The fear is being ramped up again as the World Health Organisation (WHO) warns of “concerning trends” for COVID-19 ahead of winter with “increasing deaths” as the new BA.2.86 ‘pirola’ variant spreads across the Northern Hemisphere. Oh no, there’s a cold-like virus spreading in the winter. Quick, suspend human life as we know it and cower in fear while adopting a preachy, sanctimonious tone with anyone who wants life to carry on.
Here’s the Express, in an article headed ‘WHO sounds major alarm over “concerning” Covid wave coming this winter as deaths soar’:
The UN health agency estimates that hundreds of thousands of people around the world are currently hospitalised with the virus. However, the true number could be much higher because many countries have stopped reporting Covid data.
“We continue to see concerning trends for COVID-19 ahead of the winter season in the Northern Hemisphere,” WHO Chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told an online press conference.
He added: “Deaths are increasing in some parts of the Middle East and Asia, intensive care unit admissions are increasing in Europe and hospitalisations are increasing in several regions.”
America has also seen a surge in cases as a new variant, designated BA.2.86, gains a foothold in the country as winter approaches.
According to a recent bulletin in Yale Medicine, the new variant has more than 30 mutations to its spike protein – located on the outer surface of a coronavirus – which helps it enter and infect human cells.
“Such a high number of mutations is notable,” infectious disease specialist Dr. Scott Roberts said.
“When we went from [Omicron variant] XBB.1.5 to [Eris] EG.5, that was maybe one or two mutations.
“But these massive shifts, which we also saw from Delta to Omicron, are worrisome.”
Schools across America are reinstating mask mandates in response to the surge in cases.
Kinterbish Junior High School in Alabama has asked all students, staff and visitors to start wearing face masks in classrooms and hallways “due to the slow rise of Covid cases in the area” in recent weeks.
Alabama’s Talladega City School district which is home to more than 1,700 students has also urged children and staff to wear masks, but stressed they are “encouraged but not required”.
And Maryland elementary school became embroiled in controversy this week after saying students must don tightly fitted N95 masks for 10 days, despite a smattering of cases.
The Telegraph’s coverage is, mercifully, more measured, with Sarah Knapton reporting that the UKHSA said there was no evidence that Pirola was more dangerous or would take over from the current variants circulating in Britain.
She adds that “data published this week from lab studies suggest that BA.2.86 may be less contagious and less able to evade the immune system than previously feared”, with “two independent labs at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, a teaching hospital of Harvard Medical School, [finding] that immune responses were comparable to or higher than that seen with current circulating variants”.
Nonetheless, the U.K. Government has announced that the autumn vaccine programme will be brought forward to September 11th as a “precautionary measure”, while UKHSA has urged those eligible for a booster vaccine to take up the offer. Should be good for sales.
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It’s clear to me that Ed Miliband is a much more important scientist than Newton or Einstein and David Lammy is a much greater intellectual than Shakespeare or Orwell. So I fully support the complete destruction of anything resembling education in our schools and universities and its replacement by propagandising which someone like Goebbels would envy.
To quote one of my favourite YouTubers, “David Lammy has the IQ of a pull-along duck!”
Is it really as high as that? But then it might be a cunning shield of his actual agenda. Probably not the good of Britain!
But is of less use…
The Scottish education system used to be one of the best in the world but it has been going downhill for decades thanks to leftist teaching union influence, culminating in the SNP’s introduction of its “Curriculum for Excellence”, which it is anything but.
Perhaps they are worried that if they teach too much history then someone might learn from it
Teaching English and European history to people who are later supposed to accept their eternal white guilt because there was really no difference between the Empire and the mythological Nazis except that it was even worse would obviously be counterproductive.
If the goal is to create a suitably malleable mass of future voters, these must remain uneducated in anything beyond what we’d call political opinions they’re supposed to accept as dogmas which are beyond questioning.
What, MORE at the centre?!
It gives a whole new meaning to the line from Yeats: “Things fall apart, the centre cannot hold”. If you overstuff the centre, everything at the increasingly remote edges will fall off the cliff.
I’m not sure Sir Keir Starmer is full of passionate intensity
In a marxo-fascist system the primary purpose of the education system is compliance training.
Students must unquestioningly accept the latest dogma. Independent thinking should be discouraged and, if necessary, penalized.
Educating the slaves beyond the basics is unnecessary. Adolph’s idea for the sub-aryan slave races was the minimum necessary for them to be able to perform simple manual labour for the master race.
Yep. Indoctrination not Education.
Time to end nationalised, statism, state owned education.
We are not smarter than our forbears.
I remember taking an exit high school exam (North America) from 1898. I did not score that well. I doubt today most 17 yr olds would have a prayer passing it.
Education deflation + grade inflation.
So, the story is basically Labour guys from Oxford recommends that Labour government use the opportunity to replace the curriculum with the Labour party manifesto because that’s more relevant to the world of today than mathematics or knowing about (doubtlessly ‘terribly white’) English monarchs of the past.
That’s basically the same story as the Essex police report just for education: Left-wing politicians extending their tentacles into all areas of society because they’re seriously convinced that their political opinions are really universal truths while everything else is as untrue and as it is evil.
The Civil Service is mostly OxBridge and have done their damnedest to run the country irrespective of government and electoral wishes. The Russians have recruited their spies from Oxford and Cambridge.
“England is perhaps the only great country whose intellectuals are ashamed of their own nationality.”
George Orwell
The top maybe all Oxbridge but the rest seem to be dolts. WFH; 4 day week ; no progression except increments of salary. Why do there seem to be few capable CS?
Oxbridge is long lost, and can’t be trusted – they’d sell anything, especially to China.. “For those who are in, the things that are in are out”. JW, Cantab
Didn’t Brown sell our Gold for Euros?
Yes teaching that the Earth is flat was also once part of the curriculum.
I guess they will also be blocking X (see article in this edition) in the UK and websites such as The Daily Sceptic because only the elite have the right to exchange ideas and think.
Education Endless Marxist Propaganda
As a chemistry teacher 2000-2020 i was made to teach / indoctrinate global warming etc and carbon capture as fact for OCR exams. I was well known for my sceptisim in the science dept.
I wonder what method of “carbon” capture was taught? The energy equations must have been interesting or perhaps too difficult! The process will produce more emissions than it removes unless wind and solar are free and infinite. Never mind!
I wonder how many parents are thinking of home schooling or partnering up with other parents to do this.
If I had children of school going age, I would seriously consider it.
As a retired Headteacher, may I compliment you on a wonderful book. I am a ministerial appointment as a Director to CCEA, the N.Ireland curriculum and exam board. I have frequently bemoaned the absence of any professional debate around the topic of “What is education for” and this, again as you remark, means the latest government or public hobby horse becomes the central issue. Our children are not being taught to read and count yet at board level we are spending our time debating what is appropriate and what age is age appropriate for sex education. Our Dept of Education is pressing ahead despite CASS and despite me repeatedly contesting the “scientifically accurate ” mantra. I have regularly quoted your views!
The answer to this question (Which age ...) is extremely simple: Sex is by definition private and hence, the government has absolutely no business in this area. Not at 5, not at 10 and not at 15, just never. That some half-ossified UN perverts believe differently would warrant paying more attention to their hobbies than they’d probably like instead of forcing children into not-so-covert sexting with adults.
and implemented via the inspection process. https://hughmccarthy.substack.com/p/brownstone-look-whos-in-the-classroom
and 70 + articles entitled “What are we doing to our children?” as I opposed government restrictions on children and, indeed, on all of us-based on the evidence and the data eg the youngest person to die OF Covid in N.Ireland was 38 , yet we closed schools, harmed children and no one is responsible.
The harm from the useless lies we were fed daily on TV by the supposed “scientists” and clearly didn’t have a clue was a crime against humanity. Why there are no prosecutions is completely insane.
Basically, they’re planning to ditch education for concentrated brainwashing. We should be grateful that their intentions are so clear …. so those who have them can properly educate their children themselves.
They have broken Universities and now they have nearly broken schools with their hard left rubbish. Neither subject is important in the big picture. It is all a game to the fools.
Just when you thought our children couldn’t become less educated. along comes the Wendolene-lookalike with a further round of dumbing down.
If I had a school aged child I would pull him or her out of any British school so fast their little head would be spinning!. This country is going downhill so fast it is frightening.
and Dr Tate’s article in action. Rousseau. Implemented via the inspection process-this is how it is done.
https://hughmccarthy.substack.com/p/brownstone-look-whos-in-the-classroom