The chart below shows the number of daily deaths with “COVID-19 on the death certificate” in the U.K., since March of 2020. There are, of course, various problems with this chart – as readers are well aware. But I’m showing it because it’s the chart with which members of the public will be most familiar.
I think it shows quite clearly that the pandemic was over by the summer of 2021 at the latest – thanks to a combination of natural and vaccine-induced immunity, and because many of those most susceptible to Covid had already died. (Based on the trajectory of age-adjusted excess mortality, you could make a case that the pandemic was over by the summer of 2020.)
What the chart clearly doesn’t show is that we’re still in the midst of a pandemic. Covid is now endemic and will kill a certain a number of people every year for the foreseeable future. (We can expect this number to decline over time, as more and more people acquire natural immunity when they’re young.)
The clear evidence of endemicity makes the finding of a recent YouGov poll rather alarming. On April 18th, Brits were asked, “Would you consider the coronavirus pandemic in Britain to be over or still ongoing?” Remarkably, 56% said “Still ongoing”, while only 34% said “Over”. Like Hiroo Onoda, the Japanese soldier who carried on fighting WWII long after his country had surrendered, a majority Brits simply refuse to give in.
Interestingly, the poll found no real differences by political views: Conservatives were as likely to say “Sill ongoing” as Labour voters; Leavers were as likely to say “still ongoing” as Remainers. One variable that did seem to matter was age: over 65s were much more likely to say “Still ongoing” than 18–24 years – a majority of whom said “Over”.
If we look across the pond, a recent Gallup poll found that 49% of Americans believe the pandemic is over – which is 15 percentage points more than in Britain. (Some fraction of Americans will presumably have answered “Don’t know”, so those who believe it’s not over must be in the minority.)
In the U.S., there were large differences by political views: 75% of Republicans said the pandemic is over, compared to just 28% of Democrats. And note: this can’t be put down to age; Republicans are slightly older, on average.
The gap between Britain and the U.S. is therefore largest when we consider those on the political Right. Only 36% of Conservative voters say the pandemic’s over, which is less half of the percentage of Republicans who say the same. Why are Right-wing Americans so much more likely to say the pandemic’s over?
One possibility is that they consume different media. For better or worse, many Right-wing Brits get their news primarily from the BBC – which was among the more ‘alarmist’ outlets during the pandemic. By contrast, Right-wing Americans tend to get their news from outlets like Fox and talk radio – which were much less ‘alarmist’. Three years down the line, they’re therefore more likely to have moved on.
The Government put such a lot of effort into making people scared of Covid, we now have a population that simply can’t accept reality.
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As the scheme is drawn up by politicians, with a clear track record, the entire effort can only be breathtakingly incompetent.
No, not “only”.
Richly laced with malice on one hand and corruption on the other.
Skidmark report.
‘Green’ is not green, not Gaia friendly, inefficient, impractical and far worse for the eco-system than hydrocarbon usage.
It serves another purpose however. That is why it is pushed.
Skidmore is the kind who’d have assisted Stalin meeting purge targets. To produce a report like this net zero one he can have no moral compass at all. His only motivation is steal off the normies and fill his fat chops in the swill. If green energy were so marvellous the price mechanism would have made it the energy production of choice. Note Skidmore etc have abolished the price mechanism in the energy market for any useless windmills to exist.
“Where there is no market, there is no price system and where there is no price system there can be no economic calculation”
Ludwig von Mises
A heat pump that produces water at 80 degrees Celsius should not require the extra insulation and larger radiators needed by the current puny examples.
Do come back and tell us when they have a practical system that is commercially viable, but in the meantime I am not holding my breath.
Put into other words: What Skidmore would like to mandate is demonstrably useless but experimental, new technology might eventually change that. That’s obviously always a possibilty. But until this possibilty has actually manifested itself, mandating the use of the technology is misguided. Let’s do this now and hope a miracle (ie, an unexpected technical breakthrough) will make it work in future! is not a sound policy.
Got one have you?
Heat pump technology is no where near your mentioned 80°c, more like 30° to 35°c .
It’s got a colossal way to go before those efficiencies are reached, maybe never!
I’d be interested to know how you install a heat pump in a flat; where the water tank will go in a small property which wasn’t designed to have one; and how much footage the much larger radiators will require?
I look forward to your response.
GDP is a poor measure of the economic impact of this strategy.
The UK could subsidise huge numbers to dig holes and then fill in holes and it would have a positive impact on GDP.
Not that doing something is necessarily negative — some strategic investment could be positive for the UK — it is just that whenever governments ‘prove benefit’ by mentioning GDP I get suspicious.
Agreed, GDP basically stands for G*d D*mn Profits, and is really not the best metric for wellbeing.
Heading back to serfdom like in the olden days only the ‘elite’ will be doing any travelling so don’t worry too much amount the availability of rare earth metals.
Watch out for the climate lockdown protests happening in various cities and towns.
Animal living space (that includes all humans) require adequate ventilation and air movement otherwise you get mould growth both on your walls and in your airways. So insulation has to be balanced with ventilation and the required heating for creature comfort. As with all things in life there is balance, it is a shame that there is so little with the net zero debate.
Why are these people not honest about the fact that a heat pump is not a simple swap-over with a gas boiler. The low temperatures produced generally require replacement of conventional radiator systems with ones with larger surface areas, or ideally underfloor heating. Their heat-up and response times are poor and their performance decreases at sub zero temperatures.
So give up any hope of a comfortably warm house without costly subsidiary heating.
I agree. I am one of the very many who will not be able to have a heat pump or any real alternative to Propane or Natural Gas heating. For me there is not enough land available around my home to install the necessary heat sink. The local electric supply is not enough to service the requirements of electric heating, heat pumps and or cooker, and this is without the fact, I cannot in anyway, afford the installation costs of heat pumps if I had the room and the electrical supply in the first place.
As for solar panels, there are as much use as a hand brake on a canoe when it comes to electrical supply, and as with wind turbines, after nearly 150 years of development from the first concepts, they are still in the development stage, and still constrained with the limitations in there effectiveness.
The proposals and laws regarding the private housing stock, including the much earlier ban of LPG boilers and the rental prohibition of D/E properties, is just theft, expropriation and communism.
No wonder then, that they are also technically impossible or ridiculous.
And all because of a hoax as their cover story.
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/net-zero-will-lead-end-modern-civilisation-says-top-scientist
Communism collided with reality. So will net zero. .
How much suffering will be inflicted in the process remains to be seen.
In both a few organise the world for everybody else and consider any cost and suffering (of others, of course) a price worth paying to achieve their utopian society.
Net Zero and Covid are one in the same scam, go to Joel Smalley substack new article “Why do so few of the general public smell a rat?”
Exactly. Two strands of the same thread. There was never a “pandemic” and there can be no such thing as a “climate emergency,” whatever that might be.
The “elites” are planning to take over the planet and everything in and on it, or at least the bits they want. To achieve this they need global control of the world population and any means to achieve this will suffice. Along the way population numbers have to be reduced, not because the planet cannot support the world population but because too many people will be a management issue so a rather large cull is required.
Net zero is a euphemism for depopulation.
Net zero = reduce carbon.
The carbon is US, the people.
The point of documents like this is to be the quoted reference for justifying action required in the future. What a total waste of money.
A green activist and a Tory MP cross – what new hellish hybrid is this? (There’s a lot more of them than you imagine.)
People like this hate human progress, they want to reverse the discovery of fire and the cooking of meat that led to the massive increase in brain size that itself enabled science, the industrial revolution and the transformation of human existence.
Their plan is to take most of us back to the Stone Age and ensure poverty and early death returns.
Don’t take your eye off the ball, be ready to fight.
“Climate emergency.”
It genuinely makes me laugh but can anyone explain what constitutes a ‘climate emergency?’
Perhaps it’s when some Aussie is tapping away at their keyboard of their old DOS computer and the computer breaks? CLI mate emergency?
That probably makes as much sense as any other explanation.
Hahaha! Very geeky joke mate.
“Battery storage is one option touted, but moving to all electric cars in short order will use up all the lithium and cobalt in the world. Not that it matters that none will be left for storing grid power, since the cost of this exercise is very silly to start with.”
Ever heard of sodium-sulfur batteries? Or even lithium-sulfur batteries? Or semi-solid flow batteries? It has ALWAYS been a bad bet to bet against human ingenuity.
https://www.freethink.com/entrepreneurship-innovation/flow-battery
In most of human history the technological developments come first, society then learns how to adapt change and benefit from that development. With covid and with climate change we have an invented political dogma and a petulant demand from the exponents of that dogma that technology will and must supply the answer. They are blind to any suggestion that the current technology on which their dogma depends cannot deliver or is actually damaging or dangerous.
For sure human technology could well come up with some innovative developments. But it has not yet come up with them yet and there is actually no climate emergency that requires us to sacrifice human society in advance of developing technological solutions that can deliver and work well for the whole of society.
A perfect description of the futility of the virtue signalling much loved by politicians and their lackeys.
So why are they relying on Middle Ages technology ….. ie windmills?
Skidmark producing an independent report?? About as independent as Witless and Unbalanced’s statistics on Rona
In what way is an Eco Zealot MP “independent?” This Report is an absolute farce.
Another brainwashed dreamer. There are 22 million gas boilers in the UK providing us with the best central heating system we ever had. Those old enough to remember nipping around to the shop to get a can of paraffin for our mothers know that all too well. I recall rolling up newspapers into a figure 8 and putting a bunch of kindling sticks on and then some coal from the bucket once the sticks were alight. ———I now sit in a cosy house with a thermostat that keeps us at about 20 degrees for the cold winter and then turn it off all summer. Yet these eco dimwits acting on their top down instructions about CO2, who would have difficulty explaining climate change dogma to five-year-olds are going to tell us all how to live and would leave us all back sitting in the cold at astronomical cost. Their stupid NET ZERO policies are estimated to be going to cost about one and half trillion and our impoverishment is just seen as collateral damage in this absurd war on CO2, which is even more absurd when you realise that this is not and never was about the climate. It is about the world’s wealth and resources and who gets to use them, and the silly west has decided it will go along with the idea that we have used up more than our fair share of the coal oil and gas in the ground and must STOP. This is ECO SOCIALISM. There is no climate emergency—–Wake up people
“One would have to conclude that the entire effort is either wholly unserious or breathtakingly incompetent.”
Reword as ‘One would have to conclude that the entire effort is wholly unserious, breathtakingly incompetent, or intentionally destructive of our energy system and way of life.’
As Neil Oliver has said, these plans are intended to prepare us not for green energy but for no energy.
An interview slot on the British Biased and Corrupt news channel is long overdue, Chris.
Skidmore has said he’ll stand down as an MP at the next GE. Good riddance. His undoubted extensive knowledge of windmill deployment in Plantagenet and Tudor times has served him well; no doubt he has already lined up a comfortable niche position where his qualifications in Modern History will be so useful.