Corroborated by three different ways of analysing U.K. population statistics (the official version, five-year and 10-year pre-Covid fatality percentage rates by month), two conclusions and one potentially relevant observation, become apparent.
First, the official Covid death toll (230,000) was overestimated by more than a factor of 2x (adjusted for dry tinder effects, the true figure was likely 95-105,000).
Second, Brits have continued to die at the same accelerated rate as during the first two years of Covid. There have been roughly 80,000 cumulative excess deaths in the 18 months since end-February 2022 (‘excess’ depends on the baseline used), but only 15,000 or so can be realistically attributed to Covid, leaving some 65,000 unexplained excess deaths (~7% of total annual fatalities).
The observation is that February 2022 was the date by when virtually the whole U.K. population had already been vaccinated, not once but twice (119 million vaccinations in a population of 67 million).
If multiple (> 2) vaccines have been suppressing, instead of enhancing, the natural T-cell immunity response, as some doctors are now arguing, it is a matter of utmost concern that there have now been 32 million additional ‘booster’ shots administered in the U.K. since this unknown killer first became apparent in the data.
New unknown killer
Former Blackrock executive Ed Dowd has highlighted that cardiovascular deaths in the 15-44 age group in England and Wales in 2021 and 2022 were not only on a steeply rising trend, but that the +40% jump (from eight per 100,000 in 2019 to 11 per 100,00 in 2022) is statistically alarming, to say the least. Yet the U.K. Office of National Statistics (ONS) points out that the U.K. age-standardised mortality rate in July 2023 was below the July five-year average (although the ONS does exclude 2020, 60% of Covid deaths occurred after that date). For the first time since June 2021, the leading cause of death was ischaemic heart disease (as opposed to dementia). However, the rate was 12% lower than the five-year average. So, does the U.K. have a mortality problem here or not?
Data inadequacy
The biggest issue we have is that the data are shockingly inadequate. Following Covid, the five-year averages have become abnormally volatile, even with the 2020 data excluded. After a material spike in mortality due to the pandemic, you would naturally expect deaths to be lower than trend, potentially disguising the sorts of new developments that Dowd claims to have identified. Covid era data was clearly unfit for purpose (unless that purpose was to deceive, discombobulate and control).
Cases & tests
For example, there was no adjustment or acknowledgement that ‘cases’ were not the same as infections (diagnoses) and were anyway clearly a function of the number of tests, which ranged from less than 10,000 per day at the height of the first wave, to 340,000 per day at the peak of Wave Two in January 2021, all the way up to 540,000 per day over Christmas 2022, before having now fallen back below 10,000 per day again since March 2023.
Hospitalisations
Hospitalisations are no better, because the data doesn’t measure patients hospitalised with suspected Covid, but rather patients within a week of hospitalisation that had, either before or since, contracted Covid. Since the main hot beds (excuse the pun) of Covid infection were the hospitals themselves (which also managed to have 10 times the case fatality rate of the wider community), hospitalisation data alone tell us very little.
The official death toll
Meanwhile, deaths data were muddied by being defined as ‘with’ Covid, rather than ‘from’ Covid which, combined with being a notifiable disease running rife through the hospitals, all but guaranteed it nightly headlines on the BBC. To date, the Covid death toll has officially reached 230,000, or 0.34% of the U.K. population. Prior to Covid, the annual U.K. death toll averaged about 0.898% of the population a year, equivalent to ~600,000 of the current population. Yet, since 2020, that annual death rate has risen +9.5% to 0.983%, but how much of this increase is due to Covid?
Disquiet about the reliability of data on tests, ‘cases’ and hospitalisations aside, according to the U.K. Government data on deaths, which are (only a little) harder to fudge, there were two main waves of Covid (see Chart One below), prior to winter 2021, when the disease went endemic. Officially at least, Wave One, which ran from March-June 2020, claimed 56,000 lives. Shockingly, Wave Two (October 2020 to March 2021), which might have been two separate waves overlapping with each other, took closer to 94,000 souls in just six months. Then, after ~150,000 deaths in Year One, the death toll eased back substantially in Year Two (July 2021-June 2022) to ~50,000.
Chart One: Daily U.K. deaths with COVID-19 on the certificate
U.K. Government figures show that since June 2022 (pandemic Year Three) the U.K. annual mortality rate has moderated still further to ~25,000 (see Chart Two below). At least, that is the official story. A terrible pandemic, gradually brought to heel by a fast-acting, determined and brave bureaucracy, albeit one that denied personal freedoms whilst brooking no dissension, nor even dialogue. However, whether you wholly subscribe to this narrative or not, it seems certain a more robust calculation of excess mortality might better illuminate what sometimes comes across as an almost intentionally opaque picture.
Chart Two: U.K. cumulative Covid deaths now equal 230,115 (September 28th, 2023)
Excess deaths
The issue is starkly revealed when we compare Covid deaths, which should all be ‘excess’, with the actual excess deaths data, which should all be Covid. However, after 2020 (Year One), this is not the case at all. Initially (Year Two; March 2021 to February 2022 inclusive), deaths officially tagged as ‘Covid’ by the authorities (see black line on Chart Three below), far outstripped excess deaths. 2021 was the year of ‘Project Fear’ when, although the threat was diminishing, the excessive use of testing, and the very low polymerase chain reaction (PCR) threshold required to determine a positive case, led to a massive overestimation of both the disease’s prevalence and its associated fatalities. From having been in line with each other as late as January 2021, by the end of pandemic Year Two (end-February 2022), cumulative Covid deaths (187,557) were officially ~41,000 higher than cumulative excess deaths (146,886). Furthermore, almost all this overstatement had occurred during Year Two.
Chart Three: Estimated U.K. excess deaths during COVID-19
A new threat
Covid deaths coming in materially above excess deaths in Year Two merely meant we were overestimating Covid fatalities. However, something much more worrying has been taking place since end-Year Two of the pandemic. Instead of excess deaths coming in below Covid deaths, as we would expect, the opposite has been happening; and at considerable scale. Since April 18th 2022 to end-August 2023, there have officially been 34,350 Covid deaths in the U.K. (official Covid deaths are ‘with’ not ‘from’ and have tended to be chronically overestimated by almost a factor of two since testing began in earnest after Year One). Yet officially, excess deaths are almost 100,000.
Something unidentified, but clearly not Covid, seems to have killed upwards of 65,000 Brits over the last 18 months; and at a monthly rate (~4,000) wholly in line with the severity of Covid itself.
A deeper dive
The above figures come from charts available from Our World in Data and demand closer investigation, especially since taking deviations from the rolling five-year average, as the ONS does, is not a good idea after a pandemic; whilst then arbitrarily ignoring 40% of that same pandemic is hardly the most robust strategy either. We can get a more detailed analysis by looking at monthly deaths in England and Wales for the five years pre-Covid (2015-19 inclusive), and dividing these by the estimated total population, to derive a monthly expected percentage death rate. This ranges from a low of 0.067% in August/September to a high of 0.0965% in January, when the elderly are at their most vulnerable to the cold weather, chronic lack of vitamin D and the stressor of annual flu. These monthly expected percentage mortality rates for England and Wales can then be scaled up and compared to the actual U.K. monthly death data from 2020 onwards to estimate excess deaths. This methodology merely confirms the story above, whilst painting a very different picture to the one espoused by the official narrative.
Pandemic Year One, Wave One
The first wave of Covid to hit the U.K., albeit mercifully brief, was shocking in its intensity (the official 34,000 U.K. excess deaths in April 2020 alone were three times higher than any month before or since, though excess deaths were over 48,000). Lasting barely two and a half months, from end-March 2020 to early June, Wave One officially claimed 57,000 lives. This tallies closely with the gross excess deaths number over the same period of 61,000. Sadly, a large number of these Wave One deaths were in the old-aged, hospitalised cohort, who were packed off back to the care homes to free up hospital beds which, ironically, were never needed. Many of those who then died in the care homes were not officially recognized as Covid deaths. Testing too had yet to be rolled out into the wider community, including care homes, so by end-June only six million (2.8%) out of an eventual 213 million tests had been done. Of these, 5%, or 285,000 cases, mainly hospital patients and staff, were positive, of which 21% died. By end-2021 in contrast, rampant testing, set to low positive PCR thresholds, was turning up 180,000 ‘cases’ a day, causing the case fatality rate (CFR) to plummet from 21% to below 0.08%, roughly the same as the flu (see Chart Three below).
Chart Three: U.K. COVID-19 case fatality rate (CFR, %)
Dry tinder
Nevertheless, in the run up to Wave One, there had been substantially fewer deaths (i.e., negative excess deaths) thanks to warmer winters and a benign couple of back-to-back flu seasons, particularly compared to the winters of 2014-15 and 2017-18. There is ample evidence of a significant U.K. ‘dry tinder’ effect built up over these prior two years (2018-20) during which, in the absence of bad flu outbreaks, there were ~21,000 fewer cumulative deaths than might otherwise have been expected. Adjusted for this ‘dry tinder’ effect, net Covid deaths in Wave One (i.e., those we can assume were due specifically to Covid rather than just extreme fragility) were much lower than the headline figure and marginally above 40,000: still awful, but nevertheless 30% less than the official Wave One Covid death figure of 57,000.
Year One, Wave Two/Three
Waves Two and Three, which started in September 2020, when Brits brought the Spanish variant back from their summer vacations before packing their kids back off to school to spread it amongst their friends, subsequently morphed into a secondary ‘Alpha’ winter wave originating from Kent which, between them, lasted until the end of February 2021. Owing to both the reportedly very high transmissibility and virulence of Alpha, Christmas 2020 was cancelled. However, during Wave Two testing topped 450,000 per day and, largely owing to the very low positive settings on the PCR machines, 3.8 million ‘cases’ were identified.
Whilst officially at least, this was the deadliest wave, with 95,000 people dying with Covid, because of so many positives, the ‘case’ fatality rate (CFR) dropped 10-fold to 2.5%. Yet this was also when Project Fear was gathering pace, so it comes as no surprise to learn that there were only 49,400 excess deaths during Wave Two/Three, similar to Wave One and only about half the official 95,000 estimate. This lower figure meant the implied CFR was now 1.3% (already a 16-fold better outcome than Wave One). Not that you’d have been alerted to these improved survival rates from watching the BBC News, of course.
Year Two
By pandemic Year Two (March 2021 to February 2022), Covid had become endemic and, instead of the prior big waves of infections and deaths, the official data show a steady trend of ~150 deaths a day, nevertheless sufficient to not only feed the insatiable appetite of the nightly BBC News, but to rack up a further 36,000 deaths, from 14.8 million ‘cases’, courtesy of 129 million tests (the CFR now being 0.24%, an 86-fold improvement on Wave One). Yet with Project Fear now in full swing and sceptical voices being cancelled, the somewhat inconvenient fact that excess deaths over this period barely totalled 11,000 (an implied CFR of 0.07%, or a 280-fold improvement on Wave One) seems to have escaped the attention of both the authorities and the mainstream media. Winter deaths (December 21st – February 22nd) were, in fact, 670 less than normal.
Year Three+
This was not all that evaded the authorities’ notice, however. Having over-estimated Covid deaths in Year Two by what appears to have been a factor of over 3x, an even bigger miscalculation, but in the opposite direction, seems to have been made with the most recent 18 months’ of data March 2022-August 2023. The Government’s official statistics show 42,150 cumulative deaths ‘with’ Covid, an average daily rate of 75 deaths, or about half the rate of Year Two. Given their tendency to exaggerate Covid mortality by a factor of 2x in 2020 rising to 3x in 2021, the true figure of deaths from Covid is probably below 15,000 and perhaps as low as 10,000. Compare that to a bad flu year pre-Covid, which could account for an additional 25,000 excess deaths.
Yet excess deaths in the eighteen months of Year Three+ were 78,575. If only 10-15,000 of these excess deaths can reasonably be attributed to Covid, then something else must have been responsible for killing 65,000-70,000 Brits over the last 18 months. This corroborates the 65,000+, non-Covid excess deaths figure we derived from the official statistics too. Yet on a topic this vital, it is important to apply more than just belt and braces.
Contrary to the practice of my namesake, Professor Neil Ferguson, it is necessary to consider the sensitivity of any model to its starting assumptions. The five-year period leading up to the outbreak of Covid, despite being the conventional baseline, was notable for not one but two bad flu seasons (2014-15 and 2017-18), which will have lifted the bar for ‘excess’ deaths. However, if we use the 10-year average monthly death data prior to Covid to smooth out this effect, we end up with higher numbers as expected, of course, but nevertheless the same clear message.
10-year average baseline
Wave One – Official death toll: 57,000. Excess deaths: 63,000, adjusted for dry tinder: 47,700.
Year One, Waves Two-Three – Official toll: 95,000. Excess deaths: 58,000 = a +64% overstatement.
Year Two – Official death toll: 35,700. Excess deaths: 19,400 = an +84% overstatement.
Year Three+ – Official death toll: 41,700. Excess deaths: 90,000 = a -54% understatement.
Given that even using the 10-year baseline, Covid deaths have been overstated by about a factor of +75% since 2020, Year Three deaths from, as opposed to with, Covid are unlikely to have been more than 25,000 at most (this is a higher nominal number because the hurdle for ‘excess’ is lower), implying once again that those excess deaths not explained by Covid have been in the region of 65,000, thus corroborating what we found using both the five-year average monthly death rates and the official HM Government statistics.
Conclusion
Therefore, while Covid fatalities may have been all but eradicated, there have nevertheless been 80,000-90,000 excess U.K. deaths in the eighteen months since February 2022 (to August 2023). If only 10,000-15,000 of them can reasonably be blamed on Covid, who or what is killing the remaining 65,000? No matter how you look at it, this new, unseen and unacknowledged threat is now killing ~4,000 Brits a month, roughly the same rate that Covid was killing during 2020-21. Yet, instead of broadcasting nightly death tolls and locking down the economy, along with any and all dissenting voices, this time there has been complete radio silence. Is this because the cause of death is inextricably tied up with taking medical advice from politicians, rather than medics? Worse, because this new killer is unlikely to be a new viral pathogen, it is also not likely to mutate into a more transmissible, but less virulent, variant over time. In short, until and unless identified and then restrained, this new killer could be here to stay.
James Ferguson is the Founding Partner of MacroStrategy, where this analysis was first published.
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Rip it off, yeah!
‘Covid passports’ for pubs coming to Wales
Covid passes may be used to keep pubs open at Christmas – BBC News
Passports macht frei
Open for me
But not for thee
The Indians who let Drakeford dance away at their Diwali Disco seemed to like him, they let him go unharmed.
What’s Impfen Macht Frei in Welsh?
Mae brechu’n rhyddhau.
Or, in better Welsh, celwydd noeth – a big fat lie.
Welsh is unusual in that the word for Big Fat Liar is Drakeford.
Perhaps the quicker this is brought in, the quicker it will bring things to a head.
Only if it’s resisted. There’s been no sign of that thus far.
Can’t help but agree. This has got to play out fully for people to see how dark it is. And it’s going to get very dark. And many STILL won’t WANT to see it but they’ll have no choice. And then they’ll be left with only their conscience to decide where they go next.
The accomoanying covvimap shows ‘cases’ in my county just over the 400 mark Last week it was well over 600.
It’s called ‘rising numbers’.
“It appeared that there had even been demonstrations to thank Big Brother for raising the chocolate ration to twenty grams a week. And only yesterday […] it had been announced that the ration was to be reduced to twenty grams a week. Was it possible that they could swallow that, after only twenty-four hours? Yes, they swallowed it. […] The eyeless crature at the other table swallowed it fanatically. passionately, with a furious desire to track down, denounce, and vaporize anyone who should suggest that last week the ration had been thirty grams. Syme, too-in some more double complex way, involving doublethink-Syme, swallow it. Was he, then, alone in the possession of a memory?”
― Orwell George, 1984
Should read
“Pubs to be used to enforce introduction of vax passports via vax compliance. “.
Surely the BBC headline reads:
“Covid passes will be used to close pubs for good this Christmas.”
As we all know, even the injections don’t provide any protection so we can be damn sure that a bloody ‘phone app won’t be of any use.
The pub landlords and restaurant owners should stand together and refuse to comply.
Pubs can be closed down by local authorities using licensing regulations which would be much more difficult to defend in Court than Covid laws of dubious legality.
Segregation passports, so evil they don’t even hide it now
As with previous interventions they are picking on pubs because most people do not use them regularly and many look down their noses at people who do.
There is a YouTube channel in which a pleasant young chap takes us on twenty minute walking tours of ordinary areas of Victorian London. At least twice in each presentation he will say
“Now this building used to be a pub . . .”
We can expect many more of those shortly.
Archbishop Vigano Appeals for a Worldwide Anti-Globalist Alliance
https://rumble.com/vpelhb-breaking-exclusive-archbishop-vigano-appeals-for-a-worldwide-anti-globalist.html
Is this the same study that the Dr Hillary quoted this morning on GMB as showing the huge benefit of masks?
GMB are amongst the worst with him and Sridhar pushing their nonsense every day. Long since stopped watching!
“Sridhar pushing her nonsense every day”
‘Hammer of the Scots!’
Have their been studies in Luton, Dewsbury, Rochdale, Burnley, Rotherham and Bradford so see the effects of wearing a burka/niqab? Infection rates down in those towns? If face masks work, so must a niqab, eh?
Anyone engaged in such a study would be denounced as racist.
Well, it is a “face covering”. Mind you I’ve seen face masks under “face coverings”!
If so, two different interpretations of the same study clearly demonstrate there is still no clear evidence that masks are effective, No study anywhere has come down heavily on the side of the benefit of masks. The best they have ever come out with is ‘they may reduce infection’ which is another way of saying ‘they may not’. The last time I looked the government’s own website was very vague on the subject saying masks might be beneficial in certain settings. This is nowhere near strong enough for requests let alone mandates.
It goes back to yesterday’s conversation, masks are solely about gauging the public mood for compliance in general.
It’s a clever ploy since nobody can complain that wearing a mask is complicated, it’s inexpensive although some choose to make them a fun but costly fashion accessory and it rarely inhibits normal daily activity.
Equally there are plenty of easy get out clauses to avoid the government being sued but at the risk of opprobrium from the Lockdown conscious or Covid Wary’
“I wear my mask to protect others, including uou”. Bareface-shaming.
Christmas is coming,
For what will you ask?
Please kindly Santa,
Give me a mask!
There’s something so jockstrap about them, isn’t there ..
Men with them on…looks like they’re wearing their wife’s knickers across their face.
Nearly opened up Photoshop just then but decided against it.
Next year they’ll be selling ankle tags that play Christmas carols.
Uptick from me but
+ 
= 
There are two worlds out there. My weekend was spent in busy pubs and similar places where not a mask was to be seen yet supermarkets (at least in my area) are still a mecca for the dear old muzzles. I often wonder how many wear them or don’t wear them depending where they go. Wear them in shops but not in pubs / restaurants. Mind boggling.
Face nappy wearing is well down on trains now – and they were one of the worst places for it until relatively recently. Even Northern Rail’s persistent passive-aggressive announcements are clearly not stopping more and more people from abandoning the muzzle!
There’s an ad on YouTube about the post lockdown reintroduction of a Stagecoach inter-region service in which nobody is wearing masks which I found strange.
Most people on.local Stagecoach buses still seem to wear them.
In a supermarket you’re anonymous, so you can’t be ridiculed or called out as irrational, and you’re just a fish in a large school. In a pub, you might have to face criticism and disapproval from those who know who you are. It’s about identity and being responsible for that position.
The may / may not debate is only even relevant in a theoretical untried situation. Fact is that now we’ve had 18 months of enforced muzzling on and off in many countries around the world, and in not a single case can muzzle mandates be seen in the stats – it’s literally impossible to tell whether there was one, and when it was enacted / removed (and the same applies to lockdowns, antisocial distancing and other vicious measures too, of course.
Therefore the only reasonable conclusion can be that in practice face nappies don’t work – all the Maskivist ‘modelling’ in the world can’t explain why something which they claim works has no measurable impact anywhere!
I agree. I have no doubt whatsover that over the past eighteen months extreme efforts will have been made by WHO and world governments to prove conclusively that masks work but they’ve repeatedly come up with zilch.
I would like to demonstrate in Dr. Hillary’s face that masks are no better at keeping out Covid than my underwear and trousers are at keeping in farts.
Hillary said a publican who objected to lockdown should stick to pulling pints, conveniently ignoring that lockdown shut his pub.
I remember that telly screen encounter, the Dr. came over as an arrogant prick.
The publican had come to public attention for for publicly berating a politician, to his face, about the effects of lockdown on his business.
Something to do with this?
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/nov/17/wearing-masks-single-most-effective-way-to-tackle-covid-study-finds
i haven’t been able to read it as my iPad won’t let me! Probably recognised a crap piece of journalism in a crap newspaper and said “computer says no”.
It’s utterly bizarre that they can make claims like this when there’s well over a year of worldwide stats showing absolutely no benefit – if muzzle mandates are completely invisible in the stats (which they are), any claim that muzzles are ‘the single most effective way to tackle covid’ should be treated with the contempt it deserves!
Tell me something I didn’t know.
But but just imagine if we didn’t wear masks cases would be through the roof… they say.
The frankly perverse obsession with these things is purely to do with signalling ones virtue.
And of those that do why do they wear some home made piece of filth? Surely an FFP3 one would be better?
Nutters.
There’s a lot of elephant trumpet reactions going on with covid.
People keep on telling me that it is important that they play the trumpet all the time because it scares off the elephants, and when you respond that there are no elephants they say ‘that shows its working’.
This is actually rather a difficult ‘logic’ to overcome; I’m sure that some people will be wearing masks to the shops etc for the rest of their lives.
Yes and it’s simply because for the vast majority of the public it’s easier to go along with consensus that to ask the tricky questions and find that everything is based on flawed logic. Which is why there is so little critical resistance to these measures.
“…some people will be wearing masks to the shops etc for the rest of their lives”
Those to whom I’d suggest such an idea a year ago, who’d then dismiss it as ridiculous, now react with a shrug and a sigh inside their muzzles.
Saw a ‘new’ dentist yesterday; new for me anyway as my previous dentist had packed in his practice last year because of the pressures. My new torturer seemed helpful and pleasant enough but she had no face at all. Disturbing.
No virus either is there?
Yet they’re still a legal requirement in Wales.
There never has been any scientific evidence that they offer anything but the most puny of protection, but governments around the world have created laws to force people to wear them. It is rather weird.
No, FACE COVERINGS (not masks) are compulsory. Showing it’s there to keep the scare going not for health reasons.
Scotchland too, plus vaxxports for a “vaccine” that doesn’t prevent the spread.
It’s only weird if you assume that the goal is public health rather than public submission.
Not only do they provide no protection they become a nice little petri dish for all the stuff the wearer has been unable to exhale properly.
There’s a good reason why we cough and masks prevent that.
In all these studies there is never any discussion about the basic policy *which is the wrong way around*.
Everybody must wear a mask to protect who exactly, and why can’t that person be protected just by wearing a better mask themselves? That way it has a fighting chance of working due to physics – a filter works better under suction rather than under pressure because there is less likelihood it will leak
The whole thing is backward at the most basic level, which means the enterprise must be about tapping into a weakness in the human psyche, not fixing a physical problem.
We’re all in this together that’s why….
You’re right of course. If said individual is so terrified that they need a mask then surely staying at home would be “safer”. Then I can carry on with no mask.
If said individual has a requirement to be out but is still terrified then they could wear a respirator or an ffp3 mask and goggles. Then I can carry on with no mask.
The problem is that a certain group expect everyone else to protect them which is the definition selfish. Yet as the non mask wearers, we are deemed selfish for not protecting others!!!
Totally backward!
or out yourself as even more paranoid than average and wear this
%3Ffit%3Dscale
TV drama seems to largely ignore the masks, implying that they don’t exist and that the world is just as it was in 2019. The only drama that has embraced masks is Grey’s Anatomy and they wear things just like this guy and oh my goodness, talk about killing off your drama – it seems so weird.
It does make me think about what it might actually mean at a deeper level, to blank off people’s faces … it’s pretty shocking when you think about it and shocking that so few people do consider the impact of this on society.
Was noting that very phenomenon last night watching big Apple+ drama Invasion. It’s like they’re representing a different world isn’t it. Don’t know whether to see this as a source of optimism or not; imagine if they all wore masks upon leaving the house like that fucking nauseating HSBC advert with sell out and traitor to humanity Richard Ayoade.
Oh that one make my
blood boil – quick, where’s the remote!
Would be rather fun if he suffocated. We could all have a laugh then.
But you have to protect the NHS. Apparently.
Have you noticed that those who smugly claim that ‘we’re all in this together’ are the financially-secure middle-classes who are least affected? Don’t hear many people in the hospitality industry making that sort of comment. Can’t imagine why not…
yes I apologise for repeating myself… they’re face coverings, not even masks!
Everybody wants to be Hannibal Lecter! Or, with the black masks, a mysterious Ninja warrior!
I’ve looked at a few recent (November 2021) airport videos on YouTube and there you see the extent of this utter madness. A sea of face masks. All destined for landfill, the oceans, or to be hung from trees or thrown on the ground just about everywhere.
Buying shares in companies that make/distribute face masks could be profitable!
Whereabouts in the world is most of the PPE manufactured? (Rhetorical question)
China is my guess. I have not made an investigation into this. A company in Finland makes face masks – TehoFilter in Sievi. There is a company in Finland that makes the material for the masks (Ahlstrom-Munksjö in Tampere) and a company that makes them, or at least packs them, in Hanko.
I haven’t bought any face masks, my collection consists of those I’ve grabbed where they’ve been offered, such as at my workplace, at my workplace’s private health centre, and at Toyota where we’ve had our car serviced. I’ve been fortunate to be able to avoid wearing a face mask most of the time – just for the shops, health centre, and at Heathrow airport last January (and on the two planes I took, and at Amsterdam airport).
There are one or two people on this forum who claim you don’t need to wear a face mask at an airport, and just have to pretend to wear it on the plane. I’m sure you can get away with the odd moment, when no-one is looking! But if I were going to fly anywhere, I wouldn’t be setting off to any airport without at least one face mask with me.
I’ve used a face mask in the shops when shopping with my partner as she really believes in The Virus, and is also worried about people looking at her if she isn’t wearing one. I don’t use the ‘hand sanitiser’ and she has given up on nagging me about washing my hands when we get home. After 20 months of not having caught ‘Covid’ I think even she is coming to realise it’s really not a big danger.
Anyway, ‘Vaxx Passes’ have already been introduced for domestic use within Finland – and the same is coming for Norway, Denmark and Sweden. Not very restrictive now, but, of course, the screws can be tightened down at any moment.
There was an early video showing the cheap pale blue masks being made in a sweatshop in Vietnam or The Philippines by heavily sweating individuals in highly unsanitary conditions with raw materials and finished product scattered around randomly including on the filthy floor.
well you see they backed themselves into a corner at the start by all coming out and saying masks don’t protect you and of course anyone sensible was also pointing out that even the packaging says the same thing.
So then some genius came up with the brilliant but highly illogical idea that masks only blocked things in one direction and therefore they were to stop others getting infected.
Hey presto, not only do we have a useless policy but by claiming it’s to protect others people will be shamed into doing it because who would want to be the person seen to be wanting to infect everyone else.
There are so many ways that masks don’t work.
Even if they were 100% effective when worn, as soon as you move it away from your mouth it’s not working.
So at a very simple level, if you’re wearing a 100% efficient mask 10% of the time, 90% of the time it’s not working.
The simplest way to visualise this would be to think of a 100% efficient mask as holding your breath. All good as long as you’re not breathing…
Don’t talk about not breathing on Twitter btw, it’ll get you banned for 24 hours.
When the Govt first decided to have a crisis, I was doubtful about masks so started looking. I found a study by the University of Alabama from 2010, so unaffected by Covid politics, that wanted to know how masks dealt with dust and pollutants. It was sophisticated in measurement and tested a surgical mask, and cloth covering, a DIY dust mask and an N95.
It found that the masks stopped the following percentages;
Dust mask 6.1%
Bandana 11.3%
Surgical mask 33.3%
N95 89%
Average particle size was 1-6 nanometres
The report did mention in passing that viruses such as coronaviruses have a particle size of 0.125nm or smaller.
So, I was immediately aware they were effectively useless, without all the leaking and constant fidgeting. The Govt were clearly in no doubt and never insisted, because you didn’t have to prove a reason not to wear, but was entirely about showing compliance.
Try getting the BBC/Sky/ITV to explain this to the masses….
Not in a million years, which is the tragedy of the whole shit show.
I’m still waiting for the panorama uncovering the covid un truths…
Micrometres?
A surgeon explained that if he absolutely had to cough during an operation he would face directly at the patient because most of the bad stuff was expelled through the sides of his mask.
A pre-covid study showed that there was no difference in the final outcome whether surgical teams wore masks or did not.
FDA Asks Federal Judge to Grant it Until the Year 2076 to Fully Release Pfizer’s COVID-19 Vaccine Data
https://aaronsiri.substack.com/p/fda-asks-federal-judge-to-grant-it
Wonder WHY? Something big to hide????
Still talking about the benefits of face masks? Wasn’t this thoroughly discussed back in March 2020? And now it’s November 2021 and we’re still on the same subject?
Round and round we go.
It’s irrelevant if face masks work or not, if they are mandatory to be worn in shops in Wales and Scotland, that’s all there is to it. You can always say you’re ‘exempt’, can’t you? Problem solved!
Try saying ‘exempt’ at an airport or on a plane/ferry/Eurostar/long distance train in Italy or France, and see how that goes down.
Problem solved when you’re the only human being, surrounded by a heaving sea of faceless zombies?
Hahahahaha.
I’ve never worn a mask in an airport and have travelled a few times during the pandemic. In the UK no one cares anymore. On the flight they don’t even say anything as long as it’s under your neck so you’re at least pretending
Seeing is believing. I’ll let people know my experience next time I fly. Having a face mask ‘under your neck’ counts as wearing one, in my book.
Yup did six hours on a plane with it under my chin. No problems or complaints from the aircrew
From memory just before the first mask mandate. Dictionary definition
‘To wear’ = to have about ones person
I agree with your last point. I’ve never worn one in the UK, but in France in early summer 2020, the armed police would target anyone unmuzzled in their muzzled city zones. So I just wore it around my neck until seeing police, as most of the locals did. At St Pancras, UK immigration “randomly” selected me being the only non-muzzled (and wearing an anti-lockdown t-shirt), but their intimidation failed because I had avoided their little trap by retaining my photocopied QR docket provided on the French-side (which many had binned). They seemed most disappointed, but it made me feel happy that the queue had seen how powerless they were to take any action against me.
Separately in late summer 2020 I had to wear a muzzle in all sorts of settings in Europe because the fascism was much more established. On long distance trains, armed police were getting on at stations to remove any filthy unmuzzled.
At least I know how to deal with the pathetic UK attempts at enforcement, thankfully the pig dictator hadn’t got the balls to do what most of Europe was doing.
An unexpected benefit of life with a government composed of idle, incompetent Eton schoolboys interested solely in laughing at the great unwashed with rampant profiteering and Bullingdon club antics.
Competent, efficient, industrious government = Population poisoned weekly and muzzled permanently.
Whichever way, we’re cornered.
Bully Boys Club. All people you wish to avoid on dark alleys.
I don’t know what your photocopied ‘QR docket’ means – at what stage it was photocopied (and why?), and what it was for?
The ‘environmentalists’ are strangely quiet when it comes to the billions of face masks being manufactured – apart from the littering the environment, it must use a fair amount of ‘fossil fuels’ to manufacture them and distribute them. What a waste of the Earth’s resources.
Where is the Little Goblin of Doom when you need her?
It was early on where they had introduced the passenger locator forms. If you flashed your phone screen at the departure border staff they would give you a printed QR code. Only problem was that they were all photocopies of the same QR code that had been hastily cut out by hand. It was a detailed QR that if real would have contained a lot of data. I wish I had scanned it to see what it really contained – it was probably something like “Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet…”.
Obviously they had assessed the intelligence of the sheeple and decided that they were too stupid to understand that all the QR codes were the same.
Many of them were left on the train at St Pancras and they were demanded from the people that they “randomly” selected. It was just more pointless theatrics to make sure everyone knew there was an emergency and they were doing “stuff” about it.
Is this real? Presumably a 20th generation (say) photocopied QR code would start reading “Looremsch iphshurmndulllor shitammetsch…”
Great to check this out but I enjoy not owning a pocket policeman phone.
The government has brought the discussion back into play.
Just yesterday bozo left No.10 wearing a mask to get to his Prime Ministerial car.
It’s all theatre.
Meanwhile out in Guardian land
The article references the BMJ but there is no link to the actual paper.
I expect they have cherry picked data to deliver the results they wanted, which seems to count as “scientific research” these days.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/nov/17/wearing-masks-single-most-effective-way-to-tackle-covid-study-finds
Unfortunately it is this bent research that our Government and its corrupt advisors will take as gospel.
They use this research because it backs them up.
Actually, given their diet of lies I don’t know why they bother. A statement backed up by garbage research is still a lie.
Nowhere in that piece is anything said of the problems caused by obliterating peoples’ faces. Nowhere do journalists ask the reason why many do not, will not, wear the fucking things – or like Pig Dictator and his henchmen, rip them off whenever they forget the cameras are on. Why do MPs remove their muzzles when standing up speaking in Westminster?
Worth repeatedly asking; barely worth answering.
and that’s why all those places that still have strict mask mandates have very few covid cases. oh wait…
Boris nearly died of Covid. How can you be so cruel?
I took out an onion and cried.
A while back, they were saying 92%.
Take a card. Any card.
I wonder if the timing of the Guardian article is concidence?
More lies from the Groan.
Here is the study: https://www.bmj.com/content/375/bmj-2021-068302.
It is infuriating. Here in the US, masks and NPI’s are almost entirely partisan. For those of us who just want our lives back, bunk studies like this are used to enforce social distancing in blue states. It doesn’t matter that the researchers are using a bunch of old observational studies from the Spring and Summer of 2020 in which seasonality and preexisting immunity were entirely discounted. They just cherry pick studies that give them the conclusions they want despite the fact that none of those observations have held up.
In my son’s place of work (Wilco’s in Halesowen, West Midlands) he reckons that among the customers, the maskateers are now less than 50%.
Must be time for another mandate then. The people are insufficiently fearful.
Spread the word that the Chinese spray their masks with The Virus when they are manufacturing them. That might put a few people off using them? Pre-infected. Great way of spreading a bio-weapon!
The authors of the report may inadvertently missed one very useful aspect of mask-wearing: Mask-wearing among the population illustrates the wearer’s compliance with government directives, their continuing fear and acquiescence indicates the success of the Nudge (Fear & Propaganda) Unit, and nicely continues the deteriorating health of a large part of the population through increased bacterial infection and oxygen reduction.
That’s not a very useful aspect. That’s the main purpose.
I’ve not read the study – so the following comment may be completely wrong – please correct me if this is the case. . . .
As I understand it, the remit of the study was to review the evidence regarding the benefit of masks at preventing the spread of the virus. That’s only half the story. There are an increasing number of studies (some published here on DS) that suggest there could be harms incurred by those who wear a mask for prolonged periods. When one takes this into consideration, it’s clear to me that there are no net benefits to masks at all, and the net loss could be very substantial indeed – especially if the psychological impacts of mask wearing are thrown into the mix.
had a few doc appointments in the last few days, problem being lack of hearing and each time have had to explain that I need to lip read or just can’t hear, glad to say the masks including the doc’s were removed. Deadly pandemic, no, visual control, yes
Wow. Hang on. Isn’t the Cato Institute a deep-state idea-laundering asset? What’s going on here?
Personally, I did my research and come to the conclusion that there was absolutely no benefit in wearing a face-nappy and since day I never wore one and the longer this nonsense went on the more convinced I became that mask-wearing seemed to be little more than a psychological trick with which to increase public fear and coerce people to conform and adhere to all the daft rules – for me mask wearing became political theatre to control the masses and the masses fell for it hook, line and sinker.
Now I think there is nothing more depressing than the sight of people who are still wearing their flippin masks – its the equivalent seeing grown mature adults still sucking there thumbs – its ridiculous.
Ditch the mask and get rid of those stupid plastic face shields too.
That battle (but not the war) has been lost. It would not matter who or even which authoritative body (plural bodies even) made UK public announcements that masks do not work or actually cause diseases – the sheep have absorbed the previous message too deeply and some will continue to mask up for the rest of their lives. Time to stop bothering and move on to more serious matters of concern UNLESS a new mask mandate is announced without self- exemption.
Benefit was not the object of mask mandates.
They are designed to get people to eat shit and say it tastes delicious, exactly what they have done.
This is a review/meta analysis of dozens of already existing studies.
Just as the BMJ/Monash/Edinburgh one which comes to the very opposite conclusion, peddled by the Guardian today, is.
There is as such zero new evidence in both.
They can both be summarized as such:
Biased garbage in, weighted as per ones bias, desired garbage result out.
Anyone with an IQ above room temperature KNOWS that masks have zero positive benefit here but many negative side effects.
Anyone living in the real world KNOWS that people do not wear masks properly, exacerbating their negative side effects and rendering lab studies totally unrealistic and invalid.
Anyone aware of Swedish schools and their non-existant case, transmission and death rates KNOWS that masks haven’t and cannot have made any positive difference elsewhere, only negative ones.
Sadly, most people therefore can be classified as having an IQ below room temperature, not living in the real world and being unaware of Swedish schools.
In particular, politicians, ‘journalists’, ‘public health’ professionals, scientismcists and ‘doctors’ aka quacks.
“politicians, ‘journalists’, ‘public health’ professionals, scientismcists and ‘doctors’ aka quacks” Ah, those at the top of the tree in these “professions” know very well they are telling Big Lies. They very much live in the real world.
From the paper ‘They are concerned by the lack of interest in getting to the truth on masks, putting it down to the widespread public commitment to masking policies making the scientific endeavour politically fraught.’ Applies to all NPIs.
From what people have written on this site, I think the face nappy wearing in UK and Florida is very similar. Despite there being no State enforcement, about 50% still wear them inside any public area. Doubtful if these people will ever stop now.
Depressed this morning as its only 2 weeks before we fly back to the prison state that is France. Dreading what we will find there as ‘cases’ are going up substantially so all the NPIs will be rolled out again for Xmas. No doubt about the conditioning of ‘prison’. When you are ‘in’ you get used to confinement. When you escape you realise what freedom feels like, but the reinternment is going to feel worse. To a greater or lesser extent this psychological ‘warfare’ has effected everyone. They are changing the way we think, behave and react , often without us appreciating it.
The slightly worrying thing in all of this Covid shite, and especially the denigration of the un-jabbed is that I saw a poll that said 58% of the British public supports measures against the pure-bloods. Whilst most polls can be taken with a pinch of salt, I’m sure there is a rather large portion of the population who would be quite happy to go full camps and ovens for us.
can we start calling vaccinated people muggles?
The same British public that claim to be concerned about Climate Calamity but which only 10% say they are prepared to pay to do anything about it.
What has the effectiveness or not of masks got to do with this legislation? It is purely a power exercise by the elite medical activists to see how far they can push their control.
https://brownstone.org/articles/do-masks-reduce-risk-of-covid19-by-53-how-about-80/
As I indicated below.
On the crap Guardian/BMJ 53% mask efficiency story aka fairy tale.
I recieved an email the other day about how beards render dust masks useless. Great big lumpy bits of dust. Not viruses. Dust. https://mailchi.mp/afssupplies.co.uk/beardafs?e=e8e053fe5e
Too right. Hence the (Cold War, Gulf War 1 etc era) requirement for soldiers to be clean shaven in the event of NBC activity. Tight seal between respirator and face. It was never just about looking smart, as it had been in the past.
Will somebody PLEASE tell sadist Khan, and the rest of the know-nothing politicians that take such pleasure in creating fear!
No point. They won’t listen.
Give it a couple of days and it will be retracted, the authors will apologise deeply, and the doomsday fetishists will get to breathe a mask-obstructed sigh of relief that the end is still coming.
Perhaps the best way to put this to bed is if everyone, and I mean everyone, wore a mask for a month or two and let’s see what happens. We should have done this last year because we know what the outcome would have been and we could have finally debunked this myth.
The benefit is I can see who complies.
They test for the flu since they’ve never isolated Covid-19. Which makes me wonder how they can tell there is a delta variant. They never isolated the virus but they use a test to show the damage of a solution does on monkey kidney cells then show the cellular debris as proof of the virus. So, they can use this method to claim an UNENDING! amount of variants. A lot of cancers and “viruses” are probably just different forms of parasites. Since the tests can’t differentiate between cold and flu and covid then doesn’t that mean ivermectin cures both the cold and the flu? Welcome to “they’ve been lying to us our entire lives about everything”. Get your Ivermectin while you still can! https://ivmpharmacy.com
Two types of people in this world. Mask wearing fuckwits and the rest of us.
“…but if they save just one life…” . I can hear the converted sheep uttering that mantra every time the evidence is put before them. Give me strength!!
Yeh, OK, so they don’t work. But, hey, let’s keep wearing them just in case, eh?
In early 2020 I raised questions about the efficacy of face masks with my MP. In reply he stated that no RCT (Random Control Testing) or Medical Risk Assessment had been conducted on masks for daily use outside a sterile environment such as an operating theatre. I realised then that it was about subjugation and not about the virus.
“…No Evidence of Benefit”
No Shit Sherlock?
On Wednesday on passing a neighbour walking down the street, they shouted I should be wearing a mask because apparently, “cases” are soaring in the town. Really? Anyhow I offered to send her several papers which dispute the efficacy of masks. She stood silent for a moment, furrowed her brow and said: “No, I don’t want to read them,” and scurried away.
The psychological damage is very deep and I’m thinking irreversible.
Well, it kept them busy. Over a year ago I read a relevant BSI standard on the subject, and came to the conclusion that it was junk, and never used them at all. Here is an extract of the summary part of a set of notes I cobbled together in Summer 2020.
Great document