Since retiring from NHS medical practice I have published 15 books. My latest The Great Covid Panic casts a critical eye over the Government’s Covid response and explains how it caused a series of events which will almost certainly lead to the election of a Labour Government by January 2025.
Back in March 2020 I originally supported the Government’s Covid response even though I felt the introduction of lockdowns was a step too far. As the months passed and more information became available (particularly from this website, then known as Lockdown Sceptics) my views changed.
It was clear that the threat posed by Covid had been wildly exaggerated by Government scientists, civil servants and politicians, aided and abetted by a hysterical mainstream media which was baying for a lockdown. Who can forget Professor Neil Ferguson’s paper which concluded that 510,000 people would die in the U.K. if lockdown measures were not implemented? We now know that this paper – produced using computer modelling – was based on a number of false assumptions including a mortality rate of 0.9%. Professor Ferguson also presumed that 85% of the population would be susceptible to Covid. We now know this was incorrect. In her book Expired: Covid The Untold Story Pathologist Dr. Clare Craig suggested that as little as 15% of the population might be susceptible to each Covid variant due to T-cell immunity created by contact with previous coronaviruses. It is also known that the mean age of a Covid death was 82 with an average of three underlying conditions. So the virus was really no threat to most people.
Since mid-2021 there has been an epidemic of unexplained excess deaths which the Government seems determined to ignore. Andrew Bridgen MP has held debates in the House of Commons on excess deaths but on each occasion the debating chamber has been almost empty.
The ineffectiveness of lockdowns is described in detail in the book. The U.K. went into lockdown on three occasions in 2020 and 2021 but each time the number of cases had already started to fall before lockdown started so the same outcome would have been achieved if no lockdown had been ordered. It is also widely known that countries which did not lock down (such as Sweden) fared better than countries which did.
The book is also highly critical of the so-called Non-Pharmaceutical Interventions (NPIs) which were ineffective and unscientific. There is particular criticism of facemasks which have been proved to be useless in the prevention of Covid in a number of scientific papers including the recent Cochrane Collaboration Review, plus the Danish Mask study which was published in the Annals of Internal Medicine. Three books have now been published on facemasks and have concluded that they are useless and possibly dangerous.
There is also mention of the numerous breaches of lockdown rules by various politicians and civil servants including the infamous ‘Partygate’ scandal which led to the resignation of Boris Johnson and the decline in the fortunes of the Conservative Party.
Vaccine safety and efficacy are also discussed in the book. In a chapter entitled ‘Safe and Effective Treatments’ it is pointed out that doctors have been using poorly tested and unsafe treatments for decades. In the 1930s it was believed that radium was good for you and Radium-infused chocolate and mineral water were widely consumed by the general public resulting in many deaths.
In the past, many drugs have been released for prescribing without proper testing. The best known of these would be Thalidomide, which was originally available in West Germany without a prescription and was marketed as a treatment for morning sickness. Unfortunately it was found that it was unsafe for pregnant women at it caused birth defects. This resulted in it being withdrawn from sale.
Thalidomide is the best known example of a drug which was originally thought to be safe but then had to be withdrawn some years later after its side-effects became well -known. There are many other drugs which were also withdrawn after a few years. These include the anti-inflammatory drug Opren, the painkiller Norgesic, the tranquilliser Trancopal ad the sleeping pill Halcion (which was withdrawn in the U.K. but continues to be prescribed in the USA).
Although the U.K. Government has repeatedly claimed that the Covid vaccines are “safe and effective” there is considerable evidence that this is not the case. According to data from the clinical trials there is a one in 800 chance of a serious adverse effect following vaccination, particularly pericarditis, myocarditis, heart attacks, strokes, convulsions and transverse myelitis. The U.K. Government has given legal indemnity to vaccine manufacturers but despite this a number of court cases are looming around the world which challenge the claim that covid vaccines are 95% effective.
The final section of the book describes the long-term effects of the pandemic which have included rocketing inflation, tax rises, record levels of debt, business failures and permanent damage to the NHS.
Most health centres (and some hospital outpatient clinics) introduced telephone, video and email consultations during the pandemic and these have now become permanent features of the NHS, resulting in a poorer standard of care and a likely increase in the number of misdiagnoses. A&E units are now overwhelmed with some patients having to wait up to four days to be seen. Waiting lists for elective surgery are at an all-time high with many patients forced to pay for operations at private hospitals.
The aftermath of the pandemic has also seen a renewed drive towards Net Zero and the implantation of greater surveillance, attacks on free speech and an attempt to phase out cash. People were instructed to go cashless during the pandemic as it was claimed that the virus could be spread by cash. There was never any scientific evidence to back up this claim. It is no wonder that Professor Angus Dalgleish recently said that the Covid pandemic has resulted in the “death of science“.
The Great Covid Panic by Colin M. Barron is available from Amazon in both Kindle and paperback versions.
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Isn’t “stakeholder democracy” something of an oxymoron? Seems like code for “experts who know best will decide”.
Stakeholders, unlike share holders, have invested nothing so have nothing to lose when things go tits-up.
The idea is that stakeholders, unlike share holders, are the one’s who’ll be directly affected by decisions and that’s why they should all get together to make such decisions in a way that’s sensible for all of them (or the best possible compromise which can be achieved). Share holders have no direct reason to care for the outcome of any particular decision, just for the indirect effect of share price changes.
Government… Budget Responsibility. Side-splitting laughter is heard around the parish.
Central economic planning and control aka fiscal policies = root of Socialism and Fascism. In the former the State owns the means of production, in the latter the State directs the means of production giving the appearance of private ownership in a free economy.
The technocratic aspects plants it in the Fascist economic model.
The Industrial Revolution occurred because there were no fiscal policies, had there been we would all still be working on the land, as soon we shall be as Net Zero progresses.
(The primary means of production is the Human Being.)
Off-T
Paula Jardine at TCW with her thoughts on the next Scamdemic.
https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/big-pharma-is-the-lottery-winner-in-the-great-bird-flu-myth/
“So which strain of bird flu do you have on your bingo card for the pandemic flu mark 2 public health emergency of international concern (PHEIC) this coming winter? The UK government has just signed a pandemic preparedness deal with CSL-Seqirus, the vaccine company now running the old Chiron factory in Speke, to supply 100 million doses of an unidentified flu vaccine in the event of a pandemic. But I can see another switcheroo coming. My money is on an outbreak of H9N7, the other influenza strain in Moderna’s new mRNA-1018 vaccine.”
‘The mRNA technology allows us to be much more agile in developing vaccines; we can start creating a mRNA vaccine within hours of sequencing a new viral strain with pandemic potential,’ said Dr Hensley. ‘During previous influenza pandemics, like the 2009 H1N1 pandemic, vaccines were difficult to manufacture and did not become available until after the initial pandemic waves subsided.’
Read: Nobody needs this shit and pandemic waves have so-far always subsided without it. But thanks to mRNA technology, we’ll be to market quickly enough in future to avoid this!
Deborah Birx is also again making noises about “avoiding the mistakes made with COVID”, start mass testing of healthy people now and stop requiring symptoms for diagnosis in favour of using PCR test results instead. Deborah Birx would seem to be one of the mistakes made with COVID. After all, she admitted to tricking the Trump administations into principally endless lockdowns by lying about her true intentions.
Aren’t they just establishing a costing oversight which will simply state that every Labour plan will bankrupt the nation? Net Zero is going to bankrupt every Western Nation that wants to die by just aiming for it.
it would be simpler to go back to rotten boroughs and University MPs.
And back then MPs got no pay or expenses. Voluntary contributions from constituents defrayed some of their costs, and the size of contribution was linked to how well constituents thought their MP was serving their interests.
We should go back to that.
Can we have Budget Accountability instead.? That thing that if you don’t spend wisely, we have the means to fire you..?
Fire you and fine you, say, 50% of the cost to the public purse.
I am in favour of a fiscal lock.
A fiscal lock that doesn’t allow a government to spend more than it collects or better still one that puts a hard limit, like maximum 10% income tax.
But this isn’t a fiscal lock. It’s a shift of power from parliament to bureaucrats.
A fiscal locks takes the power away from everyone.
How about abolition of all taxation except limited taxes on land value and consumer sales.
Such tax to cover essential working of government and defence, public services returned to the private sector, no welfare, and borrowing limit of 5% of GDP only in times of stress.
Oh. I’m up for all that. I was just trying to be “realistic” to illustrate my point. But, yes, that would be even better.
You could argue that a fiscal lock is undemocratic, but then you could argue that a limited democracy, where certain rights cannot be removed by simple majority, is better than what we have.
This stakeholder¹ democracy resembles Mussolini’s corporatist state a lot, ie, it looks very much like a fascist core concept.
¹ Can we have steakholder democracy instead? Sounds like more fun, especially if there’s also some pintholding.
The Swamp is truly Septic !!
“Stakeholder democracy is different in that it views the electorate as only one voice in the lawmaking and governing process – and not necessarily the most important.”
Actually I think this understates it. It views the electorate as fully irrelevant. Voters only get a legitimate say if they are directly affected by a measure as a” stakeholder”.
“Stakeholder democracy” is nothing less than the complete repudiation of democracy. We are seeing our ancient democratic system being literally dismantled.
It is dismantling the Crown in Parliament, so allowing Parliament to evade responsibility.
Henry Ford – “you can have any colour car you want as long as its black.”
British Establishment – you can have any Government you want, as long as the policies don’t change.
At least you would have a car!
If there’s no possibility that policies can change, you wouldn’t be having a government, one that represented us.
“If the Fiscal Responsibility Bill passes, all future governments will have to request that the OBR prepares an analysis of any proposed fiscal measure”
This isn’t true, any future government can, if it chooses, repeal the Bill. No government is bound by the decisions of a previous one.
Successive governments have abdicated responsibility to unelected, unaccountable bodies. This is shameful and a disgrace, elected politicians should be responsible not quangos.
It is an interesting question , why economics is not a science.
Frederick Soddy, a Nobel Laureate chemist, pointed out that in science, wealth is positive and money is negative. Who knew ?