- “Heavily Armed Cops Descend on Truckers” – “We told you to leave. We gave you time to leave,” Ottawa Police declared in a menacing social media post as armed cops smashed into trucks, reports Breitbart News.
- “Every hospital trust in England limiting visitors despite move towards ‘living with Covid’” – More than a quarter of NHS trusts have suspended routine hospital visits completely as PM prepares to axe other restrictions, reports the Telegraph.
- “Ivermectin: The Malaysia Study” – The Swiss Doctor’s take on the Malaysian ivermectin trial, which despite seemingly being ‘designed to fail’ and being spun by many as showing no effect, in fact showed a large but not statistically significant reduction in deaths, ICU admissions and mechanical ventilation with the drug.
- “The tragedy of Covid’s 100,000 ‘ghost children’” – Covid’s 100,000 ‘ghost children’ who had been at school before Covid but failed to make it back will make those who demanded never-ending lockdowns hang their privileged heads in shame, says the Mail.
- “The Israeli Ministry of Health Actually Did a Survey of Adverse Events after The Booster Dose” – Josh Guetzkow on Jackanapes Junction analyses the survey results and infers that VAERS appears to under-report Covid vaccine side-effects by factors of hundreds, thousands or even tens of thousands.
- “Preprint in Cell Detailing Peer-Reviewed Study Reveals mRNA and Spike Protein Found in Lymph Nodes up to Eight Weeks Post-COVID Vaccination” – Data from a recently published pre-print study in the medical journal Cell revealed that rather than being degraded quickly, the COVID-19 vaccine spike and mRNA persist for weeks in lymph node Germinal Centers, reports TrialSite News.
- “Will the Novavax vaccine be a good booster option?” – It would probably be better than getting more mRNA, says El Gato Malo, but he suspects it will fail on overall risk versus reward.
- “On Sage’s Covid models” – Professor Sunetra Gupta in the Spectator says the problem is not modelling per se but bad modelling with poor assumptions.
- “Terrorism for thee but not for me?” – There has been an outbreak of political violence in Canada. A member of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police was hurt and people going about their daily business were threatened by masked men with axes. But it wasn’t the truckers, it was the eco-fanatics, and no state of emergency was declared, writes Gawain Towler in the Critic.
- “Is Covid finally over?” – Listen to the Spiked podcast, where they also discuss Nadine Dorries vs Jimmy Carr and the law of unintended consequences.
- “An Open Letter to the Professional Bodies of Counsellors and Psychological Therapists in the United Kingdom” – Therapists for Medical Freedom express concern at the suggestion vaccine mandates could be brought in via professional bodies.
- “Boris Johnson set to be among first to learn fate in ‘partygate’ investigation” – The Prime Minister has responded to police questionnaire asking whether he breached Covid rules by attending illegal gatherings, according to the Telegraph.
- “NHS trusts to get funding based on how well they clear Covid backlogs” – Scheme would involve trusts effectively being paid for each patient seen or treated, ending emergency system of block grants, the Telegraph reports.
- “Sadly, the virus itself – particularly the variant Omicron – is a type of vaccine. That is, it creates both B cell and T cell immunity. And it’s done a better job of getting out to the world population than we have with vaccines” – Laura Dodsworth wonders why Bill Gates said “sadly” in this recent quote.
- “’It’s just misuse of council resources.’ Port Macquarie Revokes Climate Emergency” – Watts Up With That? reports on the newly elected Australian local council which rescinded the climate emergency declaration made by the council in March last year, with one councillor commenting: “I actually don’t believe that climate change is as big as an issue as people think it is really.”
- “My ‘debate’ with Extinction Rebellion confirmed all my worst fears about this eco doom cult” – Devoid of any answers to green problems, all they have is a narrative of death, destruction and despair, writes Zoe Strimpel in the Telegraph.
- “SNP loses bid to ‘redefine meaning of women’ to include trans people on public boards” – Ministers wanted transgender women to be included in a law designed to increase female representation but were overruled in court, reports the Telegraph. So you can have your woke quotas, you just can’t make them super-woke by letting trans women pass as women.
- “Yesterday I Was Levi’s Brand President. I Quit So I Could Be Free.” – Jennifer Sey writes on Common Sense that she turned down $1 million severance in exchange for her voice.
- “Shady finances reveal flaws in BLM’s underlying philosophy” – Two years after the riots, no one seems to know who is in control of the $60 million that remains in BLM’s bank account, or how it is being spent, writes Kurt Mahlburg on Mercator.
- “What is so enraging about a group of white men?” – Why exactly is it that white people living in cities see white people in the countryside as acceptable targets for woke hostility, asks Sam Ashworth-Hayes in the Spectator.
- “How schools are captured by ideological institutions” – Propaganda is still propaganda when it is branded with rainbows and sparkles, and it seems the Department for Education has finally noticed, writes Debbie Hayton in the Spectator.
- “Green Party spokesman sues after being sacked for transgender views” – Shahrar Ali is alleging discrimination of gender-critical beliefs under the 2010 Equality Act, in what could be a landmark legal case, reports the Telegraph.
- “‘When it comes to cancel culture, we’re safer than the National Trust – authenticity is key’” – English Heritage’s Chief Executive Kate Mavor says the charity has reinvented itself and has a less woke interpretation of the past, reports the Telegraph.
- “The woke onslaught is demoralising the Anglosphere just when it needs its confidence” – Like in the 1930s, faith in our values is being chipped away by activists and politicians, writes Robert Tombs in the Telegraph.
- “Whitehall’s ‘woke’ rules now extend to the pub” – Civil servants have been warned that discussing work over a social drink could lead to discrimination, the Telegraph reports.
- “Xi Jinping Criticizes Trudeau’s Heavy-Handed Approach” – Another exclusive from the Babylon Bee. How do they do it?
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Brilliant article, and great analogy about the hot air balloon.
Which reminds me of a thought which crossed my mind a while back, after happening upon this column by Freeland in the Guardian:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/apr/17/political-imagination-end-lockdown-mass-testing-contact-tracing
…in which he used the quite inappropriate (though superficially plausible) analogy of the public being a family hiding in a cabin whilst a wild bear prowled outside, and needing to make a decision on when it was safe to come out (ie. when the bear had gone away).
For starters, I found this troubling because if the bear just stayed outside indefinitely the family would eventually starve.
But the point is, the analogy was wrong. Under lockdown, we are not sitting in a cabin which is safe and stable for the foreseeable future. Instead we are taking huge risks with the entire functioning of society.
The better analogy which then crossed my mind was we are all in a submarine. The virus was some unknown fault which sounded an alarm in the engine room. Under those circumstances it might be sensible to temporarily shut down the engines whilst the fault was investigated.
However what has happened with lockdown is the engines have just been left switched off and the powers that be are saying “let’s stay here until we can be perfectly sure they are safe to start up again. After all, we are all still breathing and everything is perfectly comfortable, isn’t it?”
Whilst all the time the ship sinks nearer to the bottom, the hull pressure increases and the remaining air decreases. We can only hope someone shouts the order to surface before the entire ship implodes.
Yes, the “bear” scenario really annoys me. Most people – apparently including almost all politicians and other “decision makers” – have no idea at all what viruses are, how small they are, or how ubiquitous they are.
The world is thought to contain about 10 to the power 33 viruses – more than stars in the universe, more than grains of sand in the world. Much of our human DNA consists of old viral genes from invaders that burst in, were assimilated, and joined the host genome. (Karin Moelling, a leading virologist, states that the human immune system was created by viruses trying to defend the cells they had conquered from other viruses).
Every human body is full of viruses, bacteria, fungi, archaea, amoebae and other microorganisms – a total of 2-3 kilos for an average adult. Only about 10% of our cells are human; the other 90% belong to our tiny symbiotes.
Thus, as Moelling explains, our immune system is not so much “at war” with viruses as “playing ping pong with them”. Health consists of keeping the balance between all the myriad elements of the human body.
To say that someone has “been infected” with Covid-19 is misleading. I am sure we all have a few billion of the little buggers somewhere in our bodies. It’s only when the number of billions ramps up sharply that we start to feel off-colour – and only then that tests can detect the virus. (Both the PCR and the antibody tests are extremely unreliable, giving both false positives and false negatives – not least because trying to confine a virus or keep it out is like, in the words of Abraham Lincoln, “shovelling flies across a room”).
The virus does not really exist, in active form, anywhere except in human cells. It may lie around dormant on surfaces for a while, but eventually it degrades. And it probably gets into the body only through the nose, mouth and eyes. It gets the upper hand whenever the body is weakened – the immune system is inadequate, or there is some powerful stress. (Such as being locked down). Both stress and immune deficiency can be caused by a bad diet, such as Western governments have been recommending for the past 50 years, by vitamin and mineral deficiencies, and by lack of sunlight and fresh air (the best disinfectants).
So locking yourself in your house until the virus “goes away” is as ludicrous as the frantic attempts of a horror film victim to barricade the doors and windows – only to find the monster is already in the house. As Pogo said, “we have met the enemy and it is us”.
The virus will never go away. The best we can hope for is that, in time, almost everyone’s immune system will have encountered it and created sufficient defences to hold the balance – to maintain the ping-pong rally indefinitely. That is how human beings have been coping with viruses for the few million years humans have existed, and there is nothing else. Clever drugs and vaccines do no more than clumsily try to provoke the immune system into premature action – which may not end well even when it appears to succeed.
This is brilliant. This is what I have been trying to explain, but Tom Welsh has it well and truly nailed. Thank you!
What i find strange in this analogy you mention is what Roy Aitken, former Celtic FC and Scotland defender / midfielder would be doing outside a cabin terrorising a family.
I agree with the analysis. I think there is also a compounding problem of the “safe space” culture that has been propogated in the last 30 years. The BBC and the Guardian are guilty here but so is most of the rest of the press and now our politicians have succumbed. The Andrew Marr interview with Michael Gove last week is a prime example. The idea one can negate all risk is absurd. Gove rightly asserted one cannot avoid all risk but it is unfortunately a brave politician in this time of panic who actually speaks sense. And it pains me to write this as someone on the left who feels his world is crumbling before his eyes both figuratively, legally and economically.
“A courageous decision, Minister…”
Hmm, this psychological aspect is perhaps even scarier than the state to which governments have brought their economies. We have finally been allowed to go on the beach, but I keep wondering if we are actually about to go ‘On The Beach’ (a la Neville Shute).
That book has been on my mind a lot over the past few weeks.
Don’t think it’s just individuals, institutions are finding it hard as well. A week after the lockdown was eased here all the park car parks are still locked up, I think the local authorities are finding it easier not having to deal with the public
But how will they manage without the income? Not to mention deferring two months of council tax…
They won’t understand that bit until it’s much too late (and then they’ll blame the government anyway).
Taxpayers are no longer needed. We print money now.
Brilliant.
(When there’s a Guy article to read, I always pause, set myself up with a coffee, and then settle down for a real treat).
Hear, hear! It’s quite unusual to find opinion that is so well written, well argued, and well researched.
I think you mean E.M. Forster, not C.S.
Please don’t get the little things wrong, because it’ll give the malicious the chance to claim that all the big things are wrong too.
Excellent piece. I have another analogy – that blissful moment when road runner is off the cliff and in mid air, still running. Or the whale in Douglas Adam’s story becoming conscious for a few seconds as it plummets to earth. This situation is as darkly comical and as tragic.
A common theme in the comments of this website is the notion is that people enjoy being on forlough as furlough is a dream situation is that you are paid not to work. They get only get 80% of their wage but this is compensated by no travel costs.
The lockdown is going to have a major economic impact and one cause is large sections of the population not working even if this is only temporary. Let’s say a company is unable to operate during the lockdown and the workers are all off. If no one is working, things like toilet paper, soap, stationary etc are not needed which will have a knock on effect on suppliers. There is a convenience store near the company which receives a lot of trade from the workers eg buying coffee for breaks, newspapers. The convenience store looses this trade when the workers are not there. A fair number of workers travel by bus and bus companies loose this trade when the workers are away. Many of the workers are worried if they will have jobs to go back to and are reluctant to spend money.
When my younger son was at collège, as the French say, he went through a bad patch. I’ve never been able to find out precisely what happened, but I think his so-called friends stopped speaking to him. One evening he even cried. Then he learned to cope. He hung about with a new boy, observed the others, joined in the conversation when he could, was gradually re-accepted by the group. The whole experience was unpleasant, but made him more resilient. It occurred to me that if covid19 had happened when he was thirteen he would have liked nothing better than to be allowed – forced – to stay at home where his family was nice to him and he didn’t have to meet these nasty friends. He would probably have dreaded going back to school. His character would have developed in a different way. It is not good to be too safe at an impressionable age.
Tom Welsh is spot on. The worst thing to do for one’s health is to stay at home, out of the sun. This is especially so at mid to high lattigudes. The lunatic advice to stay at home, enforced by police state behaviour, has taken the last remaining elements of self-sufficiency from most people. I am also seeing a nastiness develop in formerly decent people who gave been in isolated lockdown. Having no face to face contact with colleagues for a few months is causing personality shifts towards dictatorial and repressive behaviour, or maybe exacerbating these traits.
Reminds me of
Klaatu, Everybody Took a Holiday
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l_O0ltzBlLs
Great article. But I keep asking the reasons for many of the measures in the emergency act and how was it drafted and agreed so smoothly and quickly. I’ve used https://www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/explainers/coronavirus-act
as a decent summary and believe that the sections on death certification, post mortems and inquests and the removal of liability for indemnity from health services probably make the primary statistics of death wholly suspect. Most of the Act has a shelf life of two years, but not this last section. Our health services may be exempt from liability for some time.
One question remains. I’ve heard talk of health workers being subject to the Official Secrets Act. Is this true and where are the references?
We are being scammed.