Laura Dodsworth has interviewed Toby about PayPal’s shocking and “ironic” deplatforming of the Free Speech Union and the Daily Sceptic. In the introduction on her Substack page (which you can subscribe to here) she sums up what makes this latest piece of censorship from the woke tech giant so worrying.
PayPal has closed the accounts of the Free Speech Union, the Daily Sceptic and founder Toby Young’s personal account. Since all three accounts were shut at once and PayPal won’t specify exactly why it has taken this action, it would appear to be a blatant case of censorship.
This is Big Tech bowdlerisation and banditry as PayPal is also withholding Toby’s funds (which it has the right to do) while it decides whether to apply damages. Make no mistake: this is a chilling insight into a world of social credit scores and programmable currencies, where your money can be turned off at the flick of a switch if you don’t behave.
It does not bode well that the Bank of England is consulting with PayPal, among others, about how to develop a CBDC [Central Bank Digital Currency].
Here’s an excerpt from the interview.
How do you feel about it?
I’m really angry about it. How dare they? I’ve had my personal account for nine years and never heard a peep about violating its policies before now. I’ve been paying the 1.5% commission on all transactions without complaint. Where does it get the nerve? To just pull the rug out from under me, with no notice, just accused, tried and convicted all at once, with no possibility of parole. Thank God PayPal isn’t running the criminal justice system!
What are the implications for your organisations and for you personally?
I only used my personal account three or four times a year, although it has more than £600 sitting in it and I can’t get that out. PayPal reserves the right to hold on to the funds for 180 days in case it wants to extract “damages” for violating its Acceptable Use Policy. But the cancellation of the Daily Sceptic and FSU accounts is really serious. About a quarter of the Daily Sceptic’s donors were using PayPal and about a third of the FSU’s 9,500 members are using PayPal to process their recurring membership dues.
Is this an existential threat to what you are doing?
No, we’ll survive. In fact, I think we’ll come back stronger. And the FSU is going to try to get the law changed so PayPal and other financial services companies can’t deplatform other people for expressing political views they disapprove of. I feel like saying to PayPal, “You messed with the wrong guy.”
How will you mitigate the threat?
We’ve had to contact all supporters of the Daily Sceptic and the FSU using PayPal and tell them to switch to a different payment processor. But, inevitably, some of them won’t open the email, some will assume it’s a phishing scam and some just won’t bother to switch. We’ll undoubtedly lose a lot of revenue as a consequence.
What legal action can you take? What are PayPal’s contractual obligations to you?
I’m currently looking into that. More soon. But whatever happens, we’ll make a complaint to the Financial Conduct Authority.
What sort of company are you in? Who else has this happened to?
It’s happened to Us4Them, the lobby group set up by three mums to try to get schools reopened during the lockdown. The U.K. Medical Freedom Alliance and the Exposé – both have raised reservations about the mRNA vaccines, so that’s probably the reason they’ve been deplatformed – and, in the U.S., Colin Wright, a gender critical evolutionary biologist, and a couple of Left-wing sites that oppose the war in Ukraine, Consortium News and Mint Press. But I’m sure there are many others. In February, PayPal announced it had closed 4.5 million accounts.
Laura provides a helpful list of possible actions for those who’ve had enough of “censorship, deplatforming and the erosion of liberty”. They include:
- Become a member of the Free Speech Union.
- Complain to PayPal about this transparently political act of censorship.
- Write to your MP if you have concerns about censorship, deplatforming and the financial punishment of these websites. As the Bank of England and Treasury investigate the development of a Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) it’s vital that people’s financial security is protected. Not only do individuals and businesses need protection now from companies like PayPal, but they will need it even more so in an increasingly cashless society. It does not bode well that the Bank of England is consulting with PayPal, among others, about how to develop a CBDC.
- Share the #BoycotPayPal hashtag on Twitter.
- Share this article and spread the word.
Worth reading in full (of course).
Stop Press: Toby points out that he has expunged all traces of PayPal from both the Daily Sceptic and the Free Speech Union. So if you’re a donor to the first or a member of the second, there’s no need to change anything unless PayPal was processing your payments. He has already emailed all those affected by the PayPal account closures telling them what they need to do. If you haven’t heard from him, there’s no need to do anything.
To join in with the discussion please make a donation to The Daily Sceptic.
Profanity and abuse will be removed and may lead to a permanent ban.
If the ONS put their information on YouTube they would be deplatformed, It’s the source of great perspective and information. Including the latest revelation a commenter published yesterday; Flu deaths significantly outweigh the rona. Over 40k since the start of the year. One of the worst flu seasons for a long time. Perhaps these flu victims weren’t able to get the treatment they needed. Zero media attention of course.
The mystery of the missing 2020 seasonal flu victims is an issue that requires urgent investigation.
Turns out they were there all along. I had to go through all 20 weeks data and add them up one at a time. Took all of 15 minutes. I’m sure a journo can spare some Cummings bashing minutes to do the same.
Thanks for this. Are you saying this is in addition to the CV deaths, and what is the shape of the data – is there a decline in the weekly totals after the lockdown (if lockdown was having any impact, the Flu deaths should also have declined)?
This is separate from covid deaths. They have a very clear delineation on their weekly reports
https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/deaths/bulletins/deathsregisteredweeklyinenglandandwalesprovisional/weekending15may2020
ICD10 J00-J99 respiratory deaths are slightly lower than the 10-year previous average: 33419 to Week 20 compared with a 10-year mean of 33789 (95% CI 31086,36726). I’m not sure where you’ve got your data from. The excess mortality is on top of this figure. This ICD code includes influenza deaths.
UK weekly mortality rate by age group. There is excess mortality even in the 15-45 group. From 45-85, mortality was doubled. Above 85 it was trebled. Data is to week 20 with a 10 year median/min/max.
So what does this mean?
Lockdown made lots of young people kill themselves.
What I mean to say is, the excess death data for 15 to say…. 50 is surely the most telling here. If that is ridiculously higher than normal, there is no other explanation than adverse effects of lockdown rather than disease. Simply because the chances of dying of covid, or flu, are so tiny in that age range.
It increased death rate by 50% in 15-45. Now the two most common reasons for males to die in this age band are suicide and traffic accidents. Suicide is a notifiable death, and there has not been an epidemic. RTAs are definitely down. That night explain the slight difference between males and females.
Suicide may be recorded on the death certificate but the ONS doesn’t properly compile the figures for causes such as suicide until the end of the year, right now the UK doesn’t have the data necessary in the right place and format to be collectively analysed to detect a rise in lockdown induced suicides. Typical bureaucratic incompetence.
Yes, suicide is indeed notifiable, but there is a long history of putting other things on the death certificate – normally to ‘spare the relatives’, now more likely (if it happens) to ‘spare the authorities’!
How would such an increase explain the fact that both curves for 15-45 follow the same shape as those for all other age groups? Why would it decline from a peak at the same time – would it not increase with duration of lockdown? Note I plotted a log scale so comparison is direct. The absolute risk in this age group is actually very low, I think it’s a real but modest effect on mortality, probably down to existing comorbidities in a small subset of the population.
Does that hold in Sweden though? They show barely any excess at all for 15-45, completely normal range. Up to 65 shows a tiny tick.
Agree. To back that up, Britain is by far the worst country in Europe and one of the very few (also France, Spain but their spike still much lower than England) to have experienced higher than normal mortality in age group 45-64 for the period around the time that hospitals were cleared of many non C 19 patients to make way for C 19 patients who never turned up.
https://www.euromomo.eu/graphs-and-maps/#map-of-z-scores
Yet we are still clapping the NHS?
In several US states more youths have been driven to suicide by lockdown than elderly have died of the virus. And in several african countries security forces enforcing lockdowns have killed more than the virus has.
My data is from the ONS weekly reports
https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/deaths/bulletins/deathsregisteredweeklyinenglandandwalesprovisional/weekending15may2020
20 week total is over 40k
Sorry I can’t do charts (I used to have a team for that :), but looking at the latest ONS data for flu deaths (strictly speaking, all “respiratory disease” deaths:
1st 20 weeks of 2019 were 32,987, and for the same period in 2020 (excluding Covid) they were 33,419 – so these are virtually identical.
The split between the pre and post-lockdown weeks was:
2019 weeks 1-12 22,022, 2020 equivalent (ie the pre-lockdown period) 21,423
2019 weeks 13-20 10,965, 2020 equivalent (ie the lockdown period) 11,996.
Make of that what you will, but it’s clear that lockdown this year had no dramatic impact on reducing flu deaths – in fact they went up.
The ONS have weekly breakdowns, they specifically mention deaths due to influenza and pneumonia specifically not related to covid 19.
https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/deaths/bulletins/deathsregisteredweeklyinenglandandwalesprovisional/weekending15may2020
I had to go through all 20 and add them up as they don’t have a cumulative total as far as I can see.
Our old dog Tilly used to eat poo too! Dog poo, fox poo, horse poo, cat poo, any old poo. Loved her to bits! RIP Tilly
Mine just rolled in fox poo whenever it could. We often wrapped her in a plastic bag till we could get her in the bath!
Our 5-pound Persian cat is a poo machine too. She must produce her weight in poo every day, most of it placed carefully under the grand piano. The vet has pronounced her physically healthy, but couldn’t rule out mental derangement.
What do you feed her on? Can’t be much protein in it if most of it isn’t being digested.
She sounds a bit like me!
Thank god we haven’t got a piano…
One of the reasons early humans encouraged dogs around their settlements was because they recycled the human faeces into less toxic dog ones.
The Fitzgerald diary is not real. It is parody written by American author Nick Farriella for the humor site McSweeney’s. That should have been an easy one to check before including it in today’s blog.
https://mobile-reuters-com.cdn.ampproject.org/v/s/mobile.reuters.com/article/amp/idUSKBN21733X?amp_js_v=a3&_gsa=1&usqp=mq331AQIKAGwASDIAQE%3D#aoh=15906931567180&_ct=1590693163727&csi=1&referrer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com&_tf=From%20%251%24s&share=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.reuters.com%2Farticle%2Fuk-factcheck-quarantine-fitzgerald-lette-idUSKBN21733X
I wondered if the date was a typo, assumed it was satirical and enjoyed it anyway.
The ONS are coming out with an IFR consistently higher than PHE which is odd. I find the idea that we might be overcounting COVID deaths 3x to be a bit suspect!
That said I find IFRs up near the IFR of Diamond Princess suspect; that was an infection rampant in a load of octogenarians! This IFR is in the community, should be much lower. Fishy smell.
I’d agree. If you assume 6% prevalence, 66M population and 60k deaths (90% in over 65, who make up about 18% of the population), that’s a naive IFR of 1.5%. But since there are 9x as many deaths in a population that is only 1/6 of the total, the IFR split is 0.18% (under 65) and 7.5% (over 65). Splitting further by 85+ makes it even higher in that population.
I agree but that doesn’t explain the diamond princess! That was an infection in an age group that should therefore have had about 3 times the number of deaths.
Also the ONS was supposedly excluding care homes and hospital deaths. Should be getting a lot lower IFR if you exclude those.
The effect is really most dramatic in the over 85. Those 45-85 will be more like 1-2% and those over 85 about 20%. That is consistent with the age effect in the Diamond Princess. The over 85 are so disproportionately affected. And so poorly protected.
Fair enough, targeted protection surely the way to go then? To be fair, most carehomes have managed well.
‘The numbers are terrifying’
with apologies to Jerome K. Jerome
Some people are under the impression that all that is required to compile coronavirus death statistics is the ability to tell lies easily and without blushing. It is not quite as simple as that.
I know an NHS hospital statistician, a most conscientious fellow, and when he was ordered to make his coronavirus death statistics as terrifying as possible, he determined never to exaggerate his hospital’s corpse count by more than twenty-five per cent.
‘When we have had forty deaths,’ said he, ‘then I will tell people that we have had fifty, and so on. But I will not lie any more than that, because it is sinful to lie.’
But the twenty-five per cent plan did not work well at all. He never was able to use it. The greatest number of deaths they ever had in one day was three, and you can’t add twenty-five per cent to three – at least, not in corpses.
So he increased his percentage to thirty-three-and-a-third, but that, again, was awkward, when they had only had one or two deaths; so to simplify matters, he made up his mind to just double the quantity.
But nobody believed him when he told them that he only doubled, and his moderation put his hospital at a disadvantage among the other NHS Trusts. When his hospital had really had three deaths, and he said they had had six, it used to make him quite jealous to hear a man from a hospital where he knew for a fact that there had only been one death, going about telling people they had had two dozen.
So eventually he made one final arrangement with himself, which was to count each death that they had as ten, and to assume ten to begin with. For example, if the hospital did not have any coronavirus deaths at all, then he said they had had ten deaths – you could never have less than ten deaths by his system; that was the foundation of it. Then if by any chance they really did have one death, he called it twenty, while two deaths would count thirty, three forty, and so on.
It is a simple and easily worked plan, and there is some talk lately of its being made use of by the NHS in general. Indeed, the SAGE committee did recommend its adoption, but some of the larger hospitals opposed it. They said they would consider the idea if the number were doubled, and each death counted as twenty.
Good take! I think I have read 3-men-in-a-boat at least twenty times (and that is without the suggested counting regime!).
Brilliant!
Has anyone calculated and compared different countries’ death rates as percentages by age group?
Here in Sweden, 24% of deaths have been of people aged 90+…
About 48% of the above excess mortality is in 85+ age group.
You can play here https://www.euromomo.eu/graphs-and-maps . But to save the effort, here is the standardized mortality for England, Sweden and it’s neighbors in the 95+ age range. Now tell me who’s been protecting the elderly?
Sorry typo – it’s 85+. You can look at any age group.
For everyone who loves a good conspiracy theory.
I decided to see what there was online to explain modern Britain’s love of soap opera (particularly the C 19 soap opera), which seems to have coincided with an increase in national soppiness. And I came across this:
‘New home, new life’ (bbc world service) is but one, albeit very significant, example of the use that DFID and other agencies have made of soap operas as a tool for conveying narratives intended to bring about change. Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, UK development money funded the creation of soap operas to develop awareness and acceptance of reforms….’
‘Indeed, a combination of academic insights from psychology, anthropology and communications, with practical lessons such as those highlighted in this report, might enable an investigation of the role and appeal of narratives that could inform military influence activity and wider government strategic communications.’
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/358906/Report_How_Soap_Operas_Bring_About_Change_3March2009.pdf
Has the increasingly surreal (but immensely popular) C 19 soap opera been deliberately created via the state broadcaster to manipulate the general public into obeying the lockdown and whatever reforms may follow?
You should look into the Lear Centre. Responsible in no small part for the massive left bias of American media.
The No Agenda Podcast has a good summary
https://youtu.be/85w5UttbPZ4
It’s not a conspiracy as you say, they are quite open about it.
I can also highly recommend the No Agenda podcast to anyone who reads this website. It’s an incredibly well produced podcast that dissects the media and events around the world. It has helped me stay sane through this ‘pandemic’ as well as providing some fantastic insight to other global events during the past few years.
It may be worth going back through their podcast archive if you’re interested, but honestly just listen to the newer episodes over the last few weeks relating to the pandemic. That should give you an idea of what to expect.
Isn’t it hand-sanitiser opera rather than soap opera?
“Full spectrum domination”
We are being mentally attacked and programmed on many levela
Well that was an eagerly awaited non-event for the People’s Republic of Scotia, no?
In Scotland we still have the Tartanized Lockdown but the furloughed can now socialize outside in small groups at distance. Any thought of anyone meeting up back at work remains completely off-limits of course.
Even the Telegraph has some unhinged reporting today. Ambrose Evans-Pritchard’s piece contained the phrases ‘we knew even then [Feb] it was as contagious as flu but 10 times more deadly’, and ‘the case fatality rate is as awful as virologists first thought’. Maybe best to read around the subject a bit more Ambrose.
And please, enough of the spurious ‘but we’re at war’ conflations by witless callers and broadcasters I still keep hearing on these utterly depressing radio talk shows. No, we are not, for God’s sake. Unless of course you wish to draw more cogent parallels with, e.g. Nazi occupied France, in which activities such as taking photographs outdoors and assembling without permission were verboten, and ‘denunciations’ quite a popular pass-time.
Which is just as well. Can you imagine if that nice Mr Putin decided to send a few battalions of troops to invade us? They wouldn’t meet much resistance, that’s for sure… All Bojo’s bluster about the “British Spirit” seeing us through this “pandemic” is a joke, and a bad one at that. I really feel sorry for the few remaining WW2 veterans – what on earth must they think of all those wimps sitting at home, enjoying almost full pay, terrified to venture outside…
What really gets my goat is that all of this pernicious nonsense is ostensibly being done for the sake of said veterans. These are people who flew Spitfires, survived PoW camps, took part in Dunkirk, the Normandy landings, espionage missions … now being locked away, isolated and in many cases denied medical care “because we need to protect the vulnerable.” The complete lack of respect for that generation is just breathtaking.
Me too, I’m so angry about what we are doing to our old.
Putin would have a pushover. I understand that our soldiers are not allowed to get in their tanks because of s.d.
I have to interject. Whilst I agree that all those happy to sit at home are absolute wimps of the highest order, not everyone who has been furloughed is on almost full pay.
I have been furloughed, but don’t forget, the payment is capped at £2500 per month. That is less than half of my normal pay. ‘Fatcat’ I hear the masses scream, but actually I cn barely afford to pay my family’s bills on half pay (single earner family) as these things tend to be structural and take a while to re-formulate. So, I have taken up temporary zero hour contract work to make up the difference. This has badly impacted my family life, but I’m grateful to have some work.
Believe me, I want nothing more than to get off of ‘furlough’ and back to my usual line of work. Many people want the same. This government and it’s crazy policies are making that impossible.
Interesting choice of phrase. I’ve considered myself at war since March … but with the C U Next Tuesdays who suspended democracy, imposed a police state, terrified 95% of their own population, trashed the economy big-time, and enforced separation of families.
Whether due to malice or gross incompetence doesn’t really matter in the short term. Analysis can follow once their deeds have been wiped from the face of the earth. The consequences may be more problematic, as IanE states above.
(Yes, I know, puerile humour is an unusual weapon of warfare. But to quote Bill Hicks, “You do what you can …” .).
https://project.nek.lu.se/publications/workpap/papers/wp20_9.pdf
The Individual Welfare Costs of Stay-At-Home Policies
Perhaps not the easiest paper to read from Univ. of Lund, Sweden but some interesting conclusions.
“The results suggest that the welfare cost of a one-month stay-at-home policy, restricting non-working hours away from home, amounts to 9.1percent of q Sweden’s monthly GDP. The cost can be interpreted as 29,600quality-adjusted life years (QALYs), which roughly corresponds to between 3,700and 8,000 COVID-19fatalities. Moreover, we find that stricter and longer lockdowns are disproportionately more costly than more lenient ones.
In this paper, we use a choice experiment to estimate the welfare costs of stay-at-home policies that limit people’s opportunities to leave their homes during non-working hours.
Importantly, we only consider costs associated with restricting people’s non-working hours. Hence, to obtain the societal cost of more restrictive stay-at-home orders, our cost estimate should be added to the costs of shutting down workplaces, schools, and childcare facilities and of the corresponding reduction in economic activity.”
As I read the paper these are the minimum cost and the cost for the above is not included. Also not included in the cost are the adverse effects of staying home abuse, suicide, mental health problems etc.
One month cost is roughly 3700-8000 Covid-19 deaths
https://www.covibes.org/public/Sweden
Sweden has at the moment 4266 deaths since 1st March 3 mths time and estimated 500 deaths in 14 days time.
Even in this very minimum scenario 3 months lockdown would cost as much as 11100-24000 Covid-19 deaths.
And the biggest caveat of all: we don’t even know if the lockdown would really decrease the deaths.
Would it be like Norway, Denmark, Finland and Austria?
Or would it be like UK, Belgium, Netherlands, France, Spain and Italy?
Just wanted to say – whoever you are, you are an absolute star!
PS I see we are still on track for bugger-all cases in UK by the end of June. Shame that UK is so far behind places like Poland, where I am now, with most shops, restaurants and bars already open, and with cinemas, theatres soon to be…
In the last couple of days, my mental health hit rock bottom. Was really really struggling…until I had an epiphany today. Change your attitude to this whole thing, and your whole world changes. Here are my 10 commandments to help any of you struggling at home:
1. Anything printed in the mainstream media is “junk news”. Repeat that phrase. It is nonsense, sensationalist crap. The press love doom and gloom because it sells papers. But it’s all bulls**t. Don’t take any notice. Or better still, ignore all of it.
2. The same goes for anything on the BBC (fear porn), Sky News and Channel 4. Do not watch any of it.
3. Any statements from the mouths of the cabinet members are also nonsense. Hancock, Gove and Patel have been particular offenders. These people are power-crazed egotistical maniacs who believe their own hype and self importance. Ignore them.
4. Social distancing is NOT here to stay.
5. The NHS track and tracing app is a joke. If you don’t want untrained monkeys contacting you to tell you to self isolate for 14 days, don’t download it. The lower the number of people who use it, the quicker it will be dropped.
6. There will be NO “new normal”. This is absolute bulls**t fear mongering scare tactics to manipulate people into complying.
7. The lockdown will end sooner than you think. The tide is very much turning in our favour.
8. Laugh at any nonsense outlandish statements that predict doom and gloom. Especially any statements using the word “could”. This COULD be the new future. This COULD be the new this and that. All totally made up crap based on people’s uneducated opinions.
9. Take a step back and laugh at the madness. Laugh at the idiots who wear masks in their cars. Laugh at the ridiculous Perspex screens at supermarket checkouts but then have touchscreen checkouts, that hundreds touch every day. Laugh at the madness and the virtue-signalling brands on TV who claim to be with you, but actually just want your money.
10. And finally. This will end. And it will end this year. SARS CoV-2 is dying out all over the world. There will be no second wave. That is also fear-mongering nonsense. The WHO also know this and have admitted this looks “increasingly unlikely”. Remember, that within six months (most likely much earlier) life will be back to the OLD normal. And that, my friends is what you must remember.
Be happy. All suffering is temporary and this too shall pass.
With love,
R Dawg x
Needed this today, thank you!
Screenshotted for future reference, thank you!
I forgot this one…
11. Stay off all social media. Full of crazy stuff and a lot of fear mongering. Life will be ok
Well said! Especially no.11 – happily deleted my Twitter a/c a few weeks ago and haven’t regretted it one bit
Excellent post. This is exactly the kind of upbeat messaging that should be currently broadcasting from the mouths of every cabinet minister and printed on the front of every national newspaper. Instead, they continue to peddle their grotesque brand of fear, hysteria and wilful obfuscation of the facts.
The reality is, there is now a surge of healthy rebellion afoot and dare I say, a refreshing scepticism of the lockdown policy. The observant among us may have seen a more relaxed approach to social distancing as neighbours chat in their front gardens, or see grandparents trying to keep up with their grandchildren as they cycle around the local park.
Of course, there will always be the minority of rabid Covidiots, dressed as if they are about to enter a bio weapons facility and relentlessly barking “2 metres!!” at anybody who dares stray too close to them in the local Sainsburys. Maybe it’s to do with the fine weather (I do believe sunlight is a wonderful antidepressant) but I can’t help but feel a corner is being turned. More and more scientists and experts seem to be very conscious of what the history books written about this crisis will say, and many I feel are positioning themselves on the side critical of the lockdowns as the inevitable death toll attributed to them continues to soar over the coming years.
I’ll conclude my post with this: my father’s birthday is next week. On Sunday, I’ll enjoy nothing more than travelling down to their home, having a barbecue and watching him run around the garden my two young children. I suspect he would say that is a greater gift than any material item I could ever buy him.
Brilliant reply Scotty. 100% agree with you.
Agree!! Advanced happy birthday to your dad and here’s hoping you have a wonderful celebration with him!
Enjoy your day Scotty.
Keep on keepin’ on!
Don’t sweat the petty stuff, and vice versa.
Uncanny. Exactly what happened to me. A few days ago I was so enraged and desperate, my heart racing so much I thought I was having a heart attack, but the next day, a weight just lifted from me. The last couple of days, in beautiful weather, fewer and fewer muzzles, people laughing on the street, just filled me with the most exhilarating joy. On the other hand,I’ve just watched on the Spanish news a mini riot outside of a Nissan plant in Barcelona where 3,000 people have lost their jobs. When you’re throwing missiles at the pólice, social distancing is the last thing on your mind. Two very contrasting scenes but both show humans being humans, not lab rats trapped in a maze. These bastards will not break our spirit.
Well, I basically agree with 90% of that. BUT, whilst covid will be over fairly soon, the consequences will be with us for years. You can’t trash an economy (and a whole generation of school pupils’ education and life chances) as thoroughly as has been done (and is still being done) and quickly return to square one – especially when all countries have been french-connectioned simultaneously. Humpty-Dumpty will not be easily reassembled. (And, no, despite similarities in appearance, I was not referring to Boris there).
Agree Ian. We still have a long road to travel and it’ll take a long time to recover from the damage these idiots have caused, damage, that they have to be punished for. .
Thank you very much!! This is needed.
I imagine a year from now you will hear on probably more than one occasion “of course I was totally against the lock down”
All joined the Resistance eh?
Either that, or ” yes, mistakes were made but we’ve got to move on”. To the Hague with them!
If they end up anywhere im hoping It’ll be the old Bailey
Sorry to hear you’ve been a bit down, RDawg, but glad that you’re on the up again !
Worth remembering that your posts on here (however you were feeling at the time) helped a lot of people and generated much positivity/optimism/reality.
I had a reality check with my older bro yesterday, who reminded me never to listen to Michael Gove who is “an absolute moron!” He made me realise how ridiculous all these outlandish statements are.
Basically told me to listen to my better judgement, and question if I really believed the nonsense that the media and cabinet were coming out with.
i’ve enjoyed your posts Dawg but let me throw some down sides of lifting the lockdown on your optimism. I’ve not long returned from an evening bike ride (obviously to go get essential supplies…. eek) and the roads are busy again. My three month empty roads have been a joy in all this madness but now people are out and about again it’ll be back to avoiding women in huge Mercs pulling out in front of me, geezers with lowered BMW’s overtaking in crazy places and what happened tonight a bus pulled right out in front of me as i was overtaking it, he never indicated just made his move, i was lucky when i swerved into the other side of the road there was nothing coming. On the plus side i know of a outdoor party on the banks of Loch ….. this weekend, i’m not going….. eek but it will be good. The weather is looking good, we’ve had a few rehearsals during the last few weeks (on line off course….. eek) so all in all it will be a great weekend, pity i’m not going.
Welcome to my world
Cheers!
Excellent post. I had some tentative positive news from my employer today. They are a foreign airline and plan to ramp up flights to the UK in the coming months, quarantine or no quarantine. This post has boosted my mood even more.
There are no guarantees in this life, but sometimes we just have to hope for the best. I’m not always good at this and tend to be a pessimist.
You have done some great work towards our cause with your communications with your MP, keep it up!
For the past 2 to 3 days I swing from rage to wanting to bawl my eyes out, as for hate I could really throttle Boris & Co. for putting 70m people through this torture.
No 9. Reminded me of this picture in the paper the other day of Tom Hanks sat in his car with a face mask. He’s already had Co-vid weeks ago, why the hell would he need to wear a face mask?!
Bollocks to anyone that says recovering from co-vid doesn’t confer immunity, anyone with common sense knows it does.
What an elitist prick
He’s pushing their fear agenda
Serious alegations of child abuse against hanks – suspected major playor in pedo hollywood
Hollywood is used to push propagnda
PATERNALISM VERSUS HOW THE WORLD REALLY WORKS
Yes, sturgeon appears to want to adopt a mother like figure here for the scottish nation. “Save the children” stv deleted communication, etc. Of course this is all political posturing in her attempt to be the future “mother” of a new independent scotland. Her daily communications are now pitched at the IQ of a five year old – clear and concise limited vocabulary short instructions which you must obey or be put on the naughty step.
I look forward to how this paternalistic role is related to over the winter once the bbqs and extended holidays come to an end – find me a job “mother”; how are we going to pay for all those scottish public sector workers / services, etc. In other words, her metamorphosis into the wicked scottish stepmother from hell…
All political careers end in failure, the last 10 weeks and counting being a critical footnote to hers. Slainte!
https://zenodo.org/record/3862789#.XtASNcB7lPb
This a letter to Lancet to immediately act and correct the article in Lancet which said HCQ was dangerous (immediately after the publication WHO stopped endorsing the drug in the ongoing worldwide study and also the same for France and the UK).
Lots of signatories in the letter but surprise, surprise Prof Neil Ferguson Imperial College!
Showing some independence from Big Pharma and “Don” Gates?
Re your piece on the lifeguard charity. This is appaling. An elderly lady fell as we were out walking yesterday. She was mortified- said how she had recently had a hip replacement and her son ” would kill her for being out”. Was I meant to observe social distancing and not help her? Obviously, it never occurred to me and I ran to her aid and helped her up and escorted her arm in arm home. Get a grip everyone…
Nicely done!
Normal people have a natural instinct to help the elderly, infirm and very young. You did the right thing. The same applies when the little ones go back to school next week – the natural response to a child in distress, pain etc is to comfort them, not tell them to sort themselves out or call their parents to attend to them in an hour’s time. Any teacher who does that is not fit to be part of a civilised society, let alone be responsible for little ones.
I am glad that Toby has mentioned this alternative Sage group. I fell down a Twitter rabbit hole today and found a group by the handle independentSage which appears to be made up of a group of behaviour scientists, the names mentioned in the article and a few others are frequently mentioned. Looking at the tweets and the tweets of individuals which appear to make up this group I am quite alarmed. How much sway are these people having over the government? I know they are not the main Sage group by the way but the way they are speaking you would think that they are.
Guardianistas, to paraphrase ‘Yes, Minister’, always think they should be running the country.
Take a look at thier tweets particularly the individuals that make up this group. Hysterical propositions and then some spin to make it look like they care about the problems they have actually pushed for.
Yes – I’ve tried a few times, but I have a weak stomach.
They are the ‘also rans’ in large part, that is, those not sufficiently credible and gifted to make it to the real SAGE. Given what we know about the real SAGE and their propensity to favours models known to have error rates of multiple digits, I think we can safely ignore Alternative SAGE.
Oh I am ignoring this group but is what they are saying feeding into the main Sage group?
According to wiki ‘Costello is most notable for his work on improving survival among mothers and their newborn infants in poor populations of developing countries’ – so nothing to add to real SAGE, given that children are largely unaffected by the virus. Prof Susan Michie, according to wiki is a ‘British psychologist and political activist’ – sits on both committees, and not sure how that can be allowed. Guido did a very good round-up of their influence a couple of weeks ago. Their main audience seems to be the BBC!
Thanks for the pointer, I am shocked over how many people are lurking in the shadows over this trying to get thier 5 mins of fame. Disgusting.
Nothing to do with the main group
“ The self-styled, self-appointed ‘alternative SAGE’ shadow committee will hold their first press conference shortly. In not-so-surprising news this publicity savvy committee is made up of hyper-political scientists, many of whom have a grudge to bear against the government. Among its membership are actual communists, Labour Party donors, activists, Corbynistas, “anti-Zionists”, Brexit conspiracy theorists and even a former Greek MP.Guido brings you an extraordinary rundown of eight members of the twelve strong committee here…”
https://order-order.com/2020/05/04/not-independent-activist-stuffed-shadow-sage/
SAGE or alternative SAGE…. why would a country EVER model their state solely around the views of a group of scientists? Half of them are basically savants with little if any insight into the human condition.
Of all the mistakes made – and there have been many – I think the lack of representatives from other specialisms has ranked up there. The fundamentals of effective safeguarding are to involve every agency, be transparent and communicate. This was not done.
That said, right now, I’d take a group of philosophers over the current SAGE attendees. They are that lost in R numbers, 2m distances and T cells to the detriment of the nation’s overall wellbeing.
Krankie and Boris both announced partial relaxation of martial law and house arrest today .
. The weird thing is most people have been ignoring these arbitrary rules since the begining of the month. Krankie won the competition for the most insane rule saying you can meet for a barbecue but must bring own food and you will need to dig a hole behind the rose bush if you want a number 2 .
We also have news that dentists on the NHS can reopen from 8 th June.Since mid March those with a toothache could after a long wait see a dentist in a hub who would extract your tooth/teeth. The problem you see is “aerosols” . The same problem with ” aerosols ” has stopped all endoscopies in the NHS hospitals since mid march. In laymens terms if you have suspicions of a stomach or bowel cancer or bladder cancer you would pop along to your local hospital who would either scope down or scope up the relevant organ.
In Germany dentists never closed and also in Germany physicians continued to do endoscopes naturally in PPE.Maybe a fee for service has its advantages as German doctors get paid for each endoscopy . British medical specialists have preferred to be effectively furloughed on 100 % salary.
We’ve all got a problem with “aerosols”…..they’re running the Government.
Obviously the virus was circulating before the l.d., when dentists were still operating. Was there a sudden increase (‘spike’, ugh) in c.v. morbidity and mortality among dentists. a week or so into the l.d.? If so, giving dental treatment js presumably dangerous when the bug is around. If not, not.
Gosh, looking at the care home situation, what a marvellous time to be a latter-day Harold Shipman.
incredible, isn’t it!
Except that I don’t think they are letting doctors go into care homes (or has that been relaxed?).
the old deer hunter?
I live in t’narth. In Asda yesterday, I got a little too close to one woman for her comfort.
“Six foot duck” she said.
I looked but couldn’t see it.
It was the one being attacked by 100 duck sized horses
Dr Vernon Coleman is on top form today, suspect this one will be detubed.
https://youtu.be/tdyjcNRVmdU
He always is, I love his sense of humour.
Vernon must have read my comment last week . He supports a Nuremburg style trial for the top docs and top dentists who went along with this madness…they were just following orders !
This is the one he posted yesterday, with some excellent psychological insights. The references to Hitler and Goebbels are, I believe, highly relevant; they were masters of mind manipulation techniques.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pa6LszZa7pg&feature=share
Thanks for the link. He’s great. I especially like his suggestion that the politicians are certifiable, here:
https://youtu.be/tdyjcNRVmdU?t=658
How much do we know about the ONS “unweighted” seroprevalence survey? Were the donors essentially self-selected regular blood donors? Presumably all healthy? Presumably no children? How accurate is the test? Last week the figure was 5% so a 35% increase? Does that mean the London figure increased from 17 to 23%? The 95% confidence interval reaches nearly 9%. Did the French conduct more general surveys that implied up to 10x as many people had antibodies than shown with blood donor surveys? Children may experience none, or very mild symptoms and they represent over 20% of the population. How many adults have natural T Cell immunity or useful antibodies from exposure to other viruses? Surely the IFR is much lower than 0.8%
The information is all on the ONS website. I don’t think they were blood donors, but just households previously known to the ONS selected at random-ish.
They don’t say where in the country they were, but they found 6.78% of 885 people had antibodies between 26 April and 24 May.
The midpoint of those dates is 10 May on which there were 31855 deaths. If 21% of those were in care homes, we have 24055 outside them, and an IFR estimate of 0.62%, if we assume it takes the same amount of time to die on average as it does to produce antibodies.
But it matters quite a bit when exactly the samples were taken– go a week further back and the IFR estimate drops to 0.47%.
I doubt the IFR is really this high which makes me think more of those deaths were in hospitals or care homes.
More important is what indication this gives us as to the state of the epidemic. May 10th looks to have been after the peak so I don’t think we will expect antibody levels to get much higher than this. They are similar values to what they found in France in Spain. So either we’re all some way from herd immunity, Ferguson’s guesswork was right, and the low prevalence is because of lockdowns; or it’s to do with some combination of innate immunity, cross immunity, and possibly low sensitivity of the tests to people who had mild or asymptomatic illness.
Looking at the progression of the cases and deaths in all the different countries, the low IFRs inferred from Iceland (not using antibody tests), the fact that seroprevalence doesn’t ever get much higher than 20% in even very crowded environments (https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.05.13.20101253v1), the strong evidence that infections in most places including the UK peaked before lockdowns, and the fact that nowhere seems to be getting “second waves”, I don’t think we need to be too worried.
Ok I’m defo down on the side of this being way less infectious than we were told now. And yes, heavily noco…. whatever that word is.
Quite interesting to compare the UK with Geneva:
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.05.02.20088898v1
If you look at the graph “Figure 1” it shows how seroprevalence grew from 3% to 6% to 9% in the space of three weeks, overlaid on the confirmed cases. There is a lag of about 2 weeks between confirmed cases and antibody positive, because of the time it takes for antibodies to appear.
But the 6% bar matches up very well to 10th May on the UK graph of confirmed cases on worldometers in terms of where it is on the infection curve. In other words, it probably got to about 9% in the UK a week later, and then I would think stayed at around that level, with London a bit above Geneva probably and other areas lower.
I’ve attached an image of how the susceptible ratio (which is 1 minus the fraction who are immune) changes through an epidemic. This is using a population of 60m, initial growth of 1.33x per day, and R0 of 2.4, basic SIR model. Under these parameters, you reach herd immunity at around 60%, which is why the line levels off at 0.4. The x-axis is days. Don’t worry about the absolute numbers– I don’t think R0 is really 2.4 and nor do I think seroprevalence is a complete measure of immunity.
But the point is to look at how it changes fast in the middle. If you arrested an epidemic right in the middle with sudden lockdowns, you would find some regions close to the bottom (0.4 on that graph, perhaps 0.8 in reality if we’re measuring antibodies) and others nearer to the top. If you find similar levels everywhere (between 10 and 20% it looks llike in Spain, Italy, the UK, Sweden, NY) either you managed to stop it everywhere at the same point near the beginning, or more likely, it had already dropped down to its stable level at the bottom in all those places.
If seroprevalence can grow from 3% to 9% in the space of 3 weeks in Geneva, and we know blood donors in Milan showed prevalence of about 4% as early as Feb 21st (corresponding to infections two or three weeks earlier than that), long before the lockdowns in Italy started on 8 March, it seems very unlikely that we stalled the epidemic anywhere before it got going, let alone that we balanced the broom handle at exactly the same point in all these different places.
I don’t think a comparison of a city with a country is valid. Different regions in the UK have lags behind London and this causes a blunted peak. What it shows is that in a closed population of half a million people in one place, prevalence can grow from 3 to 9% in three weeks. You can’t extrapolate that to multiple clusters starting at different time across a country.
Agree, and I would like to see numbers for London.
Well, I would expect it to grow at a similar rate in all places in terms of the time taken to reach the peak because this is given more by the incubation and infectious periods, which are characteristics of the virus itself. In more crowded places with higher R0 the peak will be higher (so the actual rate will be higher in terms of cases per day, but time to the peak about the same). I think Phil Nuttridge’s video on YT was a good analysis showing how time to the peak is very constant everywhere.
I’m not sure how accurate these antibody tests are. I believe I caught COVID-19 three weeks into the lockdown, 4 days after visiting a supermarket.
I took an antibody test last week but it came back negative.
The virus I had was completely different to any normal seasonal cold that I have experienced before as I normally get loads of rubbish on my chest. I was never confined to bed and worked all the way through it from home, it was very mild apart from the breathlessness. A breakdown of my symptoms are below which fit with COVID-19:
Saturday and Sunday: Felt a bit off, and with a bit of a headache which I just though was down to muscle tension from using a computer all day
Sunday: In the evening started being sick and my throat was sore
Monday: was the same but my stomach was turning over all the time and I had developed a cough and a burning sensation across my collar bone
Tuesday: the stomach was more settled, but the sore throat was the same but the cough was severe now, and I was coughing all the time feeling like I was trying to clear my chest but there was no rubbish on my chest at all, was getting very hot and sweating (couldn’t check for temp as lost the thermometer)
Wednesday: still the sore throat and severe cough, and I just felt like I was going to pass out all the time
Thursday: started to feel much better and sore throat was a lot better but still coughing.
Friday: sore throat gone, and cough starting to go too
Saturday: feeling much better, but then in the evening became short of breath and having problems breathing
Sunday & Monday: Breathlessness still there and causing problems
Tuesday: Breathlessnes gone, but still chest still not right, start to sweat profusely with exertion and coughing.
This lasted for the next two weeks and then my chest was back to normal and all symptoms gone.
You may have beaten the infection with slightly different antibodies than the exact ones the test is looking for because of something you caught off your cat 15 years ago. At least I think that’s what the recent paper from Singapore that swedenborg just posted is saying might happen!
So was yesterday the peak?. Track and trace finally waking the apathetic up?, because social media was pretty brutal from what I saw. Hammered everywhere… Apart from probably Facebook that I can’t bear to log into anymore.
You could almost conclude that the UK government are deliberately fucking this up..? Incompetence on this level is impossible isn’t it??
It’s given me a right chuckle today anyway.
Clapping Seal watch during the bike ride : it’s a real minority. Same houses, same morons, mental note made as I cycled every so slowly around the neighbourhood, stopping to have a nice big cloudy vape in the by the road in between 2 lots of idiots competing to see who could bang their pans the hardest… should have filmed it
Clapping seals next door had a bell today making a much noise as possible and probably noting us not going out again (never)..they have also had son and daughter and thier families round every week of this lockdown and pontificated to me when I poured scorn on it how important the lockdown is as well as signalling how virtuous they are by not leaving the house for 10 weeks (not including yesterday when seal no.1 took a random out for a test drive in his car that he is selling)!
My clapping seals had pots, bells and fireworks again. Maybe they were getting extra enthusiastic because this is the last weekly virtue signal.
No clapping seals in my area, it has never really been big here. Wonder if its because my area has quite a fairly high east European population and they don’t care.
My parents emigrated to England from Eastern Europe after WWII. My dad fought for the allies in Italy.
I have been brought up to clearly recognise with evils of both fascism and communism having had tales of what both Hitler and Stalin were responsible for at that time.
If they were alive today they would have called it for the bollocks we all know this is.
I suspect many of your Eastern european neighbours also have that heritage and ‘genetic memory’
That’s very likely although many of them are the fairly recent arrivals and they always struck me as the “this isn’t my country so I don’t care” brigade.
Yeah maybe… that would be a shame. But they do live here don’t they, so should care about themselves. At least they are NOT clapping which is a start… Maybe knock on door to see how they are. You never know.
They won’t bite you!
Lockdown’s logical flaw
Lockdowners would have us believe we needed to lockdown on 23 Mar. Also, that, now, still only a small proportion of the population has been infected. Vast swathes remain susceptible. The death rate now is similar to what it was on 23 Mar. So why are we easing lockdown? If lockdowners are correct, infections and deaths will simply start to rise again. On the other hand, if they continue to fall under an ‘eased’ lockdown, surely that proves we could have had an eased lockdown all along?
Logic doesn’t work with the fearful lockdowners. It’s like talking to a raving lunatic. Far more insidious are those who are pushing the ‘new normal’ agenda, these evil bastards are the true vermin
Unless it’s seasonal or there’s a large chunk of innate immunity, yes. Lockdown measures are as effective now as march.
That’s why the more logical lockdowners believe that lockdown can’t be eased until you have TTT. Hence we are seeing an (admittedly farcical) pretence at doing this.
With (actual competent) TTT you can manage an epidemic somewhere with a large susceptible population. This has been demonstrated in Iceland, Taiwan, and a few other places.
The correct strategy at this point, since we now know that the fatality rate among the under 60s without pre-existing conditions is almost zero, is for the hospitals and care homes to get their shit wired, to release the lockdown, and make sure that if London does still have a susceptible population, that it doesn’t for much longer. TTT is an irrelevance.
How would a lockdowner cope with the successful unlocking of much of europe without second peaks then? Do they simply deny that?
How about an axiom that I made up: “if interventions don’t substantially raise R when you lift them, it’s likely to be the case that they didn’t substantially drop it when they were put in place, all other things being equal.”
Here in Portugal after “unlocking”, the number of hospitalizations and ICU admissions keeps dropping (they have been dropping for almost 2 months now). Instead of removing all of the remaining restrictions, they are increasing the number of tests to find loads of “asymptomatic” cases and claim that the situation is very dangerous because their computed R is above 1, and the peak is still to come.
They have to explain it away the same way they’ve been doing with Sweden…
Lifting a lockdown may increase R a bit but as long as it’s still below 1 you probably won’t notice.
Actually, March 1st. Earlier intervention would have given more options. Think slow controlled braking not emergency stop.
There was already something slowing it up, or at least lifting the foot off the accelerator, before lockdowns though, we agree on that if I remember.
Indeed. But I think my analogy is reasonable – calls for intervention were actually much earlier than people realise. Sweden went for the gentle braking. Germany the same with eventual lockdown combined with expanded testing. They’ve done a lot better.
It’s not been a great day today. I may decide to self isolate from corona news for a while.
I did, however manage to send an e-mail to that slug who pretends to represent me in parliament and his personal baldrick.
I reproduce my letter here, with apologies to Toby for the bad language. Please feel free to use it as a template. Slugs love a bit of salt!
“Mr XXXX, Mr XXXX,
“Track and Trace”
WHAT THE HELL IS THIS? Are you people out of your minds?!
This bloody virus is clearly on it’s way out. There are more holes, more problems, with this brain dead idea than there are holes in a Swiss cheese!
And presumably you self serving creeps in the “Labour” Party (surely an oxymoron these days!) think it doesn’t go far enough.
You wretched wretched people live off the state on your fat cat salaries of £85,000. You don’t give a shit about the people of this country whose lives you are ruining do you?
I’ve really had enough of you people. ENOUGH.”
Wow John. You were really having a bad day. I hope your MPs arse feels hideously bruised and that you feel much lighter tomorrow.
I do hope you had your moment of catharsis because that is all it will achieve. You’ll get a standard template response from one of his taxpayer funded minions without your letter even reaching the MP’s desk. Attending a surgery is the only effective way to reach them but they’ve conveniently got rid of that under the guise of social engineering – I mean, distancing…
nice letter but you should have addressed him as Comrade, they like that sort of thing
All I’ve had from my MP is an e-mail that said “thank you for contacting me, feel free to do so again.”
That’s it, 1 reply to about 4 e-mails he’s been sent or copied on.
He’s conspicuously absent all test time, 25000 majority (not that I ever vote for him, tend to spoil my ballot paper with “none of these idiots” across if if there is not a genuine conservative minded independent on the form) and a safe seat, of course he’s not going to bother himself is he, nothing worth fighting for.
‘Time for NHS and public health to take over?’. Who else has been in charge since the Great Panic of the calamitous third week of March? Who else cleared the hospitals and sent infected people into nursing homes? Who else denied people cancer treatment? Who else scared people away from essential urgent care? The sort of people who demand a Climate Nuremberg with the death penalty. I’m opposed to the death penalty but there has to be something in store for them to make this the last time they cause so much pointless destruction.
As regards the ONS Seroprevalence Survey I see they just mention testing for antibodies. However, it has been known for some time that many people who have been infected do not produce antibodies because their innate immune system dealt with the infection, so their adaptive immune system (which produces the antibodies) was not needed.
This is mentioned by Karol Sikora and he has a small clip explaining this currently pinned to the top of his Twitter feed. On May 22 he said “Why are we not seeing more positive antibody results? A paper in ‘Cell’ suggests that T lymphocytes are our main defence. There could be significant cross-immunity from ‘common cold’ coronaviruses which provide protection. Very important – we need a better test for immunity.”
The paper in ‘Cell’ is here –
https://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674(20)30610-3
The paper says that SARS-CoV-2−specific CD4+ T cells were identified in 100% of COVID-19 convalescent patients. Also the paper states “Importantly, we detected SARS-CoV-2−reactive CD4+ T cells in ∼40-60% of unexposed individuals, suggesting cross-reactive T cell recognition between circulating ‘common cold’ coronaviruses and SARS-CoV-2.”
To me this suggests that firstly many people already have some immunity from having been exposed to ‘common cold’ coronaviruses in the past, and secondly that the testing being carried out to identify how many people have been exposed/infected should also be looking at the CD4+ T cells for a fuller picture.
If I have all this about right that would mean they are still possibly greatly underestimating how many people have been exposed, also that some people (around 40%-60%) have a degree of immunity already.
I read that the flu vaccine many people have every year could give a false positive for this virus. We hear so much recently about falsified Corona deaths particularly in the over 60s I wonder if this could affect the number of those dying with the virus rather than from the virus as it’s the over 60s group that are affected.
I wondered if the flu vaccine was implicated in any way. Don’t suppose they’ll look into that one!
I’m sure people will be studying all aspects of this pandemic for years to come.
Beware the false assumption that all those infected for the purposes of calculating IFR develop antibodies. It’s becoming increasingly clear that many are resistant due to innate or cross immunity and hence fight off the infection without developing antibodies. Thus the IFR is lower than antibody surveys will suggest.
“resistant” does not mean incapable of eliciting an adaptive immune response though. Cross-reactive T-cells would engage the adaptive immunity that still produces immunoglobulins, just later – hence IgG is slower to be detected. I can think of NO viral challenge that does not make antibodies. We have cross reactive influenza T-cells and antibodies from past infections, but you will still be able to detect antibodies specific to a new strain on challenge.
Hepatitis A is also an RNA virus like Covid-19. A vaccine was developed which protected excellently against hepatitis A. It was discovered that persons after vaccinations without antibodies still did not get hepatitis A. They obviously developed protective antibodies if challenged in natural circumstances being exposed to hepatitis A. That was enough to protect them from clinical disease. There could only be one explanation. T cell’s primed immunity. Why can’t the same be true for Covid-19?
So they had pre-immunity before they had the Jab, so the jab never forced them to generate antibodies.
This stuff is all very cool.
Shame everyone on the planet seems to have forgotten how it works.
No.They had no immunity to Hep A beforehand and got the vaccine. Even the few who did not develop antibodies after the vaccination were still protected against the disease.
On that logic, my point stands – when challenged they developed antibodies. Hence detection of antibodies would be a valid measure of past exposure (but not necessarily immunity). Antibody prevalence to hep A would detect those challenged, and SAS-COV-2 antibodies would tell the same. It is logical that many of the population have some pre-existing T-cell immunity, but only 6% have seen the virus.
Ok so why then don’t I have cytomegalovirus antibodies in my blood like 85% of other people?
I mean…. Did they vanish? Or is everyone else but me continually being infected? Or have i lived in an iron lung my whole life?
Do you know that you’ve ever had CMV? About 1/10 have not. And yes, antibodies decline over six months to a year. Cellular immunity remains and gets a boost when the cells see the pathogen next time. This sets off the cell expansion and also gets antibody production going again. Repeat…
I assume Longer to be detected would take you further back in time for point of infection and hence mean a lower IFR.
Ddi they test all passengers on the Diamond Princess for antibodies? You’d think that would have been a logical place to start.
I would not worry so much as Toby about the IFR being 1% according to ONS antibody study. If I remember correctly, the Spanish figure was slightly higher 1.3%. But the only interesting figure is IFR for each age group. It was dramatically low for everybody below 65. 0.13 IFR in Spain. And if you look at the IFR for children and younger dramatically lower. We need age stratified IFR to stop terrifying the population. We all know that the true IFR is probably even lower due to the other factors mentioned.
It strikes me as odd that only 6-7% of people have antibodies yet 70% of those infected are thought to be asymptomatic.
It could be the case that antibody test kit manufacturers have overly prioritised test specificity by only including protein makers that are specific to Covid-19 and therefore only detecting antibodies that are directed towards these antigens (so as not to produce false positives due to pre-existing antibodies to other Coronaviruses).
Could it be that antibodies (either pre-existing or newly produced) that are directed towards surface markers common to many different coronaviruses, and therefore not detected by tests, are responsible for clearing the infection?
Just a guess.
Yeah that strikes me as odd too; it implies that we’re missing the vast majority of infections, but at the same time that the disease hasn’t spread very far.
IFRs are a pointless argument anyway at this point; the number of people who have died is set – either this disease is much harder to catch and spread (in which case lighter measures than lockdown would have surely worked) or it’s really prevalent and not too deadly (in which case lockdown was utterly pointless).
Given that it was clearly limiting rapidly from the earliest start, it would never have reached the sort of numbers to cause widespread devastation across the country.
nobody turning up for a test lol. No one trusts the government tests.
Aren’t you supposed to queue in the hot sun with your car windows closed?
given the announced relaxation of the lock down rules I’m not sure this will be enough for the Chesham Dogging Society (remember them?) but they do have a twitter account with plenty of lock down related humour https://twitter.com/mickyjo98017844?lang=en
This is a story I’ve trotted out a few times in my discussions elsewhere regarding the global response to this virus. By pure coincidence somebody did an article on it only a year ago:
https://www.businessinsider.com/the-story-of-a-japanese-soldier-who-hid-in-a-jungle-cave-for-27-years-2019-1?r=US&IR=T
It’s the story of a Japanese WWII soldier, Shoichi Yokoi, who spent 27 years in the jungle not knowing the war had ended.
How does this relate to COVID-19 you may wonder. Well it’s simply that this man spent his life on a war footing for something that was no longer a threat. The war was over, he could have gone back to a normal life decades ago.
And that’s pretty much where we are now. We’ve been put onto a war footing that could be indefinite. The problem is that we’re preparing ourselves for something that may never come. There may not be a 2nd peak the war could well be over. The 2 hunters who found Shoichi represent the vaccine we’re made to wait for to end all this.
Of course we could all be wrong and the virus may come back with a vengeance. But if it doesn’t then until we’re found it seems as if we could well spend the figurative 27 years in the jungle. Unless of course we decide to take a look away from our cave just to see what the reality is.
Just taken this to heart from the excellent Vernon Coleman:
DISTRUST THE GOVERNMENT
AVOID MASS MEDIA
FIGHT THE KIES
On T shirt please?
Coleman’s excellent analysis prompted one further question: What makes a lockdown sceptic? We are a pretty varied bunch on this site, so what’s the common factor, the element in all our minds that resists brainwashing and makes us say NO?
Sorry, lies! Edit button pls!
Oh good, it’s not just me being brain-dead!
Bloody KIES, exterminate the lot of them !
I think they are allies of the Borg.
For me it was just a gut feeling that things weren’t quite right, then I started looking into it, came across the HCID list that covid had been removed from, thought that a little odd seeing as how infectious it was supposed to be, then found out about Peter Hitchens, who I’d never even heard of, then realised that close friends were getting duped as I realised we were being brainwashed and misled and it went from there really. The swprs website was influential too. I’m a loose remainer, I guess socially conservative but I didn’t vote Tory at the last election since I didn’t trust Boris, seems I was right about that!
That is exactly the same path I took!
Also John Ioaniddis first article where he said we are making decisions without data.
My first inclination was that we may be aliens.
Now I think it’s ….. something following a strong, visceral contrarian reaction to what we perceive as ‘something being off’. Or in layman’s terms – a natural bullshitometer.
Yep, me too
Ferguson’s modelling was the thing that got me going. I’d had some involvement with modelling a few years back and knew them for what they mostly are – crap.
Lockdown did it for me. As soon as it was announced I knew it was the dumbest thing I’d ever seen. The most efficient way to solve most problems will be through a targetted approach. If there’s a problem with your car engine you don’t need to take the whole car apart for example.
Even once the lockdown was imposed they could have started clearing sections of the country instead of just sitting and waiting until the infection level was sufficiently low.
Now I must make it clear that I probably wouldn’t have been overly bothered if the virus was allowed to spread at a level that allowed hospitals to cope. That’s because I accept death as an inevitable part of life. Tell that to the relatives of the deceased people will say and I’ll be thinking, ok but if they don’t die now should I have to say something to the relatives when they eventually die of something else? They could have lived a bit longer they’ll say and I’ll be thinking you could say that for just about any death.
And as time has gone on seeing all the collateral damage it’s caused it’s only made it seem dumber to me.
It was the apocalyptic headlines in the papers that did it for me I thought something was already off.
I was with the government until the text message and “Stay at home” started. Everything seemed sensible up to that point – quantine for households with the virus, some anti-social distancing, handwashing and hygiene, protect the vulnerable.
I just couldn’t see the benefits of turning into an authoritarian state. Surely the virus would pass through the population anyway when we reopened? Why aren’t we using the spare NHS capacity we have? What about civil liberties, mental health, jobs etc…
Then I found this site!
Exactly. I knew something was already off but the text message and “stay at home” mantra just sounded creepy and manipulative.
I found this site via twitter and its been a lifeline.
For me, it was the numbers coming out of China. It was hard to believe that with a population of 1.4 billion, more hadn’t been affected in other parts of China, particularly in Beijing and Shanghai. When they were locking down Wuhan, it was estimated that 5 million people fled to other cities within China and beyond.
Then I came across a video by Dr Wolfgang Wodarg, which put forward what seemed to me to be very sound arguments that concluded it was a case of “The Emperor’s new clothes.” It’s also hard to believe that China has had less than 5000 deaths, but as Wodarg said, they didn’t test for it outside of Wuhan and treated patients as having the normal respiratory diseases like pneumonia.
I started researching into all sorts of things including the PCR test, invented by Nobel Prize winner Cary Mullins and found that it should not be the sole means of diagnosing a viral infection.
All this and more led me to this site which has helped keep me sane in all this madness! Thanks.
https://covid19.healthdata.org/spain
https://covid19.healthdata.org/italy
Models are models and they are usually crap as we have seen. However I saw this site is forecasting growing number of deaths for Italy and Spain again in july and forward. Didnt find any explanation for that. Even up to 1800 daily deaths in the worst case scenario. Only those 2 countries, I wonder what’s up,
Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation is the one behind the figures
https://arxiv.org/abs/2004.04734
According to this article the above organisation has a very bad track record for modelling indeed almost useless. Difficult to understand the figure. According to
https://www.covibes.org/public/Spain
about 27000 deaths now and completed 98%. Perhaps they are speculating of a second wave but I think that Institute has a terrible reputation for forecasts.
Yeah, Im aware of the reputation and track record. Just speculating of a second wave only in 2 countries seems odd.
https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/05/why-do-some-covid-19-patients-infect-many-others-whereas-most-don-t-spread-virus-all?utm_source=pocket-newtab-global-en-GB
—
Most of the discussion around the spread of SARS-CoV-2 has concentrated on the average number of new infections caused by each patient. Without social distancing, this reproduction number (R) is about three. But in real life, some people infect many others and others don’t spread the disease at all. In fact, the latter is the norm, Lloyd-Smith says: “The consistent pattern is that the most common number is zero. Most people do not transmit.”
Very interesting about superspreading and especially about loud talk. There was recently a video, not available now, showing a Japanese girl talking in front of a handkerchief hanging in front of her. She said something in Japanese and it hardly moved. Then she said a phrase in English and it moved considerably. Explaining the low transmission in Tokyo tube? They have seriously considered banning talking in the tube as part of mitigation in the pandemic. What is also interesting where we don’t have superspreading events. See below
https://johnhcochrane.blogspot.com/2020/05/airlines-and-information.html?m=1
“But are airline flights dangerous? As I read the super-spreading literature, I have not seen a single case of an airline flight charged with spreading the virus. (Please chime in if you have seen any documented cases of virus spread on airline flights.) That’s remarkable. From January to March, people were flying all over the world. People were flying from Wuhan to all over the world. But while we have seen super spreading events in restaurants, bars, cruise ships, aircraft carriers, nursing homes, jails, beach parties, Mardi Gras, choir practice, and more, I have not seen one from an airline flight. Even though people are cooped up for hours in close quarters.
One can speculate why. Airliners actually have very good ventilation systems and hospital grade HEPA filters. Except for the occasional chatty seat mate with cat videos to show, people are usually completely silent. Talking loudly seems to be a big part of spreading the virus.”
The idea about different languages being more ‘infectious’ is superb. I never thought about that. Italian might be particularly ‘infectious’.
Being a loudmouth braggart may actually be bad for people’s health lol
Not many folk talk on the London Underground anyway….
It’s such an awful environment, I’m sure passengers’ teeth are firmly gritted.
More manipulation here I suspect. Stop people talking to each other thereby keeping folk socially distant from one another.
Simple as that
There was the case in South Korea wasn’t there where members of a congragation all in a room singing/chanting together ended up with most of them becoming infected.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/27/health/coronavirus-spread-united-states.html
—
At the end of February, Italy saw Europe’s first outbreak. The coronaviruses there were genetically very close to BavPat1, scientists found, leading to suspicions that a German traveler had brought the virus to Italy.
That’s not the case, according to Dr. Worobey’s analysis. According to the computer simulations, another introduction of the coronavirus from China probably was responsible, and it may have arrived in early or mid-February.
“The lineage just happened to get into Europe and run wild,” Dr. Worobey said.
This viral line then hopped from Europe to New York several times, Dr. Worobey and his colleagues found, confirming previous studies. They estimated that the coronaviruses circulating in the city by March were introduced into the city around Feb. 20.
Around the world, the new study suggests, the coronavirus arrived more than once without starting runaway outbreaks. In these cases, there was little or no transmission, and the virus simply died out.
The implication here is that the virus was brought to the USA after lockdown, possibly from repatriated citizens.
I am beginning to wonder if we haven’t already lost.
If you add up those in the public sector on 100%+ pay, and those on low wages with 80% furlough (just to keep the differential, of course), then you have a simple majority who are beneficiaries of not working – provided, of course, that you can borrow indefinitely.
The tax and wealth generating sector of the population has been shrinking. Maybe the simple fact is that it is now a minority. Come a good crisis, it is a pushover.
That’s true, but maybe if some of those on furlough are unemployed in a year, and public sector workers face a 2 or 3 year pay freeze, people will ask questions.
Initial blurb for new Conservative Freedom Party site, now visible at conservativefreedomparty.com.
Maybe anyone who is a traditional Labour supporter could create a Labour version!
LibLabConGreen is a busted flush. A total clear-out is required.
As the site develops you might want to consider hosting it on AWS (Amazon Web Services) through CloudFront. You get a free SSL and the running costs are very very low. You also only pay for traffic rather than a set hosting fee.
Thanks for the suggestion
As far as “civic duties” go, If I get a call to self-isolate I’ll do* it so long as I am given enough info to be sure that the contact event was real, that is to say who do I know who had it and what date (and hopefully rough hour too) am I supposed to have been infected. If their records match up to my memories then I can well recognise that holing up the infected, rather than this deluded lockdown of getting everyone to hole up, for a while can help the national situation. If the “tracing army” caller won’t say who/when/where and the whoever it was hasn’t warned me of those details for themselevs then I cannot be sure that it isn’t a false positive or a deliberate “prank”.
*And by do I mean I’ll avoid all human contact for the period, but if I’m going stir crazy I will still take fresh air where other humans aren’t, and if I’m running out of food at the time and there aren’t enough delivery slots I’ll be forced to shop (in mask,gloves…) too. I’ll also be expecting an antigen tst during and antibody test afterwards so that I can find out if I’ve really been infected or not.
No…. if you get a call from an unknown number. Block it. Job done.
Carry on as normal.
Civic duty?
Nah, they have to follow the law which is the Public Health (Control of Disease) Act 1984 which has very strict processes to go through to isolate any individual and then they have to pay compensation to cover all your monetary losses suffered due to the isolation.
Trying to convince you a ministerial statement or “guidelines” are “law” is very disingenuous and misleading – they are lying to you.
We are, not quiet yet anyway, a 3rd world banana republic dictatorship where the big boss says “do it” and it has to be obeyed or else.
New name, pro-narrative, more appearing all over the internet – spot the trend through all social media?
https://twitter.com/plaforscience/status/1266125169938051072/photo/1
Gompertz curve for deaths Covid-19 Sweden
https://twitter.com/plaforscience/status/1266126981726375941
“Despite different policies, from no lockdown to full one, tendencies follow so similar straight descendant lines. They neither deviate from their path before or after restrictions. That means one thing, natural constant cause. Herd Immunity.”
Matches my own analysis of a few days ago exactly:
https://twitter.com/pfdgeologist/status/1264838174553112577?s=21
Also see new plot of R values for England, Sweden and Norway:
I do tend to think, by the way, that anyone who tested positive and then gives details of others to the tracing service might well be violating GDPR or other privacy provisions. Seems the responsible thing to do is, should you test positive, to, by yourself, contact everyone you had been in close contact with during that time*. No risk of false positives, and the people contacted will be a lot more trusting of someone they know saying sorry I infected you” than they would of a caller they didn’t know stating that “you were involved in a contact event with a covid case”, so no risk of deliberate false positive “pranks” either. It would be beyond immoral not to personally contact anyone you might have infected and warn them, if you know you’re infected that have a right to know they might be too. Seems easier, and better for all involved, for one to personally contact anyone you may have met and spare the tracing army some work.
*Yes you’ll know these people, the sort of acquantainces like walking past a stranger or chatting from distance to someone in a park or touching hands with shop checkout staff, don’t tend to pass on infections and even Public Health England have stated they aren’t interested in those fleeting events. To be quite honest, anyone you don’t know well enough to have a phone number, email, or other contact detail for is unlikely to have had prolonged close contact to you, even back in the good-old civilised days of the past where there was zero distancing in place. As for the occasional chance like having sat near someone on a bus, the country doesn’t have the surveillance infrastructure to work out all the people who could have had that happen, and for the sake of our civil liberties we should be glad such infrastructure doesn’t exist as an integrated whole. Such contacts are still relatively unlikely to cause viral spread, and due to our, thankful, lack of the fully integrated version of IngSoc’s airstrip-one dream, the tracing army would not be able to find those contacts anyway. So for any contact worth warning you’ll be as well informed yourself to contact them as tracers could ever be, just make sure you are disciplined enough to make those phone calls/emails immediately should you get a positive test, we might not fear the virus but those we know have a right to have the information so they can make up their own minds and take the level of precautions they feel appropriate.
Latest from the DT: ‘families’ are advised to wear face masks all the time AT HOME to prevent infection by c.v.
They must start doing this BEFORE any member of the family gets infected.
And carry on for ever, presumably.
Doesn’t say what happens at mealtimes.
Or how you cope with toddlers.
Or babies.
“Doesn’t say what happens at mealtimes.”
The problem is already solved:
http://www.nbcdfw.com/news/coronavirus/inventors-develop-mask-to-let-you-eat-and-stay-safe/2372046/
Using this fantastic, high tech invention, citizens can eat safely in the company of others with dignity.
Good if you want to look like a muppet or a Canadian from South Park.
I’m invoking Poe’s law.
Have seen these before and they are absolute gold dust to share on ANY articles of this nature. This soon reveals the normals from the zombies and is actually a great tool in turning the apathetic into supporters too.
It is that ridiculous
Precisely. I’ve been sharing this one, too:
https://edition.cnn.com/travel/article/coronavirus-restaurant-bumper-tables-trnd/index.html
I leave it to the recipient to draw their own conclusion.
Any remaining microscopic shred of dignity would evaporate the minute you dribbled spaghetti sauce down it!
This is for dining out in Paris
https://twitter.com/aginnt/status/1266126657565323264
COVID absurdity. Do these designers not know what happens once they leave the restaurant?
It’s as if they’re making this so ridiculous to see how far they can go before we all scream ENOUGH! It seems a lot like a cat playing with a mouse.
Ah, the joys of the brave new world that is the home of the Braveheart legend. Scotland: ruled by the virtuous Dear Leader, Ms Sturgeon, and aided ably by her loyal courtiers Swinney and Leitch.
The loyal subjects of Dear Leader await her daily utterances and seek wisdom to direct their missives by petitioning Swinney and Leitch.
For example, on BBC Radio Scotland’s Drivetime program yesterday, one of Dear Leader’s subjects sent a text into the show to ask Swinney whether it’s permissable for him to drive from his home in Scotland to attend his father’s funeral in Essex.
Swinney advised said loyal subject that under the current guidelines (are these laws, rules or advice?) it would be “difficult to justify“.
Indeed, for one to even consider invalidating Dear Leader’s Herculean efforts to both eradicate the virus, while keeping everyone safe – as long as they don’t reside in a “care” home – is both selfish and shortsighted. Yes, your father only has one funeral, but please put the guidelines before your own needs.
The game of oneuppersonship between Scotland’s Dear Leader and the UK’s Bumbling Boris continues.
While Dear Leader graciously deigned to allow up to 8 of her subjects to meet in a private garden for a BBQ, Bumbling Boris has only allowed for 6.
However, his 6 can use the toilet. In Scotland, sales of shovels from B&Q have spiked. It appears us Scots are getting ready to dig latrines for our BBQ guests.
The Barren Sturgeon and her cult make me sick to my stomach. Never in my life have i felt so down about Scotland. We are a total embarrassment. I’m glad i’m from the Kingdom of Fife and we’ve declared ourself independent of Scotland and have our own King commonly known as Robbie the Pict. We need to free Fife from the arid Sturgeon. I see trouble coming down the road.
In her bid to cement her position as Dear Leader she seems oblivious to the fact that:
You’re welcome to join the club again if you and Scotland can summon up the numbers of the brave at heart to get rid of the idiots.
I have Scottish Dad, English Mum, grew up an Army brat overseas and stayed there ever since in the oilfield. Tried working offshore Aberdeen for a year – too bloody depressing with the “moaning jocks” and i’m not kidding, nothing could please them. Even being half Scottish I was ostracised. Strange thing though – off Humberside, Yarmouth and Blackpool same rules, same laws, lot better atmosphere.
Only ones of the family left in Scotland are the 2 professionally unemployed druggies, the rest moved south and made something of themselves so come join us, bring your bike and enjoy yourself.
That’s appalling. Things are bad down here in England but I can’t get over the insanity of this. Politicians of all parties are revelling in their power and control. Boris can’t handle it – but Sturgeon is loving it.
Sturgeon will do anything to keep the bookshops shut
. She’s finished when Salmond ‘s book starts getting serialised in one of the red tops.
There might be mass book burning soon as ‘new evidence reveals’ that people are 10 times more likely to catch the virus from handling them
I’ve long since come to the conclusion that any sensible Scots should by now have moved to England, if only to avoid the extra taxes, named person scheme, laws agin singing songs etc…
You’ve had plenty of notice, and it’s now time to build the wall.
Tried it for over 10 years. The main thing I miss is ridiculously cheap Easyjet flights to the continent from Gatwick. But even that’s likely to change somewhat in the short to medium term at least.
i have spent a lot of time in Lincoln, Blackpool and York and it’s not any different from Scotland in any way. If you travel around out island you see we all wear the same clothes from Primark, drink tea, eat from bakers and chip shops, go to the pub and a million other things we do.
Ah but the children have to clean the bathroom after they’ve had a pee.
Returning to the C 19 Soap Opera theme, that theme is not only key to manipulation of the public to put up with the lockdown but also a key ‘narrative’ for the cover up of care home deaths directly caused by discharging patients from hospitals to make beds available for C 19 patients who never showed up.
‘Care homes in the UK remain the engine of the epidemic – accounting for almost as many deaths as in hospitals. While homes in other countries like Hong Kong and Germany edge back to normality, the crisis continues in Britain.
A spokesperson for DHSC stressed that officials have been dealing with an “unprecedented global outbreak, the worst pandemic for a hundred years”.’
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2020/may/28/why-did-so-many-people-die-of-covid-19-in-the-uks-care-homes
Newspapers finally seriously picking up on this story now are several weeks behind what has been going on. Journalism in this country, with a few honourable exceptions (you know who you are), should hang its head in shame.
‘However, David Spiegelhalter, chair of the Winton Centre for Risk and Evidence Communication at the University of Cambridge, said that covid-19 did not explain the high number of deaths taking place in the community.
At a briefing hosted by the Science Media Centre on 12 May he explained that, over the past five weeks, care homes and other community settings had had to deal with a “staggering burden” of 30 000 more deaths than would normally be expected, as patients were moved out of hospitals that were anticipating high demand for beds.
Of those 30 000, only 10 000 have had covid-19 specified on the death certificate.’
Published 13 May
https://www.bmj.com/content/369/bmj.m1931
“The advice, officials stress now, was “related to what we knew at the time”“
I’m sorry but this doesn’t wash with me. This is akin to Sauron focusing on the gates of Morder while Sam and Bilbo walk into Mount Doom but announcing it whilst doing so.
“What we knew at the time” changes as data comes in or it should in any fluid situation. If this was truly a war you wouldn’t set your troops up on one front then ignore the enemy approaching on another front. You’d move your troops to counter the threat.
I think you meant
“The advice, officials stress now, was “related to what we COULD TEST at the time”“
What they new at the time, in fact 4 days before lockdown, was that all 4 public health bodies in the UK had deemed that COVID-19 should not be considered a high consequence infectious disease due, in part, to it’s overall low mortality.
We now know the official answer to the question “when the facts change, I change my opinion, what do you do?”
And that answer is “facts? Huh… ”
Page not found message for the link to the BMJ article?
https://www.bmj.com/content/369/bmj.m1931
Ah the care home deaths . . . I appreciate Toby may wish to delete this post, but nonetheless this is good . . The lovely Dillie Keane about being old in this country right now
https://youtu.be/0na2Y_74_mk
Wonderful! Thanks.
Apparently it’s been the driest May for over a century, and people locked in at home are using more water than normal. Imagine if The Dictator tried to re-impose strict lockdown in a heatwave with water shortages. Or imagine a country spending a summer with half its population unemployed or working at home, holidays cancelled, children at home, with no pubs, clubs, restaurants, tourist attractions worth going to. Do we suppose The Dictator is thinking about that? I should imagine he is…
If the kids were in school, all those paddling pools wouldn’t have needed filling.
Notice how the sky is blue, plane contrails do not spread all over the sky, you don’t have a nose full of hard bloody snot in the morning and cough up nasty lumps on the mornings that have that sky filling monochrome silver cloud in it,
The chemtrailing has stopped, at least temporary, sky turning blue again and lots of small birds, bees and butterflies around.
Long may it last.
It will take quite a while for mother nature to sort it all out back to normal but she will without regard to humans and their ideal climate.
So, we are now in some mad, insulting parody! Well, if we weren’t before, we are now.
There is, they admit, no difference to seeing someone in a park than a back garden, the former we’ve been doing for weeks, the latter we can only do from Monday, but why it’s deadly on Friday, Saturday or Sunday, nobody knows.
You can see your granny but you can’t hug her. Long separated lovers can meet, but they have to stand chastely in the garden, and not immediately dive on each other and start shagging for liberty in the hall.
Toilets are deadly in Scotland, and guests for said barbecue (how middle class is this guidance?), or more accurately an almighty pish up, need to bring their own trowel, and dig a hole behind the rose bushes as if charred on the outside but raw on the inside bbq chicken gives them the shits, they can’t use your loo.
Toilets are not deadly in England, but 2 extra people are. Six may gather in England, but 8 in Scotland (provided the pee up a tree and not in your house).
Meanwhile, we must forgo data protection and a right to privacy, and jealous ex’s, rival businesses, unrequited lovers, the mischievous, and the vindictive can play havoc by handing our data to some untrained government operative who is then going to phone us up and put us under house arrest (being serious a minute, this is very risky for women in domestic abuse situations, as (as is currently often the case) he’s going to pretend he’s sick, report symptoms, and force you to be isolated with him for 14 unrelenting days).
Meanwhile at the press conference, we are almost literally at the point of ‘blink once for yes, and two for no’ with our scientists, not that I have much sympathy for them, they can see this is now health panto, and not a public health exercise, but they seem as keen to save their own hides as the government.
Meanwhile, the government has spent £35m of our money placing sponsored advertorial in the mainstream press along the lines of ‘staff are our family, one business’ selfless tale of saving jobs’. Which is the equivalent of the government boasting saving a non swimmer from drowning, when they were the bastards that pushed them in. Having now saddled blameless businesses with billions in debt, the same banks we bailed out in 2008 are now going to make £1bn in interest in loans per year.
Quite why were are not rioting in the streets, no idea.
I imagine we’re not rioting because most people have realised that these ludicrous and arbitrary rules are totally unenforceable and they’re just quietly getting on with their normal lives – the government is around 3 weeks behind the public with this lockdown…!
Exactly! My parents had their friends over yesterday, these friends are both huge supporters of lockdown, and yet sat in the garden drinking beer and chatting with no social distancing whatsoever!
Absolutely right Poppy. I just get on with my life as normal as much as I can. To be honest, I don’t do big crowds anyway and would struggle to get 6 friends all together in one place. So for me it’s ok. But I do feel very strongly about the interference in everyone’s lives, which is what is making me cross. Not so much for me as an individual – I keep livestock so I’ve had a good reason to leave home every day anyway to look after them – but for all who are suffering through this like yourself.
Professor Karol Sikora said a few days ago that this virus will likely disappear of its’ own accord – and by that he meant it will just rumble away in the background every now and again, and nobody will take much notice of it any more. Just as happened with SARS and MERS and all the other viruses we’ve had over the years. They are all still around, but are just lumped together now with everything else that people die of. Take the media attention off it, take the government attention away from it (can somebody find another panic for them to concentrate on please?) and everyone will just get on with their lives again.
Don’t worry, the same usual suspects will be back to the Climate Emergency soon….oh wait, do I hear calls for hosepipe bans this morning?
My brother says that, if we’d never heard of corona, we’d not even have noticed anything was amiss. It’d have been a non story (like the deaths of our elderly from flu is a non story because nobody cares, sadly).
Quite frankly I have probably lost a number of ‘friends’ due to their poisonous attitude and views on this whole fiasco, so might struggle to gather 6 people in my garden! Good riddance though, well and truly opened my eyes to some of them.
But hey, I might gain a few proper new friends eh?
I was pointed to a post on another site by someone I know in real life and not just online,I used to think they were sane and pretty much on the same page as me but yesterday they had a huge hissy fit about lockdown easing,they think we should all be locked down even tighter and for at least another six weeks and now thousands more people are going to die !,I’d hoped we might have just gone past peak hysteria,but obviously not,one more name to take off the Christmas card list.
And again we come back to the same old point… sure, we can walk the streets as much as we like, but we can’t go to the football, or the pub, or theatre, or go dating, and every shop is manned by a battalion of menopausal Karens, some equipped with megaphones, others born with them…
Until businesses start flouting this stupid shit, there is no ‘getting on with our normal lives’.
Unfortunately, businesses have even worse Karens breathing down their necks, otherwise I’m sure many of them would just get on with it right now.
Indeed – they’re just on the frontline of the Karenarchy.
It’s depressing to me that people seem to be following these rules. We say to friends how we badly want to meet up, but we cant gaurentee to keep our son 2m from your child (we will not discipline him for acting like a normal human child – eg. wanting to share one of his toys). So some will stay away.
A scan of my social media suggests most people dont like these rules but understand how “necessary” they are. When did people stop asking questions? Why aren’t more critically about whether these policies are a good idea?
Bizarre period in history to be living through.
Or, looking at social media, how many people are paying lip service online to these “necessary” rules, but then going out and just carrying on as normally as they can? Quite a few I would imagine. A neighbour of mine almost apologised to me the other day for letting her son play football in the road with a boy from another household, she was almost falling over herself to explain how tough it has all been for her son, he needed to do this etc etc, and I just smiled and said “what a great idea . . . I’m glad he’s enjoying himself.” The look of relief on her face was huge. We then had a little chat about the real situation and why many of us feel the need to give in to peer pressure in public.
In my little market town, young men walk around with their shirts off with a case of beer on their shoulder, they’re on holiday. I think the quickest way to end this (which won’t happen) is if the gov turned off the money tap. And what worries me is that sunshine, cash in your pocket, and beer makes people complacent, these new government track and trace powers are quite terrifying.
“…at the press conference, we are almost literally at the point of ‘blink once for yes, and two for no’ with our scientists”
That made me laugh.
Not funny though!
Because BecJT, the majority of the British public are unintelligent, fearfull and unquestioning.
If somebody stole my bike, I wouldn’t thank him for getting the forks next week, the wheels next fortnight and the frame sometime in the future. No, I want it back right now and I would punch him in the face!
The people get the government they deserve….
I’m not sure people are stupid (that’s a key argument for lockdown, that ‘people cannot be trusted to ….’ when I think most people are sensible and pretty reasonable) but people are lazy, particularly intellectually lazy. Add free money and sunshine, what’s not to like?
I don’t think this is an either or… it’s an amalgam of free money, sunshine, intellectual laziness, over-reliance on MSM, credulity, unwarranted faith in the powers that be, the fact that now more than ever a great many people have jobs they hate, and our favourite backstop, stupidity.
Hi BecJT, thanks for the reply.
I didn’t say stupid, merely ‘unintelligent, fearful and unquestioning’. By unintelligent I mean they lack critical skills or they can’t be bothered to employ them, either skill or will, the outcome’s the same…..
Either way, we are on the same page
I do think there is a question of IQ; there are many, many people who don’t read anything and only watch MSM. Many take what the government say on trust and feel smug because they are not ‘conspiracy theorists’. There is a great deal of idiocy in the world, unfortunately, as the present situation proves.
millions vote labour/lib/green/snp so your theory that most people aren’t stupid is wrong
I honestly think people have been scared stupid and their rational heads (if they ever had one) are firmly wedged up their anal orifices.
The propaganda still comes thick and fast. Now the numbers are all about increased infection rate. That’s surely a good thing but it’s presented as the opposite. Scare stories about a bogeyman second spike dominate any lockdown letup info.
We need more MSM interviews with small business owners unable to reopen because they can’t afford all the perspex, or they can’t possibly comply with the ridiculous 2m repulse zone. I’m already mourning the inevitable demise of my favourite cafe. And what on earth is going to the pub going to be like? Imagine the seven of you cheering on the footie. Meeting up with friends isn’t going to be the pleasant social event it used to be. Clothes shopping doesn’t bear thinking about.
Maybe Sunak’s announcement about reducing the payouts might help – though the social distancing hoops certainly don’t. People will eventually realise they’ll be made redundant plus the various big companies that are laying people off in thousands might get them to realise there are more scary things than a cold virus that targets those who’ve mostly been bumped off already.
Helping to apply the brakes are the more financially secure who can breezily hold the rest of us to ransom for as long as the government likes to toy with us. Meanwhile, hundreds of people doggedly go to work every day, squeezing onto packed trains etc but being largely overlooked by the media.
Two words – free money. If there wasn’t any of that you can bet that there would have been rioting now.
Quite, and good weather. If it had bucketed down through lockdown, it’d be over by now.
And yet, historically, good weather has always been the thing that has enabled rioting… rain always dampens the feral ardour.
The good thing if it had been a washout weather is that social distancing would have fallen apart completely by now. However there is still time….
I’m not sure. People would have stayed home more and wouldn’t have had the chance to see others behaving normally. Might have got the impression everyone is wearing masks, jumping into the road etc.
Sadly Bec, I think the warm weather plus 100% pay for many public sector workers to sit at home, and 80% for many others, is guaranteeing compliance. My fear is what happens in the autumn, when redundancies sky rocket. If there is a classic late summer/Indian summer weekend, and an undercurrent of dissatisfaction, young men, prone to aggressive activity after a few drinks (Stella), will rampage. The incident in Minneapolis serves as a warning – rioting has spread pretty quickly to other cities now, including New York according to CNBC a few minutes ago.
I agree, we’re still on ‘honeymoon’ with all this, and I think civil unrest is pretty certain also. Plus staff who have had to work to keep businesses afloat are starting to resent colleagues who are on the same money but not working. I’m worried about the bitter divisions and recriminations that are on the way.
Agree. I also think the powers that be are deliberately dragging this out with respect to schools in full knowledge that it is/will be women that bear the brunt of the redundancies – they are less likely to group and riot.
My son is working from home but doing three jobs because he’s covering for those furloughed, on top of his own work. He is doing this for reduced salary. He isn’t resentful, or even complaining because he’s feeling very lucky to have a good job. However, his days are long and his spare time is in very short supply. It seems very unfair to me at any rate.
As soon as Dear Leader here in Scotland announced her wonderful tracking system a few weeks ago I replied to her post about it on Twitter pointing out, sarcastically, “well, there’s no way that will be open to abuse, is it?”.
Thankfully for Dear Leader her wonderfully kind and understanding supporters swarmed over my tweet and I had to concede that I was, in fact, to blame for putting the idea of abusing the track and trace system into people’s minds.
Just move to England… we still like canny, hard-working Scots.
Very funny BecJT, but accurate. BTW I trust my intuition and about three days ago I felt that this LD was dissolving.. No evidence for it, just felt it. I feel the same way about TTT, I can’t see it lasting five minutes because it is unworkable.
This is actually not too bad an article, and it pretty much reflects my experience of the ‘lockdown’, too.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-8367569/TOM-UTLEY-got-lightly-lockdown-heres-yearn-liberation-day.html
But I don’t think the author feels quite the same level of contempt and hatred that I do (or he’s keeping himself in check to avoid being thought of as one of us cranks). I also wince at his admission that he joined in with the Thursday night ritual – if, in fact, he did.
The articles’s not bad Barney, but did you read the comments? I gave up after reading about 4 in a row saying what a jolly time they’re having. They remind me of an article from about a month ago quoting an idiot welcoming house arrest because it gave her an excuse to have a quiet night in instead of going out with friends. What kind of person consents to closing down the economy because they don’t have the nerve to say no to people.
Tune in to Talk Sport and all these moronic football players are on there telling us how the lockdown has meant they’ve been able to spend time with their families and they all say this cringe phrase “they’re making memories”.
Wince……..wince!. Geez you jump on the sheep mentality too much. Take a chill pill yo!
Hideously Allrightjack. Would have been a good article if he’d contrasted his experience with someone at the other extreme, forced to work or lose their job, worried about rent, childcare etc etc etc.
Financial Times article
Do these ghoulish country-by-country ‘death’ league tables actually further our understanding of preparing for and responding to pandemics?
Wouldn’t it make sense to measure ‘all-cause excess mortality’ in arrears, over, a one year period from 1 December 2019 to 30 November 2020? Or even over a two-year period from 1 December 2019 to 30 November 2021?
Given that the purpose of these figures is to enable country-by-country comparisons, have the FT’s figures been age-adjusted/age-standardised?
If we can measure all-cause excess mortality over a one or two year period, we then need to distinguish between (i) deaths directly or indirectly attributable to SARS-CoV-2 and (ii) deaths which were likely to have been the unintended consequences of the policy measures implemented.
You are welcome do do you own research at the euro-momo website. You can look be country and age group. I posted a comparative plot above of 85+. We really are not winning by any mortality measure. The question is why other countries have much lower deaths at any age group, but particularly the 85+ who account for half of England and Wales excess deaths.
https://www.euromomo.eu/graphs-and-maps
Could it be that we’re simply better at keeping people alive to an older age? Admittedly I haven’t looked into it in great detail but perhaps other countries have healther old people (or any age) whereas in UK the NHS are like an artificial support for sickly people. This might help explain why you found the increased excess deaths in lower age bands too.
More likely that life expectancy has take a small dip. We’re actually younger than many countries like Italy.
Surely it’s about time we changed the name of this site from ‘Lockdown Sceptics’ to ‘We were right’.
And then we can change it to ‘I told you so’
And then government admits this was never really about the virus anyway, ha ha ha – so there ?
Good morning everybody across the English Channel!
About two weeks ago I posted here about the question wether children are superspreaders or the opposite. You might remember that I mentioned that the godfather of Corona, our enlightened leader and superstar virologist from the Charite in Berlin, Christian Drosten, had published a “study” that concluded that children had the same viral load as adults and therefore schools and particularly daycares are virus hotspots.
Well, it turns out that numerous scientists heavily criticized that paper due to its “total statistical insignificance” and “basic mistakes in the statistical approach”. The German newspaper Bild has reported about that now and has been grilling Super-Drosten (in my opinion worse than your Prof. Pantsdown Ferguson) over it. Now Prof Spiegelhalter from the university of Cambridge has come out too and called for the paper to be withdrawn.
And now it becomes very interesting: in my post back then I also mentioned that there is a detailed study at the university of Heidelberg, aiming to find out about the infectiousnes of children. Although there are still no official results published, the Premier of our south-western state Baden-Württemberg has announced that in early June all kindergardens and schools will be opened again; kindergardens and elementary schools WITHOUT social distancing measures, so the old normal. It seems that, though not officially published, first solid results of that study show that children under the age of ten are hardly ever passing the virus on. That is amazing news and is worth being spread!
Moreover, in countries where daycares and schools have been reopened (Denmark, Finland, or were never closed like Sweden, Iceland) there is no known outbreak related to children.
All German federal states have announced to bring back children to schools and daycares soon. Many even without any social distancing measures. This is a huge step.
I am so happy for my little 21 months old boy that he can see his little buddies again in day care.
And the fact that Prof. Drosten was proven wrong (again!) makes it all even that bit better.
Thats it for now. All my best from Northern Germany, stay strong guys!
Thank you so much for posting this. I’m sure we will all spread the word. It has made my day.
Fantastic news and hope we are seeing the end of this
Yes, but what are the odds that our politicians and ‘scientists’ will see or take on board any of this?
Why no-one has knocked some sense into their heads is a bleeding mystery.
Nobody’s got a hard enough hammer.
Probably a hammer isn’t enough. One needs an anvil.
N po one has a hard enough hammer
That’s good news Herman!
Thanks Herman. Great news. It’s really past time that questions are asked about who “experts” like Drosten are really working for. So glad for you and your son.
Thanks for a great post, that has increased my optimism no end. Please keep us in the loop on further developments.
Baden-Württemberg has announced that in early June all kindergardens and schools will be opened again; kindergardens and elementary schools WITHOUT social distancing measures, so the old normal. It seems that, though not officially published, first solid results of that study show that children under the age of ten are hardly ever passing the virus on. That is amazing news and is worth being spread!
That’s wonderful news. Wouldn’t it be nice if it made it into the MSM?!
Some people on my local council page want them to bring in a one way walking system around our high street as the pavements arent wide enough for social distancing. We’ll be lucky if there is any shops to walk too after this as about 70% are independent shops and can’t see them surviving tbh
I was in Southwold recently. They now have a one-way pavement system – completely ignored however!
Yes I’ll be ignoring what they bring in here too. I can’t see how you can catch it just by walking past someone, they would literally have to cough or sneeze in your face to catch it.
That’s what I’ve been saying – there is a reason why we have an immune system. If people seriously believed that we can catch something just because someone else walked past them then we shouldn’t be here, humanity would have stopped at the austrolapithecus africanus!
I think most if British humanity stopped well short of that.
Not only in Britain. Numptyism knows no borders.
That’s very true Paulito. I’ve seen enough numpties in my home country.
Unfortunately I know what you mean and many of our PTB are pretty much stuck at the austrolapithecus africanus stage.
The government are now saying that the Test and Trace policy will be asking people if they’ve spent 15 minutes within 2 metres of somebody. That’s their baseline for transmission and tracking anybody who falls into that category.
Well let’s hope the sheeple manage to read between those lines and realise you can’t get infected by walking past someone!
Yeah but bagsie not it
Morning all. Saw a headline in today’s El Mundo, (the article is part of their premium content) that quotes an Italian virologist who has isolated the latest strain of Corona. His conclusión – “It has weakened, it no longer has the destructive power it had”. Meanwhile, on planet delusion, the Spanish health minister is predicting Armageddon next Autumn. Wonder if this news from Italy will be covered as prominently as all the fear porn from that country.
Bet they won’t.The MSM here is too invested in fear porn to reverse course but hopefully someone will mention it.
Thanks for your updates on the ground in Spain. I’m getting the distinct impression that politicians in Spain and the UK are getting a bit desperate in justifying their actions…
In Spain Government lies are being exposed on a daily basis. It’s chief advisor Fernando Simon is now facing two different lawsuits over his handling of the Coronavirus. They are so deperate that they are lashing out at the pólice and judiciary.
Just waiting for this to kick off here!
I’m probably being a bit lazy here but does anyone have to hand some links to various modelling based projections that have been used (or not) by countries around the world?
Also does anyone have handy links to what those models were predicting at the start?
For those into data and science, some examples of model’s limited accuracy (if this is indeed the case) or examples where more optimistic models have turned out to be right but been ignored by governments, may help to sway their views.
I don’t have such a list, but I think that what open-minded epidemiologists will be looking at is whether the simple SIR model is sufficient to model real world epidemics – as it always comes up with the worst case scenario. Or maybe that’s why they continue to use it..? They perhaps also need to look at how they get their R0 figures and whether they need to be more aware of distortions in the testing and death figures.
To use models that incorporate the notion of innate immunity etc. involves more guesswork, even though it is highly likely that in the real world, such a continuum of varied resistance and immunity is always present.
If we insist on always assuming the worst case for all subsequent new viruses, I don’t think we’ll ever escape this madness.
Try some of the links here:
https://ddi.sutd.edu.sg/
The only model I know of that was trying to actually predict stuff was Ferguson’s. It was supposedly estimating the effects of different “non-pharmacological interventions” (closing stuff and generally interfering).
Estimated IFRs and CARs were based on early data from China. But if you read Anders Tegnell paper he was estimating a maximum upper limit of CAR (“clinical attack ratio” or fraction or population who need hospital treatment) of 1% from this early data which turned out to be right on the money (it was less than 1%).
The WHO were pushing out “naive” IFR estimates based on reported deaths over known positives (obviously hugely inflated) of 3% or so and CARs of around 10% as they seemed to be saying 20% of infections would require hospitalisation!).
The only prediction a government really needs is an estimate of the CAR because that tells them if or how much their health service will be overwhelmed.
Gupta ran a simple SIR model just to make the point that earlier start and lower IFR match observed deaths just as well as later start and higher IFR. Ferguson just arbitrarily assumed late start and high IFR. Gupta did not assume anything. But since that paper there has been much more actual evidence for earlier start and lower IFR.
You could try to argue that the low seroprevalences found support the high IFR assumption but it’s difficult to see how you also explain the earliness that those studies also show. If it started so long before any of the lockdowns then how did it manage to spread everywhere so evenly and yet so thinly?
Some Good news from Spain on the tourism front. I posted last weekend about how dreary holidays would be here if the new normalistas got their way. The autonomous government in Cantabria have stated that beaches will not have the absurd appointment system proposed by the forces of evil. Anti social distancing remains for now, as do restrictions in bars and restaurants, but this represents progress. I believe beaches in Alicante will not have appointments either. Beaches where I live are huge and looked quite normal for a weekday in May when I went for my walk yesterday. The plan is for Spain to open to foreign tourists in July so things may change but, hopeful signs.
Can’t say we will rushing to get to Spain in July, or indeed anywhere else, if it involves face masks on plane, health passports, temp taken on arrival & possibility of being quarantined, no swimming pools, queueing for meals etc. Sod all that.
Hello Fred. Can’t say I blame you. Travel is still an utterly joyless and unpleasant prospect and this summer’s going to be a washout. However, it shows some kind of pushback against these insane restrictions which will, hopefully, spread to other sectors.
Yes, everybody here is aware of the role the media are playing in this, so nothing new, but it still makes me sad, sick, frustrated and flat out furious when I read headlines like: “South Korea is locking down again. Second wave already has arrived!”
Well, a.) they never really had a true first wave (unless you count 0,0015% of infected people of the population a wave and 0,0005% deaths of the population a large toll)
and b.) the recent “second wave” consists of low two digit numbers per day of newly infected people and……. 0 new deaths.
Give me a f… break!!!
They are probably paying the price for being a bit too good at tracking and tracing….
I find it very interesting there hasn’t been massive spikes in the London area and some parts of Europe considering how the lockdowns are falling apart!
Quite, S.Korea never got anywhere near herd immunity!
Surely to create spikes in a mostly asymptomatic disease needs a lot of testing.
I was having a think about the seroprevalence testing – as Toby correctly intimates, calculation of an IFR requires the full data set so it can be corrected for demographics AND date of collection, as well as setting – I believe these samples were collected end of april / early may. A *simple* backdate to then suggests something more along the lines of 0.6-0.7%, and that’s probably being generous.
This does suggest some odd behaviour by the virus – whether that is cross-immunity from other coronaviriae, or simply the assumptions made by Imperial vis susceptibility or R0 are wrong, especially given how the virus seems to be in retreat in the London area….
Another thought for the day – maybe Toby or one of the other contributors could put together a situation report on other countries!
I notice today on Twitter academics from various arty subjects / colleges have piled on Allison Pearson for having the temerity to criticise Cambridge’s ‘on-line lectures’ policy – they conveniently ignore the fact that most HEI’s still intend to proceed with face to face small group teaching. Over in STEM land, it just won’t work without that, and my colleagues will largely get on with it! Do they not realise that ‘da yoot’ isn’t going to pay their 9K per year to sit in their hometown watching some unmotivated junior academic struggle with their Zoom connection??
Hancock’s track-n-trace thing is going to be hilarious.
I’ll give it until the end of the day today before fraudulent randoms are calling people up claiming to be from the government T&T department.
For my part, if anyone calls me, I’ll lead them on a merry dance of authenticating their identity for as long as I can be bothered, then tell them to eff orf.
I’ll only answer calls from people and numbers I know and block all unknown numbers so good luck to them if they try and call me.
Daily Mail will be on it, you can bet!
You get the app, you declare yourself infectious, and you give them the names and addresses of all the people you really hate.
All of them? That could take some time…
We could all report our MP!
That would give them a legitimate reason to skive off some more!
Thanks for this update, Toby, especially the news about Simon Dolan’s legal challenge. Does anyone (with knowledge of the courts) have a rough idea of how long it would take from the Govt response (presumably on 12th June) to the judicial review actually taking place?
On a lighter note, the Govt should rename the Test & Trace scheme the “Stay Safe” scheme – then you really would be rung up by the SS
I know someone posted late yesterday about criticism of The Lancet paper that led to the suspension of various HCQ trials. For anyone interested, here is an additional contribution to the debate from ZeroHedge:
https://www.zerohedge.com/health/lancet-study-caused-who-drop-hydroxychloroquine-trials-falls-under-scrutiny
Me thinks Mr Trump might call time on The Lancet editor, as well as his friends at the WHO
Sad about The Lancet which, like New Scientist (and somany others), used to be a respectable publication!
There are several problems with The Lancet, and its editorial policies, not least of which is having the same editor-in-chief since 1995, with his associated policy agenda. It has a turnaround time of 72 hours. In my opinion, as someone who referees manuscripts in another field, I think a full and proper reviewing system takes much longer, bearing in mind at least two referee reports from unrelated and non-compromised academics should be sought.
72hrs is really fast! The journals and conferences in my field had several weeks first review round, followed by an author rebuttal period and then a final review. Whole process could drag out for months!
Top journals in my field at least two years – after at least two (and up to four) rounds of revise and resubmit!
By which time everything they are saying is out-of-date?
The issue is that unless the manuscript is dealing with something novel, that is, pushing theory materially in a new direction and/or presenting a novel dataset or technique for the discipline, it will not get published quickly, if at all. Other academics need sufficient time to reflect. Often, very important work gets rejected outright by the initial editorial screen, and doesn’t even make it to first round review. The odds of being published in the very top journals in my area are less than 5%. Your work can be rejected at any stage in the process too – after two or three rounds of revision, the editor can decide to reject the work, even if you have addressed the reviewers’ concerns.
The EAT-Lancet Report destroyed any remaining credibility.
Just thinking about this entire fiasco.
Two points really.
1. Boris has become emboldened enough to silence criticism, because he’s protected by an 80 seat majority and is seen as a vote winning machine.
2. Cummings is revered (even now) as some political genius.
But aren’t both of these more a testament to what happens when you effectively have only one political party?
Both the Brexit “victory” and the last election win were made possible by yes, HIM.
Jeremy Corbyn.
– Enabled the Brexit vote win by essentially siding with Brexit and being hated by trad Labour voters.
– Enabled the last Tory victory by at that stage being utterly despised by trad Labour voters.
I put it you that Boris isn’t some vote winning machine, and Dom Cummings isn’t some political genius.
Rather than are fortuitous to be around against the worst opposition leader since, well anyone think of a worse one?
No Corbyn, no Boris, no Cummings, no lockdown.
Thanks again Jezza for nothing. Your utter incompetence and narcissism in clinging onto the Labour leadership continues to offer calamitous consequences.
If you want to see what happens when you have a country with one political party, simply look to the Nationalist Peoples Republic of Scotland.
“We have a predator that came from the depths of the cosmos and took over the rule of our lives. Human beings are its prisoners. The Predator is our lord and master. It has rendered us docile, helpless. If we want to protest, it suppresses our protest. If we want to act independently, it demands that we don’t do so… I have been beating around the bush all this time, insinuating to you that something is holding us prisoner. Indeed we are held prisoner! “This was an energetic fact for the sorcerers of ancient Mexico … They took us over because we are food for them, and they squeeze us mercilessly because we are their sustenance. just as we rear chickens in chicken coops, the predators rear us in human coops, humaneros. Therefore, their food is always available to them.”
“No, no, no, no,” [Carlos replies] “This is absurd don Juan. What you’re saying is something monstrous. It simply can’t be true, for sorcerers or for average men, or for anyone.”
“Why not?” don Juan asked calmly. “Why not? Because it infuriates you? … You haven’t heard all the claims yet. I want to appeal to your analytical mind. Think for a moment, and tell me how you would explain the contradictions between the intelligence of man the engineer and the stupidity of his systems of beliefs, or the stupidity of his contradictory behaviour. Sorcerers believe that the predators have given us our systems of belief, our ideas of good and evil, our social mores. They are the ones who set up our hopes and expectations and dreams of success or failure. They have given us covetousness, greed, and cowardice. It is the predators who make us complacent, routinary, and egomaniacal.”
“‘But how can they do this, don Juan? [Carlos] asked, somehow angered further by what [don Juan] was saying. “‘Do they whisper all that in our ears while we are asleep?”
“‘No, they don’t do it that way. That’s idiotic!” don Juan said, smiling. “They are infinitely more efficient and organized than that. In order to keep us obedient and meek and weak, the predators engaged themselves in a stupendous manoeuvre stupendous, of course, from the point of view of a fighting strategist. A horrendous manoeuvre from the point of view of those who suffer it. They gave us their mind! Do you hear me? The predators give us their mind, which becomes our mind. The predators’ mind is baroque, contradictory, morose, filled with the fear of being discovered any minute now.”
“I know that even though you have never suffered hunger… you have food anxiety, which is none other than the anxiety of the predator who fears that any moment now its manoeuvre is going to be uncovered and food is going to be denied. Through the mind, which, after all, is their mind, the predators inject into the lives of human beings whatever is convenient for them. And they ensure, in this manner, a degree of security to act as a buffer against their fear.”
“The sorcerers of ancient Mexico were quite ill at ease with the idea of when [the predator] made its appearance on Earth. They reasoned that man must have been a complete being at one point, with stupendous insights, feats of awareness that are mythological legends nowadays. And then, everything seems to disappear, and we have now a sedated man. What I’m saying is that what we have against us is not a simple predator. It is very smart, and organized. It follows a methodical system to render us useless. Man, the magical being that he is destined to be, is no longer magical. He’s an average piece of meat.”
“There are no more dreams for man but the dreams of an animal who is being raised to become a piece of meat: trite, conventional, imbecilic.”
― Carlos Castaneda, The Active Side of Infinity
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/12841.The_Active_Side_of_Infinity
I saw a great slogan from one of the many eviscerating comments on Youtube for BBC news yesterday regarding track and trace:
“Got the App? Stay Back!”
Obviously, you don’t want any of these idiots who actually have anything like that running on their phone anywhere near you
Assuming the RNLI is not typically crewed by the cast of ‘The Last of the Summer Wine’ & the octogenarians are therefore taken out of the equation that IFR rate becomes significantly less & the probability shoots way back above 1 in a million…
Interesting wording on Sky News just now. Talking about weaning off the Furlough scheme the reporter made a point of saying
The Furlough scheme brought in as a result of the lockdown triggered by the pandemic
It’s the first time I’ve noticed that being used and I suspect we’ll being hearing more of this “triggered by the pandemic” moving forward.
Sky are very biased and one sided in their reporting. It’s so blatant and you can see it clearly when they’re interviewing people with contrarian views to their agenda.
https://www.spiked-online.com/2020/05/28/why-they-hate-sweden/
The Nick Cohen piece linked in there is absolute comedy.
I’m never quite sure what the difference is between the Guardian and the Daily Mash.
Used to love reading the daily mash but it morphed into a permanent lefty Rant. That’s probably how nish kumar got hold of it and ruined it completly For me
….. absurd attempts to compare New Zealand to the UK (New Zealand, for one thing, has more sheep than people).
Hmm, not sure about that, though many of our sheep have only two legs.
Brendan O’Neill today on Facebook:
A revolt in Hong Kong, riots in Minneapolis, an economic depression on the horizon, Twitter censuring the President of the United States, European leaders openly wondering if it was a mistake to enforce lockdowns, and British journalists are *still* talking about whether Dominic Cummings stopped at a petrol station on a drive to Durham. The absolute loons.
I see he’s still trying to protect his mate, even though that man was apparently one of the individuals most responsible for this lockdown disaster, and the only one we currently have any chance of seeing punished for it.
Great way to let personal and political loyalties prevent any real repercussions for the Guilty Men.
I wonder if a lot of this defence is due to Brexit….
Pretty sure it is, mostly, where it isn’t social friendship or a broader political alliance.
Whatever, anyone who defends Cummings on this can’t be trusted as a lockdown sceptic, because they’ve made it clear that it isn’t that important an issue for them. Just something to be ditched when it becomes inconvenient.
Brendan O Neil has jumped the shark in his defence of his pal.
Cumming is the idiot that was convinced by Ferguson’s bullshit model.
Cummings is the one that sanctioned the lockdown.
Cummings is fare game, even if he’s being attacked for the wrong reasons (imagine!).
Useful to keep the following in mind whenever we see these little comments implying that trying to get Cummings out of the government is somehow frivolous or “a distraction”:
“The government has confirmed that Dominic Cummings was an observer at some meetings of its Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE), the secretive body which gives specialized advice to ministers on responding to the pandemic.
According to two people involved, Cummings played far more than a bystander’s role at a crucial SAGE meeting on March 18, as the panel discussed social distancing options to tackle the Covid-19 outbreak.
Speaking on condition of anonymity because the meetings are private, the people said Cummings asked why a lockdown was not being imposed sooner, swayed the discussion toward faster action, and made clear he thought pubs and restaurants should be closed within two days. They then were.“
The Guilty Men. Never forget. Never forgive.
Could we have a daily picture of a facemask wanker? I get it’s a little negative but it’s time to turn the screw on these whoppers trying to usher in the new normal
Geez you people hate mask so much!. I get the impression we’ve got a lot of Brendan O’Neill like “everyone is a sheep” people here!
Well, they represent the culture of cringing fear that got us into this mess.
Fear AND wilful compliance
You guys must be getting desperate lol
I don’t hate masks, on the contrary, I used masks professionally in appropriate clinical circumstances.
However, I HATE being made to feel that I am the one who’s not normal by not wanting to wear a mask as demonstration of willful compliance with a totalitarian social experiment!
If you suggest that I HAVE to wear a mask, observe my HATE transform into VIOLENCE.
Good day
Don’t hit me, I’m on your side!
sorry Annie, sometimes I wear my heart on my sleeve
Go on Mr. Troll post a picture of you with your mask on so we can all have a laugh
My favourites are those who sport not just the muzzle but also those ridiculous welder style visor things. The old belt and braces approach.
Then we can blow up the picture, cut it out, and have a nice time playing a game called ‘pinning the mask on the wanker’.
Bags I have first go. I know where I want to pin it.
Having read Michael Moorcock’s quote: “If we continue to make any sort of social progress, I suspect that the political battle lines of the twenty first century will not be between socialism and capitalism but democracy and paternalism.”
it made me think about the number of Common Purpose ‘graduates’ who have been driving the woke social agenda for some time from the upper echelons of our public organisations, quangos, universities and charities.
Where wokeness embeds itself, it brooks no argument and is by its nature anti-democratic, this could be why it is wholeheartedly advocated by Common Purpose as they seek to lead us in a post-democratic world.
Wokeness is paternalism writ large.
Here’s a link to a video about the “spontaneous” worldwide clapping phenomenom I first saw over a month ago and forgot to post:
https://www.bitchute.com/video/_dslfuSBY2U/
Not sure if anyone has seen this but it is a quite brilliant video and watching how people just comply with a random person telling them to do stuff says it all.
https://youtu.be/pzWNyftuyk8
A great discussion on the moneyweek podcast about the validity of the various testing methods and why the government totally ballsed this up!
https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-moneyweek-podcast/id1048958476#episodeGuid=vnid%3A%2F%2Fepisodes%2F28520839%3Fmedia_id%3D29047081
How many of you were aware of this Medieval law regarding your assets?
Ooops Sorry should have attached this to my above comment !
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/uk-uses-feudal-system-law-seize-ps150-million-bank-accounts
Have you seen Heir Hunters on BBC1? Basically there’s a time limit on inheritance before somebody’s estate passes to the the state.
That’s awful! I guess I’d better log in to my savings accounts and at least put one transaction through each so they can’t claim it’s dormant!
The article is pertaining to estates where somebody has died without an heir. There’s a lot of unclaimed inheritance out there.
Just write a will – and make sure someone knows where it is!
Covid Zombie encounter of the day:
Was at M&S today and was making my way to the self-service tills when this man wearing a face mask was blocking the path, I asked him politely if he was in the queue, he mumbled something that I didn’t understand and when I asked him to repeat what he’d said he became rather rude but seeing the look on my face he moved away.
A short time later I was on my way out when I encountered the same man again who exaggeratedly moved out of my way then said something again. I just ignored him thinking he was a twat.
What is it about people wearing masks that exhibit such strange behaviour.
Jesus wept.
You were right in thinking him and his ilk are twats,they certainly are,Where I live the numbers of mask wearers seems to go up and down randomly through the week so I can’t detect if there are more of them or not,they do seem mostly to be people under thirty years old though.Most of them have an air superiority about them with a ‘look at me,I’m saving your life’ sort of aura about them.Twats.
Not your life. Their life.
Yes,that’s what they are doing and a lot of them like to virtue signal and imply they are doing it for the greater good when it’s the rest of they are scared to death of.I think the ones that wear painters dust masks from the pound shop are amusing and I haven’t seen many this week with the magic blue gloves.
Agree. In my area the vast majority of those wearing masks are old (the bloke I enocuntered today was certainly over 60 which seems to explain the patronising way he was trying to talk to me, I was having none of it), BAME and immigrants (mostly E. European) – the latter two are the worst actually as I’ve said before they tend to be the worst when it comes to not observing basic hygiene protocols – constant face touching, not washing hands and even nose picking!
Well said about the air of superiority. I also think they’re virtue signallers as if to say “I’m good because I care for my health. Poor you for not thinking about yours.”
Do watch this video (I did post it earlier) but very funny (and scary watching people comply)
https://youtu.be/pzWNyftuyk8
All I can sat is wow!
Just shows how people can become sheep. Sad.
That is class!!!
If the lockdown was necessary and if the ONS antibody survey results are to be taken at face value – i.e that only 4 million people have been infected and everyone else is susceptible, then the Government should not be easing the lockdown. Deaths now are at the same level as they were on 23rd March. So if the lockdown was necessary then it must be necessary now.
HOWEVER, if the Government does ease lockdown and infections don’t rise, this proves that the eased measures could have been in place all along. That other countries have eased their lockdowns and not experienced spikes also demonstrates that the eased measures could have been in place there all along.
Fortunate for the government in the weeks and months ahead that the current crop of journos, who clearly do not understand ‘the science’ either, are still in post when the truth comes out!
Grandpa Drakeford has announced the relaxation to the lockdown rules for Wales, except seems to have made them more draconian than they were before. Now we are supposed to stay within a five mile radius of home to shop for essentials etc. There was no stipulated distance prior to today. It’s only a rule of thumb though, he says between sucking on a Werthers Original, and people in rural Wales may have to travel further. No, really? Within a five mile radius of my house there are only fields and one shut up pub.
And unlike England non-essential retailers are only being told to prepare for opening at the next review in three weeks. Is Wales more plague ridden than England? No of course not. Is Mark Drakeford a big girl’s blouse? Yes. Fortunately for those of us who live on the border we can skip over to England (as long as the border is ‘local’) do our shopping in all those lovely shops allowed to open over there, and then return home.
Devolution is an absolute nonsense.
He did say the R rate is the same now as it was 3 weeks ago so because the risk level hasn’t increased you will be required to proceed with more caution.
Because he’s looking at it taking the country as a whole, rather than regionally. In South Wales we were an early hot spot with the first cases reported around 11 March (same timescale pattern as London), but cases have dropped away here. Whereas the pandemic in North Wales didn’t start until the end of March, so those regions are 10 days behind. The R rate in South Wales will be lower than in the North.
A good example of why lockdowns have little or no affect. The pattern of the pandemic is the same in the North as it was in the South, yet in the North if lockdown was affective, it should have been snuffed out quickly.
Lucky you. I am way over in the West where there’s no escape.
The nastiest thing of all is the way the l.d. is being used as an excuse to whip up anglophobia among the Cymruzombies. Let’s all hate the English and make sure they never come here on holiday again. What? The economy depends on them? What’s an economy? We can’t understand big English words.
Only solution: London chops down the magic money tree. Then watch the Drakeford lice go scuttle.
You’re welcome to join the club again if you and Scotland can summon up the numbers of the brave at heart to get rid of the idiots.
From The Telegraph:
“Boris Johnson is like an Anglican bishop in an empty cathedral, delivering a sermon on the importance of sexual restraint after the Dean has been caught at a drug-fuelled orgy.
Indeed, there is an academic, almost theological air about the latest pronouncement on outdoor reunions. At least the original lockdown had clarity. Now, confusion reigns as the strategy unravels. Why are only six people allowed to gather in England, but eight in Scotland? Is there something in the Caledonian air? Can a household host several successive parties of six people in a single day or night? We are told that visitors cannot stay overnight, so when do they have to leave? Midnight? Three am? Tents are apparently banned, but can a friend or relative stay in a camper van?”
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2020/05/29/new-lockdown-rules-will-fast-become-bureaucratic-irrelevance/
Isn’t the risk to the RNLI far lower than you calculate? Firstly, how likely is it that an infected person is going to want to go swimming, if symptomatic? Secondly, a typical lifeguard is younger and more healthy than average, and hence less likely to die if infected, e.g. by a factor of four for a forty-something. Your 1/2.5M drops to 1/20M or so. The RNLI certainly seems to have made a poor call.
It’s all part of the culture of fear and preservation of life at all costs.
The whole point of emergency services is that they risk their lives to save others. And while they shouldn’t be exposed to frivolous risks, they absolutely should not be where they are, whether it’s coastguard, fire service, police or whatever, if they aren’t prepared to run risks much greater than the ludicrously small ones involved in this particular disease.
In fairness, most likely apart from a few coronapanic zealots, the problem is almost exclusively in the admin. The rank and file volunteers probably would be quite happy to get on with it.
Be wary of articles in the Daily Hatemail, not exactly known for it’s balanced reporting, when it prefers to incite bitterness and wrath among its more nasty-minded readers.
The reason there’s a shortage of lifeguards is because of lockdown and government regulations, not because the RNLI are a bunch of stupid wimps. Lifeguards are retrained every year and this year the lockdown has prevented that. In addition, lifeguards are seasonal workers so don’t qualify for fulough. Many have had to find other jobs.
The RNLI started this year £4million short of the budget it needs to maintain the service. Meanwhile, we had severe floods, in which the lifeboats were a large part of the rescue work. I live about as far inland as you can get, yet there is a lifeboat station about 2 miles from my house. The hundreds of stations and all the equipment must be maintained and updated, which doesn’t come cheap.
And before anyone starts screaming about salaries, RNLI admin staff are happy to earn less than they would if they worked in similar jobs in the commercial sector because it’s such a good cause.
The lockup must have prevented a lot of necessary fundraising to take place and articles like the one Toby based his sneering on will have caused some self-righteous DM readers to withold donations.
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.05.26.115832v1.full.pdf
Important newly published paper (26 May) about immunity to Covid-19 among non exposed patients.Study from Singapore (which has world famous experts on SARS). They tested old sera from SARS patients all having cross immunity to Covid-19. But most interesting non SARS non Covid-19 exposed persons, in half of them, had cross immunity to Covid-19 from other betacoronaviruses of animal origin .
Very interesting. It seems you might end up with T cells that spot the parts of the proteome that are generic to almost all coronaviruses and this may help your immune system to see off the infection in the very early stages.
This is all +1 reason why it’s probably rather unhealthy to spend your whole life locked up– you’re generally better to get infected with a few of these things and let your immune system take part in the rich tapestry of life out there.
The other piece of good news is they were looking for memory T cells to see how long immunity might last for. The SARS1 ones were still kicking after 17 years, and there’s every reason to believe SARS2 will work the same (in fact the SARS1 T cells are good for SARS2 anyway, but not many people had SARS1).
Just went for a walk by Kingston riverside. It was teaming with people. Pubs were serving food and drinks to take away. Nobody was bothering staying 2 metres apart. Lots of groups and gatherings. There were a few (maybe 10%) idiots wearing masks. Some had them on under their chins, which always makes me chuckle.
Anyway here’s the point. We are winning this battle. People are slowly starting to see through the BS. Maybe we’ll have a few more months of silliness, but I’m convinced that within six months max we will be back to the old normal.
I also have a sneaking suspicion they will drop the 14 day quarantine order from international travel. It’s not sustainable and it has too much resistance. Patel, Gove and Handjob can go stick their stupid rules where the sun don’t shine.
Have a great weekend everyone.
I’m sure there are some zombies who breathe through their chins. Or maybe even lower down, from where they talk.
This is great to hear. Unfortunately we’ve been told in Scotland to avoid all the behaviours you describe lest we kill people and end up with the lockdown back in place. The virus is our behaviour.
I say ignore it and live your life as you wish. The more people who resist, the quicker wee Jimmy Krankie realises it’s game over for her dictatorship.
Agreed. Been doing that, literally, from day one. Very little has changed in my life. I have a small, tight social circle, none of whom are lockdown enthusiasts.
Ordinarily when do Scottish schools close for the summer break? I know it is earlier than England which is approx. the third week of July.
Been looking to book a holiday in Scotland and it seems July 4th is the date when holiday accommodation will become available again.
Odd that lettings companies know 4th of July it will be safe to go on holiday.
If social distancing will hasten the demise of our tourist and heritage industry, that 14 day quarantine will be the final nail in the coffin. No wonder there’s too much resistance.
Thanks for this RDawg and let’s stay positive!
Resistance! One has to wonder what sort of idiot decided to implement it 12 weeks after it was too late in any case.
Agree. They forgot three words – stable, horse, bolted.
Our daughter is “popping” over tomorrow! From London! We live in Rugby. Not seen her since Feb. She’s coming here on the train then driving her car back. She hates public transport in London in normal times, so wants her car with her. Can’t wait!
My daughter lives in Paris with her baby boy born in January, we have seen him once in February when we visited her. Don’t know when we will be able to see them again….have a great visit with your daughter (I’m not jealous really….
)
Enjoy your day Adele.
I work in the travel industry and there is a huge lobbying movement to stop the quarantine and it is gathering traction. Here’s hoping.
Surely, if we were being told by Vallance and Whitty in March and April that there was no evidence to suggest that letting International Flights in to the UK would spread ChinaVirus then where’s “The Science” now?
Here’s the data on Scotland:
– 1.73% of people tested in Scotland (only 109,000 tests for a population of 5,400,000) have tested NEGATIVE
– 0.28% have tested POSITIVE
– 50% of the 2,316 deaths have been in care homes. Around 45% of deaths have been in hospital
– the average age of death is around 80
– 75% of deaths are people aged 75+
– no one under the age of 19 has died
– as of today, 797 people are in hospital having tested positive
– 26 – yes TWENTY-SIX – people are in ICU having tested positive, not 40 as claimed by resident-dentist Jason Leitch today
He’s currently working on the Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon to model the potential spread of infection.
It’s ridiculous, if you know the people that are dying then you work out the most efficient and therefore least costly way to protect them. Stopping people from working and getting on with life is probably the most costly way to do it.
FWIW those are yesterday’s figures. The numbers published earlier today are even lower: 769 confirmed cases in hospital of whom 25 are in ICU (with a further 15 suspected cases out of 447 in ICU).
For further context: the highest number of confirmed cases in a single day in Scotland was 430 on 31st March. The total number of confirmed cases for the past seven days is… 358. There were another 39 confirmed cases in today’s figures – the same number as on 19th March four days before lockdown began.
According to the daily figures 86 people died of covid in Scotland in the last seven days. A week ago the seven-day total was 192 and a week before that 242.
The most recent NRS report (up to 24th May) lists a total of 3779 deaths. Of the 233 deaths in the week up to the 24th (week 21) nearly 54% (126) were of people aged 85 and over. This is in a nation where the average life expectancy of someone born in 2012 is 77 (male) and 81 (female). In addition to nobody under 19 having died, in the most recent figures there were, in week 21, no covid deaths at all in the 0-44 age brackets.
If I am reading the report correctly excess deaths for week 21 were all of 178 above average (although the total for this year remains much higher) and deaths in hospitals were actually below the five year average.
The secret to Scotlands low numbers is the mass consumption of Irn Bru. Sure we’ve no teeth but after using an etch-e-sketch, the back of a fag packet and reading the tea leaves it turns out through this rigorous scientific procedure that the less teeth you have the harder it is for the virus to multiply in your mouth. Combine all this with haggis suppers and Tunnocks tea cakes and we’re virtually immune.
I don’t know how many of you folk have seen this (courtesy of link in Peter Hitchens’ blog), and apologies if Toby has already linked to it, but it’s so utterly appalling I thought we should all make certain if having read it: Options for increasing adherence to social distancing measures 22nd March 2020 Question addressed What are the options for increasing adherence to the social distancing measures? This paper addresses the two social distancing measures that are seen as most important at present: 1. General social distancing by everyone. 2. Shielding for vulnerable people for at least 12 weeks. The methodology for evaluating the options is given in Appendix A. The options set out below are not mutually exclusive. In fact, there is evidence that greatest behaviour change impact is achieved by interventions that operate at many levels simultaneously and consistently (1). There are nine broad ways of achieving behaviour change: Education, Persuasion, Incentivisation, Coercion, Enablement, Training, Restriction, Environmental restructuring, and Modelling (2, 3). We have focused on those that are most relevant for this task and where there is evidence to draw on. 1. General social distancing by everyone Government guidance (4): ‘Everyone should try to follow the following measures as much as is practicable. 1. Avoid contact with someone who is displaying symptoms of coronavirus (COVID-19). These symptoms include high temperature and/or new and continuous cough. 2. Avoid non-essential use of public transport when possible. 3. Work from home, where possible. Your employer should support you to do this. Please refer to employer guidance for more information. 4. Avoid large and small gatherings in public spaces, noting that pubs, restaurants, leisure centres and similar venues are currently shut as infections spread easily in closed spaces where people gather together. 5. Avoid gatherings with friends and family. Keep in touch using remote technology such as phone, internet, and social media. 6. Use telephone or online services to contact your GP or other essential services. We strongly advise you to follow the above measures as much as you can and to significantly limit your face-to-face interaction with friends and family if possible, particularly if you: are over 70, have an underlying health condition, are pregnant.’ Options (See Appendix B for summary of option evaluations) Education 1. Specificity: The guidance currently lacks clarity and specificity with regards to recommended behaviours. For example, instead of the phrase ‘try to’, it should just say ‘do’. Phrases such as ‘as much as is practicable’, ‘non-essential’, ‘significantly limit’, and ‘gathering’ are open to wide differences in interpretation. This can lead to confusion about exactly what people are being required to do (e.g. gathering outside or going for walks). Guidance now needs to be reformulated to be behaviourally specific: who needs to do what (precisely) and why (explain the rationale) and communicated through channels that provide personalised advice and account for individual circumstances including SMS messaging and an interactive website (5-7). Persuasion 2. Perceived threat: A substantial number of people still do not feel sufficiently personally threatened; it could be that they are reassured by the low death rate in their demographic group (8), although levels of concern may be rising (9). Having a good understanding of the risk has been found to be positively associated with adoption of COVID-19 social distancing measures in Hong Kong (10). The perceived level of personal threat needs to be increased among those who are complacent, using hard-hitting Evaluation of options for increasing social distancing Page 1 emotional messaging. To be effective this must also empower people by making clear the actions they can take to reduce the threat (11). 3. Responsibility to others: There seems to be insufficient understanding of, or feelings of responsibility about, people’s role in transmitting the infection to others. This may have resulted in part from messaging around the low level of risk to most people and talk of the desirability of building ‘herd immunity’. Messaging needs to emphasise and explain the duty to protect others (12, 13). 4. Positive messaging around actions: People need to see self-protective actions in positive terms and feel confident that they will be effective. Individuals also need to understand that the survival of the severely ill will be increased by the capacity of the health care system, which in turn will be increased by reducing the rise in infections now. Messaging about actions need to be framed positively in terms of protecting oneself and the community, and increase confidence that they will be effective (14). 5. Tailoring: Some people will be more persuaded by appeals to play by the rules, some by duty to the community, and some to personal risk (13). All these different approaches are needed. The messaging also needs to take account of the realities of different people’s lives. Messaging needs to take account of the different motivational levers and circumstances of different people (15). Incentivisation 6. Social approval: Social approval can be a powerful source of reward. Not only can this be provided directly by highlighting examples of good practice and providing strong social encouragement and approval in communications; members of the community can be encouraged to provide it to each other. This can have a beneficial spill-over effect of promoting social cohesion (15). Communication strategies should provide social approval for desired behaviours and promote social approval within the community. Coercion 7. Compulsion: Experience with UK enforcement legislation such as compulsory seat belt use suggests that, with adequate preparation, rapid change can be achieved (16). Some other countries have introduced mandatory self-isolation on a wide scale without evidence of major public unrest and a large majority of the UK’s population appear to be supportive of more coercive measures. For example, 64% adults in Great Britain said they would support putting London under a ‘lock down’ (17). However, data from Italy and South Korea suggest that for aggressive protective measures to be effective, special attention should be devoted to those population groups that are more at risk (18). In addition, communities need to be engaged to minimise risk of negative effects. Consideration should be given to enacting legislation, with community involvement, to compel key social distancing measures. 8. Social disapproval: Social disapproval from one’s community can play an important role in preventing anti-social behaviour or discouraging failure to enact pro-social behaviour (15). However, this needs to be carefully managed to avoid victimisation, scapegoating and misdirected criticism. It needs to be accompanied by clear messaging and promotion of strong collective identity. Consideration should be given to use of social disapproval but with a strong caveat around unwanted negative consequences. Enablement 9. Community resourcing: People are being asked to give up valued activities and access to resources for an extended period. These need to be compensated for by ensuring that people have access to opportunities for social contact and rewarding activities that can be undertaken in the home, and to resources such as food. Adequately resourced community infrastructure and mobilisation needs to be developed rapidly and with coverage across all communities (6, 15). 10. Reducing inequity: Adherence to these measures is likely to be undermined by perceived inequity in their impact on different sections of the population, especially those who are already disadvantaged, e.g. those in rented accommodation and those working in precarious employment. Reducing costs of phone calls, data downloads etc. by ‘responsibility deals’ or government subsidies should be considered. Evaluation of options for increasing social distancing Page 2 Sections of the population who are particularly adversely affected need to be identified and steps taken to mitigate the adverse impact on their lives (19, 20). 2. Shielding vulnerable people for at least 12 weeks Government guidance (21): ‘If you have a vulnerable person living with you: 1. Minimise as much as possible the time any vulnerable family members spend in shared spaces such as kitchens, bathrooms and sitting areas, and keep shared spaces well ventilated. 2. Aim to keep 2 metres (3 steps) away from vulnerable people you live with and encourage them to sleep in a different bed where possible. If they can, they should use a separate bathroom from the rest of the household. Make sure they use separate towels from the other people in your house, both for drying themselves after bathing or showering and for hand- hygiene purposes. 3. If you do share a toilet and bathroom with a vulnerable person, it is important that you clean them every time you use them (for example, wiping surfaces you have come into contact with). Another tip is to consider drawing up a rota for bathing, with the vulnerable person using the facilities first. 4. If you share a kitchen with a vulnerable person, avoid using it while they are present. If they can, they should take their meals back to their room to eat. If you have one, use a dishwasher to clean and dry the family’s used crockery and cutlery. If this is not possible, wash them using your usual washing up liquid and warm water and dry them thoroughly. If the vulnerable person is using their own utensils, remember to use a separate tea towel for drying these. We understand that it will be difficult for some people to separate themselves from others at home. You should do your very best to follow this guidance and everyone in your household should regularly wash their hands, avoid touching their face, and clean frequently touched surfaces.’ Options: (See Appendix C for summary of option evaluations) Education 1. Specificity and structuring: The guidance is vague and is not behaviourally specific. For example, it uses the phrase ‘as much as possible’ which is ambiguous and undermines the message. The phrase ‘aim to’ is too weak – the guidance should promote action not aims. Use of the term ‘avoid’ is weaker than ‘do not’. Key parts of messaging are missing. For example, it says ‘clean’ and ‘wipe’ but does not state that this needs to be with disinfectant. It uses the term ‘regularly’ but does not specify the situations when this should occur. It talks about ‘touching the face’ when what is crucial is to avoid touching the ‘T-Zone’ – mouth, nose and eyes. The structure can be improved to help people to understand what actions need to be undertaken where and when. Guidance needs to be behaviourally specific and structured: who needs to do what (precisely), where (e.g. in what rooms) and why (explain the rationale) (5). 2. Tailoring: Much of the guidance is contingent on the person’s living circumstances but the tailoring could be clearer so that people can easily see what applies to them and are not distracted by content that is not relevant. Guidance should be structured to make clear which parts are relevant to whom. This could be done through an interactive website where people can put in personal details (e.g. key worker, live with someone vulnerable, husband just developed a cough) and receive tailored guidance (6, 15). 3. Audience: The guidance is directed exclusively to those living with vulnerable people. It needs to be extended to the vulnerable people themselves so that they understand what measures need to be taken, and why, and so that they are motivated to accept the necessary changes, inconvenience and restrictions. They also need to be active partners in decisions made in the household so that following the guidance is a collaborative process. A third key audience is employers of vulnerable people. Vulnerable people need to be justifiably confident that they can self-isolate without financial penalty. Guidance should be directed to all members of the household, including the vulnerable people themselves and any employers recognising the need for partnership (20). Enablement 4. Support: This is complex guidance that is difficult for many people to understand, remember and follow. There needs to be more specific information, education and practical support. This could potentially be done by trained community support volunteers, by targeted media campaigns, social media and user- Evaluation of options for increasing social distancing Page 3 friendly interactive apps and websites. Community support, targeted media… Read more »
Wow…. how utterly unsurprising. Copied this and will distribute, thanks! I note they don’t have a section for ‘Significant minority who see through our bullshit from the very start’
http://weekly.chinacdc.cn/en/article/doi/10.46234/ccdcw2020.032
In this report from China, already sent out in Feb, anyone can read that the age profile of deaths was highly affecting the very old. Instead all our planners were fixated on CFR total 2.3 % and seemed to ignore the unique age profile. Fair enough, if our planners were suspicious of any figures coming out of China and therefore only used the worst-case scenario CFR and ignored the age structure of fatalities. But they were not so choosy in completely adapting from China the totalitarian idea of lockdown for weeks. All civilised nations never had in their pandemic planning the idea of lockdown i.e. quarantine the healthy in an effort to stop the spread. Indeed, the whole idea of lockdown was not recommended either by WHO or ECDC even as late as Oct 2019.
Perhaps this is the irony of the whole thing. They adapted the worst from China and disregarded information about the age related IFR, which was factually true.
Never Posted here before. Informative site and some great comments. Four brief thoughts:
1 Really disappointed that after so many weeks there is no political leadership anywhere challenging the current approach. One would think some politician would take a ‘punt’ to reap the benefits on this approach being shown to be so much nonsense with staggering health and economic consequences – as well as probably illegal.
The current government approach appears to be morphing into ‘There goes the crowd; we are their leaders; we must follow them.’
2 Anecdotally have been asking shop assistances how many staff have contracted Covid 19. The answer (albeit from only 3 national supermarkets) is none; admittedly there are those who have had to self isolate from the beginning.
3 Why is there not more contempt and outrage over the 14 day quarantine for travellers coming into the UK from 8 June? Apart from Ireland where obviously they have never had any cases! It is such utter and illogical nonsense. Wrote to my MP. No reply.
4 I keep in regular touch with my brother who has lived in Sweden for over 40 years. His grand-children still go to school. He is not aware of any child or teacher having died from Covid. He is advised to self-isolate (which he does) but he could meet a friend for a drink in a pub with appropriate social distance if he wanted. Am I alone in detecting that Sweden is an embarrassment to some commentators – who love to emphasise any perceived short-comings?
Bill Gates thinks everyone should be vaccinated. I really don’t see why this particular virus is deemed so dangerous that it needs to be eradicated.
https://www.economist.com/by-invitation/2020/04/23/bill-gates-on-how-to-fight-future-pandemics
I think he should be incarcerated!
Incinerated
Oh fuck right off if you legit believe that “he planned this pandemic”, ” he wants to microchip US all”, population control BS. Shove that conspiracy theory BS up your ass
Now that the era of happy clapping the nhs is apparently over, can I suggest we replace it with jeering, booing and hissing at the lying pussies that claim to be ‘too scared to work’ along with a special jeer for the hapless government that made their paid holiday possible?
Obviously it is too late to save our economy now, but we could always send bojo to Las Vegas with the last remaining £50 note in the treasury and get him to put it on lucky 13 in a roulette game. Not much chance of winning of course, but more chance than dying of coronavirus.
Sweden on the other hand is a different case altogether. If they want to boost their economy rapidly, all they need to do is to start printing t-shirts, hats and underpants with their flag on and exporting them to the UK – I would buy all three.
Not sure what the RNLI problem is as they must already have protocols for first aid that take account of infection risks (hepatitis and HIV at the very least), it’s not as if Covid is the first infectious disease to have turned up and require a whole set of new protocols. Adaptation of existing protocols to current issues should be something they are doing normally and no reason to shut the service down, we didn’t see paramedics and fire service not turning up.
I gave up donating to the RNLI when they hired that twat professional manager as the big boss who promptly forgot they are a charity and voluntary organisation and the people do it because they WANT top do it and “sacked” the 2 lifeboatmen (who I have great respect for) for taking the person they rescued to hospital in their land rover as the ambulance was over an hour away.
Their new management are basically common purpose idiots who do not have a clue – same as RSPCA among others.
I focused my charitable giving to an autism charity and RNLI – and dropped RNLI for the same reasons as you. Common Purpose has infiltrated all institutions and NGOs, so I will only give to charities that are very local or where I know the people involved.
All we need at the moment is for him to show Boris how to grow a backbone and man-up (not PC bollocks I know but the modern equivalent doesn’t have the same effect):
https://nypost.com/2020/05/28/trump-signs-executive-order-against-social-media-companies/
On my tweets I’ve done exactly that.
MAN UP. Admit lockdown was wrong. There will be no 2nd wave. Get our country back to work!
Had no reply from HMG but plenty from bedwetters…
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8369207/Confusion-coronavirus-alert-level-NOT-reduced.html
It really seems to me that it’s the scientists who are desperate to keep us locked up. Boris if anything is doing a Trump.
My perspective on this has been completed turned on it’s head.
He’s trying to deflect from Cummings story.
Wel if it means getting us out of lockup I hope he deflects a lot more!
I left home today and travelled to a community gathering There must have been at least 50 people inside the same building. Some seemed to want to stand well apart from others; most just acted normally and avoided direct contact. .
I have survived.
I went to the local supermarket.
How is this different to going to the pub?
Lockdown serves no worthwhile purpose and should be ended NOW.I am an adult and I can make my own judgement of risk, I do not need to be told what to do.
https://www.zerohedge.com/health/gang-monkeys-attacks-lab-assistant-escape-coronavirus-test-samples
A gang of monkeys in Delhi, India assaulted a laboratory assistant and escaped with coronavirus test samples from three patients, according to Sky News, citing local media.
A monkey could steal his job.
Toby
Came across this sceptical blog site that might be of interest…
https://drmalcolmkendrick.org/