The story of Jeremiah Thoronka, the rising star of clean-energy tech hailed as a saviour by green elites, is a cautionary tale about the dangerous optimism and ignorance of Western green elites. As Ralph Schoellhammer explains in Spiked, the inconvenient truth is that our societies still heavily rely on fossil fuels, and the consequences of abandoning them would be dire. Here’s an excerpt:
In 2021, Jeremiah Thoronka was making a name for himself in clean-energy technology. The then 21-year-old Durham University masters student had invented a device that uses kinetic energy from traffic and pedestrians to generate electricity. It certainly sounded groundbreaking. In a pilot project in Thoronka’s native Sierra Leone, two devices had apparently provided free electricity to 150 households and 15 schools.
Thoronka’s work clearly impressed awards panel judges. In 2021, he picked up the Commonwealth Youth Award and the Global Student Prize, which was presented to him by film star Hugh Jackman at a virtual ceremony, broadcast from the UNESCO headquarters in Paris. Thoronka was the man of the moment. There was a profile by the BBC, an invitation to give TED talks and, in May 2022, an audience with the Pope. He was celebrated as a green-tech innovator, someone setting a clean-energy example for the world to follow.
The accolades have continued to flow. Last month, at the Green Tech Festival in Berlin, he won the Youngster Green Award for 2023. It was this that prompted German journalists to ask if it might all be a little too good to be true. They contacted the organisers of the Youngster Green Award and Greentech Festival to find out a bit more about Thoronka’s pilot project. After all, it sounded incredible. But the organisers said that wouldn’t be possible because the pilot had since been dismantled. They asked if the device was being used anywhere else, and were told that it wasn’t. One journalist even asked if there were any videos, blueprints or other documentation of this unprecedented breakthrough. Again, nothing was forthcoming. In fact, no one could tell journalists much about the device or the pilot project at all.
It seems the Youngster Green Award and Greentech festival organisers, and potentially others, have been willing to take Thoronka’s achievement entirely at face value. Perhaps the pilot was a success; perhaps it wasn’t. That no one really knows – or cares to know – is telling.
Clearly, Western green elites want to believe in the success of Thoronka’s device. As journalist Alexander Wendt concluded, perhaps Thoronka’s genius lies not in the field of piezoelectricity – the conversion of kinetic energy into electricity – but in ‘psycho-engineering’. He is telling the West’s green establishment what it wants to hear. It wants to believe it’s possible to meet Africa’s growing energy needs without fossil fuels or nuclear power. And so this kinetic-energy device is catering to their environmentalist fantasies.
The tale of Thoronka’s device captures well the wishful thinking that dominates the worldview of Western green elites. They are determined to believe that there are quick and easy routes to decarbonising the economy. That it’s possible to meet people’s energy needs today without using fossil fuels or nuclear power. That the transition to clean, green energy is just around the corner, and the only thing standing in its way are the evil fossil-fuel companies.
This is a dangerous, infantile outlook. And it’s not just confined to the likes of groups like Just Stop Oil. It is the outlook of a large part of our political and media elites, too. They talk up the transition to clean energy and set grandstanding Net Zero targets. And they encourage the demonisation and cessation of fossil-fuel use. But all their green schemes will come at a huge human cost.
The truth is that our societies are still massively dependent on fossil fuels. For all the talk of the advances made in renewable energy, the proportion of our electricity production reliant on fossil fuels has barely changed over the past 40 years. In that time, only nuclear power has declined as a source of electricity.
None of this is to say that an energy transition is impossible. A target of Net Zero by 2050 could well be met. But the rapid abandonment of fossil fuels that this demands would inflict misery and hardship on billions of people.
Of course, Western elites will claim that the energy transition is absolutely necessary if we’re to avert catastrophe from climate change. King Charles and London mayor Sadiq Khan even unveiled a ‘National Climate Clock’ last month, just to show how little time we supposedly have left to stave off the apocalypse.
In truth, Western politicians themselves don’t really take their own doom-mongering that seriously. They know that talk of ending fossil fuels appeals to parts of the electorate. Plus it looks good on the global stage. It’s something to posture over at the annual COP junket. But they also know that most people would be unwilling to bear the consequences of an actual end to fossil fuels.
U.S. President Joe Biden, for example, is well aware that gasoline prices have a direct impact on his re-election prospects. This is why he has shown no hesitation in draining America’s Strategic Petroleum Reserve to keep prices down.
The same bad faith is at work among European politicians, too. They hype up the ‘climate emergency’ and posture over Net Zero targets. But when push comes to shove, they relent. Germany, for example, likes to present itself as a leader of the global energy transition. Yet as soon as the energy crisis started to bite last year, the German government brought coal power plants back online to power the electricity grid. And it did so by burning lignite, the dirtiest type of coal.
Then there’s Norway, the fifth-richest country in the world, which is blessed with abundant natural resources and hydropower. It has become the poster child for the introduction of electric vehicles, and we’re told it is showing the world how to manage the energy transition. But is it really? Domestic oil consumption in Norway today is about as high as it was in 1985. Despite the hype, Norway’s energy transition is going much slower than the headlines let on. Norwegians themselves know which side their Smørrebrød is buttered. Indeed, Oslo has just approved $18 billion in funding to help develop another 19 oil and gas fields.
Western governments’ green hypocrisy is revealing. They posture endlessly about Net Zero and indulge in fantasies about the energy transition. Yet they can’t escape the fact that fossil fuels are integral to their societies’ wellbeing.
Worth reading in full.
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In Jan 2021 The EU’s Parliamentary Assembly published the conclusions form a Assembly debate.
The link is here.
The document makes for interesting reading as to the conclusions. In relation to health passports it says in point 7.5.2
I appreciate that the UK is no longer in the EU. It does show that at one time the were not meant to be used in this way. There must be more documents, similar to this, to prove governments are forcing this upon us.
Sadly (in this case) the EU parliament is a tissue-paper tiger. Macron evidently think so.
Actually the Parliamentary Assembly is nothing to do with the EU. It is the parliamentary arm of the Council of Europe and overseas the European Court of Human Rights of which the UK was a founder member and, more importantly, still is. There’s hope!
Dr. Robert Malone – Inventor of the mRNA vaccine technology, explains mRNA Vaccines and The Noble Lie Used by The Medical Establishment to Manipulate Vaccine Propaganda.
https://theconservativetreehouse.com/blog/2021/08/12/dr-robert-malone-explains-mrna-vaccines-and-the-noble-lie-used-by-the-medical-establishment-to-manipulate-vaccine-propaganda/
Isn’t Dr Malone double jabbed as well though? (please correct me if I’m wrong – read it in here I believe). If so, don’t understand his standing on this whole issue.
He is….Moderna I believe, he does mention it in one of his talks with Bret Weinstein. Rightly or wrongly believes in vaccination for elderly people who are at much higher risk for covid (his words).
Regardless he does not believe in vaxx for the younger population, or vaccination for herd-immunity. Nobody is perfect, I kinda like my hero’s to be flawed, makes them more real and human.
Also, he might have had the injection before he became aware of the extent of the adverse events, given his age. Peter McCullough admits that he was in favour of injections until about March; now he says that he was slow in reading what was going on and says that the roll-out should have been stopped in February.
Have watched most of it, (after I’d posted above) and it confirms some of what I was thinking. I’m still not convinced that the vaccines will stop the elderly and infirm dying come the winter months, but I want to be wrong about that, and we shall see.
Who would have thought eighteen months ago, as he says, that we would all be experts in R numbers, PCR and cycle values etc? I now have a new word to add to my coviknowledge, he mentions the importance of glycosylation….I am going to swat-up on that next! LOL!
“Passports would be relevant only if the vaccination stopped the spread of coronavirus.”
No! Passports would still be irrelevant if the vaccines stopped the spread: the vaccines would then be the final backstop, and no further passport would be needed. Also, if the vaccines worked, why discriminate against the unvaccinated? The vaccinated would be ALREADY protected, whereas the unvaccinated have the RIGHT to reject the vaccine. Plus, who’s to assume the unvaccinated DO spread the virus, even if the vaccines worked completely? Do we on that logic bar AIDS sufferers or anyone with a contagious disease from all public life?
Muddled bunkum from this doctor.
I think that you have misinterpreted. All he is saying is that the ‘social’ argument would only become relevant at all if the ‘vaccines’ worked. I don’t think he is saying at all that it would justify passports.
So in what way would the passports be ‘relevant’ then? As a mere point of discussion? His words imply that a fully working vaccine would be a basis for passports.
Yes, there is no logic that makes passports make any sense unless there is the situation where ‘vaccine’ completely protects the person from covid unless they come in to contact with a sick unvaccinated person in which case it doesn’t work.
I dont think a silver bullet vaccine would make the passports necessary. Coercion and discrimination would be even worse if there was such a vavcine and passports were STILL needed.
Covid is about control, depopulation and then transhumanism for those that manage to survive the “cure”. Silver bullets are not on the agenda.
I’m against them on principle, but if you’re not then IF the vaccines stopped the spread then there would be case for them to protect those who cannot get vaccinated because of allergies etc.
There never has been for other disease beforehand. Individuals medical decisions are for indivdidual benefit, we are not all mandated to have the flu vaccine because a few of the people who might need t have conditions meaning they can’t have it.
I think there are undoubtedly people who have not been jabbed for medical reasons. So if you argue against vaxx passports on the basis of they are not useful, you fall down here. That is why the argument about medical decisions being personal is the only one to make.
Also, given how much they are pushing this vaccine I suspect it has already been given to the majority of people who are 1) vulnerable yet also 2) have allergies which mean they shouldn’t have had it. Anyone trying to make the “protect the allergic” argument has to face the fact that those who are allergic, vulnerable and haven’t had the vaccine are very few and far between. No civilised society has ever turned itself upside down for the sake of something like 1 in 100000 people, and largely people near the end of their plausible lifespans anyway.
Even if vaccines provided sterilizing immunity, the germophobes would demand that everyone must have them because they are the magic solution to their own, mental problems. They’d use people who cannot be vaccinated as pretext to build a compassionate potemkin village in front of their own, gross egotism.
I have to use one of your phrases here: Any millimeter in this direction leads deeper into rabbit hole. All of COVID has been about a fairly small group of extremely selfish individuals abusing the majority of decent people for their own perceived benefit in whichever ways they could think of.
Aside about utilitarian morale: The well-known contrived dilemma of sacrifice a few to save many has a critical flaw. It wrongly portraits the person asked to make the decision as being an outside entity distinct from both groups. But in reality, that’s never the case. It’s always about sacrificing a group the decisionmaker doesn’t belong to, all other members of the saved group have been saved by accident and just serve to hide the fact that the person making the decision wanted to save himself.
Logicially continuing this, the decision maker will always chose to sacrifice someone else in any future dilemma, until the saved group has shrunken to two people and then, he’ll chose to sacrifice the other.
Yes I agree, I was just presenting an argument that could be used to advocate for vaccine passports, in the case that the vaccines actually worked. As I’ve said elsewhere, I think the argument that they are wrong on principle is the one to start and finish with, for the reasons you give.
Do I really have to spell it out? He is simply stating the obvious – that the functional argument is no argument at all if the snake oil doesn’t work.
You seem to be obsessed with attributing dubious motives when there is a simpler explanation.
But frankly – I can’t be arsed beyond pointing out an obvious alternative.
Yes i grasped his main point. Not sure you grasped mine.
be glad the vaccine isn’t fully working, and given it does the important bit, stopping serious symptoms for the vulnerable, there is no incentive for anyone to develop a vaccine which does “fully work”. We can use this doctors sensible comments as evidence in our war against their passport plans, help bring some more wavering people across to our side.
Well, does it do the important bit? The evidence is unclear.
I think a vaccine that properly works would be better, if it had long term safety data, no compulsion or bribery or threats, and judicious rollout, and was restricted to the most vulnerable (if safe for them).
Vaccine passports are morally wrong. That’s the only argument I believe is worth making.
This 100%. No logic in his argument. There is no need at any time for a vaccine passport for anything. Full stop. End of story. Done.
He didn’t say there was logic in it if vaccines did work to stop spread, just that there definitely isn’t logic in it given they don’t stop spread.
I think it was Jeffrey Tucker who made an interesting point the other day: The severity of viral pandemics has reduced significantly since world travel became more common. In fact the WHO has reduced the criteria for something to be called a pandemic by removing the ‘severity’ clause. The last few ‘pandemics’, including Covid-19, would not previously have qualified as such.
Immunology 101 suggests the reason: Isolated groups / countries have weakened immune systems, so when they do get exposed to something new it is devastating. In the world of global travel immune systems get a constant work-out and keep fit.
Obviously a ‘conspiracy theorist’, independent Fact Checkers have now debunked the false information that humans have an ‘immune system’.
“Fact checkers” have also debunked that the WHO has ever changed the definitions it uses for epidemiological purposes, because herd immunity was always about vaccination only, right?
In the last 16 years I didn’t get the flu and only about two colds. This is obviously coincidence, or perhaps I was secretly vaccinated in my sleep.
“Discussions about vaccination passports have centred on personal freedom and social responsibility”
Have they? I must have missed it. I tend to think that as far as possible the discussion should start and stop there. As with lockdowns, the state cannot be trusted with the power to compel individuals to do things allegedly for the good of others. That cannot be conceded, ever. As soon you concede it, you disappear down a million rabbit holes. Conceding it is what led us to the mess we’re in.
It leads to – an individual being forced to have an abortion for the good of society, euthanasia of those the state deems worthless for the good of society, forced sterilisations of those deemed unfit to reproduce.
Yes indeed, good points
And incarceration of those deemed a threat…for whatever reason.
A bit like the CCP then. Ironically, I seem to remember that Taiwan has a lower birth rate, but without the coercion. A bit like UK IFR rates compared to Sweden…
My read is that he is not dismissing arguments based on freedom.
He is just saying that even if you do not care about freedom then there is still no externality associated with not taking the vaccine. So compulsion has no logical grounding.
Jay Bhattachrya makes the same argument on a Pod Cast.
Yes, I get that. I’m saying it may be dangerous to entertain any argument that does not start and stop with NO coercion under any circumstances. The government can easily fabricate anything it likes to prove more or less anything, and people will believe. Or, it could actually be true that taking the vaxx helps protect others (those that for medical reasons cannot get vaxxed) – would you argue I should be made to take it?
The goal is a Chinese-style social credit system, so they can nudge/coerce the population in any direction they choose. “Vaccine” passports is how they intend achieving it.
Given that people who didn’t actually get the vaccine have been given such pasports, for example the placebo participants on (now finished, so there is no need to maintain the placebo illusion) vaccine trials, it would seem the state doesn’t care about making sure only the vaccinated are around, its concern looks more and more like one of simply msking people submit to the ID card system.
They know very well vaccine passports have no health benefit. It’s entirely political, as is mass vaccination.
Or for punishing the non-compliant.
I am on the threshold of an older category re this vaccination campaign – I have been closely exposed to highly symptomatic (tested positive) people with this seasonal flu like virus (they call Covid 2). No mask no distancing- nothing – so far I have had zero symptoms. To assume taking an experimental low efficacy drug is somehow going to afford me anything other than multiple harms (clots, paralysis, a bad headache) is a step too far for me. The only benefit against risk would be to v sick, old and /or vulnerable people. So these type of vaccine passports are a nonsense on the most basic measure- freedoms and bio security agendas aside – this is medical rubbish – but obviously the virus and the so called vaccines have absolutely nothing to do with the passports – they are purely a control agenda that has been knocking on the door since the transhumanist nutters got very very rich and their religion – technology – got very very sophisticated. Get real about this and do not obey.
“The only benefit against risk would be to v sick, old and /or vulnerable people”
The number of people here getting suckered by this government argument genuinely amazes me.
The drug was never tested on this group, and it seems to have increased mortality within it!
Yes, at least one of the ‘trials’ was only done on people 55 or under and I think they were all healthy too so to me was a waste of time.
On the other hand HCQ & Ivermectin have been used on people who were genuinely showing signs of being infected and actually worked but have apparently only been tested ‘in very small trials that were inconclusive’.
I agree Rick. I find myself, as an older person, often thinking, ‘yes restrict it to the elderly, that’s ok’, then I remember there were no elderly immunocompromised on the trials. So why would it work for them? It just shows I suppose how invasive the propaganda has been, and how ‘hope’ can confuse even those of us who think we’re following facts and the data.
The truth is, we don’t know.
There is some correlation, but this is now mindlessly being accepted as causation.
Whilst that approach is questioned or discarded outright with all the other correlations which disprove the authorities narratives.
I must admit that if I were in that category I would not consider the unproven potential “benefit” would outweigh the now well known (amongst the savvy) significant risk of the “vaccines”.
It has taken months for the main stream to catch up with the fact that those who are vaccinated can, (just as easily as the unvaxxed) both contract and pass on the virus, something many doctors, scientist, and we here have been saying for months.
All the scientists seem to concur that the ‘Delta Variant’ is much less severe, yet in heavily vaxxed countries we are seeing serious disease and more deaths than last year. (When there weren’t any vaccines!) how can that be, and why isn’t it being questioned….at all!
We also have mounting evidence of severe side effects which cannot be hidden and denied forever but which for some reason are never mentioned.
I now fear the good doctor, like the masses who have had the vaccine, are going to find that when the winter flu season comes it doesn’t stop them from ‘severe’ symptoms or death either. In this I would love to be proved wrong, but the actual evidence is not going their way at all.
I am heartily sick of hearing about the success of the vaccines, without any real evidence, at all, to show it. In fact, evidence wise, the opposite would appear to be true. We know that no one is properly monitoring the safety of the vaccines. We know the ‘trials’ have been unblinded and scientifically are worse than useless…..when is someone going to question this?
This medical hubris is so stunning it is hard for me to grasp.
ADE/PIE
The obvious difference is still that nobody died of asymptomatic COVID last year because – due to the relatively high number of people with symptoms, ie sick people – nobody had a need to go onto COVID fishing expeditions among the healthy to sustain the notion that a pandemic was still ongoing.
We’re now experiencing the summer of COVID without COVID. They’re one step further along in Germany with the summer of COVID without even positive test cases. Unfortunately, this doesn’t matter the least to the germophobic nutjobs as the only risk which is accetable to them is no risk unless it’s to others.
Protest march today noon starting at Charing Cross station, going up Strand,Fleet St. to City then back via Holborn Tottenham Court Road. just a simple march no speeches or picnics in park etc.
It’s going to be interesting to see just how many “double vaccinated” (what a nonsensical, inaccurrate term that is) decide against the (first) booster injection, especially in the younger groups that it will inevitably be rolled out to in time. And subsequent boosters. I predict that fewer and fewer people will have valid vaccine passports going forwards because people will see for themselves that the injections are not stopping them from getting sick – indeed, I think many people will experience a general increase in sickness levels, from all sorts, and see an increase in premature deaths. In addition, if younger adults start having difficulty conceiving and carrying pregnancies to term, they too might start to question the “vaccine”. It’s all a matter of time. Hopefully, many people won’t be so stupid as to keep putting their hand in the fire. Although unfortunately it may already be too late for some.
However, it will be a race against time to crash the vaccine passports before the government morph it into a digital ID.
The Reverend Dodgson was prescient – beware the Jabber-woke my son!
For many it’s already too late. I very often hear “double-jabbed” covid “sufferers” quote that familiar, comforting lie: “I got covid after being vaccinated and it was horrendous but it would’ve been much worse had I not been vaccinated”.
The governments have long realized that the vaccines won’t stop or hinder the pandemic. The role of vax passports is the same as the role of masks – to reassure the majority of scared population to go on living, working, spreading the virus and eventually arriving at the natural herd immunity as for all other coronaviruses. It’s just that they cannot sell this concept honestly. (What they can do, is sell as many vaccines as possible in the process, though; this is necessary to satisfy their pharma pals but also to avoid losing face completely.)
Anyhow, you “sceptics” should be rejoicing, as this is exactly what you demanded all along.
No we didn’t demand anything of the sort
We demand an immediate end to all exceptional measures related to COVID, withdrawal of the emergency license for the vaccines, an honest investigation into alternative treatments, a public apology for the Big Lie that COVID was exceptional, a written constitution guaranteeing inalienable freedoms, and criminal investigations into the actions of the government and advisers, and their banishment forever from public office
Well, if you demand that, you are a very naive individual who does not realize how the world works.
You’re assuming I think these demands will ever realistically be met. You assume a lot. You started by assuming you know what “sceptics” demanded all along. Now you’re assuming what I do and do not understand about how the world works.
Will I see any of those goals achieved in my lifetime? Probably not.
Are they the right goals? I think so.
Will I carry on to my dying day doing what I can to get us there? Yes.
What about you?
We’ve placed those demands, and we’ll keep fighting for them. We will struggle by whatever means necessary, history will look kindly upon us, and our side will be the ones writing it.
If the Tyrants in Charge realise this why are they still persisting with experimenting on children? if they realise this why don’t they be truthful and tell people to stop wearing masks as they are pointless?
Their dishonesty has already caused immense suffering, and continues to do so…who would be happy about that?
I don’t rejoice at all, many friends and family have had the vaccination and I’m still very worried for their health. The ‘passport’ is still being pushed regardless, as are the pointless tests, we are still been stopped from travelling freely, and the horror of ‘children’ being experimented on is still very much a reality.
From a personal point of view none of this makes me happy at all, quite the opposite.
The push to children is to legitimize the idea of a repeated lifelong vaccination (don’t forget they have already purchased hundreds of millions of doses – they can’t just throw them away without making fools of themselves; some are already dumped to Africa to be quietly discarded there).
They will do it as long as the majority keeps “buying”, but I predict the overall interest will eventually wane. As the pandemic ends by its own, as every pandemic has ended before. That is when they will declare victory (thanks to vaccination, of course).
The idea of domestic passports is likely going to disappear by the same time if not sooner. What they will most certainly keep, however, is the idea of travel passports – because that also helps tackle the migration problem (just make sure that the source countries cannot easily create those passports, and you have a “humane” barrier to keep all the migrants away from your precious country).
Domestic passport plans will only disappear if we fight them, and ensure mass defiance. Much as I WISH they’d disappear magically, we must not grow complacent. We cannot be sure they will disappear without our efforts.
Domestic passports/ID cards are and have never been about a virus. It’s about control. Pure and simple. Deny that at your peril.
They don’t know how to tell the truth. They fear the consequences if they admit that they took the wrong road 18 months ago. The more time passes, the harder it will be.
If only Johnson had said, last May or June, “well done, everyone, we are past the worst, now back to normal” what a different world there would be. He missed his chance, now he has to lie and evade to try to cover his lies and evasions.
And no, I’m not happy either.
He had an even better chance, he could have stuck with the precedented Swedish model from the start, however much the media may have bleated he could have held strong. A few weeks of the wave washing past and people being told to wash their hands and otherwise get on with life would have got our attitude matched to Sweden’s, countries which have held out against a waves without locking down haven’t pressured themselves in to doing so later. We saw stats a few days ago that people who work outside their home are more likely to be vaccine hesitant, this means that people who are more exposed to the wider world and witness covid for what it really is, rather than the fear-porn descriptions shown on TV news, get over their worries quickly enough they can’t even be bothered to be vaxxed. If more people had been out, about and normal in the first wave they’d have realsied this and certainly wouldn’t bother to let themselves be locked down. The fact he didn’t proves Bors is either backboneless or has been a lockdownist all along.
Not even the Swedish model. The existing Pandemic Preparedness Plan. It doesn’t matter how out of date and useless it might have been. It would have provided legitimate cover while a rational risk assessment was undertaken. The process for these are well established. I’ve spent 45 years executing Threat Assessment and Risk Mitigation and none of this involves Ferguson and his crystal ball!
The awful realisation of the gravity of their error hit them in April/May 2020. Then they had the choice. Admit and throw themselves on the mercy of the people, or lie and double down. They’re Politicians. Liars and chancers. Is anyone really surprised at the choice they made?
Nope the passport is the point not the vaccine, its the platform on which digital currenly will be introduced and all of your monetary expenditure and income is readily accesible and easily curtailed by use of your own individual tracker. Building your own prison
Rubbish, this is the exact opposite of what lockdown opponents wanted
That best case scenario would be based upon the assumption that they mean well, and that this is about health and that they were able to change their minds based upon facts.
Too big stretches for me to share your assessments.
Seeing comments like “those who are vaccinated can, (just as easily as the unvaxxed) both contract and pass on the virus”.
What is the basis for this? I have not seen anyone claim that any C19 vaccine would afford complete protection from catching and transmitting C19. I’m fact most of the early MSM coverage WAS about the relative effectiveness of each vaccine.. But if a full size of the vaccines can afford over 90% protection (Source: CDC on mRNA vaccines -. https://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2021/p0607-mrna-reduce-risks.html) from infection, and not being infected means your not going to pass it on, then surely you have to accept that they will reduce transmission, and does not conflict with what the doctor said.
Whether passports are the best approach is clearly debatable, but it’s certainly strikes me as a cheaper option for reducing risk of transmission compared with giving out lots of free year kits to be used before attending any event in my opinion. Nothing related to this is ever going to be 100%. Interested in hearing reasonable responses to this.
Your risk of infection is 9% is semantically identical to you will get infected unless you die first.
And that’s on top of the usual criticism against small sample (less than 3500 people) one-off studies misreporting anecdotical information about the relative frequency of something at some time in the past as probability of future events, IOW, on top of the fact that this is a junk study which got published because it happened to support a preexisting standpoint.
Sample sizes is always concerning, but do you have any references to any larger studies that suggest that information is not accurate?. Otherwise just calling it a junk study seems to also be also be a way of dismissing something that doesn’t support your viewpoint.
Pick a country, any country, with high % of vaccine rollout and then compare numbers of “cases” this summer with last summer. The numbers seem to have gone up. Odd that. Anyway, who cares? Covid is not exceptional, mass vaccination of the non-vulnerable with an untested vaccine for a largely mild disease is unprecendented, not necessary, a huge waste of money and arguably dangerous, as well as being immoral once you start bullying young people into having it.
That’s all (perfectly valid) opinion but doesn’t seem related to anything I’ve said regarding transmissions and if I may say comes across as an unrelated rant. However to respond – in my view better availablity of testing will have inevitably lead to higher case figures this year (in the UK the data showed we’re testing about 3X more than a year ago but the testing numbers have been broadly static since about March) assuming other factors are effectively equal (which may not be the case with other variants). I personally did my first test last week despire not having symptoms after being at a large outdoor event.
You seem to be claiming that being vaccinated makes a significant difference to your chances of being infected and passing on the virus
And I am saying that there isn’t much real world evidence for that given highly vaccinated countries with lots of cases and much less vaccinated countries with fewer cases
I am also saying that none of this makes much odds because Covid is not exceptional and the whole thing is folly and evil
If you think vaccine passports are a good idea then please do explain your logic, including some indication of the number of lives saved, how the cost is justified compared to other spending on healthcare, and the justification for depriving me of my liberty based on a medical choice that is private to me
The statement I made was about a small sample (less than 3500 people) one-off studies misreporting anecdotical information about the relative frequency of something at some time in the past as probability of future events.
Please feel free to address that.
Where to start? Firstly, anything the CDC says has to be treated with caution, not to say scepticism! Secondly, 90% reduction or risk reduction? Relative risk or absolute risk? What would a ‘passport’ achieve? Even if one’s personal risk level was reduced by the non vaccine your infectiousness would still affect others around you. In turn they could choose or not to accept a non vaccine that may or may not reduce their symptoms. Therefore your status is irrelevant. Proof of your status is irrelevant.
m not really sure why people are asking me to defend passports. I said in my initial post that whether they are a good idea is debatable. I was surprised the UK government went ahead with them.
> Please feel free to address that.
As I said before, the sample sizes aren’t great, but if we don’t have any other data suggesting otherwise (I asked if you knew of any) it’s not unreasonable to at least consider that it might be valid.
> Secondly, 90% reduction or risk reduction? Relative risk or absolute risk?
90% less risk of conttacting it if you come into contact and world have caught it if unaccommodated AIUI, so I guess relative in your terminology.
> There isn’t much real world evidence for that given highly vaccinated countries with lots of cases and much less vaccinated countries with fewer cases
I think in terms of some vaccinated countries increasing case numbers desire good vaccination rates that’s fair bit it does appear to dismiss the potential effects of stronger variants. From what I’ve seen the UK and US in particular has large increases when Delta became the dominant station there Whether you agree with the existence of such stronger variants or not with, some lower vaccinated countries like Australia with previously low case numbers have been keeping people out so far – but Australia’s cases are now increasing too so it feels like countries in that category may be just delaying the inevitable, so that offers another potential explanation alongside the conjecture that vaccines are ineffective. I personally think that regardless of the 90% figures accuracy if the vaccines are reducing pressure on health services by reducing severalty as they seem to be then they are a positive overall.
I feel that I’m being attacked for trying to put some points here, and being asked to justify things I haven’t said I support because I don’t fit the site’s narrative. On that basis (and also because this website is difficult to navigate on mobile and keeps jumping to the start) I think I’m out of this conversation because I feel that whatever I say here will be dismissed without good references. Good to hear from you all though
Repeating your non-statements doesn’t change it’s contents.
Risk reduction, ie, it’s relative.
The claim in itself is also impossible: Infection depends on exposure and a (possibly vaccine-primed) immune response can only occur after infection took place.
There’s also circular reasoning here: If one takes a group of people and divides it into two groups based on some criterion, say, vaccinated or not vaccinated, and than determines the frequency with which some property X occurs in both groups, one will get two different frequencies. But that’s not a proof that the difference was caused by the criterion, ie that was just assumed from the start.
Some of the parameters of this observational experiment are also questionable, ie, why did they use this group of people and observed them for the exact amount of time they were observed? In absence of an explanation for that, it’s reasonable to assume that the timespan was until the observed outcome was the intended outcome. As everything which has a propability > 0 will happen, given enough time, that’s actually pretty certain: Had they observed both groups for long enough, all members of both groups would have gotten an infection, whatever that precisely means.
Seeing comments like “those who are vaccinated can, (just as easily as the unvaxxed) both contract and pass on the virus”.
What is the basis for this? I have not seen anyone claim that any C19 vaccine would afford complete protection from catching and transmitting C19. I’m fact most of the early MSM coverage WAS about the relative effectiveness of each vaccine.. But if a full size of the vaccines can afford over 90% protection (Source: CDC on mRNA vaccines -. https://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2021/p0607-mrna-reduce-risks.html) from infection, and not being infected means your not going to pass it on, then surely you have to accept that they will reduce transmission, and does not conflict with what the doctor said.
Whether passports are the best approach is clearly debatable, but it’s certainly strikes me as a cheaper option for reducing risk of transmission compared with giving out lots of free year kits to be used before attending any event in my opinion. Nothing related to this is ever going to be 100%.
Lack of vaccine efficacy in stopping infection and transmission of COVID-19 is just one argument against vaccine passports. They are a dreadful idea.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eow5_3Z1_8k
Sadly, it looks like a significant proportion of the public are very easily scared, and will seek solace in anything that might reassure them – even if it has no rationale.
Pink socks
I wear Pink socks. They do not stop me getting Covid, they do not stop me spreading Covid, but I believe if I get Covid they will prevent me from being as ill as I otherwise would have been if I had not worn Pink socks.
I find patterned ones do the same for me!
I only wear one pink sock. Apparently I have to wait eight weeks before I can wear the other one and be fully protected.
If it saves one life………..
Pink Socks.
Wanted to book a show at the London theatre part of the Nimax Group. Everything is digital, timed entry, booking drinks in advance and the audience all above the age of 11 years old required to wear masks. Boycott Nimax theatres. I
There is a good letter in the Telegraph today written by a doctor who highlights that vaccine passports are pointless because people who are ‘jabbed’ can still spread the virus.
But this is just common sense thinking – if you have the jab and can still get and spread the virus and the variants then what is the point in vaccine passports? Its all a complete nonsense – they will ban unvaccinated from large events or travel meanwhile the vaccinated (who could still be infected with variants etc) will be allowed to travel and attend big venues and spread the virus.
Its all bollocks the lot of it..
This is either the most stupid government in the history of British governments or there is something more sinister at play here – I’m starting to side with the latter.
Watching the Man Utd v Leeds game on tv, playing to what looks like a capacity stadium, is the government really expecting, come October, that the fans will all come along with their vax passports, after being allowed in without them up until then?
I couldn’t spot any masks either.
I see similarities with the mask mandate. The British Retail consortium weren’t happy with the bounce back after the first lockdown-they thought masks would give people confidence to shop so masks were brought in.
Now that football has started again in front of crowds, this is a good indication of how “safe” fans feel about going along in big crowds.
Sadly I think they will comply. Wembley and Wimbledon looked pretty full and I think you had to have negative test for both. Hardly any masks at Wimbledon but close to 100% compliance as they came to and from the indoor bit (loos, bar etc).
Everyone going on holiday needs negative test and vaxx or quarantine, lots of people still going – some like us because we don’t want to test, some because they are scared but many because they rightly don’t trust the government not to change the rules
From the Man Utd official site, it said there would be no checks for this match.
How sad it is that one of our key hopes as a country is that football hooligans will form a frontline in the war against ID cards. At least I hope they’ll go to war over it, your average hooligan surely has brains enough to know that if he lets his vaccination status control his access to games then soon his criminal record will be used to keep him out, and to know that if he submits to providing a vaccine passport at the entrance he’ll loose the anonymity he so prides when causing trouble.
I get the impression most hooligans have been priced out of the Premier League.
I’m sure that some stewards would look the other way for a tenner… as they did at Wembley.
Similarly, out in Harrogate last night at a popular restaurant absolutely crammed full, no masks, no attempts at distancing, others we passed similarly packed to the gills (great to see!). For many people at least the fear has gone and it will be hard to get it back.
Personally, I think it’s both!
I expect the vaccination to mitigate the virus if I get it, but not to stop me from getting it or from passing it on.
First part wrong, second part right.
‘Vaccine Passports’ are already here – and if you have a National Insurance / Social Security number, then you already have one. Your details, including your medical details and ‘vaccination status’, are already held on a digital database – probably with copies held in China too!
The NHS ‘vaccine passport’ app (or NHSX) has already been rolled out. You can download your ‘vaccination’ status onto your smartphone, or have a paper copy printed out. You are already on the system, whether you like it or not.
What part of this are people still not getting? It is irrelevant what the ‘vaccines’ actually do to your body, all that matters is whether you have been injected and indoctrinated into The New Society or not. That was the aim from the beginning.
So, yes, you have digital IDs already. And they are for sale, as in when the DVLA ‘shares’ your name, address and vehicle details with private companies such as District Enforcement who make their living by charging people for being 1 minute too long in Sainsbury’s car park.
The NINO, for example, is not allocated at birth on the basis of a particular injection….therein lies the distinction between that and a ‘vaccine’ passport. There are already mandatory booster shots being proposed for travel overseas, recorded for the authorities to check on your smart phone. The NHS, DVLA, Social Security are separate agencies but the vaxx pass system is to integrate all such agencies in to one monolithic database.
Hardly irrelevant what ‘vaccines’ “actually” do to a body..Yellow Card MHRA site suggests otherwise.
People certainly have been ” indoctrinated” over the past 18 months, however, if everyone were to ‘bin’ their smart phones like those useless LFTs, then surveillance would be handicapped and the vaxx pass would become defunct. Are people wedded to a smart phone or their ability to operate as free individuals, as was the case prior to March 23rd 2020?
Naomi Wolf – someone the lefties used to love, until she went off the reservation.
https://twitter.com/SikhForTruth/status/1426200444427284487
“You were warned: “This is literally the end of civil society.” – Digital Identity, Covid ID’s”
A worrying aspect of discriminating in favour of the double jabbed is that they are the ones who are far more likely to be carrying the virus without symptoms and therefore more likely to spread it. I’ve explained to my friends and family who have chosen to bare arms in a rush to get to the front of the queue for travelling abroad that they are a risk to me so I’ll be keeping my distance.
Our government has not the slightest interest in whether vaccination passports help stop the spread of disease. They have simply seen it in another country and then the groupthink has kicked in. As it always does.
Shared this in main thread yesterday and it’s now deleted so don’t know if anyone replied.
Can anyone verify this post as it seems to be completely different to what we are seeing in other countries
https://twitter.com/petethorn/status/1426608695811604481
Data source seems to be here
https://www.kff.org/policy-watch/covid-19-vaccine-breakthrough-cases-data-from-the-states/
They do note that they are including cases where vaccine status is unknown in unvaccinated.
I do not normally read the OffGuardian articles, finding many a bit over the top, however the other day I fell upon this one —-
https://off-guardian.org/2021/08/13/science-salvation-and-heretics-from-monsanto-to-pfizer-its-the-same-old-playbook/
It accuses some so called “Anti Establishment “ sources ( Daily Sceptic anyone ? ) having fallen in with the official narrative of the miraculous COVID vaccine and how its saved so many lives, totally ignoring the Yellow Card data. OK, as the BBC state no deaths have been conclusively linked to the vaccines I suppose many will consider the controversy as closed. I, for one, do NOT! Taking the now frequently quoted example of the Thalidomide disaster 60 Years ago we would consider that the adverse outcomes attributed to that medication would be acceptable now if the same criteria applied to Covid vaccine adverse reactions were applied, same would be true for the Swine Flu vaccine.
Please Daily Sceptic, UnHeard etc etc stop sitting on the fence – it may be topped with barbed wire, very uncomfortable on the end!!!