.
Why do you ask why? Because they had a Gates/WHO and Great Reset agenda they were told to follow – surely you know that by now?
Because they were reflecting the dominant ideas of the culture, green ideology has been taught for more than a century.
Interesting that your comment – the first reference to Gates etc this morning – is the first to receive those wonderful thumbs-downs. Those WEF boys are watching, bless their black hearts!
If the WHO treaty is signed then naughty boys like Sweden will have to toe the line.
Especially as I believe their Chief Scientist or similar has joined the WHO. I’m happy to be corrected if I”m wrong.
You could have been right. The Swedish Public Health Authority did announce that Mr. Tegnell had gotten a job at WHO.
Then they announced that the previous announcement had been premature but that discussions were ongoing.
And finally they announced that the job fell through – and if anyone wanted to know why, they would have to ask the WHO because they themselves didn’t know.
So in the end Mr. Tegnell is staying at the Public Health Authority but at a new position.
It all sounds quite strange, but it’s all true.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-03-23/sweden-jumps-the-gun-on-covid-strategist-s-new-who-job
Thanks for that. I was surprised that he’d join the WHO when Sweden hadn’t fallen in line with the rest of the world. It’s interesting that he’s also no longer in the position he had in Sweden. Maybe something to do with vaccines?
Yes but if you believe you can control the Earth’s heat-budget by +/- 1.5C with taxes and edicts, making viruses do as they are told by frightening them away with masks and squirting them with ju-ju medicine is a piece of cake.
Shouldn’t that be ‘Bo-Jo” medicine?
Not following disaster management procedures which were considered, discussed and agreed in advance seems to be a habit among those who should know better.
After the IRA bomb exploded in Bishopsgate the board of HCBC met and discussed all morning what to do. At the end of that they decided to trigger their disaster management procedures that had been delayed while the Directors cogitated. Seems HMG went one better. Having paid out for years to devlop strategies they invented a new one as they went along. When I write “government” I include all the bureaucracy and it seemed to me the politicians weakly agreed this approach on advice from well paid civil servants and academics.
I can hear covid-happy politicians all around the world saying ‘The Brits did okay? Hell, we must have been at least as good as them!’
In reality, they handled covid with the finesse of a skateboarding hippo.
“Anyway, why doesn’t Syed’s argument work? To begin with, his premise that the WHO report tells us something we didn’t already know – that it provides “new evidence” – is false. Decent estimates of excess deaths in various rich countries have been available for months.”
Yes but all that information would require him to do some actual research. The WHO send out a nice press release that he can regurgitate.
Not even worth debating the sham WHO ‘s role . Trump was right to leave and let Gates fund his pet project.
He’s not that good at reading the room inviting J&J onto the stage. Maybe the reaction might make him think twice about promoting big Pharma again.
For people like Syed it is all about belonging to a class – it may be the purpose of the class to destroy the country, so many of the criteria that Noah raises are irrelevant to him.
They are not trying to destroy the country. They are trying to save us from ourselves, just as the Bolsheviks once did in the Russian sphere.
The essential factor is mistrust of ordinary people. We are viewed only as a vehicle for their own elevated ambitions. Our foolishness cannot be allowed to derail their plans. If we are let off the leash we’ll watch too much tv, smoke cigarettes and indulge in wrongthink.
Journalists are often the saddest of the bunch as they are rarely in any inner circle. They use their megaphones to signal their understanding of the agenda and their willingness to sell it to the masses in the hope they’ll be noticed. Like an attractive waitress in a restaurant in Hollywood hoping the producers can help them get on in life.
Useful idiots of course. But it is the big shots we need to focus on, the decision makers.
Precisely the distraction they want you to focus on, something we can’t possibly do anything about, but all have an opinion on, no matter how deluded.
“But it is the big shots we need to focus on, the decision makers.”
I’m sure I remember a couple of posts on here in which someone said that if they met Chris Whitty in a dark alley they’d growl at him, and another who said that if they happened to walk past Sir Patrick Vallance in Nottingham they’d mutter something under their breath.
That’s the spirit!
Sweden did ‘okay’ and I’d argue even they went too far at times. Our politicians just did a series of yougov polls on lockdowns etc then broadly followed what the results told them.
I agree. Sweden went less insane than any other advanced country and Tegnell deserves credit for his individual strength and resolve, but in any free society what Sweden did was still an offence against liberty.
I think having a stronger constitution in place is what stopped Tegnell introducing Lockdowns, but since they’re doing well, he’s taking all the credit as a hero of liberty and keeping a cool head.
Tegnell himself gave no indication he wanted lockdown, he said or a colleague said that Sweden wasn’t experimenting, everyone else was.
He never resorted to the apocalyptic balderdash of Fauci, Whitty and company, he gave evidence for his claims and nothing he did was purposefully absurd, it wasn’t absurd at all.
The YouGov polls were biased and rigged to get the results the government wanted. It was always 70% or thereabouts that desired more restrictions or longer, sooner, harder lockdowns and masks. It was too much of a coincidence. They even unashamedly had two polls running off the same subject depending on how you answered the first question. They obviously went with the results of the one that fitted in with their agenda.
Aye….Question 1. Do you want to kill granny. Answer. No. conclusion: They want more Lockdowns.
I’m afraid I would have answered Yes.
For ‘sceptics’ it is remarkable how easily some have been taken in by ‘polls’ arranged by a ‘lying Arab’.
See below how polling really works. They took this page down from the WEF site. In this case it was WEF partner Ipsos doing the work… Bear in mind Ipsos did well in the pandemic carrying out the REACT surveys in conjunction with ICL
https://web.archive.org/web/20210907145424/https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2021/09/how-can-framing-decisions-impact-the-issue-of-vaccination-passports/
I’d say the only thing they did well was the (useless) vaccine rollout though as this meant you had doctors dishing out jabs at £30 a pop rather than seeing sick patients you could even question this. As for the rest, a complete shit storm of disaster from the killing vast swaithes of the elderly, giving away billions to fraudsters, destroying children’s development, creating the highest NHS waiting lists ever, making NHS dentistry unavailable to the masses and torpedoing small businesses across the country to name but a few.
Had they simply vaccinated the most vulnerable groups ASAP and then thrown everything open I may have been tempted to be magnanimous and say that they had a bad first half then turned it around.
That was obviously never the purpose of the “vaccine”. So what is the real purpose of the mass never ending ‘experimental’ vaccination programme for every living human? Apart from failing totally in its prime stated purpose, what has the “experiment” revealed?
Any guesses?
How do folks feel about the UK signing up to the Gates/WHO ordering by Mandate a new mass vaccination every month to combat all the “Germs” he keeps finding with such unbridled enthusiasm? Johnson seems very keen!
If they just watch the BBC, that would be ‘News’ to them.
The ‘vaccine’ has only just begun its rampage through the population – we need to keep an eye onthe figures and mortality rates: cardio-vascular issues, blood clots , previously unknown myocarditis in the healthy young, strokes, neurological problems, spontaneous abortions, still-births – now we even have a ‘new strain’ of hepatitis in babies to add to the growing ” nothing to see here, move on” Government list.
C’mon now folks… move along please…
If this was the CEO of a company he would have been sacked long ago, and probably prosecuted.
Exactly right.
Ginger pussy!
Yes it is off-putting when people mention the wonderful gene therapy “rollout”.
It was a success in logistics at best.
The only thing they did right was to make UvdL look an utter twonk when sourcing the vaccines.
That they then spent so much on vaccines for most people who didn’t need them rather eclipses that one, brief ‘triumph’, though.
Every time I’m tempted to think they knew what they were doing, I remember the changes of mind about which vaxxes were best (and worst) for which age cohorts.
‘Clueless’ doesn’t even begin to describe it.
Ok, when they’ve caused unnecessary misery to billions?! Many had an opposite view with proof which was ignored in favour of the global scientists, which would have resulted in excellence not ok.
Oh, there was most definitely some excellence going on. Look at all the grifters who made serious money on this scam – not just in UK, across the world. And we undoubtedly do not even know the half of it.
If one’s political model is to show the mob how things are really done, then they have exceeded excellence.
Where there’s muck there’s money.
Is matt Hancock the leader of the grifters?
I had not hitherto heard of Matthew Syed – it would appear I have not missed out on anything.
His petty swipe at LS shows he was either instructed or knows to put down non-MSM, rather than raise critical questions as to why such sites arose. I haven’t read the article, as it’s pay-walled (can’t be arsed to try the tricks to get beyond that), perhaps he goes into deeper debate on this point. If he does not, then all he does is smear any dissenting voice – presumably another ‘journalist’ like Andrew Neil has become, writing according to instruction, surrendering critical thought and integrity for the 30 pieces.
Rationality was sucked from the debate precisely because of hacks like him. It is unlikely I will ever read anything by the man, but wish him good health and hope fervently that he takes as many vaccines as the non-cancerous, acceptable sources recommend to him.
Syed is a ghastly globalist lackey who does exactly what he’s told.
Plus a few more boosters – just to make sure!
Establishment writer in establishment organ backs establishment whilst camouflaging fanboi status with ‘lessons could be learnt’.
For the likes of Syed (chief globalism correspondent at globalism incorporated) to claim that figures are only just becoming available is almost beyond belief. We’ve had innumerable data and stats available for at least two years. It took me about 20 seconds to find them when I first sensed what was coming. Hell, the Diamond Princes told us absolutely everything we needed to know before the first lockdown.
“chief globalism correspondent at globalism incorporated“
Good one.
“Syed writes: “Websites such as Lockdown Sceptics rose up like cancers, metastasising across the internet, sucking rationality from the debate like intergalactic debris into a black hole.” This rather lurid comparison is ironic coming from Syed, who spends much of his article lamenting the “shocking decline” in standards of public discourse.”
Always amusing when clearly intelligent elitist authoritarian types like Syed render themselves functionally stupid in this kind of way, confusing dissent with irrationality because, basically, they are too arrogant to brook the possibility that the authorities they love so much could be questioned on any fundamental levels.
As an authoritarian elitist, Syed is in exactly the right place, writing for the Times. The rest of us just need to get in the habit (or stay in the habit, for those of us who saw through our elites years ago) of ignoring him along with the rest of that rag.
Noah Carl hits the correct target here, pointing out that limiting consideration to death numbers is to repeat precisely the disastrous error made in the initial panic – obsessive focus on the disease without any proper perspective or wider cost benefit assessments for the responses.
If only there weren’t authoritarian elitist publications like the Times and opinionators like Syed sucking the rationality out of our politics, we might have had a political class that could have addressed the issue competently back in early 2020.
There are now so many enemies of truth in the media woodwork – the whole edifice is now rotten and crumbling to dust.
Matthew Syed said Frank Bruno is an effeminate, helium-voiced albino dwarf with no muscle and no punch at all.
Diane Abbott goes to the doctors and says;”Dr, I need your help. I’m 68 years old and I can’t count”.
Dr says; “What I’m going to need you to do is strip naked and squat in the corner over there”.
She does so and he then instructs her to move to another corner and do the same, then to by the wall next to his university degree and then to by the window.
She says, “Dr, how is this going to help me with my counting”?
He says, “It won’t, there’s sod all I can do. But I’ve just ordered a new black leather armchair and I’m wondering where it will look best”.
I understand that this joke is shortly to be banned under the Government’s new Approved Humour Bill….
Definitely triggered me….
‘Now we know our ministers did OK against Covid…’. I’m afraid that this is an incorrect statement. Doing nothing would have resulted in less damage, and far less cost.
“The truth is that on the whole, and with only a few exceptions, ministers did their best in unenviable circumstances.” – I’m more afraid that this is a totally correct statement. We have just witnessed the very best that the Technocratic Bureaucracy (fronted by politicians) have managed to do. Next time they will have had more practice, and will probably cause more damage…
Maybe he has access to the bank statements, that would explain it!
“Websites such as Lockdown Sceptics rose up like cancers, metastasising across the internet, sucking rationality from the debate“
Syed seems to be a male equivalent of that noxious elitist the US regime have just put in as Minister of Truth:
Tucker: This the point where we have to draw the line
Matthew Syed, as a former table tennis player, has much to prove that he is a fit and proper person to hold governments to account on medical ‘pandemics’ and economic lockdowns.
If he wants to be a greasy pole climber, fine. But people should call him out on that.
Table tennis – Hall of Achievement Gold Cup perhaps? What a role model!
“Websites such as Lockdown Sceptics rose up like cancers, metastasising across the internet, sucking rationality from the debate like intergalactic debris into a black hole.”
Reading behind those lines, this means that Lockdown Sceptics had become essential reading for any journalist who wanted to know what was going on. When you get attacks like this, you know that you have hit a nerve….
“this means that Lockdown Sceptics had become essential reading for any journalist who wanted to know what was going on...”
….and they really, really hated the fact that they couldn’t beat the arguments made or silence the people making them.
Goebbels still believed Germany was winning the war when he shot his wife and bit on the capsule.
The “Great Lie Machine” continues its steady propaganda. Mark Steyn is the only MSM journalist with the courage to expose it.
While the liars congratulate each other on their web of Political and Media lies, more and more people are discovering the shocking truth every day- especially those personally damaged or bereaved by the ‘vaccines’ and abused and ignored by Media and Government alike!
Sir Christopher Chope carries on his crusade for truth and accountability (which used to be a ‘given’ in this country justa few short years ago) in the face of a wall of silence, abuse and ridicule from Parliamentary Officials.
The Queen did well to be unfit enough not to be coerced into partaking of yesterday’s disgrace of a speech, designed to crush our freedoms – however it suited “Davos” Charles very well.
‘Our Ministers Didn’t “Do Okay” Against the Coronavirus’
Perhaps, but they did very well against the population
The piece by Syed, referred to here, is a downright disgrace. If the decline in reporting and rational debate standards are your big concern, then it’s probably best to avoid guttersnipe, red-top and yellow press standards.
I read his column in the Sunday Times main paper, and whilst some of it is absolute BS, he’s written some sound stuff about, for example, the deification of the NHS and its need for drastic reform. I had thought, (wrongly, it now appears) that Syed was at least reasonably intelligent and perceptive, but this latest mudslinging garbage has disabused me of that.
One can only suppose that something has unhinged him, so that he has had a damascene conversion to the morons’ side. Whether this is pressure from his editor or proprietor, or payment in kind against favours to be rendered to him, or something else isn’t clear. The other possible explanation is that he has had a few too many lunches and dinners in the company of the rabid pro-“vaccine”, “vaccine sceptics=anti-vaxxers who must be punished” D. Lawson of the ST.
I quite like Syed now and again but this was a ludicrous article.
He quotes the data but completely fails to mention Sweden which is the screaming out take away from the numbers.
He also refers to Lockdown Sceptics as ‘cancerous’ and falls sadly for an intelligent man into the usual response of referring to something you don’t like or don’t understand in subjective and insulting terms so you can ‘dismiss’ it off hand.
Very very lazy and pathetic
“Now we know our ministers did OK (for themselves) against Covid”
Throwing away centuries of human rights, the economy, the NHS, kids educations for flu, and failing to achieve anything better than Sweden is not “doing alright”. It is an unmitigated criminal failure.
No he is not worth reading in full
I was against lockdowns from April 2020, when we knew the old and infirm were the only one’s going to “sadly” succumb. I also worried that the hokey-cokey economy was only going to store up problems for the future, notwithstanding the insane amount of deficit caused by increasingly desperate PTB. The NHS should never have been clapped, because it was already clapped-out. They should have got ready for a potential problem over winter 2020/2021 and carried on heroically.
The NHS panicked initially, because all they were allowed to use was forced air. That first lockdown was really the only time of excess deaths. They also left the old to rot in care homes, seeding the virus in the old and infirm.
It has taken until now for the MSM to finally, and partially note the things that went wrong during the supposed pandemic. They were paid to follow the consensus, and should be ashamed of themselves.
Never really believed it was a thing. Never tested. Never jabbed. Had one mask for possible emergencies, and it never really needed replacing.
Never jabbed, never tested, never masked.
I once wore a piece of cloth in summer 2020 before I read the studies that showed it was a sham … or should that be shaman?
Oh dear. There’s the reason that sites like this must be punished and the internet more thoroughly policed.
You have admitted, Citizen John001, to reading “studies”; rather than doing as you were told and following the advice of your government which reads studies for you and selects ones that do not present “misinformation”.
Mike Graham caller claims UK is being destroyed
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nai-G1zF7Hs
Amanda in East Sussex claims the government is destroying the country “on purpose”, with people “still wearing masks in shops” and migrants “flooding in.”
TalkTV
A quote from one of the messages left on YouTube:
“This chap Graham it was clear had no interest in her anger, and waffled on about the Weather and inflation. Good on her! She speaks for the majority.”
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Mark Steyn mentioned him because, just like most MPs and the BBC, the vaccine damages Bill is being ignored.
The Times, with the FT and the Economist is the mouthpiece of the globalists.
What else did you expect but ‘nothing to see here, move on’.
Only the destruction of an economy, children’s education, graduate degrees, and the single greatest loss of freedom since William the Conqueror.
Can’t print that though, so ‘the government did OK’.
Still don’t know who died OF or WITH covid, still guestimates when all the other end of life conditions seemed to disappear
Wu-flu historical revisionism has sadly, and predictably, a long long way to go ….
As far as I can see, this wretched government has declared war on its own people. Not content with needlessly imprisoning everybody in their homes, forcing them to take useless and toxic injections, withdrawing healthcare from those who need it, it is now making food, heating, and travel almost unaffordable in order to chase some fairytale climate myth, robbing them through the tax system, and criminalising speech and thoughts outside the prescribed narrative. Who needs a hostile invasion when you have a government like this one?
“Did” okay? Do they think it’s over?
Whoever is in charge of Clown World clearly has not received proper independent expert advice, ( or maybe they know exactly what they do).
Geert Vanden Bossche again trying to warn the world :-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N5SQrg8bY9g
Please share, especially to any who may have influence on power.
Basically, we are “vaccinating” ourselves to death. The concept of virus becoming less lethal with increased transmissibility is false. We have presented covid with an ever increasing chance to mutate and with greater virulence, simply because of the none sterilising nature of the jabs.
Herd immunity will never be achieved because the pool of unjabbed – especially in the young, is getting smaller.
“Cases” continue to rise, almost entirely due to the jabs, but no-one seems bothered because the symptoms are mild. This is bad, and heaven forbid if the worst fears of GVB are realised.
I don’t think it needs to be as complicated a GVB says it is.
Simply injecting yourself repeatedly with the Bill Gates clot shot poison will do you in without any need for a naughty virus.
At least Mark Steyn and Dan Wooton of GB News are speaking very publicly now about the ‘vaccine’ injuries, deaths and lack of support for those cruelly affected.
I caught Steyn on Youtube last night interviewing a BBC broadcaster who is a vaccine victim.
I have to say, I have criticised GB News but they were brilliant, and Steyn pulls no punches. The contempt for the vaccines is dripping from him.
If ministers did their best, their best is the work of Satan and Baldrick.
Their best was woeful and, if they had purposefully tried to do the maximum damage with every policy, I don’t see what they would have done differently.
The pandemic was but one example.
The green agenda, mass immigration, Islamisaton, all things transgender (especially directed at children), the endless wars, the ever increasing censorship, the Tories are hell bent on destroying the British people.
Lockdown is green ideology and derived from German philosophy, as is multiculturalism, multiculturalism is repackaged Marxism.
The left have taken some commendable ambitions for humanity, (naturally evolving multiculturalism, living with the environment and reducing mankind’s impact, anti-racism, bodily autonomy, religion etc.) and weaponised them, destroying everything good about them in the process.
They don’t care for people, they only want their globalist, one government, redistributive, fantasy utopia to succeed, which it never will, as it never has.
They have no desire or ability to learn from history, they delude themselves and lie to everyone else about everything, and they never, ever give up or volunteer for their own eradication to demonstrate their eugenicist ambitions are practical.
Those aren’t really their aims, those are what they pretend they want but their actions prove otherwise.
A critical question is –
Why did Boris Johnson impose a CCP style lockdown when our existing pandemic preparedness plan did not support this policy and SAGE (The Science) were not speaking in favour of a lockdown prior to the fat one implementing lockdown?
Why did our wheelie bin PM decide to ignore the long standing pandemic plans that had been put together by experts over decades?
Why did fat worzel gummage implement this CCP style policy when SAGE were not proposing it?
Who was Boris serving when he did this to us and and what did Jabba the Johnson get out of it?
He doesn’t think for himself. He copied the Italians, who copied the Chinese. He shut schools because the Irish closed their schools. He imposed mask mandates because that was done in other countries.
Yes. He’s a second-hander, essentially.
Bruce
It begins with W and ends in EF
Because he’s Kim Jong Johnson.
In fact, the real reason is he has no convictions and is a parasite, entirely dependent on others. He wants to be liked and does what he believes will be popular or what he believes not doing will make him unpopular.
As such, it was easy to terrify him and, with his green wife, he soon became a green in every way.
As I remarked on Sunday, I attempted to make similar points on the Times comments under Syed’s article. They were deleted. So much for public discourse.
One of my points to Syed was the continuing lack of critical analysis from the MSM and lobbing insults at ‘Lockdown Sceptics’ was the opposite of what he should be writing.
ministers did their best in unenviable circumstances… …to cover their own arses.
Our old friend groupthink was the biggest factor driving our politicians. Why stick with your pandemic preparedness plan when the noisy Twitter and Facebook mob is screaming at you to care as much as the politicians in other countries. Do you hold your nerve and risk getting unfairly blamed for letting people die? Or do you go along with the baying mob?
Our government took the Pontius Pilate route – releasing Barabas rather than doing what’s right.
My impression of our rulers during the pandemic was that they spent nearly all their time running round like headless chickens desperately trying to keep the published numbers down by throwing money at every new initiative that would reward their chums.
They didn’t see past the next day’s headlines.
Yes, they ran around like headless chickens, but I don’t think they ever really wanted to keep the numbers down. If they wanted that the could have reduced the PCR cycle threshold, recommended using a 2000 IU+ dose of D3, let people enjoy the amazing weather of May 2020, counted “cases” only with symptoms, not given incentive to put COVID on every death certificate they could get away with, not counted deaths within any timeframe after a dodgy positive test, not given out midazolam and morpheme to every care home resident having a positive test, etc, etc, etc. They did none of that because they were under instructions to make it last in perpetuity.
They did none of that because they were under instructions to make it last in perpetuity.
Or at least until Pfizer had developed the vaccine, rushed it through testing and got firm contracts for vast numbers of shots…
Yes,LD sceptics has its share fair of nutters but you could read in LD skeptics from April 2020 the following, which was not in MSM ( but now slowly changing)
LD was wrong and never evidence based/ folly to throw away established flu pandemic plans
Masks were wrong not evidence based
Early treatment was lunacy not at least trying with safe medicines early in the pandemic together with vitamin D
Modelling of the disease spread in the population impossible as unknown amount of at least temporary innate immunity in the population
Hope-Simpson observation that lots of non-immune escape infection in a wave but might be infected in the next wave
Seasonality of infections and waves coming back until endemic (Yeadon was wrong on that)
Caution of using the new vaccines outside risk groups as we already had excellent real-world data who was at most risk
Much more rigid safety follow-up of vaccinations from the beginning
Achieving herd immunity with vaccines ludicrous idea and never happened before in humanity against a respiratory virus, enormous risks for scant benefit in healthy populations
The total disgrace and folly of vaccine passports/hinders of international travel
Where could you read this in real time during the pandemic? In LD sceptics but never in MSM. We were always first here. All above you could read at LD sceptics first. If Syed had the courage to read LD sceptics retrospectively, he would find out how a free press should work and you can only supress truth to some extent but never indefinitely in a society. And comparing LD skeptic to cancer?
‘Much more rigid safety follow-up of vaccinations from the beginning’
Don’t be silly, if the sleepy sheepy general public become aware of the harms these injections do many won’t roll up their sleeve again.
I think it is very easy with the benefit of the hindsight to call this a silly statement. Let us remind ourselves how we were in Dec 2020. There were excessive deaths in the elderly and especially in LCH. To think that any responsible government would not use vaccines in that situation is unrealistic.
We all knew that the vaccines were new, untested for long time effects, incl.sterilty etc etc.Better traditional vaccines were in the making but not ready.
A rigid safety follow up much better than Yellow card could have been set up quickly. The selection of a subset of population with high risk could be easily spotted and concentrated efforts. The risk benefit could be acceptable starting the campaign but any intelligent system would have in built break-pedals.
The whole disaster was starting vaccination outside these risk groups and also not stopping in time when clear negative risk benefits was found in some of the selected vaccinated.
“ To think that any responsible government would not use vaccines in that situation is unrealistic.” I agree there would be a strong political temptation to “do something” but not necessarily that this was “responsible”. There is some evidence of correlation between increased excess deaths and the vaxx rollout in vulnerable age groups. Once they’d started rolling it out, stopping it would have been politically impossible, so better not to start, arguably.
I honestly thought we’d end up being wrong about more on this, but on every issue LD sceptics got there first.
Correct IFR/CFR, ventilators, PPE, masks, seasonality, old/young risk ratios, vaccine efficacy… the list goes on and we’ve been vindicated on every single point.
Big question is who is really pulling the strings. That is what interests me, the fact that Lockdowns cause more harm than good is self evident.
Boris ‘I’m sticking with the existing pandemic plan, there is no need for all this fuss and fear over a bit of a cold’
Dominic Cummings ‘If you declare an emergency all the usual rules and safeguards for contract integrity will be suspended and you will be able to tip as much cash as you can into your chums pockets’.
Boris ‘Good God man, there are grannies to save, lock those fuc[kers down’.
Dommunist Dictator, the man who tests his eyesight by driving to County Durham.
Came across this – leaked documents exposing the gain of function research on coronaviruses funded by Ecohealth alliance and US.
DRASTIC recently became aware of documents which show that EcoHealth Alliance (EHA) in concert wIth the WIV were looking towards implementing an advanced human pathogenicity BatCoV research project that clearly qualifies as GoF, in a grant proposal submitted to a funding proposal call by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) in the spring of 2018.
The EHA / WIV proposal (named ‘DEFUSE’) was ultimately rejected for full funding (but leaving open the door for partial funding), in part because it skirted the GOF guidelines.
In other words, a branch of the federal government had already judged aspects of EHA’s research, and the corresponding shared research plan with the WIV, as falling under the definition of GOF, only for HHS to approve similar work without P3CO review in 2018 and 2019.
https://drasticresearch.files.wordpress.com/2021/10/preempt_hr00111880017_notes_v1_b-1.pdf
Some extracts from the document to show what GOF research on bat coronaviruses Ecohealth alliance was carrying out.
THE PROPOSAL INCLUDES THE INTRODUCTION OF “HUMAN-SPECIFIC CLEAVAGE SITES
”Human protease-specific site insertion was proposed.
The proposal does not specify exactly which protease, but does discuss Furin in the preceding text.
“We will analyze all SARSr-CoV S gene sequences for appropriately conserved proteolytic cleavage sites in S2 and for the presence of potential Furin cleavage sites74,75” . SARSr-CoV S with mismatches in proteolytic cleavage sites can be activated by exogenous Trypsin or Cathepsin L.
Where clear mismatches occur, we will introduce appropriate human-specific cleavage sites and evaluate growth potential in Vero cells and HAE cultures.”
https://drasticresearch.files.wordpress.com/2021/10/preempt_hr00111880017_notes_v1_b-1.pdf
That document also mentions Ecohealth’s proposal to attach to DC-SIGN which is a mechanism used by HIV to attack T cells, and it just happens that SARS-COV-2 has a suitable gp120 site for that as well, nicely “evolved” right at the end of the spike: https://arkmedic.substack.com/p/absolute-proof-the-gp-120-sequences
The best bit is that when you look into the issue of how a new virus was identified you find that the methods used are a joke.
They never proved that there was a new virusthat caused disease.
From there you learn that the Chinese scientists used the standard virology methods to shows sars-cov-2 exists, the problem being the standard methods are bogus.
Under the existing orthodoxy those in power can calim that there is a new super deadly respiratory virus flloating around, (whose symptoms are exactly the same as previous seasonal illness) knock out a PCR that will spew out false positives in a multitude of different ways and hey presto you have a pandemic and your excuse for lockdowns, vaccinations and all the rest.
‘ministers did their best in unenviable circumstances’
Yes indeed, Boris and his chums spent the best part of two years nursing massive hangovers, these lockdowns weren’t easy for them at all.
It’s interesting how there seems to have never been an article on The Daily Sceptic naming and shaming the companies and people who have profited from ‘Covid’.
Isn’t this what we should be concentrating on? Going after the people running the scam?
What’s with Faisal Shoukat of the scamming company RT Diagnostics (of Halifax, UK) these days – has no-one been able to hunt him down and shake all those ill-gotten gains out of his pockets?
Here’s one:
https://eastdevonwatch.org/2022/02/15/private-eye-profits-of-doom-how-to-make-600m-disappear/
“So Faisal Shoukat, a Labour Councillor runs a Covid testing company and issues Fit-to-Fly certificates. Gotta love all that capitalism.
Anyway – it turns out it’s all a complete fraud – he charges people whatever it is – £80 or so, doesn’t check the result- in fact all the tests just get chucked in the bin, and he issues everyone a negative test cert meaning they can fly.
Can you imagine the scandal if this were anyone other than a Labour politician? If it were – heaven forbid – a Tory, there would be absolute wall-to-wall coverage on TV with demands of life imprisonment, war crimes, you name it.
But this happened 4 days ago – and absolutely nothing, in fact the media are doing absolutely everything they can to be utterly silent and disinterested in it. Dominic Cummings drove himself around and it was the end of the world. The BBC would have had you believe that a seven horned monster had risen out of the sea with angels pouring bowls of blood from the sky – but here a Labour councillor is fraudulently faking tests and absolute silence from the media.”
https://www.thestudentroom.co.uk/showthread.php?t=7062025
You need to stop prowling obscure chat rooms and check the information you select from them which fuels your natural bigotry – from 9 months ago!
“A Halifax Covid testing facility has hit back at ‘ludicrous and defamatory’ accusations made by The Sun about the way the firm is handling Covid tests.”
https://www.examinerlive.co.uk/news/west-yorkshire-news/halifax-covid-test-firm-furious-21092153
Perhaps you should focus on the fact that a public official is allowed to run a business or have a second job.
If he’s not being paid for his public duties, then it’s high time we began paying these people so they can be held to account for the decisions they make on our behalf. That’s proper capitalism. A fair days pay for a fair days work. It’s left wing cretins like you who expect these people to work for nothing and are then shocked when they rob us blind.
The Student Room…..FFS
Doing their best would have been following the Pandemic Plan compiled and updated over decades from experience and knowledge, ready so that a Government could react quickly and manage the situation.
They didn’t. They completely rejected it, made it up as they went along, lied to cover their mistakes, and failed to learn from observation and adjust policy accordingly because it would have revealed their reckless, careless, incompetent action.
The excess mortality includes non-CoVid deaths caused by policy, and death displacement. CoVid selects those who are about to die anyway, so this year’s excess is next year’s shortfall.
They caused countless deaths and great misery, fear and suffering. They should not be excused.
That’s why we need to insist that planning for worst case scenario, national catastrophes are made and passed into law that they must be regularly updated and adhered to.
That’s the only chance we have of holding the bastards to account and allow them to be hunted down and swing for their crimes.
The ‘wonderful’ Democratic, parliamentary system we exported around the world has one fatal, and deliberately included flaw – politicians never answer for their incompetence, greed, over ambition or malice.
Is there anything we can do to prevent the UK signing up for WHO membership to allow them to dictate what happens in the next so called pandemic? Not long to go now
“Is there anything we can do to prevent the UK signing up for WHO membership”
There’s a petition going around that you could sign.
I don’t know Dan.
Mercola had an article on the issue yesterday.
“The WHO will accept two more days of public comment on the treaty, June 16 and 17, 2022, so prepare your statements now. The World Health Assembly will also vote on amendments to the International Health Regulations, May 22-28, 2022, which may also strip away more individual rights and liberties”
“It seems far more likely that the WHO is being installed as a de facto governing body for the global Deep State.7 Through the WHO, under the guise of biosecurity, the globalist cabal who seek to own everything and control everyone, will then be able to implement their wishes across the whole world in one fell swoop.”
“With this treaty in place, all member nations will be subject to the WHO’s dictates. If the WHO says every person on the planet needs to have a vaccine passport and digital identity to ensure vaccination compliance, then that’s what every country will be forced to implement, even if the people have rejected such plans using local democratic processes.
As noted by Corbett, these negotiations are already well underway,8 and the treaty is expected to be fully implemented in 2024 — that is, unless the people of the world wake up to what’s happening and beat back this monstrosity.”
“Another clue about what the WHO intends to do with more power comes from its primary funder, Bill Gates. Gates recently announced he’s building a pandemic response team for the WHO, which he would like to be called the “Global Epidemic Response & Mobilization” or GERM Team.
This team will be made up of thousands of disease experts under WHO’s purview, and will monitor nations and “decide when they need to suspend civil liberties, force populations to wear masks and close borders,”
Regarding submissions on June 16 and 17, 2022 the WHO has not yet released any submission details. Your best bet right now is to sign up for the WCH’s newsletter. The last time, they issued links and instructions on how to submit your comment, and are sure to do the same for the June submission window. You can subscribe at the bottom of this page, or on the WCH’s home page.
To block the IHR amendments at the May 2022 World Health Assembly, we need to flood our respective delegations with opposition. A list of U.S. delegates can be found in Roguski’s Substack article, “Speaking Truth to Power.”
For contact information for other nations’ delegates, I would suggest contacting the regional office and ask for a list (see “Regions” in the blue section at the bottom of the World Health Assembly’s webpage). It’s also possible that the WCH will publish guidance on it, so be sure to sign up for their newsletter.
WE COULD TRY SOME OF THE ABOVE – WHETHER IT WILL MAKE ANY DIFFERENCE IS MOOT
Thanks, have signed the petition, but agree, will it make any difference at all, if there is any decency and democracy left it should……..
Unfortunately I think that signing the petition will have little effect – there is a cadre of people out there who actively say we should not sign the petition.
I think that the more effective thing [altho it is debatable] is to contact whoever the UK delegation is and register an objection or to lodge a personal objection with WHO public submissions in June.
I think the whole thing is deliberately complicated and nothing more than pure window dressing – “but we consulted (kind of half heartedly)….”
I would like to think that the big battle with this might be in the USA. How will this sit with the Red states? How would a Ron deSantis feel about being dictated to by WHO about how to handle what WHO declare is a pandemic in his state? especially if they are forcing measures he doesn’t want to implement, after all they will impact people voting for him.
I’m wondering if the Red states might push for secession as this is a fundamental sovereignty issue.
If, and it is a big if, Trump gets the nomination for 2024, and if he manages to avoid the sabotage that there was for 2022 and gets in, he might withdraw the US from the treaty, if not from the entire WHO, if Biden signs up to it. There are a lot of ifs in that last sentence!
Will be interesting if the twitter deal goes through to see if he signs up to re-activate his account and to see if he foments public discourse on this issue. Somebody has to or else we are sunk.
The president in the US cannot sign any binding treatys with foreign powers.Biden’s submission for go ahead with the treaty has no legal binding unless the Senate approves.president Wilson never got US to sign and joing NF.Truman had to have Senate’s blessing to join UN.
In reality most signing this treaty won’t take it seriously as with human rights conventions etc (Saudi Arabia signing) Only stupid European countries would take it seriously.
I can’t believe Matthew Syed is the same guy that wrote “Black Box Thinking” – one of the most inspiring books I have ever read. The book about learning from mistakes and being open minded. Instead of following his own advice he has become one of many government propagandists. Will he become chief of “Ministry of Truth” as a reward? Disgraceful.
I don’t know anything about him, but I will take your word for it that the book was inspiring. I think if you manage to convince someone that they are “doing good” then they often become very uncritical in their thinking, regardless of their level of intelligence.
The book is really interesting, starts with showing how aviation has evolved so far in terms of safety because people had to learn from mistakes or else there would be death including pilot…. on contrary in Healthcare there is a culture of cognitive dissonance, hiding mistakes and following strict hierarchy where medical errors are swept under the carpet….. He either had a ghost writer or is being used as well known author to push government lies like many other useful idiots / celebrities.
All I’ve heard overwhelmingly, from those who lapped up the narrative from day one, is “They were only doing their best!!!” No critical thought employed, what’s so-ever, even when you point out the blindingly bloody obvious! Baa Baa!
So are “they” looking after our wellbeing? If not, why not?
An Abstract in 4 Key Points:
-Dr. Fauci and a few other senior scientists knew instantly that the discovery of HIV spike inserts within the SAR-CoV-2 viral genome made it almost impossible for the virus to be natural.
-They knew about the Furin cleavage site [FCS], the single biggest genomic contributor to SARS-CoV-2’s ability to become a pandemic virus.
– They suppressed treatments that were already available – including the very fusion inhibitors implicated by the existence of the HIV inserts.
-Much of what has been done to combat the pandemic – especially here in the United States – has been the opposite of what would’ve been recommended, had all of the information been publicly known in early 2020.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/359855384_The_Myth_of_the_Blind_Watchmaker
https://twitter.com/CharlesRixey/status/1513000646311649282
And we can also look across to Florida, that didn’t lock up its citizens past summer 2020, didn’t destroy its local economy, schooling, mental health, etc, and did better than New York and California.
I’m prepared to accept that ‘ministers did their best’.
The problem was that the ministers weren’t very good, so their ‘best’ was unacceptable. The fact that none have resigned that weren’t obliged to is proof that they’re shameless and unfit for purpose.
I reckon if you’d thrown the requisite number of sticks into a general crowd and put those who were struck in charge of the various ministries, things may well have gone better than they did. They could hardly have done worse. And yes, I do mean especially you, Sunak.
If you ‘do your best’ when you are incompetent then the outcome is a failure; as the past 2 years+ of government decision making shows all too clearly. ‘Doing what you are best at’ is the appropriate phrase and as all the decisions were made by individuals who had no idea what they were talking about we cannot be surprised at the mess they created.
And as has been mentioned previousy 10K upticks to LS/DS
“Websites such as Lockdown Sceptics rose up like cancers, metastasising across the internet, sucking rationality from the debate like intergalactic debris into a black hole.”
You know, I find it incredible how often during the last two years that it feels like i’m living in a parallel universe.
I sought out and found LS because it was injecting rationality into the debate, which the MSM clearly wasn’t.
I stopped buying The Times during the scamdemic and thank Syed for justifying my decision.
Surely not Matthew Syed, the author of Rebel Ideas and advocate of disruptive thinking.
Never mind their view. They made a complete mess of our economy and the lives of many. If they had set out to do harm then they succeeded and no doubt praised for it by the globalists who seem to influence / control most government policy now.
It’s amazing what a journalist will write whem promised a ‘gong’ by a corrupt government
A metastasising cancer indeed. This site sounds even worse than Covid-19! There are undoubtedly some mischievous sites but perhaps Mr Syed has not actually been here. Anyway he is wrong. The government did not do OK. It relied on the wrong experts and refused to take advice from the clinicians who knew what they were talking about. Whether that advice was always right (and I would be the first to admit that mine was not, though most was) that does not justify the total refusal to listen.
it failed on too many levels for it to be judged “not bad”. I look forward to explaining my reasoning to the Hallett inquiry.
Because of poor articles by the limp likes of Matthew Syed. This is the reason today’s news is NOT even tomorrow’s chip paper anymore.
I am happy to read this article. I read the original in The Sunday Times and it seriously annoyed me. I usually like what Matthew Syed writes but he lost me as a fan when he described Lockdown Sceptics as an example of a ‘cancerous’ site and praised the government highly. I was extremely disappointed in him although he did make some interesting points.
Interestingly, there are quite a few columnists in various publications that I read and enjoyed before lockdown but I’ve gone off quite a few of them as they virtue signalled and tried to coerce us into vaccines and wrote appalling stuff about people who chose not to be vaccinated.
The Daily Sceptic is my first read of the day.
“The Daily Sceptic is my first read of the day.”
Hear hear!! I’d be lost without it nowadays.
Bloody cheek if it wasn’t for the likes of Toby we’d still be locked down now. Does this A hole think it’s okay not to question? As for the Sunday Times like the BBC I gave up with them a long time ago.
Actually I don’t blame ministers. They got no help at all from the universities, the medical profession or the press.. In Sweden an authoritative, believable and likable leader emerged, in the rest of the world the commentariat lined up with the political left saying that if you do not spend every penny you nave on this and one pensioner dies you will go to hell. If Imperial College had been hit by a meteorite at the beginning of the pandemic it would all have been so different.
Syed is just practising his response to the Public Inquiry.
By ANY measure ….. economic; public health in its wider sense, not just Covid; mental health; deaths; debt; public services such as education …….
Ministers did appallingly bad.
Lockdown sceptics was a rare case of sanity in a Media which, collectively, went mad.
Syed destroyed his reputation in my eyes with this article. It was a lazy defence of the ruling class. I noted his cheap shot at the lock down sceptics web sight, I think it is actually a backhanded compliment if it managed to annoy him that much. He has written some good articles in the past but I am not sure I will bother with him very much in future. The Sunday Times has lost any ability it might once have had to hold the govt to account. It is very much pro Establishment anti Boris, a sort of slightly central version of the Guardian.
The performance of the govt was and is a disgrace. Lies. Fear-mongering. Still pushing a medical product they know is potentially deadly for some with little benefit for the vast majority. If Johnson were Japanese he’d have committed suicide by now given his abject failure.