A leading member of a Canadian centre-Left party supporting Justin Trudeau’s minority Government has tabled a bill seeking to jail people who speak out in favour of hydrocarbon fuels. Charlie Angus is a leading member of the NDP party which has 25 seats in the Canadian Parliament, and his bill seeks to ban the commercial promotion of hydrocarbons by any means “that is likely to influence and shape attitudes, beliefs and behaviours about the product or service”. Angus’s bill (C-372) is given the Orwellian title of ‘An Act respecting fossil fuel advertising’, and under this proposed anti-free speech measure, a gas station retailer could be fined C$50,000 for offering a complementary coffee and doughnut with every full tank.
There is not much between Canada and the North Pole so without natural gas to heat their homes, the locals would likely die in their thousands during the winter. Without diesel trucks to transport food vast distances, famine would stalk the land. Yet Bill C-372 states in its preamble that “fossil fuel production and consumption has resulted in a national public health crisis of substantial and pressing concern, in a way that is similar to the public health crisis caused by tobacco consumption”. Smoking cigarettes is a voluntary and enjoyable pastime for some, but it has the unfortunate side-effect of causing death. Hydrocarbons keep people alive with power for clean sanitation, transport, domestic temperature control, food production and back-up for unreliable wind and solar power. Without hydrocarbon use, the only people able to live in most of Canada would be Eskimos huddled together for warmth in igloos.
Under the bill there is a blanket ban on the promotion of oil and gas. A curious clause bans the suggestion that the burning of some hydrocarbons and the emissions caused are “less harmful” than other fossil fuels. This provision would make it illegal to state the scientific fact that burning natural gas produces less than half the carbon dioxide than the burning of coal. It would also be an offence to suggest that the use of hydrocarbons would lead to positive benefits for the environment, the health of Canadians and the global economy. Whatever the facts based in science or economic observation, all these ‘wrong’ thoughts can be punished with a C$500,000 fine and two years in prison.
The bill’s attack on hydrocarbons is broad and even attempts to suppress sales at the retail level. Gas stations will be banned from issuing loyalty cards, cash rebates, tickets to prize draws and free gifts such as coffee and doughnuts.
If this was just the work of a lone parliamentarian green crank, it would be easy to laugh and dismiss. It is a private member’s bill and will struggle to be passed into law, but its promoter is a major figure in the NDP, and his party currently holds political sway since it helps prop up the minority Trudeau Government. “We welcome the NDP’s bill to the House,” said Kaitlin Power, the Press Secretary of Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault. Speaking to the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, she added: “We will carefully assess its bill and look forward to productive debates and discussions around this important issue.”
The NDP bill is an attack on free commercial speech and seeks to demonise an industry that is vital to modern life. The belief that Canada, along with every other modern industrialised society, can remove hydrocarbon energy use within less than 30 years is a luxury, decadent affectation. It is the work of politicians with little understanding of science and the workings of a modern state. It fails to comprehend that life without hydrocarbons for 99.9% of people who have lived on planet Earth was hard, brutal and uncertain. Without reliable cheap fuel, all that ‘first generation to go university’ stuff will be replaced by working the land of the local warlord, or skivvying in his great house. It is the work of badly educated people who think they can outsource all their vital manufacturing to the emerging superpower of China, open their borders to all and sundry and squeeze the living conditions of existing residents, abolish traditional families, bend the knee to defund the police, or impose so many woke conditions they are unable to function properly, ditto external security services.
It is the belief system of a cult that wants to impose a massive supra-national programme of deindustrialisation, and still peddle the fantasy that we will magically stay warm, delicious food will be available at the press of an iPhone, and everyone will live in peace and harmony. It is the belief system of people who live in Imagine, one of the great John Lennon’s sillier songs.
Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’s Environment Editor.
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I can’t be the only one thinking that the latest fear propaganda has been ramped up as we approach the 6 month review of the Coronavirus Act put in place in March.
But as LS subscribers, I’m sorry, we need to do a lot better at getting facts out there into the wider community. Too many people think millions of people in this country have died, too many people think the infection fatality rate is above 3% as the WHO originally reported, too many people think that 20% of all people who catch this need to go to hospital. They aren’t evil idiots, they are just misinformed.
None of those facts are true.
But we’re not convincing people by calling them bedwetters etc.
Neither are we helping by joining the covid phobias and fear to NWO, 5G, Lizards, Bill Gates, Woke Cancellations, BLM and so on.
The best way to reduce the fear for people is to be reasonable and evidence-based. Stick to the facts that matter. Cases, testing, deaths, hospitalisations, co-morbidities; challenge the fear with evidence and compassion in other words. Like Ivor, like Carl.
A lifelong friend who is suffering badly from the brainwashing started talking about the concerning rise in cases. A short explanation of the flaws in the PCR test, combined with a firm reminder that hospitalisations and deaths are much more significant statistics, definitely gave him pause. He did not respond with the usual hostility and repetition of the government/MSM scripts. I try this every day with colleagues, in a variety of different ways according to each individual and the context. We just have to keep chipping away at the edifice of lies.
As we head towards the inevitable second lockdown, I am very concerned that the hospitalisation statistics in the next two weeks are going to be manipulated. Difficult days ahead of us.
Congratulations Richard, I likewise prefer to take different approaches depending on how I judge their attitude.
If the hospital mortality rates are less than 0.05% it will be obvious that they have again put people in who didn’t need to be there. Mortality in March was 6% and while the Covid may have become more benign and treatable that would not explain such a difference.
I think the ugly little fact that flu rates didn’t change with mask wearing is gold. The absolute numbers are down due to Covid being registered but rates didn’t change.
It’s almost like God is laughing at the plan
Yes, that’s a good point. Also the link someone posted recently (a world life expectancy site) shows flu mortality rates by average, per year, and countries that have high mandates or custom for mask wearing – like Japan – have a significantly higher flu mortality rate.
I think this may be what you’re referring to, I have posted it previously.
Japan despite obsessive mask wearing has seasonal flu incidence above USA and Europe and approx the same as UK.
This is the worlds largest trial involving millions of people over a decade, showing that the general public wearing masks has at best no effect on viral transfer.
https://www.worldlifeexpectancy.com/cause-of-death/influenza-pneumonia/by-country/
Does anyone want to come up with more on this? It could be a game changer. I’d like to use it on the Covid 19 Assembly website. http://Www.covid19assembly.org
I do the same to everyone I chat to.
We’re planning to do this on http://www.covid19assembly.org
We’re working on the rational things like you mentioned but the majority of people have been “got to” emotionally by the MSM and we have to unpick that.
One of our team is a behavioural scientist (formerly with Cambridge Analytica) who isn’t developing a survey to find out what it is exactly that people are afraid of. When we know, we can focus on that.
When the survey is ready we will want everyone here to go out and ask people they know personally or on the street to complete the survey.
Hopefully it will be the start of something much bigger.
David
I just had a look at the website, it’s a great idea. It would be wonderful to have all the information in one place – it is not that there is a shortage of evidence to dispute the official narrative, rather there is an avalanche and consequently it can be overwhelming to stick to the key issues.
I am curious about the survey though, surely people are simply afraid of catching Covid and dying because they have been convinced there is a serious risk ?
Fear of infecting others ? Fear of being fined ? Fear of being shamed ?
Yes. So if we end up with a definitive list then we’ve taken the first step to unpicking it all!
Thanks. You’re making an assumption. Maybe it’s the fear of passing it to elderly relatives, community duty, etc. So we need to ask the question. That’s the first step. Then if we know that there are three main reasons for example fear of death, fear of passing it to elderly relatives and community duty then we know we have to focus on all three. But if we find that 85% indicate that they fear their own death than that is our main target. Know your enemy. It also allows us to compare trends with future surveys to see if anything is changing.
So it needs to be done as a foundation for all other work.
Fair enough.
This is a great article in the New York Times about the flaws in the PCR tests, it cites recent studies that showed up to 90 percent of people testing positive carried barely any virus.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/29/health/coronavirus-testing.html
Chatting with a bright young woman yesterday, as usual I waited for her to start ‘the conversation’.
BYW “I hate them masks, starting to make us wear them at work… ”
KV ‘have you noticed how they are slowly imposing curfews on one part of the country after another?’
BYW “Not really, what’s that all about?”
KV ‘They are locking the country down again but know they don’t have the 100% support that they had in March so it’s bit by bit’.
BYW “But what for? The Covids gone and everyone knows ‘cases’ don’t mean anything.”
KV ‘Do you think everyone thinks that ?’
BYW “Every I know does and that rule of six, what’s that supposed to do ? I think they’re just playing games with and anyway I can’t afford to be off work again”.
Further conversation revealed that “everybody knows that everyone who died was already dying…”.
Brilliant !
Regrettably the facts don’t work.
Japan has been doing QE and buying up bonds for decades, yet people still believe that governments are monetarily restricted in their own currency.
Japan is the Sweden of economics. Has it caused enlightenment amongst the masses. Has it caused them to ask if they might be missing some vital feedback loop that works in aggregate that doesn’t work on an individual. Nope.
Instead we have mask wearing everywhere and little questioning. Because obviously masks catch coughs don’t they and lots of Very Clever People say so and they can’t all be wrong can they.
Once beliefs take root, shifting them is near impossible because there is always an excuse why not. Japan is “special”. Sweden is “special”. Japan hasn’t done as well as Korea: Sweden hasn’t saved as many people as Norway. At no point does “Belgium hasn’t saved as many people as Germany” cross their mind.
People work on stories and premature extrapolation. Hence why we now have The Power Of The Mask and the secular religion developing around it.
I agree that the facts don’t work for some people, and emotive arguments are better for them. Strongly disagree with the analogy ha. Ultra loose monetary policy removes government accountability.
Emotive arguments reinforce a polarises position.
If you can make someone doubt their current sense of self in fear, or by insinuating guilt and penalty, to a sense of helplessness, you are using emotional manipulation to fool them into doing what you want. But there will always be negative consequences from this, even if they can be seemingly evaded for a time. The mind that seeks to buy more time by evading its own toxic debts is driven to such extremes as we are witnessing.
Hang on; there’s seven of them.
I’ll get my coat…
Hello,
I believe the problem is not only stories but the common sense way people understand complexity. For example take face masks common sense says they should stop transmission of covid, but as we know thirty years of science and no reduction in the spread of flu says otherwise. Or take lockdown again common sense says it should stop transmission and save lives but again it could never do such thing as it’s meant to gain you time while you build up capacity to treat the expected casualties. The message is simple do as we tell you and every thing will be alright, object and you must be a sick selfish murderer. But people are beginning to realise that countries like Sweden and Japan with no lockdown are not seeing the increase in infections we are seeing and asking themselves why?
When enough people ask why they will be a backlash especially when people individually suffer through loss of job or medical care.
Backlash?
maybe, but if while under constraint, the ball park rules have changed so as to surveil and regulate all movement, money and information exchange, under a ‘safekeeping narrative’ that can save you if you sell out on others…
Great post .We need easy to read leaflets and hard hitting stickers that keep up to date as things change .keeping to common sense and facts not speculation is the way to get our message across.I had a friend who cancelled a walk with me at the start of the lockdown because he was seriously worried anyway last week we met for a drink and seeing he had changed so much i introduced him to looking up Carl Heneghan, he rang last night to say he was meeting up with family at weekend ,three different households more that six .No fear just pissed off with the government. I know it’s easy to be disheartened but we just have to keep pushing forward .The darkest hour is always before the dawn and we are going to get there .So people stay strong and rise up like the sun .
That’s what we’re going to do. All help appreciated.
http://Www.covid19assembly.org
Looks great .Hope you up and running soon.
Thanks
http://Www.covid19assembly.org
A few days ago I posted here asking whether anyone could tell us what this organisation is, what its stance is, who runs it and who funds it — the answers to those questions were not on the website. Since you’re advertising it here, perhaps you know something about it and could answer those questions for us, please?
Hi Richard
I’ve just sent you an email.
Regards
David
No funding… yet! Unfortunately. Some Lockdown Sceptics readers have offered to make donations but we won’t take any until we’re fully up and running.
Our stance is explained on the website. We don’t represent any political party and we are on the more fact based side of things. We will not be getting involved in the more controversial areas. We are saying that Covid 19 is not as deadly as it is made out to be – lots of evidence and lockdowns are wrong and not effective.
I run it. I’m just a professional Environmental Health Officer who occasionally works in motorsport! I have met with Toby Young and he has kindly agreed to be on the Advisory Board as have other eminent people already.
The plan is for it to grow and be managed by a very professional group of people. I’m not saying I’m even the right person for the job!
David
Thanks for that, I’ll send a reply in due course.
Captured opposition doesn’t have to be in conspiratorial liaison. It merely self-censors so as to seek to attract or keep and audience. Controversial facts are not allowed, also the whole thing serves the system that is purports to be critical of, as long as that’s alright Sir!
If enough people focus in the surfaces, they will leave the underlying causes hidden, protected and unaddressed.
By all means do as you feel moved.
There are levels to ‘taking off a mask’ that many are unwilling or unready to look at.
I never needed evidence that locking down the healthy and the global economy was wrong and alas very effective in a negative sense of undermining what was left of our social structure. Hapless? Or is such a determination hapless? And is appeal to ignorance masking over a hidden arrogance.
I do hold that we do the best we can with what we have at the time, but what we have at the time is a sense of self and world that expresses itself as behaviours (or suppressed behaviour). A set of conflicted ideas, perceptions and purposes can and does act insanely, but will always seek and find narrative justifications, because that is what (that) mind does.
The investment in the ‘virus’ framework is huge – a major player in the disproportionate split of wealth and power. But more than this is its use to step into a biosecurity state – of genetic control.
The core program uses any and all ‘fronts’ to achieve the dream of making life in our own image – excepting the word ‘us’ is false. But joining in hate – or polarised reaction against the hated or feared, SEEMS to unify, as long as the threat persists.
I appreciate that Toby allows comment freedom here – even if he also evades directly addressing the issues that he knows would open him to direct attack that would then mark out to lose all political credibility. And even if it is a shout box to kettle a few who are all profiled – because everything we do or say online is part of our profile.
I find the Swiss Doctor site an excellent resource for information within the narratives of accepting the virus theory as propagated (infected?).
https://swprs.org/facts-about-covid-19/
And here too.
And a range of views and perspectives from current witnessing and also from a past that has many previous instances of the same basic fraud being carried out.
PS,I don’t resonate with using the name of the ‘fear branding, for the site or organisation. But that demonstrates a successful brand. You are stamped out in the image of what you think to be putting in its place (a cold).
“Cases, testing, deaths, hospitalisations, co-morbidities; challenge the fear with evidence and compassion in other words. Like Ivor, like Carl.”
You are preaching to the converted and the points above are very much the bread and butter of this site and I do wonder why would you wouldn’t know that.
There is not much talk about Lizards here, or maybe that was just a snide reference to David Icke. Those that believe there isn’t some form of global takeover in progress can’t really be accused of paying too much attention.
BLM manufactured protests are likely to be part of the Covid fiasco, being meant to serve as a distraction from the globalist Covid coup. However, the protests etc are not over laboured on LS.
Those that think Bill Gates isn’t at the heart of the global Covid fiasco need to do a lot more homework.
As for 5G it gets little reference here and rightly so. 5G is highly technical and is best dealt with elsewhere. Having said that, there times when reference to 5G will not be out of place.
The reptilian or primitive brain, is associated with prodigious feats, but lacking any moral perspective. The mammalian mid brain can be bypassed and the frontal social functions, can be effectively captured by a fear and control mentality. If you have ever been triggered to terror or rage, you will know first hand that at that time you were not in your Right or whole mind – nor could you know it until you came back into your Right mind.
The takeover of the mind by fear and control is like a yeast working through the whole dough. IE: As an infection or contagion of split thinking (doublethink – or attempting to serve two masters).
A narrative control operates a masking over fundamental conflicts protected from disclosure. Such as by smear and ridicule, or by generating new conflicts by the working of guilt and BLaMe. Evasive manoeuvre operates protective to the core function – assigned to ‘survival’ of the controller – supported by the abnegation of power in those who are separated from their true guidance, support and direction.
Bill of the Gates of hell, is in process of being presented – but wordplay asside, he is not at the heart or head of more than a section, and even then as a KOL – key opinion leader – within a billionaire’s club that is very effective at increasing such ‘wealth’ while presenting as giving it away.
The 5g is most definitely needed for the ‘real-time’ surveillance and enforcement system without which the ‘plan’ at the least gets very tenuous and messy and overreaching. If it can also in specific application operate yet another toxic weapon, then it joins the list. But the underlying nature of our bodies as electromagnetic – (and no less of our Cosmos) is outside the lockdown mind of a ‘prison planet’. I note that Fields ONLY effect resonant structures. The science of EMF and the electric underpinnings to a world rendered as ‘object modelling’, is lost to catastrophic fears rooted in human guilt. So I see Firstenberg as potentially operating both a wake up to electrical biology and a cover up to its true nature – but framing it in fear and guilt – which ARE the control matrix.
My sense is that the virus narrative works a cover story for the protection of toxic exposures of all kinds on all levels – including psychic. And that switching narrative focus to the next bogeyman can be historically seen to be laid down in advance. Perhaps with good intentions. Rachel Carson didn’t anticipate the environment movement that sprung from finally acknowledging biocides – but it avoided the real human cost and callousness and came out of a Rockefeller funded institution.
As for The Plan – that is the ultimate unfolding of who and what we are to awareness of true recognition – I don’t know any more than another – except that it works through our invested identities as a means to reflect ourselves back in ways that cannot be forever evaded. The belief that truth damns, is the belief in truth as judgement set over and apart. If we use such a mind, we reinforce it in ourselves and teach it to the susceptible.
your first sentence is an excellent summation of this week. Actually this week has been encouraging on the LS front. Carl Heneghan at the science and tech hearing. Question time with Sunetra Gupta and John Caudwell. Finally Van Morrison releasing 3 anti Lockdown songs. Knowing his stuff I imagine there will be a lot of spoken word stuff as opposed to singing
This may have already been discussed, but there does seem to be growing resistance from MPs to the Coronavirus Act renewal:
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/news/mps-unite-to-derail-renewal-of-sweeping-powers-to-halt-coronavirus-t0z976vtm (Times article, behind a paywall unfortunately)
Unfortunately the article doesn’t give details of how large the “cross-party” group is or how many members are from outside the Conservative Party.
“The strategy is to keep the virus down as much as is possible whilst protecting education and the economy. And doing everything we possibly can for the cavalry that’s on the horizon – the vaccine and mass testing, and the treatments that, frankly, this country has done more than any other around the world to develop.”
When Hancock refers to “cavalry” I could not help but think of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.
What strange, troubled times we live in.
He’s been using that phrase for a while now, BBC interviewers neither rise to or challenge it.
Perhaps it will prove to be the governments
Custers Last Stand.
Clusters last stand?
As in Clusterf##k’ s last stand?
The only bit of cavalry I associate with hapless HandsonCock is the amount of horseshit.
We’ve had Death and Pestilence and loo roll Famine. All that’s left is War.
This is war, and we’re the enemy. Silent Weapons for Quiet Wars.
Not really. We are designated data inputs to a system of control that has been stress tested and modified at every happenstance or tweak. Life as conflict management is the farming of conflict made more efficient.
Conflicts that are manufactured to provide energy for the system are considered part of the system – but instabilities that call the system into question are to be ironed out – or choked back and kneeled.
Officially sanctioned opposition will call a token protest on what doesn’t matter as a kettling of protesters in an echo chamber, that against serves the system.
Systemic thinking can also be called conditioned response.
But though I said not really, it is because a war between truth and deceit is not possible. Illusions battle only with themselves. (ACIM).
The core deceit on which the world was made (I’m talking the model we interpret and experience through), is coming up from the ‘Deep’.
Is the reset to another era a continuation of what went before?
Perhaps in a new and fine set of robes?
Or is that up to who you listen to for truth?
“And Who told you you were naked?…”
We’re already at war. There’s been a coup.
So close.
“If a vaccine becomes available before the end of the Brexit transition period on 31 December and it has not been approved by the European medicines watchdog, the UK will use its own emergency regulations to sidestep EU law to allow the jab to be deployed due to the serious threat the virus poses to human life.”
Absolutely jaw-dropping, it really is. An untested, illegal vaccine. This alone will be one of the greatest crimes against humanity in all history.
That’s a pretty worrying sentence.
Some days it’s hard to fathom that we are living in a so called developed country in the year 2020.
What exactly has been developed?
The terminology is from those who set such definitions from technological and financial dominance.
Technologism as the extension of control has been developed under a mask of virtue that has surely slipped.
And there is a cheap, safe, highly effective early stage treatment we all know about which is being denied to populations of the western world. Hydroxychloroquine treatments make the vaccine unnecessary.
We need to get the message out to the brainwashed in any way we can.
https://www.facebook.com/CraigKellyMP/videos/313190119942539/
Those who have the privilege to know have the duty to act.
Albert Einstein
At the risk of offending Bartleby, the vaccine will always be unnecessary and its purpose will have nothing to do with protecting populations from the ephemeral Covid-19 coronavirus. Apart from making eugenicist Bill Gates needlessly even richer, just what could its purpose be?
Honestly am not going to take offence at any difference of opinion, belief or approach and will defend your right to express it too.
Having said that, at least in part what prompted my early morning/late night post was something I’ve noticed more and more: When people challenge the evidence that many of us here have taken on board, they do so by ‘playing the man, not the ball’. In other words, some really good analysis and data evidence is instantly dismissed by a large number of people because they look at the other opinions any of the authors might have expressed about topics as diverse as brexit, climate change, immigration and so forth.
I have no issue with any opinion held on any of those or other topics, but perhaps we can fight the fear narrative in smarter fashion by sticking to the topic of what’s actually happening in the world with Covid.
On a related tangent, I’ve always been a fan of stand-up comedy. I’m sure he won’t be to everyone’s taste, but I’ve always liked Bill Burr. He had a great routine about his failure to ever win an argument with a girlfriend until he learnt the secret of how they argue. I can’t do it justice here, but his point was, if they’re right, they stay on point an on topic and he had to respect that and take it. But if they’re wrong, they start stirring the cauldron to come up with some evil ‘hail mary’ desperate attempt to get you to lose your temper so that even when you’re absolutely in the right you still end up losing because you ‘lost your shit’.
In other words, I’m trying to stay on point and argue/challenge in a reasonable fashion because I think it helps. I also think it helps us be more persuasive if people can feel/sense that you don’t think they are some kind of bedwetting tool because they are afraid of something they have deliberately been made to fear.
But there’s room for different approaches, just wanted to express what I think is working better for me and see if other folk would consider it too.
I’m not overly disagreeing with you, as of course the main thrust of anti-lockdown rationalism is to concentrate on the basic facts that you set out in your earlier post.
However it is now abundantly clear, that the government has no intention of listening to reason. This entrenched approach seems to defy logic and has in my view strong overtones of malicious criminal intention. Accordingly, it becomes incumbent upon ourselves to try to fathom out what is driving this government pig headedness. Proper research on this point will nearly always get you back to the name of Bill Gates and this fact alone, ought to be very disturbing.
We are in very deep trouble and restricting our approach will not get us out of it.
Everything can be seen as a matter of priorities and the persistence in an inverted priority set will not become stable if it achieves it ‘normal’.
So the alignmnet in the highest quality information – is to me a matter of recognising what is relevant and resonant to who I truly accept myself to be.
Therefore like bartelby, I have no interest in attacking the person, engaging in smear, put downs or other narrative devices that Schopenhauer mapped out so clearly in what alas is largely marketed as ‘ways to win and argument’ (by trickery and deceit).
So I invite reframing to ‘we are in deep deceits’ and need truth in whatever moment or manner we can find willingness to let in.
Or else we can labour FROM narrative conviction of helplessness – which was the flip-side to the payload of viral contagion.
People with deeply weakened and dysfunctional immune response can fear a cold as a death sentence. The terrain is what is hidden by the focus on the psycho path. or indeed pathogen.
But having cast our mind – we retrieve in the measure we gave.
You can go back to Rockefeller energy cartel monopoly and the capture of the medical model, along with its regulators. You can go back further but it is the pattern that is what I feel to become aware of and then recognise and release in our selves, our relationships and our part in our world.
Disturbing can elicit a fear response, or the yielding up of the fear to awareness of acceptance of truth. (Which is a mouthful – but points to feeling and facing what we meet – as the willingness to recognise truth, rather than recoil in masking illusion. (Job comes to mind).
i wouldn’t put any drug in My body that Trump suggests
Even adequate Vit D levels show protection or removal of dire outcomes.
Niche. I can see ‘No! I’m Randle McMurphy!’ a la Spartacus becoming a meme
Randle McMurphy, am I being a little slow this morning?
Thank you, saw it once but I don’t like sad movies.
Based on a book written by Ken Kesey btw. While the book is fiction, Kesey worked in a mental hospital and the story is based in one.
https://www.thevintagenews.com/2017/12/25/ken-kesey/
There is a view that the counterculture was seeded by the CIA to break the peace movement – as mainstream USA was unwilling to get on a magical mystery tour.
To what degree Kesey was used, or used the CIA is a notion that might grate on you if you sometimes think on it.
‘Cuckoo’s nest’ could be called predictive programming. as can Orwell’s 1984 or HG Well’s Time Machine.
What we give attention to we attune to, and become.
Have we yet highlighted our favourite Neil Ferguson is on the board of vaccineimpact.org?
I’m pro vaccines where appropriate, but highlight this here as it is surely a conflict of interest. Plus we will get tol 99.999% must take it or we’ll all die. As ever, apologies of already posted.
https://www.vaccineimpact.org/secretariat/
Not untested (apparently) but unlicensed. With none of the vaccine companies being made to be held accountable. And with no plans “currently” to make vaccinations mandatory. Government’s words, not mine.
Weasel words. They will claim that it’s not mandatory and you can refuse the “Bill Gates DeathVax Final Solution®”, what they WON’T tell you is that you will be unable to exist in society (no bank account, credit card, passport, driving license, mortgage, loan, insurance etc.) WITHOUT your valid “Certificate Of Vaccine ID” (Which, oddly enough, spells “Covid”.)
THIS is what the whole charade is about, folks – compulsory vaxx (either by force or social coercion) leading ultimately to the BIG ONE:
https://steemit.com/covid/@munkle/permanent-injectable-biochip-covid-sensors-near-fda-approval
A totalitarian globalist’s wet dream.
Agenda 2030 is in full swing.
Anytime you see the word “Nudge” in this sort of context, this is what they’re talking about; instead of making evil things mandatory (which ultimately could lead to civil disobedience), they will say “Well, it’s of course your choice”. and then the evil shits will simply give you such a long list of things you can’t do without it, that most people will sigh and go along with the evil for an easy life. Just like the little shit Cressida Dick said about mask-wearing. “Community peer-pressure”.
Yes, just as they ‘nudged’ us into buying diesel cars for twenty years before changing their minds to accuse us of giving the kiddies cancer with them.
or patented leaded petrol.
Damn it. Nearly every day atm I’m a failure
One day
So, does anyone know if the Disability Discrimination act has ever been used on a snowflake who got upset at being called normal? Chippy little graduate got snarled at by me at work and has run off to tell the boss.
Rubbing my hands with glee at nailing this simpering condescending fucknugget on her bigoted view
Pre-Covid a Solicitor told me of his “snowflake graduate trainee”.
“Marvin could you bring those boxes over here please?”
M ‘but I don’t move boxes, I’m a Graduate!’
S “I’m on 500 an hour, move the boxes”.
An inalienable right to be mocked with the latest crop of grads. And crop because definitely vegetable like in application of work, any work
I once again will point out a very important issue with the death (and other) numbers in Spain and now France, which you keep missing.
These are the numbers of people that die with COVID -19. Now since the positive testing is running at around 13% (13.1% in the week to 13/9), 13% of all Spanish deaths should be of people that have tested positive if the virus had no health effect whatsoever. Around 1150 people per day die in Spain so you would expect around 149 deaths to be of people with COVID 19 if it had no health effect. The actual figure is around 60 per day (subject to some upward revision) for the week to 17/9.
So either having a positive test is a positive indicator for health (unlikely), or the figures are meaningless because the sample is non-representative, but either way, there is absolutely no evidence of an uptick in Spain .
As an analogy, how many deaths in Spain are of people who tested positive for left-handedness (if such a test were done)?
My guess is that there is a slight seasonal uptick just as there is in the UK.
I am left-handed. I am truly positive about that.
Should I panic now?
Definitely panic – your chance of dieing is as high as the population as a whole.
To borrow from the 80’s AIDS advert:
Don’t die of innumeracy
I’m cutting mine off now! It’s all too ‘sinistre’
There is only a slight uptick in anything to do with Covid19 apart from Government induced panic and hysteria.
Yesterday there was an increase in English Covid 19 hospital patients of 35, up from 953 to 988, wow a 3.5% increase! Over a whole week that could be 25% , out of a population of 66.65 million with over 1200 hospitals, I think we can cope with that!
A second wave? more like a ripple, and anyway if the virus is now endemic we cannot eradicate it, we need to take a tip from the beach;
“You can’t stop the waves, but you can learn to surf.”
It is testing that is driving all this and as the testing system gets challenged they are scrabbling to find hospital/death data to justify their policy but as the song says;
”ain’t nothing shaking but the leaves on the tree”
To mind the testing system is the achilles heel in all this, doubts are now being expressed and we need to keep pressing home the underlying fallacy that is the testing system.
Testing figures is what is driving it. There is plenty of evidence that there is precious little testing actually going on.
It’s probably all Tractor Stats.
On talk radio JHB asked Hancock how many people were in hospital in Bolton. (Which is apparently ground zero for Ebola)
Handcock replied “loads”
She said to him “2”
But presumably she was using the data from the NHS website, which is as at 3 September.
If there has been a recent ripple, I fear Hancock is right (on that small point).
Shocking that he was so innumerate on the impact of the FPR, though – she could have skewered him on that.
Unfortunately the only ripples are due to the government ignoring the FpR and the increased testing numbers. It’s just statistical noise/nonsense.
Far more people have died and will keep dying from lack of medical treatment than will ever from wuflu.
My concern is that this latest lockdown stuff is not about the virus
This is about the financial Armageddon that is about to be visited upon us
The end of the furlough scheme approaches
Mass unemployment (including in the public sector). Mass bankruptcies. The banks go bust. Pensions and benefits stop being paid, Food shortages. Civil disorder
I agree that we need to get over the idea that this is about a virus.
This was clear by the end of April at the latest.
I pretty damn sure there is going to be a global, economic collapse and reset. Nearly all the world’s government’s are complying with this, and are using Covid as the Trojan horse, it seems.
It’s been inevitable for a while. This great blogger (I haven’t actually read the post I’m linking to btw but it looks good) has been talking about it for years.
https://www.oftwominds.com/blog.html
Agree. Charles Hugh Smith has been very consistent. First came across him during the sub prime crisis.
However, such bloggers get their time in the sun when things look precarious but their wares are based on selling the inevitability of inflationary crisis (either runaway hyper or death spiral deflation, take you pick).
The debt based money system has a sell by date for sure. And my own view is that much of the financial system, especially exotic debt instruments and how they move around the world from blanace sheet to bankruptcy to bailout, is largely smoke and mirrors to keep the confidence trick going.
And taking that further, those who are tasked with maintaining such a system of precarious control (central banks and their related global institutions), despite knowing that it is in fact a confidence trick, certainly see themselves apart from the plebs who go about their day not knowing just how easily it could all be taken away.
No you can’t just pause the economy
A local major construction site carried on right through lockdown, supplies of materials started to become a problem and, while much improved, it is still a problem 3 months after lockdown was eased.
You know we have one word for people using “covidiot” for people avoiding masks: Sweden.
There is also one word for people using “economically illiterate” about Magic Money Trees : Japan.
MMT is real and has precisely the same aggregate feedback loops you are missing as those who bang on about masks.
Pensions are just a current production issue – who gets a slice of current production who doesn’t have to take part in the producing? Covid has shown that we really don’t need very many people involved in the producing and therefore it has *increased* the amount of people we could have retired, not reduced it.
Because it never is money that is the limiting factor. Demonstrably the circulation can be maintained. Japan has been doing it since the early 1990s.
It’s always stuff that limits what we can do.
Scarce resources have alternative uses. Resources tend to flow to their most valued uses. This does not mean that one use categorically precludes all other uses.
From the standpoint of the society as a whole, the “cost” of anything is the value that it has in alternative uses.
The real cost of building a bridge are the other things that could have been built with that same labour or material. The cost of watching tv is the value of other things that could have been done with the same time. This reality exists regardless of the “economic system” used.
Correct. And what is the alternate use of somebody who could be a nurse that is so much more important than them being a nurse?
If the answer is nothing then “we have no money to do it” isn’t the limiting factor in them being deployed as a nurse.
Good point being made on the economy as a priority of values, but I feel to say the value of nursing has been denigrated and replaced with a corporate replacement that can hardly serve true function. Any and all life extending relational exchange is ‘reduced’ to data points of a ‘delivery system’.
I saw doctors being replaced by robots (screens and smart devices) before covid.
If economic utility in terms of the system controllers is the only value, then humans are to be replaced, and the genetics reprogrammed to serve preset functional utility.
I noted that nursing the sick was to a large extent denied by the covid dictate.
“Everything is BACKWARDS; everything is upside down! Doctors destroy health, Lawyers destroy justice, Universities destroy knowledge, Governments destroy freedom, Major media destroys information, And religions destroy spirituality”. ~ Michael Ellner
Re your comment…
“ Covid has shown that we really don’t need very many people involved in the producing”
My favourite headline of the coronabollox charade was this
https://order-order.com/2020/09/07/civil-service-union-using-covid-pretext-to-fight-government/
“The Government is trying to lead from the front with its return-to-work drive, setting a target of 80% of civil servants to return to their desk at least once a week by the end of the month.”
This alone proves exactly how much use the civic service is. 6/ months they have done almost nothing. No one at work. Yet the country functions without them.
You have never answered my point.We do not grow enough food in this country to feed the population.So our very survival relies on the fact that foreigners keep excepting our currency in return for foodstuffs.How long will this continue if we keep printing at this rate.
Look at history,debasement of the currency has always led to economic,then societal ruin
They don’t accept our currency. They accept our real exports. In a floating system importers in the U.K. essentially buy the UKs exports in money terms.
When you do the calculation on that you’ll find that U.K. savings are an export product.
We have a massive balance of payments deficit.This was covered for years by overseas earnings made by British owned companies but since the Blair era so many British companies have been taken over so this is no longer the case.Debauching the currency is normally a policy taken by end of term empires.The USA is a more recent example
Japan has been economically stagnant for about 30 years…
They also have a powerful manufacturing industry and the ability to trade their goods for raw materials and foodstuffs.We on the other hand export very little,import a lot,cannot feed ourselves.We have been living on thin air for years now.This reckoning has been years in the making.
Time to work on the veg patch – I’m not joking!
Less than 10% of britain is urbanised, the rest is sheeps, cows, turnips and potatoes, add to that being surrounded by fish, there is no shortage of food in britain. You are a fool.
And most of the population are unable to cook anything beyond Pot Noodle. Most have no idea what goes into growing food, much less preparing a meal. I once offered a woman some courgettes from my allotment. She said, “we don’t eat that kind of thing.”
When push comes to shove, I’m not worried about people stealing food from my allotment since most will have no idea what to do with mustard greens, pak choi or kohlrabi. But they will be rather grumpy when the supermarket shelves don’t have any biscuits or beer.
Really.we only grow 60% of our own food.The only reason we didn’t starve during the 2nd world war was the merchant navy and supplies from the USA and the empire.
We haven’t got a navy to speak of now and our fishing fleet has been decimated by the EU.
Please do some simple research
We export as much as we import – by definition since they don’t use Sterling anywhere else.
False,we haven’t had a balance of payments surplus since Major was in power.Tell a lie the last quarter there was a surplus because economic demand collapsed
Norway has fewer Covid deaths than Sweden.
There’s always an excuse if you want to avoid considering the alternative.
I don’t see the relevance of your comment.
The complacency of printing money is going to bite the country in the arse. Because the money printing, that dug us out of 2008, didn’t lead to the predicted inflation the left think doing it again won’t lead to inflation this time either. Unfortunately, the reason we didn’t see inflation after 2008 is because the money that was printed replaced the money in the economy that didn’t actually exist; this time we are adding billions that don’t exist to the economy and the stagflationary fallout is going to be brutal, especially for pensioners.
Yes it did, it fueled the ongoing rise in house and othe asset prices
Correct. I think RPI was up at about 5% for some time.
Can you explain that a little further? That the bailout money replaced money that wasn’t actually there?
Is this referring to actions such as central banks purchasing corporate bonds to inject cash? That financial instruments are a form of money printing in themselves? As they create a demand for liquidity which has to be met at some point?
Two women (clearly retirees) were laughing as though this will not affect them.
Oh the stupidity of it – if the economy is destroyed, or the currency (inflation), it is those who can’t swap their labour for income who will suffer the most – pensioners. Being pensioners, you’d think they would recall the 1970s. And being pensioners they are probably going to have to call on health care some time – good luck with that in a crashed economy.
It’s also most notable that those supporting this garbage tend to be those least economically disadvantaged by it – so far: their dues are coming.
I do enjoy your cafe vignettes, and the other little anecdotes told on this site. They all help to get a picture of what is going on, far better than offered by the msm.
“And being pensioners they are probably going to have to call on health care some time ” – good luck with that when the NHS is the Covid Health Service.
I’m a pseudo-pensioner (64) and I have no expectation of ever using the NHS again. But I understand that other people might think it possible at some point in the future.
That’s my main worry too. My workplace is in the middle of consultations for restructuring and introduced another round of voluntary redundancies in an attempt to stave off compulsory ones. Another lockdown will finish us off and possibly render all of us if not the vast majority of us jobless.
That said I still can’t believe the number of people who are still asleep, still slavishly follow the MSM narrative and are still afraid of a virus that has a negligible effect on people. As I bluntly told a colleague who’s afraid to go on a train that has people in it, she’s more likely to die being hit by that train rather from Covid 19.
The government is clearly desperately clutching at straws. I get the feeling that the mood will turn very ugly soon – Joe and Jane Public will end up taking matters into their own hands.
That’s why, at the moment, it’s mostly about pubs and restaurants closing earlier. It does not affect the large majority of the population sitting at home by 10pm.
Exactly. Given nightlife is virtually non existent, people don’t bother and the pubs and restaurants end up closing if there are no customers.
Yes because
“At first they came for the nightclubers and I did nothing…”
Unfortunately the sheep will roll over and obey. There will be no push back. MPs are useless. Hardly anyone asking any tough questions. All frittering around the edges arguing if children should be excluded from the “rule of 6”
No one saying fck your rule of 6, this is all shite now.
Telegraph YouTube poll yesterday showed only 9% agreed with the Rule of 6 but probably some people think it should be Rule of 2.
I know a lot of sheep – they will simply comply and a few will even say “the government isn’t doing enough” or “there are so many selfish people, if they did as they were told this would be over.”
Jesus wept.
The BBC were interviewing the good folk of Okehampton yesterday, virtually all of them said ‘we haven’t really had the Covid down here but the more we all obey the rules the sooner we can get back to normal.’
If that isn’t a face palm moment then I don’t what it.
I wish I could agree. But too many citizens still believe this is necessary. They are utterly compliant. The government says “jump” so they do. Without question.
Not even aware of the most basic facts, stats or data. It’s truly depressing.
They will get their comeuppance at some point methinks.
Unfortunately, so might the rest of us!
When the penny finally drops there will be either a collective roar of anger or like people who’ve been seriously scammed, collective amnesia. I think it’ll be like Germany after WW2, no one was ever a Nazi supporter…..
Or France and the Netherlands after WW2 – everyone was a Resistance fighter or supporter.
Your work colleague is more likely to die from the impact of losing her job than covid.
I’ve tried telling her that but I might as well be trying to get blood out of a stone!
This is about there being a minor ‘Second Wave’* and how their bold, if unpopular,
curfews saved us from a Virus Volcano.
They hope that by this we will forgive them for the ruination of the country and destruction of millions of livelihoods.
At least Chamberlain had the good grace to stand aside when he realised that Appeasement was a disaster.
* many of us said as long ago as June that they would do this, using the normal winter flu as cover.
the London calling podcast with Toby and James referenced the possibility of a second lockdown back in June-that there was always a plan for this
This is what angers me with many boomers – they lived through the economic crises of the late 1960s and 1970s, how quickly they forget. Of course now they enjoyed the good life out of the ashes of the 4 days weeks, strikes and economic downturn not to mention as well as sitting on top of massive savings and generous pension schemes; they genuinely think that they will continue to be cushioned by their wealth and that if the government just tightened the screws, the virus will be contained and we’ll be all OK.
Then this attitude is compounded by the economically illiterate millenials – those who jump on every SJW bandwagon going, bang on about “people before profit” and signal their virtue with their muzzles. They also think that if things go wrong then the Bank of Mum & Dad (plus Grandmama & Grandpapa) will bail them out.
Newsflash to both groups: You are not invincible – majority of the pensions are tied to real estate and if the likes of the City of London become ghost towns forever, your pensions will be as worthless as the Deutschemark in Weimar Germany. Not to mention, what if the government decides to raid your pensions and savings to pay for our mammoth debt?
As for the millenials – what if you are made redundant and can’t get a new job? What if Mum, Dad, Grandmama & Grandpapa can’t help you?
I think both groups will be in for a rude awakening and I shan’t have any sympathy for them – they will reap what they’ve sown.
As a child in the 60s and teenager in the 70s I can honestly say I didn’t notice either of those two recessions, except for the mountain of bin bags in Leicester Square.
That’s a fair point. My anger is directed more at those who were already adults during the late 60s and 70s – they should know better but curiously they’ve forgotten.
To be honest, most of the sceptics I know are that age or older – grannies and grandpas that were never asked if they wanted to be ‘saved’ by their children and grandchildren. However, they do tend to be less cynical of politicians and the media, not wanting to believe how much less trustworthy they have become over the last few years
I suppose part of the problem was at least the media of the past (and even government) tried to live up to the high standards that were set and that’s what that generation were accustomed to. But they have not really woken up to the fact that standards were deteriorating over the last 20-25 years.
I admire your posts, Bart, but I think your anger is unjustified. Please don’t take the following remarks personally…
This pensioner still remembers wearing an overcoat while coding COBOL by candlelight in the Three Day Week, and is fully aware of the Weimar business, when wealthy people were bartering with farmers to exchange their grand pianos for sacks of potatoes.
Not all “boomers” are callous profiteers.
Memes which set the generations against each other sow division and should be resisted.
If you read my post, I said “many boomers”. However I take your point.
I agree, although I spent the 70s in America. Not all boomers are even wealthy enough to own their own home. I live in a rented studio on my landlord’s property. I will never own a home, not even a flat, in the UK, although I am fortunate enough to have some savings. I also work at a minimum wage online job to bring in enough money to live, and will for the rest of my life.
And yet people go on about how wealthy boomers are.
I can assure you young person, we have not forgotten. Try living on a basic state pension nowadays – those of us in our 70s and 80s were expected to save for retirement.
And please everybody stop making lazy assumptions. I am beyond angry.
I’m not that young and am aware that I will have to save for my retirement (if it ever happens) and any pension I have will be derisory and loose change.
Like you I work in London.I can give you an example of the devastation this is causing.In the Haymarket in the West End the only 2 businesses open were coffee shops.The buildings shuttered included 2 theatres,Planet Hollywood.This is right in the centre of London and Mayor Khan is demanding more severe restrictions.I despair
That man is really starting to show his true colours!
I’ve walked past that area and agree, its despairing. Sadiq Khan should resign and be made to pay for all the destruction he has caused.
It makes much more sense to interpret the ‘virus’ in term of the controlled demolition of a (zombie) Global Economy, than the other way around. But for many the fact of the willingness to lock down life support and bunker down under martial law – convinced them of the dire terror that must be so – ‘or they would never do that would they?’
Resetting the ‘Economy’ by those who rig it and benefit from rigging it, is their purpose. But it is not mine.
They are very good at getting the cutting edge insight to stuff into the old wine bottle paradigm of possession and control – or marketising and weaponising.
This is where every argument offered to change their minds is subverted to be repurposed to deny yours a voice or even a language.
There is another possibility that I hold possible, and that is that globalists are played to bring the world to destruction, while they are led to believe they are coming into their ‘rightful inheritance’ that the mass of the unworthy denied or deprived them of.
For I see nothing in the NWO that holds the seeds of Life from which to grow anew.
They may think that genetic control are the source code. But again behind the scenes it the insider knowledge that it is a workable narrative lacking true foundation through which to control the minds of many (who may be more complicit in being controlled than their narratives allow).
Fear needs to be acknowledged and not masked over, but presence of mind calls for a clear and unified purpose – which may not take existing structures but be moved in ways that grow new pathways in our thought and feeling, and therefor in recognition and response.
Even if a CME took out the electronic basis for the sytemic control, we would have a great challenge in regaining a basis from which to live – BUT – once set in purpose, we are no longer divided and conflicted. That civil disorder has been predictively programmed as dystopian horror doesn’t mean we have to obey.
This article in the Australian edition of The Spectator outlines a shocking new bill that would allow Victorians to be detained indefinitely without trial or review. I include my abridged version :
“The Victorian Labor government has introduced a bill to parliament that coupled with other measures is one of the most egregious attacks on civil liberties seen in war or peacetime. The Bill would allow people to be detained indefinitely and give powers to untrained people to become “authorised officers” with sweeping powers to arrest and detain fellow Victorians….
Called the COVID-19 Omnibus (Emergency Measures) Amendment Bill, it overrides all other laws and legislation….The Bill confers and extraordinary power to the Secretary of the Department of Health to appoint public servants as “authorised officers” with the same powers as police. However worse than that is a provision which allows the secretary to appoint any of the following as an “authorised officer”:
“[a] person the Secretary considers appropriate for appointment based on the person’s skills, attributes, experience or otherwise.” The word “otherwise” so broad and non-specific it gives rise to real concerns about who the Secretary could or would appoint. Put simply, this means you can be locked up and detained indefinitely at the whim of a designated officer….
Nowhere in the Bill or its Explanatory Memorandum is a reason or justification given for the introduction of these extraordinary sweeping and ill-defined laws…
These laws will operate side by side with the powers that already have Melbournians locked in their own homes for 22 hours a day; where the first-ever curfew in Australia’s history is in place; where freedom of movement is banned; where police and ADF personnel patrol the streets to enforce mask-wearing; where $5000 fines are handed out if you attempt to breach internal state borders and so on.
These proposed laws are unjust, unnecessary and unjustified. They are a direct attack on citizens’ civil liberties….
Even if this Bill is not passed it says much about the mindset of the Victorian government that it is prepared to assail its citizens’ rights.”
It is also worth pointing out that our house arrest has been effectively extended indefinitely, as dates given for an easing of measures are regularly extended and contingent on unattainably low case numbers, even though the “pandemic” is confined to a small number of deaths in care homes.
I think it’s time for a global campaining organisation, as the assault on our freedoms is happening worldwide. It could perhaps be similar in structure to Greenpeace- a global network of independent national and regional organisations with an international coordinating organisation. Any thoughts ?
https://www.spectator.com.au/2020/09/daniel-andrews-plan-for-indefinite-detention-and-more/?fbclid=IwAR3QAhHiNfnfZs8MCazDzv_XfT8qXW85XG7Ngw5t78dUBMvmZfogTiyu1eg
From what I’ve read here and elsewhere Victoria’s Dictator is coming under attack from all directions so perhaps this is his attempt at going down with all guns blazing.
That is absolutely true but he still has the support of 62 % of the Victorian public if polls are anything to go by. Personally I don’t know anyone who is doubting him! Apart from our Governor General, it is only his own party that can get rid of him. The remaining 38% of us have certainly let our MPs know how we feel, my only hope is that the Labour Party realise they can’t win the 2022 election with him and ditch him sooner rather than later.
The job keeper allowance of over $3000 a month keeps a lot of people happy.
I guess $3000 a month goes a long way if you cant leave your house?
It’s a lot of Uber Eats.
I bet it does, some would have never had it so good. I know someone whose son did 2 shifts at Maccas a week and now gets that. They think it is faaaabulous! Unbelievable.
Same in the Republic of Ireland. You could have been doing 2 shifts a week for 75 quid at a store. Now with furlough they are giving you 300. No wonder they are happy to keep the lockdown going.
Can you imagine the havoc this man could wreak in the next two years bearing in mind what you have pointed out above. What are the Libs like down there? If this bill is going to be debated in Parliament couldn’t a vote of no confidence in the government be sanctioned. And on another level how do you get through to the general public. No point putting anything on facebook or twitter as you will be raided. Any use in old fashioned letter box dropping? As KH indicated above the govt money tree cannot last forever, the complacency and ignorance is just astounding.
Absolutely, he is nuts ! It is no secret he is a committed communist and is no doubt relishing the destruction of all the businesses. The Opposition Leader is set to introduce a motion of no confidence against Daniel Andrews in parliament, but Labour has a strong majority. Even though he is getting blasted from the majority of MSM and the Prime Minister, most Melbournians are Guardian reading luvvies and remain wilfully ignorant of any criticsm . Their human rights concerns are restricted to woke issues.
62% !, if true they deserve all they get except for those being prevented from leaving the State
I know. I really am so tired of trying to bring people to their senses, I think the only option is to leave if and when that becomes possible.
Scary, scary stuff, nat. Yet I saw something in the Telegraph last week that Andrews is really popular with Victorians, people have pictures/flags of him in their yards etc and seemingly happy with the harsh lockdowns. Is this true do you think?
Yes, I know it’s true ! Polls show 68 % approval rating and believe it , judging from friends and family.
62% of the weak still means 38% of people hopefully strong enough to make a substantial stand against these measures
I hope so too.
Pictures? Really? Flags?
Hmmm…
Yes, apparently so. It gives me the creeps.
Glad I took my family to London.
I don’t envision coming back (not that I could anyway) anytime soon. My mate had to go back to Sydney (where I’m from) and had to pay to stay in a hotel for 14 days, with security patrolling the corridors. His daughter would bring him “care packages” because the food was not hotel food, but prison food.
The problem is, while even he thought it was a bit strong, he doesn’t seem deeply troubled by it all.
Some of my cousins are in Melbourne. The stories from them are, well, disturbing.
Perhaps we should move to Sweden.
I’ve heard the food is terrible as well. On top of that the rooms are air conditioned with no access to fresh air let alone sunshine. Apparently a Travelodge in Sydney was evacuated by the army and police a couple of weeks ago and inmates quarantined to other hotels. Rooms filthy etc. It was nice your friend’s daughter could get provisions through. It seems most returning o/seas passengers are aware of quarantine and accepting of it. We are definitely better off in NSW (at the moment) as we can move freely from our homes whenever we want to..
I have heard that too, awful food and not allowed fresh air at all in 14 days. If this Bill gets passed I will be moving if and when that becomes possible.
Sky News Australia had a vid yesterday with interview clips of Australians stranded abroad.
About half the comments were ‘good luck to you mate you’re better off there than back home’.
The others were ‘you had the chance to come home earlier so stuff you’
Like a picture of Stalin on the wall – I think that was pretty much mandatory for a while in the Soviet Union.
Watch the first couple of minutes of this video:
https://www.skynews.com.au/details/_6192155615001
You’ll see some examples.
It’s unbelievable.
Good grief!!
In love with Big Brother!
We often criticise the UK government for not having a clear Covid strategy but in Victoria they have a 4 stage strategy and it is scary and ridiculous and a bit like the cartoon at the top of this newsletter.
Dan Andrews seems to see himself as Wyatt Earp and that he can deal with this virus like the shoot-out at the OK corral and totally eradicate the virus. It is a recipe for a 1984 style perpetual war.
The problem is that he seems to be setting the agenda that the likes of hapless Hancock feel obliged to follow with his talk of defeating the virus.
Combining King Canute and surfing you get;
“You can’t stop the waves, but you can learn to surf.”
But only Sweden (and possibly Brazil?) have had the nerve to take this approach.
and Belarus
I believe the Serbian populace said ‘no’ in uncertain terms a while back.
Dan Andrews is enacting a Chinese Communist Party-style draconian lockdown. The CCP must be so proud of him.
https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/belt-and-road-advisory-board-was-stacked-with-people-linked-to-ccp-20200528-p54xex.html
“Belt and Road advisory board was stacked with people linked to CCP
The board of an Australian and Victorian government funded Belt and Road foundation was stacked with advisers with high-profile links to the Chinese Communist Party.”
https://www.advanceaustralia.org.au/how_ccp_influence_runs_deep_in_oz
How CCP influence runs deep in Oz
“June 12, 2020
Thanks to a new report by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute [ASPI], our worst fears are confirmed: the Chinese Communist Party [CPP] has way too much influence in Australia.
ASPI has revealed the extent of the CCP’s United Front Work Department, with operatives and associates having infiltrated Australian business, politics and academia.”
Great links.
Congratulations to the Vice-Chancellor of Exeter University for cancelling the no-platforming of Caroline Farrow
She also faces calls from the University staff union to immediately ban all face to face teaching
‘to keep students and staff safe from the Covid’.
Easy life working from home more like. Students don’t pay £9k pa to stare at a computer screen.
Paying For Education AT University Is For Fools
The students might as well not bother. They’re being ripped off on a massive scale.
I wonder if this is the beginning of the end of the University model? Originally a sort of monastic setup where students became part of the academic community. Now too many people are attending, paying too much, ending in debt, and sometimes gaining little benefit.
In the 1990s I worked part time in a university department just delivering teaching. I worked 2 days a week and did the teaching load of 4 lecturers. What were they doing for the rest of their time? ‘Research’. Who was paying for it? Mostly the students.
Agree BUT why did it happen in the first instance?
I have been trying to work out why what is going on feels so weird.
This crisis may very well be judged by history to mark the watershed moment at which the world finally turned from Atlantic centric to Pacific centric or at least when it became startlingly obvious.
A change from post christian ethical christian mores to buddhist mores.
Buddhism teaches the eightfold path: right views, thoughts, speech, conduct, practice, mental attitude, mindfulness and meditation.
So, now, does twitter
English law always used to be about everything being allowed unless expressly forbidden, innocent until proven guilty.
WHO is in the pocket of buddhist China.
And we can see where the eightfold path leads by reference to the fate of the Uighurs.
We can see, from twitter and the precautionary principle. that now society’s judgement has changed to a presumption of guilty until proven innocent
And we, in the west, have changed now from leaders to followers, led by an alien culture, and that is why this national reaction to a minor common cold coronavirus epidemic feels so weird.
I don’t think the Buddha’s the problem.
One of them is………
First, China isn’t Buddhist and never has been. There have been plenty of Buddhists in China, but it has never defined the country as for instance Christianity defined Britain (and all of Europe) for centuries.
Second, I don’t know whence you get your understanding of Buddhism, but as someone who has had a lot of very close contact with it for decades (I’m not, and never have been, Buddhist myself) I can confidently tell you that the Buddha’s ideas about right thought etc did not extend to imposing such on others by force.
Mark, I commented before reading your remarks. Spot on.
If you want to do a version of the Crusades with Buddhism taking the place of Islam, well, to each their own. But China is a totalitarian state.
Totalitarianism is what feels alien about this situation to me. I was born and raised in the United States, which certainly wasn’t a totalitarian state when I was a girl in the late 50s/early 60s. But Britain and the USA are walking a very strange path right now.
Someone told Jeremy Vine that he and the family were off to Spain for a fortnight
“But you’ll probably need to quarantine when you get back !”
‘Not really bothered Jeremy, me and the wife are both working from home’.
“We learn from history that we do not learn from history”
Georg Hegel.
Do we make the history that we use and an excuse for not learning?
Hindsight tells a story, not the fact.
“That’s the Covid cult: an endless cycle of restrictions followed by relaxations followed by restrictions as we wait for the vaccine Messiah who never quite comes.”
This is the standard “Fear then Relief” persuasion technique beloved by salesmen, marketeers and Behavioural Insight Teams.
http://changingminds.org/techniques/general/sequential/fear_relief.htm
And room 101
At the moment in my awareness 101 is allowed to insinuate into your expectations.
But in some places it may be ‘fleshed out’. However, it is still our fear that breaks us. And everyone’s fear of the unknown is the projections around denied trauma from a preverbal stage of our development.
And military interrogators everywhere, when they want to break down a prisoner.
I have just about given up. I didn’t buy into this from the start. The face mask rules sent me spinning. I have very little fight left and barely any hope. I am lucky as I still have a job, and have worked the whole time and no real worries but I am.surrounded by pod people who believe the crap they are being fed. I saw a sign up on a roundabout that said.”shame on you Boris”. Indeed, shame on all of them !
Shame for what ? Lockdown or not enough
Thank you.
Apologies for any hurt caused.
My comment was not questioning Francescas post, rather the ambiguity of the sign which can be can be read either way as with the Telegraph poll that finds only 6% of respondents agree with the Rule of 6, some might prefer a Rule of 2.
Don’t fight what you cannot see.
Above all else seek sanity.
Perhaps to sit
out by a tree
and remember
your humanity.
Everything in the deceit operates to get you to give your power away by reacting to its provocations and baiting.
There are deeper truths to life than the passing show.
And if anything can bring sanity to a world gone mad, it will be from those who keep their head and heart when all around have fragmented to panic or despair.
Live This Day Well.
Sufficient be the evils of the day thereof.
These are what rises within our field of responsibility.
Grow what you love.
Don’t disagree that there should be caution taken on testing regarding false positives. Certainly if just randomly testing the general population. But if testing is focused on the symptomatic and those who’ve been in close contact with the symptomatic, there is likely to be a much higher incidence of the virus amongst those tested than the general prevalence. So, yes there will be some false positives, but testing will be picking up a lot more ‘real’ positives. The 91 in 10,000 example in this post is misleading in the context of the testing regime we are supposed to have in place.
I’ve genuinely valued reading Lockdown Sceptics since the start, first time posting. But it is increasingly becoming victim to its own confirmation biases, and less balanced than it was at the start. And sadly seems less interested in genuine solutions / alternatives to the current policy approaches in favour of simply tearing down every intervention. I’m not clear what you’d propose we do instead? Assume the answer is “Sweden” – but Sweden’s approach hasn’t been without limitations on day-to-day life either.
Come off it, you can’t possibly think that 150,000-230,000 people who are being tested each day are symptomatic with symptoms matching covid-19 but then only a couple of thousand or so are positive?? The fact is there _is_ mass testing of the healthy taking place, because people are idiots and have been convinced getting tested is effective treatment in some way. Hancock and co are also proposing insane mass testing of 10mn a day by next year.
So yes actually it is extremely important to point out the false positives rate alongside the inability of PCR tests to determine infectiousness so that Hancock stop wasting £bns of our tax money on this garbage.
If you also can’t gather what the alternative approach sought by Toby and those in the comments is, I suggest you read more carefully. As for you not being able to tell the benefits of a Swedish approach which did indeed have some restrictions Vs our idiotic governments with many many insane restrictions…
I am in my car with a clear view of the local testing station. There is no activity whatever yet local people are being told to go to Wales for testing.
We are being lied to Big Time.
U.K. Column news had a big item on this.Create a need for a test.restrict access to increase demand then test as much as possible to get the ‘case ‘ numbers up
Agreed – a testing station near my parents in Kent is now being converted into a lorry park – part of the preparations for 1st January.
See this is part of the problem – people are ‘idiots’ , use of infantile terms like ‘bedwetters’ and ‘face nappies’ – it’s not constructive.
The narrative on this blog increasingly tends towards every intervention being wrong, idiotic or insane.
I would massively support a more Swedish approach in the U.K. by the way. But I don’t see hope of getting there when the debate is so polarised.
There is no need,it is over.We lockdowned past the peak,even Whitty admitted that.The time for a Swedish approach was sometime in March.We had something similar in the summer which wasn’t needed but now they have gone nuclear again.When we are fighting over scraps from the bins I don’t think we will be worrying about past use of nasty names
Call a spade a spade Michael. The people going for tests because they’ve got a runny nose are idiots, whether you or they like to be called it or not is irrelevant. One of the things the whole debate needs is a bit more honesty, and if that means telling people they’ve being stupid and pathetic, then so be it. Some cold hard reality would do people the world of good ‘get a fucking grip and get on with your lives’
Also – please tell me which intervention _isn’t_ any of wrong, idiotic or insane? One example of something they’ve mandated that isn’t at the very least one of the above…
But remember that many people are going for tests because their child has a runny nose and the school has banned them until they are tested and show negative. so in those cases the people are not idiots, the schools are the idiots
How many times have you come around to alternative point of view after having been called an idiot or pathetic?
Well, I certainly haven’t come around to the idea of wearing a mask because of being called a “covidiot” so I guess you have a point.
I too don’t like the term ‘bedwetters’, but admit to sometimes getting very frustrated with the people to whom it refers – probably wrong of me I know, but there we are.
A friend the other day, after I pointed him here, intensely disliked the reference to ‘bedwetters’, and it has put him off the site.
I replied that people like us have been called ‘granny killers’ and ‘murderers’; we have even been likened to terrorists. So the insults don’t go all one way. Which is worse, being called a ‘bedwetter’ or a ‘granny killer’?
Thanks for your original post though – confirmation bias is indeed a danger, on both sides of the argument.
Agreed. I’ve hated the way people wanting to go about normal life are branded ‘Covidiots’
I know many people who comply with the government restrictions in the belief they are doing good.
They are not bedwetters or covidiots but honest well-meaning people who have worked honestly all their lives and for whom it is inconceivable that the current tsunami of lies would emerge from a democratic government they trusted.
One they trusted to behave as honestly as they, themselves do in their own life.
They have no experience of the sadistic depths our government is capable of and have been shielded from the horrific and murderous destruction of innocent countries marked for regime change by the compliant lies of the MSM.
Now that destructive force has been turned on the home population.
These people are innocents.
Most are gullible, not innocent, testimony to the skill of the nudge unit and the guilt of the MSM.
The government lies are absolutely blatant, the “rules” so arbitrary that people are starting to question and see through them.
Those who are all-right-jack are definitely not innocent.
If there was a sceptical MSM, the public wouldn’t believe so much of the propaganda.
Hence the first things a coup captures are the Media and TV.
This coup was effected as capture over generations to ‘come out’ from the shadows through the trojan of a medical mandate.
The term “granny killers” is especially offensive and egregious. As if anyone on this site would deliberately want to kill anyone.
Those who set the term by propagating the meme know what they are doing is choking the life support of the aged.
Gates has called those who are critical of vaccines as baby killers.
Bush declared a ‘war on terror’.
The flagging to another or to any narrative of your own masked intent can operate as a cognitive dissonance.
Perhaps it is not wrong to feel frustration but to assign your own motives to them and blame them for it as a way to alleviate your distress.
I recommended a friend here who also found the bedwetting stank.
As for people who have or do or will wet their beds for whatever reasons that surely have nothing to do with whatever this furore is all about, welcome to a new layer of shame by association.
But not really!
Don’t give it permission to enter your mind.
The thing is, those already identified in shame have no access to the power of command, and are defenceless against contagion that gets in by the back door and replicates a mutation of their already installed ‘thinking’.
I agree about bedwetters (prefer sheeple) but I think face nappies is a very accurate description. Filthy things!
Yes, I’d go along with that. And face-nappies has the advantage in that it isn’t a direct personal attack.
I know people who are scared to death of covid (and have no need to be), but I still value them and wouldn’t want to use the b word to describe them. They are just have an overly nervous disposition, which in other times we would have sympathy with, not regard with derision.
Another sinister side-effect of the covid response.
One is attack on the person, another a depiction of an item of apparel.
Some of them are toxic before being used.
There is little awareness of environmental toxiciy – which includes innumerable solvents, plastics and substances that are ‘novel’ to our adaptive capacity – and many of which undermine our adaptive protection (our microbiome).
A major reason for this is that the polluters are protected by cover stories that almost completely divert attention to a gold mine for virological interventions and treatments – that are themselves part of the toxic synergy undermining our capacity to live a human life. (Degrading us).
Every intervention has been “wrong, idiotic or insane”.
Blame those who impose such bollocks, not those who oppose it.
I join with you in affirming that the polarising of identities of such infantile terms of self-superior and smug derision seek to mask in virtue of being ‘right’ because they are so certain of being wronged.
If you cant get at the Global Gated governments and lockstepping assets – why not dump emotional frustrations on your fellows!!
If I were the globalist manipulator I would smile at the polarising division as a fate accomplished.
I don’t see what we prefer has any voice in this?
Except in what we can practically engage in, such as preferring not to endlessly torment myself with it.
or preferring to educate myself in any and all ways as to who and what I am, what is going on here and where shall I stand within it.
I for one favour NO intervention from the outset.
So for me the intervention of the state in our lives on the pretext of a paramount concern for our safety is bullying based on bollocks.
I save more nuanced language for issues worthy of discussion.
Once the target is phished, you have stolen their identity while they run off and do what you frame them to. That many seem to want to lose their mind for a newthink of systemic control, may be more of a Stockholm syndrome, than any outcome of considered awareness of their situation.
Let the polarised bury the polarised, by the way. You are not here to change anyone else – but of course those who find they share the same learning find affinities regardless of background.
In her evidence to the Science and Tech select committe on Thursday Dido Harding said that her own team’s surveys found that 25% of those surveyed at testing centres admitted to having lied about having symptoms to secure the test. The true figure will be much higher since most folk would not admit to this when questioned directly.
We must also remember that especially at this time of year a temperature, cough or loss of taste and smell could be related to a vast number pathogens. There is now a smaller chance than ever that one or more of those symptoms indicate covid-19
Toby’s false positive explanation is one of the most important posts so far I think. It’s reasonable to investigate further, but whatever the details this is surely the biggest anti-lockdown argument we have.
Big travel piece in the Mail today about going to Cyprus. It mentions in passing that you need ‘proof of a negative test’.
The uselessness of the PCR tests for diagnostic purposes was known since it was developed, and stated by its co inventor, Kary Mullis.
The arguments against the veracity of the claims for HIV was hardly covered by the Media. There is fraud and bollox there too. The novel thing about this ‘virus’ is it capacity to shut down the global economy and lockdown the healthy.
Hello,
beginning in March I followed the recording of test results and noticed only 0.5% of tests were positive then. So an awful lot of people were being tested then as now were healthy. In fact I believe 99.98% are uninfected even now so we’ll be doing an awful lot of testing for very little gain.I agree we should have followed Sweden’s way as we were doing before Boris was panicked into lockdown. I believe Ferguson’s prediction was based on the Spanish flu of 1918-19 when 225000 died in the UK. Why didn’t know one notice that Ferguson’s prediction was double Spanish flu which affected everyone unlike covid which affects mostly the old and sick.
I kind of agree here – I believe in evidence-based policy, and Lockdown Sceptics has got lost in its own hype a few times. Declaring ‘it was over in May’ or whenever is a bit risky when I think there is plenty of evidence to say the virus is still genuinely out there.
Also calling everyone bedwetters and so on may feel good but it’s persuading no one and doesn’t do much good. A more mature approach will get more results – for instance people like Carl Henegan was giving evidence to the science and technology committee the other day. That’s a good thing.
As for Sweden, it has had limitations, but it really wasn’t done like here at all, right? It’s the use of the law, the bullying that does, that really rubs me the wrong way, rather than treating the population like adults and respecting personal freedoms and choice to adapt guidelines to individual circumstances; the harms of al this lockdown, which don’t seem to be weighted enough; the lack of parliamentary scrutiny and accountability, which results in bad law; and, now, the tunnel-vision and doubling down and seeming inability or reluctance to consider if this approach needs to be entirely re-thought. All this really upsets me.
Thank you. Fully agree with you here
Use of a law that stems from the 1984 Public Health Act which was to enable Local Authorities to detain infected persons against their will, not yo impose restrictions on a whole, largely uninfected population or parts thereof.
I don’t like words such as bedwetters as it is clear why people may be scared. We are constantly bombarded by the message from the MSM we are in the middle of a deadly pandemic. When the government introduced draconian laws people were going to think on the lines “this disease must be really bad to introduce these laws”.
Yes – I can’t get too angry at them nor do I think the term ‘bedwetters’ is appropriate. It’s not their fault really, the shame should be solely on the politicians and the media.
I’d much rather see repentance than shame.
Not to evade or escape consequences – but to re-align in an honesty of being to face them.
Yes, the virus is still out there. But it is going underground and becoming both endemic and now invariably asymptomatic. As far as clinical illness goes, SARS 1 simply disappeared, and so would this one if left to its own devices.
I agree with you. I’m vulnerable but I think we should be free to choose for ourselves what measures we take to protect ourselves. It is horrifying when people are shut in and prevented from seeing loved ones. Such measures have no place in a supposedly free society. Indeed they are a sure way of making people ill and likely to catch every virus going around! Let those at risk with medical conditions and old age be supported if they wish not to go in anywhere. Let everyone else get on with their lives.
Yes, I agree. I’m in my 60s but healthy. I certainly do not appreciate the government telling me what to do “for my own good”. I simply want to be left alone to go about my business in peace.
“plenty of evidence to say the virus is still genuinely out there”
Plenty ? Go on then …
My thoughts on what policies I would enact instead are summarised by this quote from Thomas Sowell:
“No matter how disastrously some policy has turned out, anyone who criticizes it can expect to hear: ‘But what would you replace it with?’ When you put out a fire, what do you replace it with?”
Yes, ‘the virus is out there’ and it always will be. Listen to Prof Henegan in his evidence to the Science and Technology Committee. The virus is endemic. The good news is that the vast majority of us are immune and most of those who are immune will test positive, so what?
What is the syndrome where a firefighter sets a fire just so they can play the hero putting it out.
It’s what wankcock and his sorry crew are doing.
Pyromania
Also the title of a Def Leppard album
Welcome Michael, or should we call you Mike77? Reading from the start eh?
You’re a sceptic yet believe we are truly testing symptomatic people, which is why the figures Toby challenges should also be challenged?
Oh and Lockdown “Sceptics” has become “less balanced”? Pull the other one. The clue’s in the name.
Genuinely was my first post – so don’t know if you’re trying to link me to a previous poster or not …
1. My point was that, assuming we are testing as we say we are – ie people who are symptomatic, have been identified as having been in contact with someone with the virus, or are in a high risk area – then there will still be false positives in the sample, but not to the magnitude of error given in the article. I would be highly sceptical of the benefit of testing the population on mass because of the false positive issue. Not withstanding the ridiculous cost of “moonshot”.
2. What i liked about LS at the start was the intent to be sceptical yes, but also open minded.
“(I also welcome rebuttals of those views. can see a thoughtful response to my piece in the Critic by Sam Bowman here, as well as my reply to Sam’s critique here.) Although I believe the lockdown needs to be dialled back, I’m not absolutely certain of that and am open to having my mind changed. The critical thing is that we should have an informed public debate about it.” Tony, introduction.
Toby, sorry
1. The number of tests to positives, false or not, is so wide that the idea those people are symptomatic individuals is kind of bizzare. For then we clearly have an issue with what we are labelling as symptoms (which many will agree with) for what is the worst virus we’ve known for 100 years. Symptoms that are not really symptoms then would be the logical conclusion.
No, what is happening is we are screening people based on fear with a PCR test that was never designed for such a purpose. Children in a bubble at school are being asked to seek a test if a fellow pupil shows these symptoms, or else face isolation for 14 days. So already you could have scores of children with no symptoms booking tests, and their parents in many cases. Then you also have frontline workers is a similar position. Anyone geting an operation of any kind also needs to be tested. Symptoms or not.
There are even stories of people who have zero symptoms booking tests so they can see their parents, just to be sure.
It’s a shambles and totally predictable so it begs the question why are our masters continuing to test test test? I’d love to know your answer to that.
2. It’s natural to feel that although measures seem over the top, something needs to be done. Because the propaganda is on a huge scale right now and it would be a bit difficult not to be impacted in some way.
Try it from the other side. Provide for us some kind of data which shows that 1. a second wave is indeed upon us and 2. thenew lockdown measures will prevent it.
If there is evidence, then we absolutely need to see it.
And. The false positives are a massive issue. That’s undeniable
From what I understand, most asymptomatic people being tested have to do so to be able to return to work on school. They are not sick and do not appear to have the disease. Hence the concern about false positives.
Yes. Tear down every intervention and get back to normal life. That’s exactly what is needed.
What other conclusion could you possibly reach after 6+ months of this shit show? Nothing the government has done has been of any use whatsoever. It’s been worse that useful. They’ve sent infected people into homes. The testing scheme is a fraud. The lockdowns have been an economic and social disaster. Masks have simply made people more fearful when they were meant to give people more confidence – except anyone with half a brain could have foreseen that. And they’re obsessed with keeping us in a holding pattern of self destruction until a vaccine come along which will be unauthorised and unsafe.
Tearing down every intervention is not only a genuine solution. It is the only proper solution. And the only reason it isn’t being implemented is because the bastards in government can’t go back on what they’ve done because they would have to own all the damage they’ve done and accept it was for nothing.
Just been told that out of 600 students expected at one Hall of Residence only 30 have arrived with notice recieved from most of the others.
No surprise really, with little or no classroom teaching, zilch social life and constant hectoring about Covid Safety why would they leave the relative comfort of home and the rediscovered friendship of their old schoolmates.
The university in town is opening next week. The buses have increased scheduled services next week based on the expected number. But I am wondering if I will continue to ride almost alone on the university service I use to get to my allotment. And what will happen to our bus services without the expected influx of passengers?
As you say, why leave the relative comfort of home? I’m sure the word is getting around as to what the experience will be like.
“Another song references a widely-shared Facebook post, of a screenshot from a UK Government website saying, “COVID-19 is no longer considered to be a high consequence infectious disease (HCID) in the UK.” This link is blocked by the facebook censors. Anyone managed to get it elsewhere, please?
No but that phrase was included as a lyric from one of Van Morrisons new releases broadcast on BBC R4 News yesterday.
It was also mentioned in a debunk by the BBC misinformation team:
“Olga Robinson, BBC Monitoring disinformation team
Sir Van Morrison refers to a debunked Covid-19 conspiracy theory in one of his new anti-lockdown songs.
The track As I Walked Out includes the lyrics: “Well on the government website from the 21 March 2020 / It said COVID-19 was no longer high risk”.
It’s a reference to a UK government page that stated “Covid-19 is no longer considered to be a high consequence infectious disease (HCID) in the UK”.
That much is true – but that doesn’t mean that coronavirus is harmless.
The HCID designation is given for very fatal diseases: for example Ebola, which kills more than 50% of infected people.
Covid-19 was initially classified as HCID in January – when little was known about it.
By March, more information and testing prompted authorities to revise the classification”
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-54194408
It’s here by the way.
https://www.gov.uk/guidance/high-consequence-infectious-diseases-hcid
What we have is the Covid-19 industrial complex. A range of frameworks and legislations designed to make money for big companies. Matt Hancock plans to be a CEO at one of these companies at the end of it.
“It is because of the mad mathematical modellers. The academic epidemiologists. Neil Ferguson, and others of his ilk. When they were guessing (sorry estimating, sorry modelling) the impact of COVID they used a figure of approximately one per cent as the infection fatality rate. Not the case fatality rate. In so doing, they overestimated the likely impact of COVID by, at the very least, ten-fold.
However, just have a look, at the figures. Tell me where they are wrong – if you can. The truth is that this particular Emperor has no clothes on and is, currently, standing bollock naked, right in front of you. Hard to believe, but true.”
https://drmalcolmkendrick.org/2020/09/04/covid-why-terminology-really-matters/
This Ferguson Model is such a joke it is either an outright fraud, or it is the most inept piece of programming I may have ever seen in my life. There is no valid test to warrant any funding of Imperial College for providing ANY forecast based upon this model. This is the most UNPROFESSIONAL operation perhaps in computer science. The entire team should be disbanded and an independent team put in place to review the world of Neil Ferguson and he should NOT be allowed to oversee any review of this model.
The only REASONABLE conclusion I can reach is that this has been deliberately used to justify bogus forecasts intent for political activism, or I must accept that these academics are totally incapable of even creating a theoretical model no less coding it as a programmer. There seems to have been no independent review of Ferguson’s work which is unimaginable!
https://www.armstrongeconomics.com/world-news/corruption/i-have-reviewed-fergusons-code/
As I’ve said before, in any professional outfit if you got such a model to production and released it to customers your company would be under investigation and you may end up in jail. For safety critical applications you would end up in jail.
The reason politicians believe the modellers is that they’ve been doing it already in other areas such as climate change.
Plus ca change
And part of the reason for the new lockdown, sorry local curfews , is that they are using computer models of human behaviour to predict how we will react.
We are Guinea Pigs running on a wheel for their entertainment.
Wankock seems to be thoroughly enjoying it!
While there may be some by product that fits what you say, the system controllers are refining a system and have little if any concern for us.
But every interest in reverse engineering our mind and behaviours so as to predictively program and immediately work any instability back into the program.
However, I speak from what I intuit.
Below the controllers are the useful idiots. Greedy people can be used.
I believe that the model was only used to give a scientific veneer to a political decision already made.Id say that the decision was made before March 13 when Johnson made his ‘loved ones will die ‘ speech
The temporary support of official designation was rolled back as a legal protection. Everything is done with an eye for legal comeback.
You can read a MMS media hit piece as a legal document and a sales brochure seeking not so much a sale, but an emotional reaction.
Everything terrifying was couched in legally defensible terms of may, believed, experts say, or is predicted to be.
Predictive programming also states it intentions overtly at the outset – albeit as if the virus is going to come in waves that will mean waves of contractions leading to the birth of a novel system of behavioural control.
The root csuses of our problems are that the people accepted the hammer&dance narrative and response, and that everyone but Profs. Gatti&Montanari accepts the pharma industry’s narrative that herd immunity exists as a real medical evidence, instead of just a theoretical epidimiological simulation.
Both of those doors must be shut!
Just read the Spectator article by Fraser Nelson that Toby linked above and came across this comment by a reader:
I think this comment is spot on. I can detect a mood of despair among people as I’ve noticed it when I go to work, the muzzles don’t exactly conceal people’s body language. They look dead behind the eyes, their body language is demoralised and they’ve just retreated behind their phones to numb the horror.
If and when the public take matter into their own hands, it won’t be pretty. As that reader has said it will make the General Strike of 1926 look like a tea party. There’s a lot of simmering discontent and government are ignoring it at their own peril.
I wonder if the public will break. Certainly I think ‘cancelling Christmas’ could be a breaking point. I’d like to think it is happening now, to stop any second lockdown in its tracks. I don’t think it will be ugly, though – in some ways I’m an optimist, and I think people might just politely ignore the rules en masse and get on with their lives in a reasonable way in light of the pandemic, as they are kind of doing now. No laws needed.
The other institution that might break is Parliament – I really hope it will re-assert itself this week and force the government to choose a new course, based more on the Swedish approach.
Christmas I suspect will break it. Also the end of furlough with the forecast of more job losses and bankruptcies.
Given that they know their stupid laws make no difference to a problem that doesn’t exist it will be very easy for johnson to uncancel Christmas in early December and claim the credit for ‘saving it for the long suffering but brave British public’.
I agree. That is exactly what I think will happen.
I agree.The virus is endemic in the population.It doesn’t affect the under 65s.They can declare it over anytime they wish.
I don’t know what is scarier.The thought that the government is being controlled by outside forces and the fact that they might really believe their own propaganda
the govt will most likely scale down the panic once they get the Coronavirus act over the line next week
Well it is both. People have to live with themselves (while they yet live), and if for whatever reasons are controlled by fear, coercion, blackmail, along with heavy financial inducements and protections and privileges that may include criminal activity given licence, and yes a belief in a narrative that justifies cracking eggs to make an omelette or breaking down and eradicating the old as the necessity for the shining path of the golden dawn of a new world order.
Communism does this and in a different was so does its counterpart seek to stamp out the new unless it can be brought into the service of the establishment.
Most everyone believes their own thinking. Its an almost universal addiction. The conflicts in our thought bear such fruit as we struggle and die in.
How can there be even a token gesture to re-institute Xmas? None of these supposedly viral suppressive strategies work, and thus there is no exit strategy, barring a fundamental re-appraisal of ‘mitigation’ strategy. At the least that would involve a full public acknowlegement of the shortcomings of the existing methods of PCR testing with urgent remedy.
All positives must be retested to provide a confirmation.
And there needs to be two sets of results; symptomatic testees and non-symptomatic testees. I can’t see this happening…
Quite the opposite: ‘Moonshine’ is about something else entirely, imo.
And Brexit will be imminent. Without wishing to be alarmist, I foresee supply line shortages at least a month before then.
Perhaps the brinkmanship is setting the breaking as a matter that will be timed to suit those who are setting the agenda most everyone is reacting to.
If it falls apart when their preparations are done it may be like waking from anaesthesia to find vital organs have been stolen, and the surgeons have fled to some hideaway.
There is gentle, for want of a better word, civil disobedience everywhere now. Noticed more mask wearers having it under the nose, less people wearing masks outside. More visits to other houses going on. Lots of little things like that might not mean much to sceptics but to previous absolute supporters it’s a lot. It’s a beginning
Or under the chin which I’ve seen a lot as well. Not to mention using the same mask over and over again.
I agree with the under nose wearers, but I see more and more people wearing them outside.
I’m the same as you, if I go into shops or in public transport half the time I’m the only one not wearing a mask. Unfortunately there is still a lot of brainwashing going on but the fact that I don’t see many people wear them properly or shove them into their bags, pockets or danging from their hands show that perhaps they’re seeing this as pointless theatre.
Yes, me too. I am usually the only bus rider not wearing a mask. Of course, the driver usually doesn’t wear one either, which does give me a small amount of pleasure.
The mask becomes another prop for the emotional investment of identity.
the masking over our light is a withholding of our regard or if you will, our blessing. The willingness to acknowledge others in their own right is not judging them from behind our mask.
Where we are living from, can be true of us, or a passing off in masking presentation, so as to hide from, or to hide behind.
In God we trust.
In fear we are trussed.
This post is a bit off topic, and a bit long, so please ignore if you are not into song analogies.
Lockdown Sceptics theme tune. Good feature of the site, although generally the songs appear to be chosen for their titles rather than content.
Regarding content, I posted here a few weeks ago how I thought the lyrics to Bob Dylan’s ‘It’s alright Ma (I’m only Bleeding)’ seemed especially aposite to lockdown sceptics.
But there’s another, very early, song of his, which is little known now outside of Dyan circles, and which Clinton Heylin (if I recall correctly) said was perhaps the first great song Dylan ever wrote: ‘Let me die in my Footsteps’.
The Guthrie-like drawl isn’t to everyone’s taste, although it does me just fine. This is how Dylan himself described how he came to write it:
I was going through some town and they were making this bomb shelter right outside of town, one of these sort of Coliseum-type things and there were construction workers and everything. I was there for about an hour, just looking at them build, and I just wrote the song in my head back then, but I carried it with me for two years until I finally wrote it down. As I watched them building, it struck me sort of funny that they would concentrate so much on digging a hole underground when there were so many other things they should do in life. If nothing else, they could look at the sky, and walk around and live a little bit, instead of doing this immoral thing.
The first verse goes:
I will not go down under the ground
“Cause somebody tells me that death’s comin’ ’round
An’ I will not carry myself down to die
When I go to my grave my head will be high,
Let me die in my footsteps
Before I go down under the ground.
The following six verses are in the same vein.
(https://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=let+me+die+in+my+footsteps+dylan+lyrics&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8)
Never been a Dylan fan—I enjoyed your post though. I like those lyrics and the story behind them. Thank you
Thanks for reading. Such posts risk clogging up the site, but I wanted to get it off my chest.
just listening to it!
I haven’t heard it for a bit, but remember it well – might play it again now.
I like the eclectic nature of the posts here!
Some are a real breath of fresh air in the middle of a string of despair – and both are completely valid.
Yes, I do like the huge range here – from the highly technical, to the personal, to the expletive-riven rants.
Can anyone give me the link to the BBC’s page that showed five reasons why the second wave may not be real? Increased testing etc. I cannot find it! Thanks.
https://www.bbc.com/news/health-54064347
That’s it! Thank you so much!
If “we” and I say we as a the original band of sceptics to which the numbers seem to be growing by the minute, are right then surely this has no more than 2-3 weeks to run?
If deaths don’t suddenly jump to hundred per day in that period then the government will be in an impossible position.
Even the ONS is not going to be able to make up death numbers.
Personally I think the school returns will soon settle down, the stats are already showing calls to NHS 111 have started to drop off.
University returns was always going to be a lunch point and I think many are fearful of that.
Again give that 2-3 weeks and if that bottom line is still flat then it’s effectively over.
Sadly no. That’s why the new lockdown comes in now.
If they left it a few more weeks and nothing much happened, it would indeed be over.
So they have to lock down now before this happens. Then they can say that they avoided the new wave of death only thanks to their highly successful lockdown.
Yes I agree but what that does is make these changes now a huge overreaction.
The dissenting voices grow louder by the hour.
So actually these new local restrictions play into our hands.
We expect the deaths not to increase and when they don’t our perspective will be seen as the right one.
So the government are perhaps coming into line now and believe what Carl is telling them but don’t want the risk of this being out of control.
When it’s not in 2-3 weeks he will be right and the government can’t be accused of locking down too late again.
Win win for the government.
Well, that’s one way of looking at it. I hope you are right.
But look at the muzzle nonsense. That all began in June (!), so you might reasonably say “if they worked, where has this so-called second wave come from?”.
But the question simply doesn’t arise. They just double down and move on to the the next diktat, without a murmur of dissent in the media or among politicians.
The BIG difference in the spring was the need to protect the NHS.
People bought into that but the questions people are asking more and more is why that applies now when deaths and hospitalisations are down to manageable levels.
The numbers in a March and April were not good, we know that.
So the government I think are over reacting now because they don’t want to be blamed for not reacting fast enough.
But that only lasts a few weeks.
Too many influential people and MPs are challenging this now.
Hope you’re right. Also charities particularly are getting hammered, big news piece about Help for Heroes shutting regional branches & hemorrhaging staff in large numbers might make a few more wake up.
Not just deaths and hospitalisations down, but people are actively angry about the lack of treatment for conditions like cancer. And that anger is welling up again with the latest clearance of the hospitals for the “second wave”. I read hundreds of angry comments on the Daily Mail this morning – have to do something on my bus ride!
I agree the dissenting voices are growing louder both in “real life” and various internet platforms such as comments sections and even on Twitter dissenters are getting as much support, if not more, than Covid lovers. Unfortunately, these occasional public surveys that the PM governs by still show around a 60-65% support for this nonsense, only down 25% from the height of 90%ish in May. Hopefully by December when people realise their Christmas is fucked the support will dip below 50%.
“If they left it a few more weeks and nothing much happened, it would indeed be over.”
I think that’s a brilliant one sentence summary of the whole farce.
Another new Mark, or are you the same one who’s been posting occasionally over the past few weeks?
Interested to know if you are signed up or not, because I’m still logged in as Mark, so if you are signed up and logged in under the same name then that seems a little odd, that the software would allow that.
I wish I had your faith, hotrod! The genius of the narrative they have shaped means that they can argue ad infinitum that the second wave is just around the corner. With the current testing protocols positive tests can never be eliminated which will be Boris’s ‘evidence’ that we have yet to beat the virus.
Even if we tested a million a day and we found viral load in 20,000 people if the deaths stay flat ALL people will soon realise the test is flawed.
Right now that number of sceptics is growing.
Maybe (if you mean positive tests, rather than viral load), but the counterargument then is that all the measures in place are what is keeping the death-rate down and the rise in deaths will always be just around the corner if we don’t do as we are told. We are hearing quite a lot that masks and anti-social distancing are argued to reduce viral load which means that transmission continues but not enough virus is passed on for people to become seriously ill.
Sadly I don’t believe all people would think the test is flawed – that hasn’t happened where I am in Melbourne, where a major escalation in tests produced more cases. If people are told cases are increasing most will believe it without question.
It’s been flat lined for three months, hasn’t stopped the tossers.
The problem is that people will die. The virus appears to be very infectious but not very fatal, except to those who are terminally ill. Since there is a renewable supply of people who are terminally ill, there will always be a spike in deaths when a period of isolation is stopped.
The critical question is: where does the spike end. Their argument is that you will have released an unstoppable exponential wave of death, and so you dare not let it even begin. You can see why that argument is self-reinforcing forever.
“Even the ONS is not going to be able to make up death numbers.” — Well, they have been doing that all along (revised down for one obvious lie, yet to correct the others) so I dont see what will stop them this time.
Depends on the death certification process. A friend’s elderly relative died of cancer but it was jotted down as probable covid. The removal of the Shipman controls is highly dangerous and no longer necessary.
Pretty similar recording pattern worldwide, from what I can see. Hence why George Floyd is a covid statistic!
So the vaccine is the cavalry, eh? Really?
DNA-changing, unlicensed, with no long-term safety record and manufacturers indemnified against any injury liability. And it will not even necessarily stop you catching CV-19 (full sterilising immunity is NOT a requirement).
All to combat a virus that has effectively burnt itself out and has all but ceased to hospitalise or cause any deaths – and for which HCQ+Zinc is a cheap and ready cure, as proved in Africa.
Bearing in mind that most of these new “cases” come from false positives, as Michael Yeadon has noted, none of this makes any sense at all in terms of health.
But it makes all too much sense in terms of Covid passports – and an electronic population surveillance and control grid, which globalists like Blair have wanted for decades: a classic case of problem-reaction-solution. Worrying, to say the least.
Do you have a link/paper for my records of HCQ+Zn as a cure/prophylactic in Africa?
My info is from a friend over there in health sector. There are also some interesting graphs going around, looking at death rates and HCQ use.
This article may provide a few pointers, but it will not open for me: https://fellowshipoftheminds.com/hydroxychloroquine-is-why-uganda-with-a-population-of-43m-has-only-15-covid-19-deaths
I will frankly admit that getting the papers you want is tricky. It is like someone wanted to bury good news about HCQ…why would anyone do that?
There is reams and reams of evidence growing by the week.
This site is good:-
http://covexit.com/
The associated Facebook group has been recently taken down (shamefully), which was a mine of quality information and links. The equivalent discussion group has moved here:-
https://www.minds.com/groups/profile/1152734811007930368/feed
I’m sure if you digest the above you will find something on Africa.
The vaccine scene if it comes is going to be a living nightmare. Ignoring the rushed, improperly tested aspects. They are thinking in terms of not just a single vaccine but indivduals being given one that best suits them. Each giving different levels of cover. The paperwork/digitalwork will be an unworkable disaster in operation.
I agree, we already see this with influenza vaccines depending on age group etc. And that’s before the impending digital medical passport. It’s undeniable that this is coming soon.
I just want a reference of HCQ treatment in Africa. I have papers/articles reporting from Belgium, Brazil and USA but not for Africa. I vaguely remember something a while back about its use in Morocco. Maybe there is a review article of substance anyone knows of?
Not sure if you’re aware of America’s Frontline Doctors – the group that spoke out in favour of HcQ & other things earlier this year and got hammered for it; one of them has a lot of experience working in Africa, – if you have a look around, might point you in the direction of what you are looking for.
https://americasfrontlinedoctors.us/
https://www.palmerfoundation.com.au/moroccan-scientist-moroccos-hydroxychloroquine-82-5-success-reveals-european-failures/
Old folks given the “euthanasia” version. Young people given the “sterilisation” version. Bill Gates’ eugenics program.
Posting this again. A global techno-fascist (or techno-communist, take your pick) society is the endgame for the totalitarian Agenda 2030, and it depends ENTIRELY on the introduction of compulsory vaccination. IOW compulsory jabs always were, and still are, the purpose for the plandemic:
https://steemit.com/covid/@munkle/permanent-injectable-biochip-covid-sensors-near-fda-approval
Not the usual Mark.
Because this crisis is being led from the pacific, intelligence from that area is informative as to how long this nonsense will continue:
https://www.straitstimes.com/business/economy/malaysia-cuts-medical-tourism-targets-as-border-control-tightens
So that will be not until end 2021 or longer…….
OK I admit it reading the item in this newsletter about the false+ve rate made me feel like I was back in the undergrad stats course that I never understood.
In the example given above if, for the sake of discussion, the FPR was 2% then by the argument used the number of false+ve’s would be 200 which would be more than the number of actual +ve’s! and I am baffled.
I think this needs some expert in explaining stats to us thicko’s, as even the explanation in today’s newsletter did not make sense to me.
Any takers for this tricky challenge?
You’re quite right, the figures for false positive rates are hard to get a grip on. It is quite true that, when prevalence (true positives) is low, almost all positive results will come from false positives, and the false positive rate must be less than the observed positive rate.
That leads ONS to conclude that their tests have a false positive rate around 0.1%, which is plausible enough in itself but not consistent with other data suggesting a false positive rate around 2%. Of course, there are different tests and different ways of performing the same test. I’m trying to find out what’s going on here myself.
Richard, we (me and Mr TT) used and referred to the following in our submission to the vaccine consultation. Although it doesn’t answer the question definitively because there are so many testing regimes/machines being used, it implies the false positives could be as high as 5%:
https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/which-test-is-best-for-covid-19-2020081020734
Thanks for that. There is a GoS paper GOS: Impact of false positives and negatives, 3 June 2020 which says
A distinction that will be of major importance is assessing the reliability or even feasibility of a mass testing programme in which individual members of the public carry out their own tests. (The GoS paper of course does not address the issue of people having an incentive to actually cheat on their tests.)
They go on to say
and, more worryingly,
They proceed to carry out that analysis and conclude
Executive summary: operational test FPR is between 1-4%.
In another neck of the woods, SAGE estimate that after six months of weekly testing, 41% of the population will have received a false positive result. Since the 25th root of 1-0.41 is 0.9799, it seems very likely that this is based on 98% specificity, ie 2% test FPR.
In the current context, of course, even achieving a test FPR as low as 2% (which seems to me unlikely in practice) against a prevalence of 0.1% means an evidential value of 3% for a positive test result, that is, 97% of positive results are in fact negative. This is of course disastrously low, and in my view puts the whole mass testing programme into serious doubt.
I haven’t yet reconciled this with the ONS regime, though. Unlike some people posting here, I’ve worked with people from both GoS and ONS and have respect for their scientific ability and integrity.
There’s also a BMJ paper Interpreting a covid-19 test result which explains the evidential value in terms of a 2% FPR (and a surprising range of FNR, from 2% to 29%). However this is advice in a clinical context, where the population under test are much more likely to be positive than the population as a whole, and so the evidential value of a positive result is correspondingly high.
I think that chimes with the Harvard Medical School paper. All told, there needs to be a proper investigation by a genuinely independent and experienced team of statisticians and clinicians. At the moment we have policy outsourced by Boris (a classicist of dubious mental capacity at the moment) to Hancock (a first in PPE with an MSc in Economics who doesn’t appear to understand basic statistics or is being deliberately), with the assistance of Dido Harding (who has form in incompetence in the private sector).
I think that chimes with the Harvard Medical School paper. All told, there needs to be a proper investigation by a genuinely independent and experienced team of statisticians and clinicians. At the moment we have policy outsourced by Boris (a classicist of currently dubious mental capacity) to Hancock (a first in PPE with an MSc in Economics who doesn’t appear to understand basic statistics), with the assistance of Dido Harding (who has form in incompetence in the private sector).
That’s very interesting Richard, thanks. I cannot comment on the bodies you have worked with, although several people have commented as to the ability and integrity of ONS. My concerns are two-fold: skills and abilities of those carrying out and processing the Pillar 2 testing, particularly (the ‘rank and file’), and the motivations of those above them (‘the elites’). Suggest regulatory capture is as endemic as this disease!
Good post. Keep them coming!
Thanks! Happy to oblige. The ONS COVID-19 Infection Survey (Pilot): methods and further information states
This is expanded in a Medrxiv preprint (DOI 10.1101/2020.07.06.20147348).
This is far better specificity than other studies, so we have to presume that these tests are being done differently. But I’m not sufficiently expert on the testing process to say why or how.
If — and this is a big if — the “moonshot” test can achieve this degree of specificity, then the evidential level rises to around 50%: in other words, the positive test result would come down to about twice the true positive rate. This might be considered tolerable. But it would mean carrying out the sort of tests ONS is commissioning scaled up by a factor of a thousand.
I’m going to have to read that again and think about it!
I’ve previously been involved (as an engineer) in government defence science. I’d say the scientific ability and integrity was patchy – largely, in my view, the consequence of the need to secure next year’s finance.
I don’t know about the GoS and ONS, but from what I’ve seen (little I admit) of the ONS they do appear willing to say what the government doesn’t want to hear (or perhaps I’m being a bit naive).
I think i understand it . Yours is an unrealistic example but logically correct. But in that scenario the implication would be that all the “positive” tests must be false positives – and so nobody is infected, But with FPRs below 1% the figures do add up indicating that a high proportion of the “positives” are false and so that shows how ridiculous the whole testing regime and the governments dependence on it is
But seeing Richard;s comment below I hope he comes up with a better explanation than me
I think I see what you mean, Steve. Yes, if the FPR was 2% then false +ves in that example would be 200 but since we haven’t got that many overall +ves that tells us that 2% couldn’t be plausible as an FPR. We would be putting rubbish into our calculation and getting rubbish out.
.8 % does not give us nonsense in statistical terms, but it renders the current approach useless (as indeed does 0.1% without any mitigation).
Or could all the tests be false positive and the rise or fall in numbers be entirely related to the rise or fall in testing?
I think we can all be confident that false positives make up a significant proportion of the “spike in cases” because Hancock is blatantly lying about what a false positive actually is…
https://gov.wales/sites/default/files/publications/2020-07/core-principles-for-utilisation-of-rt-pcr-tests-for-detection-of-sars-cov-2.pdf
Don’t know if this paper helps? There is a table on here which shows how the numbers of false positives play out at different levels of prevalence of the virus. It is dated July.
Hi Steve,
Here’s how I see it.
Say 1 in 1,000 people have Covid. Say the PCR test picks up all of those with Covid (ie there are no false negatives), but en route, picks up 1% who don’t have it (ie there are 1% false positives). [BTW this would be a very accurate test.]
If you test 100,000 people, there will be 100 people with Covid, all picked up by the test.
The test will also show up as positive, 1% of the 99,900 healthy people (ie 999 people).
So of the 100,000 tested, 1,099 will show up as positive, but only 100 of them will actually have the virus. ie if you test positive, there’s only a 1 in 11 chance that you actually have it.
1. False positives aren’t an issue with a very virulent disease, so if 10,000 in every 100,000 actually had Covid, the above test would pick up all 10,000 who had it and another 900 (1% of the healthy) who were false positives – hitting the target with 10,000 out of 10,900 is good shooting.
2. You could easily pick up most of the false positives by retesting everyone who tests positive – the falsies would be unlucky to test +ve a second time. It shouldn’t be hard to devote resources to this on a sample basis.
3. At the moment I presume that 10 out of every 11 people who test +ve is self-isolating unnecessarily, reducing school rolls, increasing NHS absenteeism etc etc.
This also doesnt address the cycle threshold issue that is being discussed more and more now (thanks Carl) too. Cos if you add the false positives to the ‘not really positives but not false’ you get even more, and retesting them wont make any difference.
“You could easily pick up most of the false positives by retesting everyone who tests positive – the falsies would be unlucky to test +ve a second time. It shouldn’t be hard to devote resources to this on a sample basis.”
This. I believe it’s being done in the US now in many places, certainly some of their major sports where a false positive can place an entire sporting event in jeopardy, perhaps for no reason. I believe the approach now is to look at the positives, and retest via a different test from a different lab. A ‘confirmed positive’ could then be dealt with appropriately on an individual basis; though since they have introduced this method I have heard of no issues.
Just to say that we need to know what the cause of the false positive is. If, as I suspect, based on the GOS paper, the inocrrect results are largely operational (incorrectly handled samples and so on) then successive tests on samples taken by different trained operatives and sent to different labs should be independent. On the other hand, if the false positive tests are incorrectly responding to something about the subject which is not the virus but somehow triggering the positive result, then successive tests will presumably produce the same result. One example, of course, is residual genetic material from a long-passed infection. I don’t know of any research into this question, and it may be hard to get at since the results will tend to affect the commercial interests of test labs and equipment manufacturers, not to mention the scientific difficulty of obtaining ground truth.
Carl Heneghan said It is because they are multiplying the sequence up to 45 times so it cannot differentiate between a live and dormant virus trace.He suggested 25
The ability to define the virus, set the testing parameters, dictate the treatments and mutate the definitions, testing and treatments to maintain the desired result is a way of playing god.
‘Citizens assemblies’ are the last thing we need.
We have far too many politicians as it is.
In fact citizens assemblies already exist, local councils etc. but they do not fulfil their democratic functions effectively.
So not more politicians, but constitutional reform, more delegation of powers from the centre, is urgently required:
Federal Britain with an English Parliament
County councils empowered, each with a representative to sit in a reformed and reconstituted, renamed, house of lords.
That would be a start.
The house of commons is now overmighty and quite clearly needs a democratically mandated reviewing and amending supervisory chamber to prevent this abuse of power ever happening again.
just see what the climate change citizens assemblies are like. Only selected from those that applied that already had strong views on climate change.. so output from them just parrots the green party manifesto.
As independent as WHO
The Green Deals were well intentioned when conceived, but will be co-opted by markets that will “green wash” their stocks and use that as an excuse to receive loads of taxpayer money direct from government. Promotes large scale corruption and the embedding of inefficiencies. And I say this as someone who has voted green in local elections before ha.
And they suggested replacing nuclear with solar/wind. No understanding of baseload or the lack of pumped storage potential in the UK.
The problem with our system is that it evolved to keep the monarch in check.It worked well but the prime minister is now the monarch in parliament.They also control parliament.The House of Lords since losing the hereditary peers is full of placemen.
When we have a government with a large majority we end up with an elected dictatorship
“constitutional reform, more delegation of powers from the centre, is urgently required”
I agree. But can you see any way it might happen?
I’ve tried every approach I can think of over the last five years or so (including trying to start a constitutional reform party, Local Sovereignty) but I haven’t found much public interest in the idea. Unless the courts can be persuaded to order a constitutional overhaul, I don’t see any prospect of worthwhile reform happening this side of a societal collapse.
My local council’s policy is more draconian and stupid than the government’s!
Just to have a functioning HofC would be a good start for now.
I am emailing my mp every day at the moment. This is today’s instalment:-
“In the cost/benefit calculation that the government is using, how is the market rate of 1 covid death calculated?
And what is it currently? I’m guessing it must be something like 100 cancer deaths, 30 heart attacks, 20 strokes and 10 suicides? Is that about right?
How has it been determined that a covid death (average age 82) is worth more than say a 40 something dying of cancer leaving behind a couple of teenagers?
The numbers of much younger people than 82 unnecessarily dying of other causes will be vastly above normal rates over the next few years due to the ever increasing backlog of appointments and referrals. Prof Karol Sikora (emminent oncologist) stated in an interview recently, that half the number of patients are being seen compared to normal times.
Every day the queues are increasing and the wait times get longer and longer before a diagnosis can be confirmed. Every day is crucial. People are now waiting 4 months instead of 4 weeks, and some are terminal before they even have their diagnosis confirmed. In what universe is that OK?
My 77 year old mother is now suffering from anxiety – not from fear of the virus though. She couldn’t care less if she gets it. She would rather get it than live in this nightmare. She has anxiety attacks when she watches all the depressing news of more restrictions, lockdowns and peoples lives being trashed. And she worries about what sort of world will be left for her grandchildren. She was crying last night when she said that she will have to call the doctor for something to calm her.
So thank you Boris et al – you are slowly killing my mother with your psychological tyranny – not the virus. And many thousands of other older people who have been isolated from their families over the months since March. This must have been the plan all along though – it can’t have been to protect them. They don’t want you to protect them – they are perfectly capable of assessing their own risks. They have been doing it a lot longer than any of you, and didn’t get to the age they are by being infantilized and mollycoddled.
We don’t want the government to protect us – that is way beyond your remit.
We are not scared of the virus.
The thing that is truly terrifying – is this government.”
Bravo. So sorry for your Mum. I hope your letter gets the response it deserves.
Have we reverted back to the post Shipman death certification process or are the doctors still free to mark their own homework?
Yes and no, it’s worse than that. I was talking to a colleague who had tried to refer two patients beck to their GP. The GP said they weren’t certifying death in person, but if there was someone with the deceased who was happy and able to check for a pulse that would be sufficient!
Under normal circumstances any death that involves a notifiable disease should have a post mortem and a coroner’s inquest. The coronavirus legislation removed those requirements.
Yep. I believe also, that coroners were ‘strongly urged’ not to talk to the press at all…
I wonder why that would be …..
So Prime Minister, if we are six weeks behind Spain and France, how far are we behind Sweden?
About ten years
“Sweden took it seriously, they voluntarily locked down and antisocial distanced because of their different culture!”
You are right. Isn’t that argument just pathetic!
“Ah, but that’s because Swedes have magic pixie genes. They must have, because they have been affected differently. QED.”
And the best part was back in April/May the zealots were all “Everyone is dying in Sweden because more deaths per million than Denmark and Norway!”
As Geisecke said on his Unherd interview, this was mainly because they lost control of the huge Stockholm care homes. But now all of that “dangerous, reckless experiment” stuff never happened. The mental gymnastics are incredible.
Magic Trolls – you know the ones that live under the bridges and bludgeon coronavirus to death
You forgot that Sweden is sparsely populated as well
I’m not sure if I am being thick or missing something here, so please correct me! I can’t understand why everyone, even sceptics, seem to universally accept that hospitalisations are rising. But a growing number are accepting the sheer problems with false positives with the PCR tests. But has anyone questioned that those supposedly hospitalised are false positives?
As a for instance, my elderly relative went into A&E recently as she had a fall. She had a Covid test, and it came back negative. However, as I understand it from Lord Carl (!), if it was positive and she had a negative confirmatory test, it would still be classed as positive. Then would that be classed as someone being treated with Covid in hospital?
And then, how many people are being treated in hospital with heart attacks, who tested positive for Covid, but, could have been a victim of a false positive. And how many hospital deaths?
I just feel like this is just the start of the unravelling here….
Hence why Handy Cock is lying about what a false positive is…..
I don’t think that sceptics do universally accept that the reported rise in hospitalisations is accurate in any meaningful sense. I certainly don’t.
nor me
They seem to be peddling the rise in ‘hospital admissions’ rather than the number of people actually in hospital. Quite a lot of those admissions may well be discharged pretty quickly. To say as Hancock did ‘rate of admissions doubling every 8 days for the last few weeks’ is pretty meaningless. Where did this unit of 8 days come from, if only to make sure each period included more weekend days when numbers are low due to reporting delays. Yes, there has been an increase of patients in hospital but the increase is far less dramatic. They always pick the worse case figures to make their alarmist statements.
From Thursday to Friday the total number of stated Covid 19 cases in English hospitals rose by about 3.5% but still less than 1000 total who knows where it will go next? but so far a slight ripple, no wave in sight.
Hitchens was warning about this.They are desperate to pump the numbers up
The criterion for counting a Covid hospital admission is a positive test within the last 14 days. Elective admissions will be tested prior to admission but emergencies not. I looked at the HES statistics yesterday to find the proportion of emergency to elective, it was about 2/3 in March, the latest in this data set. Since then electives would have nearly gone to zero during the lockdown and presumably are coming back to normal. It could be that emergency now dominates.
So it could be that the rise in Covid admissions is at least in part an effect of the false positives issue manifesting in emergency admissions.
More people are admitted to hospital in autumn/winter even in normal times, when covid didn’t exist. Therefore if they are all tested, more positive admissions would be found. What is the percentage of positive admissions to hospital, rather than the absolute numbers? And most important of all, what is the reason for the admission? Covid symptoms, or something unrelated? The only meaningful measure is the number of people admitted needing treatment for covid symptoms, rather than being admitted for a broken leg or appendicitis, and just happening to test positive with no symptoms.
Morning all, excellent piece on FP’s today.
Although the simple Maths is too abstract for most in this country.
We need to find a way of presenting this problem in a way that people understand.
Anyway, should be recording with the lads tomorrow. If you haven’t listened to our latest Podcast episode all about the Northern lockdowns, then please find it in the link below.
https://therealnormalpodcast.buzzsprout.com/
Good dismissal of ‘TheScience pro Masks’ and a pragmatic proposal on what should be done instead:
N95 for the endangered only, surgical for the symptomatic only (if they must leave home). http://ronpaulinstitute.org/archives/featured-articles/2020/september/18/unmasked/
Well done Oxford Brookes students! The closest university to where I live.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/news/film-night-or-fat-sesh-unrepentant-students-choose-to-party-on-jh6d95zg2
Although if this gets turned into an excuse to lock my area down I … well, I won’t blame them.
Just the Scottish government warning us that we’re walking death dealing blobs.
https://twitter.com/scotgov/status/1307004460707844098?s=20
Holy eff! Followed this link above and saw the little clip. I cannot over sell how outrageous that scot gov advert is.
The actors the designers the camera folk all but have saw dust for brains. It has been carefully worked through public health comittees to achieve utter rubbish.
Please look at the above link and witness gov covid fear done on the cheap. No sparkl8ng moon beams of viral speech circulating for Scottish government. Left over makeup from the 80s BBC scifi unit is the best they can do.
Absolutely disgusting. At least I couldnt see a single supportive comments in the tweets replying to them. Vile vile propaganda
But did you notice that the gangrenous gunk was on the wrong side of the girl’s face?
This is the perfect opportunity for krankie to set about UK Government over Matt Hancocks H-B false positive scandal.
All krankie needs to do is point this fatal statistical flaw out, she ascends to a place among the gods and boris and hancock left to wimper among the destitute for ever more.
Sadly krankie won’t say a thing because she is at it just like handcock. Funny how the same incompetent mistake is being made by ‘leaders’. I notice devi has both of their pulbilc health backs, but there is a whole plethoral of scienticficals who also have responsibility for Hackock’s inderstanding.
Will moonfaced Clark of reading university kindly point out hancocks error? I bet my house and pet hamster in mask he won’t. Will the great chris witty pop his head in to hancock and begin with here guv you ain’t getting it, it’s not as bad as you think it is? I bet both my houses and my family of hamsters in masks he won’t.
Why won’t WHO or PHE, or the NHS or ONS inform hsncock of his error? Because, and here I am going to get conspiratorial, they are all in it together.
I will be chirpy as fuck if anyone of the above schools hancock. That he won’t be corrected is a sign that meangingful science is dead and there is a collabouration to keep the narrative we see rolling us to vaccine and associated id paperwork checks.
In other words Occam’s Razor me this – how is it Hsncock won’t correct himself, no government scientists will correct him and political opponents won’t seize the moment ot stick a seriously sized boot into Hancock?
…and globally it is pretty much generally the same picture.
Everybody has been read the Riot Act and told what the real reason is.
It must be somthing of extraordinary overriding importance.
In my opinion the end of this international financial system is expected within the next twelve months. Negative nominal interest rates and the mysterious goings on in the US repo market one year ago, point to this.
Global trade would come to a standstill within days of this happening. We saw a hint of that in Autumn 2008, with the declining acceptance of Letters of Credit.
Governments, in order to prepare, have to create the infastructure necessary, not only to maintain the deiivery of critical goods, such as food, medicine and fuel, but also the maintenance of public order. The pandemic buys them time for that.
Governments can obviously not come out and say something like ‘the financial system will collapse soon – we have to get ready for it’. That would precipitate the very event they wish to plan for.
In my opinion, we should be ready to accept that governments are, in this way, acting in the public interest, as they understand it.
Would be interested in feedback. Does my argument make sense in light of all that we know?
Its not the international financial system that brings our prosperity. Our prosperity is the result of our liberty. Remove the liberty and you remove the prosperity. Allow the international financial system to collapse and go bankrupt and the assets have an opportunity to move from weaker to stronger/smarter hands, we can create new decentralised currencies if necessary with modern technology, etc – as long as people have their liberty we can bounce back from a collapsed financial system. At the end of the day it is just its own collective insanity. Take away peoples liberty and there is no bouncing back. The government is not trying to save us.
Agree on liberty – absolutely.
But we can only start from where we are. Where we are is statism.
The financial system is past its sell-by date.
It must change and will.
However, the transition period has to be negotiated.
All of our lives depend on a finely-tuned, just in time,international trade system.
This system works because of convertible currencies and a banking system
Take those away suddenly – and ………..
I agree the financial system must change and will. In my opinion though government involvement is the problem not the solution. Government can be and is now entirely captured by vested interests.
If the government permitted vested interests and big bushiness to go bankrupt, did not shut down competition in the currency markets like cryptocurrencies and rolled back intellectual property law particularly patent law so that humanity can again freely build upon and benefit from our body of knowledge – in summery did not allow laws to be written by and for the vested interests that have corrupted that government then I think we would be fairly robust to this change. Yes it would be big rapid change for many people and many will loose out. On the path we are on though all we have to look forward too is decade after decade of increasing grinding poverty and famine for the vast majority.
I think China has disproved the correlation between liberty and prosperity.The dislocation in the financial system has been caused by the rise of China and the collapse of America and the West.To maintain our standard of living we have funded this by credit not hard work.This was the cause of the 2008 credit crunch which was never rectified.Basically China sold us goods and instead of spending the money in China they lent it back to the west so they could buy more Chinese goods.
Because they know they can’t.
One indication of this is the freedom with which. money is being spent. The UK government has no qualms about spending as many pounds as necessary now, because it knows the system is dying – that in the very near future those pounds won’t be worth anything anyway.
They know that they will never need to pay any of it back.
Can I ask about my posed question – what is the Occam’s razor for this false positive error not being corrected?
It is not in the best interests of the public to let such an error stand.
I don’t believe that in the current circumstances the best interests of the public get a look-in. Political survival and individual hubris will be winning the day.
Right. So are you okay with me suggesting that there is more to this situation than scientific findings, methods and reasonably accepted truths? If so, then it appears to me discussion does need to encompass some of the motivations behind the hubris/criminal/illegal/undemocractic behaviours we are witnessing daily.
Sadly it appears to me the Hancock False Positive Error is a seminal moment in this fiasco. Every one of his opponents and advisors ought to be correcting his error. They cannot because it exposes each and everyone of them. This is at best a moral conspiracy to hide reasonably acceoted truth.
Not directed at you Charlie – my poor writing skills make it easier for me to write with ‘you’. It is angering what we are seeing is errors are used to deliberately hide truth behind.
Understand it’s not directed at me, Basics. But I’m definitely okay with that! Throughout my working life I have seen countless examples of egos getting in the way of progress and sane decision-making in both the private and public sector. I have also seen how hard it is to challenge those who are willing to lie brazenly and repeatedly while in a position of power. My perception is that this is just happening on a grand scale.
I agree, we have all experienced deperados in life willing to treat others with cintempt for thier own greed mainly.
More than one person lying in unison is a conspiracy. My opinion is that if this clear error is not corrected or attacked (advisors or opposition) then that is evidence of something. Joyrnalists ought resonably to be acting as LS Toby/Will has above and challenge. Again, if that isn’t happening it is evidence of cahoots.
Cheers Charlie, I understand you. I’m off for a look at the world.
I agree, we have all experienced deperados in life willing to treat others with cintempt for thier own greed mainly.
More than one person lying in unison is a conspiracy. My opinion is that if this clear error is not corrected or attacked (advisors or opposition) then that is evidence of something. Joyrnalists ought resonably to be acting as LS Toby/Will has above and challenge. Again, if that isn’t happening it is evidence of cahoots.
Cheers Charlie, I understand you. I’m off for a look at the world..
It’s exactly the same as the other day when she announced there were only 48 people in hospital not 262 and no other politician said anything. Both her then and Hancock should be getting ripped apart. Can you imagine if Trump made a similar mistake to one of these?
I half agree – exception is nippy makes a very angular point of going after Westminster at every opportunity. Or very does she? It looks like the wee witch is pulling her punches.
The imolication of which is massive.
My half agreement is about the motivation nippy supposedly has to pull apart hancock. On the other hand hancock etc don’t have a real pattern of going for krankie jugular.
There is no opposition in Scotland.
The fear is as palpable as the complicity.
The fear that controls relative insiders are fears that are nothing to do with viruses.
However, I see the operation as a live drill, after a long preparation of practices. So those in the loop share a ‘common purpose’.
Agree completely.
Shame they haven’t spent it on something truly useful/helpful then.
I can see some sense.The way the government is spending money you can tell they have no intention of ever paying it back.Maybe a new form of financial system is coming.The track and trace surveillance grid is being created to control any opposition.All theories mind you
“In my opinion the end of this international financial system is expected within the next twelve months.”
You might well be onto something, it wouldn’t altogether surprise me. Some authors – Jim Rickards springs to mind, there’s a few others – have been ahead of the curve for some time on this subject and totally seen it coming, he’s got a few books around and varied online presence. I find him interesting and worth checking out. Also BoE Governor Carney has made more than one cryptic statement, about serious moves to a digital currency, inc. as a complete replacement for the US $ as world reserve currency.
Certainly a lot hinges on the US election.. you can see where this could easily end up. If they get to install Biden then it’s off to the races, they can do what they want with zero resistance. They’re clearly preparing for a Trump win, hence Biden’s pretty threadbare list of actual policies that seem designed to turn voters away – unless working class Americans specifically want to fund billions in healthcare & legal assistance for millions more illegals when Biden reduces border security – some might like that, IDK….if Trump is allowed to be inaugurated for a second term, it will be after a prolonged fight, probably another impeachment attempt for who the hell knows what, Russian meddling, the fact that Ivanka Trump’s 3 year old son may or may not have had assistance to build a lego model…. though Trump in the White House would certainly be useful cover for a “look what he did, crashed the global financial system…”
That said, a resounding Trump victory would do more than throw a spanner in the works. He may well be a egomaniac at times, but I think he knows very well what folks are up to.
I completely agree. This is the only argument that makes rational sense and accounts for the silence and compliance of all our governments and elected representatives.
I sent an email to the wee dictator the week she introduced face masks in shops. It was full of links to data showing how non threatening to majority this is and also a link to Norwegian PM apologising for overreaction. I suggested she should do the same and as everything she says and does is pro independence this would humiliate Boris & Hancock.
I never got a reply.
It was four months after I wrote I was replied to, by functionary not her. I addressed CMO Leitch also. At this point every communication will beed to be trip hazard checked since they are in such a tight corner of lies.
A little snippet from the care homes; our 94 year old neighbour has lived in a care home for about two years now, her 90 year old sister still lives just down the road from us, she is in regular telephone only contact with her sister who informed her recently that she had taken a pair of scissors to her own hair because no hairdressers had been allowed in since March. Imagine being 94, cut of from your sister who you have seen virtually every day for decades and having to cut your own hair, it is horrifying.
Does anyone have the full text of this?
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/09/18/covid-getting-less-dangerous-has-no-10-noticed/?li_source=LI&li_medium=liftigniter-rhr&ICID=cus1579-adobe-vs-liftigniter-rec_politics_control-liftigniter
interesting edition of Any Questions last night.
Usual political arguments about testing process and its flaws. Waste of time.
Usual politicians being so off the mark it is ridiculous.
One panel member – Timandra Harkness – who had some scepticism
One killer question . “what does the panel understand to be the objective of the government’s covid strategy? The only clear objective I’ve heard was the slogan “to save lives and protect the NHS”. But that was 6 months ago? IS that still it?. It seems that the NHS was protected and many died at home of none covid conditions. What’s next? ”
This is worth a listen just to hear the politicians struggle with this. It is a question that we should all ask out MPs “
What time in the programme was that question?
Just listening while doing housework. Question at 16:30 mins
also interesting questions at end.. A girl who had finished her gas fitter apprenticeship but couldnt take the final test because of lockdown. So not qualified.. So cannot work. Cannot get a job. Current employer cannot keep paying her. One of the panellist is minister for apprentices . What a shambles of an answer .
Totally out of touch with reality.
We were two weeks behind Italy in the original scare. Italy’s ok now, so we are apparently two weeks behind France or Spain and must model the response of Belgium. We will be following another one with the worst ‘optics’ next week. We can’t be the same as them all as they’re different. They’re not even trying to be sane any more, are they?
No I think they have realised what they say doesn’t matter anymore. As long as the BBC continues to broadcast to maintain the hypnosis they can say and do anything.
We’re only guaranteed to follow the ‘worst’ ones, any country not experiencing a ‘second wave’ is to be ignored and dismissed as irrelevant.
I mentioned yesterday that our local urgent care centre had been chosen for one of Boris’s Lighthouse CV laboratories. I hadn’t realised until I checked that in fact the urgent care centre had been ‘temporarily’ closed back in April although the other clinics there are still operating on a booked appointment basis. I suspect now that we will never see this urgent care centre ever again – a very useful facility as our nearest A&E’s are all very inaccessible by public transport and not that much better by road.
This site has been excellent at highlighting the conflicting science behind Covid and any lockdown, in particular referencing articles that promote discussion and I have pointed people toward the site as a result
I’m concerned the site will turn into a ‘conspiracy theory’ site, the way out of this mess is science and evidence and we should (in my opinion) not insult or ridicule those who, at the moment, are just following the rules
We should always point to poor science, less bedwetters and more #freethepapaya please
Can you explain why Hancocks error is not being corrected by him, his advisors or political opponents?
What political opponents,
I just want my life back. Life is short. Six months of not being able to live it the way I would like is a significant percentage of the time I probably have left. Another six months is even worse.
Am seriously not understanding any of this.
Example.
You get tested because you have symptoms. You test negative. But you probably have a cold or flu. So do you now self isolate or go off and merrily spread other viruses around. You should stay at home anyway. So why get tested? Same decision. If the symptoms get so bad that you are ill then you need a doctor. Applies to any illness, not just Covid.
If you have no symptoms then you do not know to get tested though. Even if you have an infection. Needing to be tested is entirely based on this idea of asymptomatic spread. But dealing with that would require instantaneous testing on tap with instant results. Wow.
I guess the Moonshot thing is an attempt to solve these problems. But it will not work either.
The testing mania sounds like a total nonsense. The whole thing sounds like nonsense too. This is the moment for adults to step back and actually think about what they are doing and address the trade offs. Alas, I see little chance of the government doing so.
This has now moved beyond the rational sphere of thinking. We are I a different place.
A group of highly intelligent people have convinced themselves that they are right and are unable to conceive of any possibility that they are reacting to this in a way that is wrong and actually counter productive. So they just carry on in a perpetual cycle. They are in so deep that they cannot stop. In their own minds they are highly virtuous. But all dictatorships convince themselves they are virtuous.
This is now becoming a bit like the group think and inability to change direction that accompanies war. Any rational group of people would have ended the First World War within the first couple of months when it reached stalemate. But it dragged on for four years. The war aims of both sides then grew as the sunk cost rose – so as to justify the previous loss of life. The ability of highly intelligent humans to keep doing the wrong thing and to be self-delusional is very high. I am fearful that this madness will ever end.
There is a great interchange in the film: “12 Angry Men”. This is where Henry Fonda convinces a biased jury to acquit a boy who is clearly innocent. There is a moment where a convert of his tries to convince another juror rationally. Fonda replies that the other man cannot hear you, he never will. Rational argument is not working here, either. In the end, Fonda only wins by getting each juror to confront the biases driving their decisions. We are in that world today. Images of overflowing hospitals in Italy and coffins in New York are still the true driver of behaviour here. Not data and science.
Sounds like the emotional dog and its rational tail.
Right.
Zero rationality in this.
If this were data driven then we would be seeing studies such as:
Are police officers or supermarket workers systematically more likely to test positive than other population groups? It would be an easy study to do if one has the data. They have been at work since the start. Very little evidence of mask wearing. Little evidence of social distancing. You often see two or more cops in a car.
Only government has access to the data for that though. If these studies have been carried out then they are not being released. My guess is that they have been done but the results do not fit. So the government convinces itself these results are flawed.
If these workers were systematically getting ill and infected then I am sure that the Police Federation would also have been highlighting that fact long ago anyway.
The “rationality” associated with what the government is doing is a bounded one: within a narrative that they are convinced is true. That is a very hard thing to fix.
I think you’ve hit the nail on the head. Emotional reasoning without rational explanation.
http://www.rudygarns.com › exePDF
The Emotional Dog and ts Rational Tail: A Social Intuitionist … – Rudy Garns
Indeed, I think some are too hopeful that data and science will win. The relentlessly pushed narrative has gripped the majority from the start and now the fear machines are being cranked up again.
Yes. And most people just go with the flow. For as long as they are being paid by the magic money tree.
Got to end sometime.
12 angry men is a masterpiece.
ABSOLUTELY!!!
It is indeed. Carl Heneghan is following Henry Fonda’s strategy – picking away at one piece of ‘evidence’ at a time. I think he pulled Greg Clark over at the Science & Tech committee on Thursday. He has had another go at the death figures for July and August, which suggests September’s ‘rise’ will likely need to be reviewed. He just needs to completely demolish the PCR machine false positive narrative – he has started with his article on amplifications a couple of weeks ago.
Anyone have any information on The Mirror Project? Conspiracy Theorist site or a legitimate and helpful platform? I’m not sure – was hoping others might have more information. Worth a look, if only to dismiss the reasoning: https://www.mp-22.com/
Can we PIN this article.
“Could” being the reason behind latest panic.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8747395/Englands-coronavirus-outbreak-DOUBLED-week-official-estimates-show.html
Let’s review this in future weeks Matt to see what the reality is.
All for hancock being exposed to truth. Strap him down with Clockwork Orange Eye openeing wires and cinema screen on loop if needs be.
Is Cl9ckwork Orange still illegal to see? If it is I haven’t seen it.
It’s been on a few times on Sky
Think so.
Interesting reading https://docs4opendebate.be/en/open-letter/
Thank you for this, a must read and basically gives you all the rational, logic and information needed to counter any argument on the response to this virus, including mask wearing.
Would be great to see some of our medical profession doing the same – when their role is to promote health and ‘do no harm’, I am grossly disappointed at their silence. Accuse me of being harsh, but I am afraid the excuse of staff being silenced by the NHS hierarchy is no longer a refuge for inaction, people are dying and suffering dreadfully because of limited access to healthcare and these draconian measures, and the inaction needs to called out as does any manipulation of hospital admissions and data on deaths etc. The situation is now at the stage that it cannot continue to be ignored. I am not advocating something I wouldn’t be willing to do myself, as I and other senior nurses did back in the 90s over concerns of patient care, albeit not in this country.
Signed by 380 medical doctors
Signed by 1300 medically trained health professionals
Signed by 8406 citizens
Surely someone has to take notice?
You can also sign the letter.
Worth sending to feature in the daily newsletter?
Genuine question: how did the Spanish flu end? Herd immunity,vaccine or what?
No flu vaccine in 1918, in fact few vaccines at all. It seemed to follow the classic curve. Ivor Cummins has a video on this. There appears to be three waves, but there’s a suggestion that it was three separate events.
Asian flu pandemic in the late 1950’s and the Hong Kong flu pandemic of the late 60’s also followed the same curve.
and no vaccines in 50s and 60s either ,,, and no fuss , no lockdown… stiff upper lip and all that .
Today a stiff upper lip would be added to the list of covid symptoms
There was a Polio vaccine in the 50’s given in 3 doses; I remember because I only had 2 of them which still bothers me 60 plus years later.
Yesteryear’s generation = stiff upper lip
Today’s generation = trembling bottom lip
To be honest, I think it affects all ages; my wife and myself are almost 72 and we try to live a normal life as possible under these draconian rules but my younger brother and his wife ( a mere 68) have more or less locked their selves away.
Meanwhile our 18 year old granddaughter was out to 3:30 am enjoying herself with her friends last weekend after finishing her shift as a waitress at a local pub.
I agree really was just a joke comment, most of the youngsters I know and we have 6 boys between us behave far more rationally than people i know of in their 40s and 50s
Thanks for your reply, I totally agree with your comment.
Stay sceptical.
Thank you for that, I remember the Asian and Hongkong flu’s, my brother had the Asian flu as did my future mother in law (95 last April) but I well remember that the country didn’t go into a blind panic.
Good question. Same question all of the bubonic plagues in history please.
I think that whatever people do “like it or not,” these plagues just”burn themselves out”
Herd immunity is a myth, it is not backed up by any medical evidence.
It is an invention of the pharma industry to peddle more unnecessary vaccines, in collaboration with computer modelers, called epidimiologists.
Without the herd immunity concept being established and accepted (scientifically unquestioned and unproven), there would be no case at all to vaccinate people not threatened by a particular pathogen and disease, e.g. healthy people under 70 against SARS Cov2/Covid19, against it!
See Prof. Gatti and Montanari for more on that.
https://childrenshealthdefense.org/news/herd-immunity-a-false-rationale-for-vaccine-mandates/
Kennedy and CHD also question the herd immunity concept and rationale.
Genuine question again: So how do these pandemics disappear or do they?
Well you know the answer! Population immunity is the only way out with any respiratory pathogen. Vaccines help a bit but influenza vaccines are given to at-risk groups at this time every year and 30,000 mostly elderly people still die of flu. The problem is that if you”re in an at-risk group you are almost by definition immune-compromised so the vaccine won’t produce much of an immune response. It will be the same if there is ever a SARS-CoV-2 vaccine.
In the last 48 hours or so, we have moved through the following stages:
– A second national lockdown would be a disaster.
– We can’t rule out a second national lockdown but we will do everything in our power to prevent it.
– Whitty supports 2-week national lockdown.
– Actually no, we deny that, he doesn’t. Maybe some “national restrictions” will be needed though.
– Two-week national lockdown planned for October! Short period of circuit breaker restrictions!
– A “few weeks” of national restrictions now being considered.
– National lockdown imminent. On-off lockdown required throughout the entire winter.
Tomorrow – lockdown begins, to last until May next year?
It’s how they’ve governed throughout. Whichever side of the lockdown fence people sit on we can all agree the government has been a fucking shambles throughout. Governing by anonymous briefings to journos and constant flip flopping
It has the appearance of a shambles.Lockdown is pencilled in for the end of month.Everything else is smoke and mirrors to disorientate the public
It lasts as long as we put up with it
Not Lockdown-related, but that “Woke Gobbledygook” entry from Columbia University reads like a confession extracted during a show trial and read out loud prior to being shot in the head at the Lubyanka.
Now i know why the sheep are so accepting.. Just watching last night’s Googlebox. 3 minutes in ,, 2 young girls. watching the Dennis Neilsen drama ( N.B. Watch it ,,, it is best drama in months!) ..
I know the youth today are snowflakes but i cannot believe they are also this stupid.
It is brilliant
The Nielsen drama that is
Also on Gogglebox . at 11 minutes, they are shown a bit of covid related news.. Interesting reactions .. A lot of scepticism .
My better half enjoys it but I had to retreat when that hideous, selfish Bristolian woman started “blaming the youngsters”. Fucking bitch.
Right – I’ve digested the so-called news of the day, and the result is in. The U.K. is indeed now following Italy and France. At the first sign of possible threat, we are running away and hiding in preparation for surrender. Boris has spoken to Herr Ferguson, and he has promised penury in our time. We might need to change our leader. Soon, very soon.
Excellent selection today. The point about groupthink by David Seedhouse explains a lot.
This is what I find most peculiar. When the orthodox view is questioned, people like Hancock, Ashworth and others don’t engage with the argument and demonstrate they understand it, while disagreeing. They just find a way to avoid it. You would think, intellectually, they would have considered it and resolved it in their own mind. But they have not. They are not difficult arguments to understand.
And then it shades into coercion, similar to the no-platforming. They are starting to accuse people who disagree of causing harm by incitement. That is deeply troubling, when a society feels it can’t even ask questions.
Ashworth used to be my MP. He is not very bright. During a local visit he was caught in a torrential downpour and my kindly neighbour invited him in until it passed. Unfortunately for him she was a retired headmistress who soon saw through his incompetence and lack of intelligence and took him to task in no uncertain terms. How the denizens of Leicester continue to elect this hopeless man is beyond belief.
That’s a very good point. You would think they would try to explain why they think the counter arguments are not valid if that were the case. It would be bad enough if they simply ignored legitimate challenges but now these are being censored.
Of course, Boris and Matt might just be acting sensibly and logically if their aim is not what we think it should be. If they are trying to prolong the fear and inconvenience so as stoke demand for a vaccine then their actions make perfect sense. Whitty, Valance, Ferguson etc are all linked to GAVI, Gates Foundation and the vaccine manufactuers. There is a video called The Jab which highlights the corruption in the WHO and how it has lowered the threshold for deciding if there is a pandemic. Vaccine manufacturers promoted this change and most western countries signed dormant or contingent contracts to purchase vaccines. Boris has now ordered over £1B worth of vaccines. Is he now trying to justify this expenditure?
Yep. The sunk cost fallacy is an incredibly powerful phenomenon in all sorts of situations. When you’ve spent a billion it’s got to be irresistible.
Didn’t we do that all before 2010. This is from an article from 2010
“But it criticised the restrictive contracts with drug companies which have left a stockpile of over 20 million unused doses of swine flu vaccines for England alone.
The review revealed that Britain spent £654 million preparing for a possible flu pandemic, and £587 million responding to last year’s H1N1 outbreak – a total of £1.24 billion.
This included £1.01 billion on drugs, among them anti-virals, vaccines and antibiotics, as well as £115.4 million on items like face masks and respirators.”
Handing out billions to vested interests is just another day in the office for our politicians.
Baby ant to father ant: ‘Daddy, why don’t we get covid?’
Father ant to baby ant: ‘Because we have anty bodies!’
Ruth Bader died with or of covid19?
Fairly certain it was cancer but they will doubtless put it down to “probable” covid…
pancreatic cancer at 87
I don’t mind what she died of, as long as she is dead. She had an appalling reputation in certain circles in the USA.
Most Or All Of The Positives Are False
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wionHLUG2uM
Care home whistleblowers talk of Covid cover-up
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OklVMPAuLmw
*************************************
Apparently Boris says the “Rule of Six” isn’t working. Next he’ll say the 2 week “circuit break” isn’t working.
The first lockdown was only for three weeks.
Our disgraceful MPs are doing nothing to stop this tyrant.
Strikes me that this FPR is key to it all. If it’s really the case that the FPR applies to the sample as a whole and it is approximately the same as the prevalence of the virus, then in turn, such a huge number of the positives are false that it blows the whole testing farce out of the water. That then becomes the most important weapon in the sceptics armoury.
This also presents me with an opportunity – Mrs Leggy is a semi-sceptic but also a retired geneticist who spent a great of her time in work performing PCR tests, albeit in the plant sciences. I’m tasking her with investigating the tests as she should be able to get to the bottom of it all far better than I. If I can have her conclude that the FPR doesn’t just apply to the positive results, but the total sample, then I’m confident so join me as a fully fledged sceptic.
With that in mind, can anyone link me to any papers or research on the topic please?
You don’t need any expertise in PCR. It’s basic probability theory which I learnt for O level maths many years ago. If the probability of a FP is 0.8% it applies to every test individually. If the probability of being infected was say 50% then the tests would be valuable because the chance of it being a real positive is 50/0.8 ie 62.5 x greater. As the ONS says the infection rate is nearer 0.1% the opposite is true. Basic maths which seems to be beyond Hancock.
Thank you – I get that, I just need to show her studies that prove:
If I can get her to verify that, she’s fully onside. She still believes that it applies to the positive results only (like Hand Cock it seems).
I think 0.8% is optimistic. I think I saw a table of the different types of tests and the sensitivity and FP rate on Alistair Haimes twitter. Eg RT LAMP has fp rate of 3%. And of course running 45 cycles will amplify such tiny bits of RNA even though they are clinically irrelevant.
That shows how great Cambridge education is. Not.
Clearly Hancock didn’t get past age 16 for Maths education. I would expect most MP’s are the same.
I once spoke to a Cambridge theology graduate who argued that Islam was older than Christianity
See my piece in lockdownsceptics on Thursday. There were 2 papers from NHS England statisticians about false positive rates which they estimated to be between 0.8 and 4%, median 2.3. In the second paper they appeared to be working on a figure of 2% and said that at a prevalence of 0.1% (about where we are today), if you do 10,000 tests you will get 209 positives of which 9 will be true positives (people who actually have the virus) and 200 false positives. Hancock’s operation moonshot if it ever manages to take off would from it’s 10,000,000 tests a day yield 20,000 false positives each and every day. Carnage!
Oh, it’s a lot worse than that. Since current prevalence is about 0.1%, almost all of those 10million are truly negative, and so 2% FPR means 2% of 10million which is 200,000. There will also be at most 10,000 true positives: in other words, at least 95% of positive results are incorrect. It’s this figure which is of concern. Not only will an intolerable number of people be unnecessarily confined, but it will shortly become obvious that almost all of the positive results were false when almost none of them develop symptoms. After a short period the test programme will lose any credibility it ever had. Why on earth would anyone take it seriously after that?
sorry, missed off a nought. Mere rounding error reminiscent of Halfcock’s maths!
I made a very basic calculator, not sure whether it helps get the idea across but it was helpful for my understanding https://coronacalculator.azurewebsites.net
matt.hancock.mp, boris.johnson.mp, John, John, NICE
Dear Mr Hancock
From an NHS website, it seems you bought the above tablets, which have now been trialled in many countries and found to be efficacious if used at first sign of Covid. When will you hand over the tablets to the GPs in this country, so that they are prepared for a second wave of Covid infections?
I would rather take a treatment for Covid which has been tested, than have to wait for a vaccination which will be produced too quickly to be safe. Prevention is better than cure, and this drug can also be used to prevent catching covid. Surely you can come out of the vaccine contract as it has been shown to be dangerous in the current trial.
The big pharmaceutical companies will be able to produce something that may be useful in the future, but whether it will be for Covid is doubtful.
If you persist in ignoring the results of trials around the world which are shown to be trustworthy, on a drug which has been around for a long time, you are sentencing people to death for the sake of what? Tell the public the truth, supply the GPs and doctors with this drug at the correct dosage with zinc , and you will, even at this late stage, be hailed a hero.
Please think carefully before you go along with another lockdown, which will not help anyone, as the treatment for the virus in the UK is this medicine. Covid will still be there this winter along with flu and we need to have the treatment ready.
Please discuss this with all the scientists who have spoken out, including SAGE, so that you get the full picture before it is too late.
I have a neighbour who works in the pharmacy of a regional hospital who has said they have huge stocks of HCQ that they aren’t using and which are now close to expiry.
This just in from our resident skateboarder – shock/horror, there were seven of them skating in a nearby village yesterday, prompting this hysteric rant from a local pub. Anyone else amazed by the irony of a busy pub freaking out on social media about 7 teenagers being in the outdoors exercising?! They don’t have any tandem skateboards.
I want to reply really, so if anyone has any suggestions for a balanced and sensible retort, please do let me know!
The children are not stupid.They can sit in a classroom with 30.
The adults on the other hand.
This is spi-b at work.Stupid illogical rules which pit the population against each other rather than directing their anger at the government where it is deserved
Not helpful by way of reply to op. But I agree, perfect spiB 101 social shaming. Manipulate thoughts with the end consequence that skater is spoken to by parent.
Well, as one of the parents I have encouraged the skaters to continue their activities.
If it had been “rule of seven” instead of “rule of six”, would these same people be lobbying the government to reduce it to six?
but they are 2 meters apart Sandra.
David Seedhouses book is £6.99 for the e version, £45 for hardcover. Will there be a paperback version?
The problem is that nothing seems to make sense.
Everything should be discussed.
All stupid ideas should be countered with logical argument.
This is not happening.
Only joined this site yesterday and not too impressed so far…
There does seem to be a lot of re-arranging of deck chairs going on.. it’s almost as though everyone has given up…. such a shame.
You’ll get that anywhere….giving up, that is. I think we are reaching the point where the faint-hearted will, yes, declare that there is nothing more to do be done, other than accept our fate. This is not the way to win battles. We need to dig deep into the soul for more courage and more strength. Many of us have little to no influence in upper level social circles , but we CAN make a difference by doing just a little bit. For example I sent in my rsponse yesterday to the government vaccine consultation. I realise many will view it as a waste of time. But doing NOTHING is not an option.
Curved balls are occasionally thrown by God. I think he has quite a few more up his sleeve and he will use them as long as the people keep fighting and showing courage.
I disagree. There is a lot of despair but there are many who discuss everything, counter stupid ideas and are doing all they can to combat this in their own way. Writing to MPs, attending rallies, setting up podcasts, distributing leaflets, ripping down signs, educating people, sharing information etc. etc.
Yes.
Welcome! Please jump in with logical arguments and discussion points to your heart’s content. New blood is always a good thing.
Sent a message of support to MP Philip Davies last night about his interview in his local paper to let him know more of us felt this way than he would think from the MSM.
Also sent him my FOI answers and letters that have gone unacknowledged or answered.
Surprise surprise when I woke up this morning he and sent a reply saying that you.
More than my bloody MP has.
Station Approach convenience store has reopened in time for the students’ return
Good sign
“staff vacancies, apply within”
Bad sign
“Card Payment Only”
In the Mail:
“Another 4,322 people have been diagnosed with Covid-19, the Government announced today in the highest one-day rise since May 8”
Diagnosed with Covid-19?? This sort of interpretation is a massive part of the problem. Covid-19 is the disease caused by Sars-CoV-2. Those 4,322 ;people have tested positive (whether truly positive, or false) for some part of the Sars-CoV-2 genome. Most probably don’t even have symptoms. It’s enraging!
It’s fucking test results and dodgy ones at that. It was bad enough when they went from “cases” to “infections” but now its “diagnoses”, MSM propaganda is just getting worse and worse.
As all of us Sceptics now know for certain:
The Government IS the virus.
The media IS the spreader.
And the only ‘Super spreaders’ in this whole sorry mess are the BBC and the ‘Guardian’.
Ignore and resist. Normality is what we make it not what those in power deem it to be.
That’s why people must go to Trafalgar Square today and on the 26th of September.
I am going today.
I am trying to put myself in the shoes of someone who supports lockdown.
“Loads of people died suddenly in March, so we were all sent home. I’m working from home now and, I must admit, it’s very convenient. I don’t have to get up till about quarter to nine and I can be out for a run at five thirty. We have all bought new bikes. The kids love them. I actually have less financial stress than before. No commuting bill, no child care, no coffee and snacks bill. The car’s a bit clapped out but I don’t need it so much, and I am saving on fuel. Now the kids are back at school and the eldest has gone to university it is very peaceful during the day. To be honest, I don’t have to do much work and I can easily sneek a nap in the afternoon. Apparently it is all funded by zero interest rates. The Chinese are almost paying us to take their money. Can’t argue with that. Where’s the problem? I am doing my bit for society, I wish people would shut up and just do what the health experts are telling us to do. It’s even worse in Spain. Do people really want that to start happening here?”
Pretty hard to convince otherwise.
Absolutely on the nail,well said.
Agree
I know 3 people like that.
They are so selfish to think about great impact on economy and society.
What you have written could almost describe myself and mr CGL as far as the getting up late, wfh, pace of life slowing, not spending on petrol etc – except that we are angry as hell, and can see very clearly the road ahead
But what about the stuff of shared human experience that enhance our lives? Culture , however defined, Art, Music Theatre etc.? These are not “virtual”and need physical interractions
“Where’s the problem? “
Waiting up ahead, in the shadows, with a cosh in its hand!
“I’m alright Jack” mentality
Matt Hancock mixed up (whether it was intentionally or by his ignorance) a tests sensitivity with specificity. The Covid test might have 99% sensitivity – meaning that if you have the virus it will 99% of the time detect it (i.e. low false negatives) but equally important is the specificity of the test i.e the percentage of people with test result positive who are actually negative (i.e false positives). I dont claim to be a statistician, but the health secretary should know better, considering huge policy decisions are being made on the sensitivity AND specificity of the test.
And he should know how many people are in hospital in an area the citizens of which have been deprived of their liberty.
THIS VIDEO WILL SOLVE YOUR FRIED BRAINS ABOUT HANDYCOCK’S COCK UP!
https://twitter.com/RealNormalPod/status/1307257907017383937?s=20
You can hear more in our next podcast! Please can someone draw Toby’s attention to the video above!
https://therealnormalpodcast.buzzsprout.com/
Tweet unavailable? Did they take it down?
Try again.
I got unavailable, and then I tried again and it came up.
Sorted!
still showing unavailable
Try this… https://twitter.com/RealNormalPod/status/1307257907017383937?s=20
No scullduggery, I just had to remove the old video because it had an edit error!
It’s a sorry state of affairs when the most sensible and intelligent comments are coming from a ‘Loose Woman’… when the greatest scientists in the world appear to be flummoxed.
They are not flummoxed
Just self serving or mendacious or understandably afraid to speak out
The risk of medications lowering immunity is not trivial – elderly people often routinely take half-a-dozen medications which may help to put them at risk. Over-medication is a serious issue with Covid and other infectious diseases. That said I am not sure the government were right to ban cortisol injections, if they did. I find it very surprising.
https://rxisk.org/medications-compromising-covid-infections/
Below is the positive case profile for the London Borough of Brent which was mentioned this morning as one of the worrying areas. If anyone has an area they’re interested in I can post the data or does anyone know which London Boroughs are supposed to be bad?
Here’s Hackney & the City of London
I see that Borat Johnson has just won the Ig Nobel Medical Education Prize ‘for using the Covid-19 viral pandemic to teach the world that politicians can have a more immediate effect on life and death than scientists and doctors can’:
https://www.improbable.com/ig-about/winners/#ig2020
He has to share it with, amongst others, Alexander Lukashenko of Belarus, Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey, Vladimir Putin of Russia, and Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedow of Turkmenistan. Fine company.
Runner up to the team that brought us sharks breathing helium.
An amusing example of how these supposedly independent-minded cynics are in fact just establishment types taking the piss out of dissenters. They target Bolsonaro, Lukashenko and Trump undoubtedly because those are first, politically “on the right”, and second, the leaders who most publicly trashed the panic agenda, and in reality the joke is on the igNobel organisers, who are evidently too hidebound in their conformist ignorance to have noticed that those are the leaders who got it closest to correct, and who did the least damage.
Johnson is most likely in there because they are lefties as usual, and see him as the “Conservative” enemy, and the context suggests they are criticising him exactly as all the mainstream leftists are – for not locking down harder and sooner, and thereby doing even more damage.
IgNobel as sanctimonious and useless as Nobel when it comes to politics.
I used to rather like the IgNobel prixes, but I fear this could easily be the case here. They have failed to line up any criticism for Macron’s brutal lockdown, Spain’s brutal lockdown, St Jacinda’s military guarded quarantine camps, Kim Jong Dan’s arrest of pregnant women, …
I think they are fine within their area of applicability and expertise (science, originally). It’s when they stray into politics that they become just preachy bullshit rather than humour.
This chart is from the Government surveillance report. It shows that Pakistanis have about 5 x as many positive tests per head of population than Blacks & 7 x more than other ethnic & White people. So there may be a racial element to the pandemic but not a racist one.
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/919092/Weekly_COVID19_Surveillance_Report_week_38_FINAL.pdf
Wow. Surely that has needs sharing.
Nobody is being racist about this but it’s ridiculous if this isn’t being fully understood.
Higher poverty means they have poorer health outcomes on average anyway. The remainder of the impact is probably to do with ACE 2 receptors, higher obesity etc.
May be it’s to do with them being packed 30-45 to a house by the people who run the sweat shops they are forced to work in.
My belief is that people packed 30 to a house make up a very very tiny minority of this demographic. I do agree denser living conditions are a factor though.
Low vitamin D levels
It may also have something to do with the initial superspreading, what with all those flights.
It’s not difficult to come up with hypotheses that can be tested. Different ethnic groups have very different multi-generational household compositions ; they may have different diet; ethnicity is related to poverty (as others have noted); there’s the Vitamin D issue ….
The main point here is that it could be either genetic factors or cultural ones, or (quite possibly) a mix of the two.
The people who have a problem are those who are unable, for ideological reasons, to contemplate accepting one of other of those (invariably in practice the first, because antiracism is the dominant dogma today, and the state indoctrination line for many years has been the lie that “race is purely a social construct”).
So I guess this could infer a far greater level of Pakistanis living here. I wonder if they have to show ID to get a test, how many required an interpreter during the test, and how many then travelled home in the same car
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/sep/17/masks-risk-confrontation-covid-19-guidelines-empathy
As long as self-righteous wokes like this author refuse to engage at all and acknowledge the exisisting, increasing and scientifically and logically much stronger evidence against wearing a mask and frame the articles solely to the contrary, we will have no debate, no understanding but confrontation in this matter, and, for sure, my and millions of others very justified continued refusal to wear a mask.
And in France, for example and as a hint to this prejudiced author, mask refusers were established as being primarily well educated GenX women….
In a previous post I called the ‘Guardian’ a ‘Super spreader’—not without reason!
Spreading covid can be easily forgiven, spreading panic cannot.
I can only presume the majority of my fellow humans are innumerate (and possibly, mostly illiterate too). The scientists seem to be relying on this.
But this is well known. We are hopelessly bad at assessing risk. The insurance industry is based on this.
Everyone in science should have taken a stats class at some point, that class will have covered the example of how a test with a 1% false positive rate still has 90% of positive results as false positives when used to search for something rare enough. So any “scientist” who is agreeing with Hancock’s bullshit is knowingly ignoring the truth either to score political brownie points or do advance some bizarre personal pro-lockdown agenda.
BBC R2 10.30 News
“The government is facing calls to bring forward plans to extend local additional measures to fight Coronovirus infections to the rest of the country…”
And who might be making these ‘calls’?
None other than prick of the year Ferguson who then spouts his usual guff for a good 60 seconds.
“Facing calls” is BBC speak for “we at the BBC think x or y should happen”
You can always find someone calling for something if you look hard enough or prompt the answer you want
It’s the famous “passive voice”. A sure sign of deceit.
Gah the cunts, the siren cry of the media ‘facing calls’ cos them and their pals are making the calls.
FFS
I find it disturbing how so many news articles, even on the usually sceptical Telegraph, are saying “scientists are recommending harder restrictions”. When you look at the details those scientists, are one man, Ferguson, and given both his track record and his willingness to favour models over data, “scientist” is not such a good description of him as “soothsayer” or “apocalypse cultist” would be.
I’m noticing that a large percentage of new deaths reported by NHS England’s daily stats are not coming with a positive test which is ever so slightly odd. For example
18th Sept 14 deaths, 3 without positive test
17th Sept 18 deaths, 6 without positive test
16th Sept 11 deaths, 5 without positive test
Combined that’s 33% of deaths from the last 3 days which are questionable to say the least.
Given the test is a load of crap anyway it’s still quite striking they’re including deaths without a test as that could easily be flu etc.
https://www.england.nhs.uk/statistics/statistical-work-areas/covid-19-daily-deaths/
I’d be interested to see how many deaths there’s been like this as it’s a easy way to fudge the numbers and get away with it due to Media incompetence and complicity.
Given the widespread testing there’s no excuse for including anyone without at the very least a positive test, so those should be struck off immediately as an outright lie.
The bar needs to be higher, given the dangerous mythology that is being supported.
I was just thinking of a common parallel phenomenon for this surge of ‘illness’.
Just think of when you develop some minor symptom – and you’re also feeling up-tight. You focus on it and become aware of it – constantly exaggerating its potential significance. You may even start testing your blood pressure and temperature – noting every twitch in the metrics as ‘significant’ instead of just every-day ‘noise’.
We now have this sort of psychosis on a population scale.
From the last few days’ news I’m getting a sense that our torturers are not yet tired by their obsessive, single-minded efforts to make people’s lives as miserable as possible. They cannot keep this up forever though. Soon they will want a break. Then we strike back.
‘ …and, as we know, cases of asymptomatic secondary transmission are extremely rare. ‘
Does anyone have know of a source for this? Because it kind of destroys the mask-wearers arguments that I might give it to them if I’m not wearing a mask because I might have Covid and not know I have! ie i have no symptoms
Fauci and the WHO are on record.Although they have both recanted
I read somewhere that today Covid is the 24th biggest killer at 1.4%. Anybody know where this data comes from? I can find Daily deaths numbers but not a list of deaths by cause.
ONS reports it. But they are a bit variable on what they choose to highlight each week.
This is from the government surveillance report. Interesting how Rhinovirus has shot up, those masks are fantastic, they let the Rhinovirus through but not the coronavirus, who would have thunk it!
Also, shows respiratory cases up most sharply amongst 5-14 year olds, it couldn’t be going back to school could it….. like every year?
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/919092/Weekly_COVID19_Surveillance_Report_week_38_FINAL.pdf
Warming to the theme.
“That corona is pretty nasty. A friend of mine knows a doctor who said it can turn your lungs to jelly. Ugh! You really don’t want to be catching it. It’s super infectious. Even masks don’t really stop it, apparently. Sophie was ill with it, I’m sure, when she came back from Italy, and she says she still isn’t feeling quite right yet. Her 5k times are down, even though she is able to get out and run most days, now she’s working from home. Henry has a friend who was made redundant from her gym, but I didn’t much like her anyway. To be honest, I don’t think it’s such a bad thing if we all slow down a bit. Probably help the planet too, with burning less fossil fuel. That reminds me, must get the boiler serviced. I wonder if they are still working? Bloody nuisance if they aren’t.”
77th ?
No…it’s WhyNow’s satire! If I remember rightly, WhyNow, you’ve been here from the start.
Yup. You would hope that a sceptic would recognise it, wouldn’t you.
Apologies.. I’m new here. Difficult to tell satire from reality these days.. plus I sort of gave up after the first few sentences.. I’ll remember next time..
You would, but perhaps add </sarc> at the end just in case someone is confused, the reality is so crazy it can be difficult to be certain!
I suppose it’s a compliment that someone thought it was real!!
Hope he get his boiler ‘serviced’.. think they might be running on LEDs by the time Extortion Rabble have had their way…
Oh, really! You would hope that a fellow sceptic could read and understand without turning straight to the abuse.
If you don’t understand why people think as they do, what hope is there of persuading them otherwise?
Not sure everyone commenting on this site is a sceptic…. just saying…
That’s OK, surely : the challenge is evidence-based literacy. Not a label.
Indeed. Not keen on labels. Although a clue might be contained within the site’s name…
Free speech is exactly that.
Indeed.
I really recommend that people watch this interview between JP Sears (comedian) and Robert Kennedy junior.
https://childrenshealthdefense.org/news/season-2-episode-2-of-truth-with-robert-f-kennedy-jr/?utm_source=salsa&eType=EmailBlastContent&eId=0c3996da-ba6e-4ace-be1a-4ed6a7489fa8
Please persist with listening, even though Kennedy’s speech problem makes listening difficult at the outset. He has spasmodic dysphonia,. This interview really exposes what is happening and the danger it poses to our society and culture.
Kennedy is particularly articulate on the political danger, and given his background he should know what he is talking about.
Two great men, right now. RKJ’ s interview on London Real earlier in the spring, was brilliant. JP Sears has kept me sane in all this.
Like Dave Ferguson, I am a member of the Labour Party – although not so active as I once once – for a variety of reasons.
I share, from a left of centre point of view, his despair at the lack of any opposition from the comatose state of the Starmer-led Party in terms of challenging this assault on the sort of civil liberties that would have brought forth Orwell’s scathing dissection of the situation.
Orwell is indeed a key touchstone – questioning, honest, ‘ornery’ and contrarian – in these times when one is defining real political allegiance as opposed to labels.
Sadly – I am not surprised. Starmer is clearly the establishment alternative shill who has shown no signs of moral backbone from the start, aiming to reduce the Labour Party to the gutted but amenable shell it became after Blair’s pursuit of an inimical agenda.
Yes. Wouldn’t that be grand. How I long for some ‘scathing dissection’ from the Labour Party.
I have avoided reading the MSM for the past few weeks and just dipped into the DM. Headline that hundreds of daily deaths expected in the next few weeks according to scientists, fear porn on steroids through different articles, the usual photos of icu patients … how do you define this anymore, we went beyond madness weeks ago, I have run out of adjectives. Unfortunately the comments are no better, akin to lockdown now as thousands will die if we wait. I note also the word ‘cases’ has been exchanged for ‘infections’.
I know. I keep thinking I’ve got to wake up soon from this bloody nightmare!
This chart from https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/919092/Weekly_COVID19_Surveillance_Report_week_38_FINAL.pdf
shows the location of outbreaks of both Covid & Flu, that’s a place where there was at least one linked case.
As you can see, virtually all cases in the last couple of weeks are in care homes and hospitals. Locking down students isn’t gonna have that much impact on their granny in a care home, we’re locking down the wrong people.
I agree with your comment but just want to point out that the second highest bar is educational settings, not hospitals. Doesn’t really matter because the educational cases are highly unlikely to translate into deaths whereas the same cannot be said for care homes.
Oxford Professor Explains The COVID Testing Scam
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hVdcfu4OyR4
Yes – v good vid. Clear and concise.
I agree with all that and understand the false positives. Was just pointing out that what the original post says and what the bar chart says are different, regardless of whether the data is right or not.
Yes, but looking at the Rhinovirus figures amongst the 5-14 year olds I posted below many of these school/college outbreaks could be flu.
Personally I think kids should get a gold star for catching the virus, it should be regarded as their civic duty, the more kids who catch the quicker we get herd immunity & the safer the grannies are.
Those of us with children or grandchildren will know that this is the time when quotidian infections – including common cold corona viruses – start circulating.
The difference is that throughout history, we haven’t put society on hold for even quite severe infections – let alone low consequence ones.
‘Cases’ in such a context are unlikely to translate into actual ‘infection’.
I know and even if they did, would have little effect on those in education.
I was merely pointing out that the original comment says most cases come from care homes and hospitals according to the copied chart. That isn’t what the chart shows.
Lighten the load and have a giggle in these harsh times – check out Matt “the prat” Hancock`s twitter feed; many a comment that would make a nun blush.
Oxford Professor Explains The COVID Testing Scam
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hVdcfu4OyR4
Yes – the usual concise demolition work from Carl Heneghan.
I recommend viewing the video on this site to be clear about the real agenda: https://www.lifesitenews.com/blogs/people-behind-climate-change-agenda-accelerating-their-plans-with-the-covid-scam-are-deeply-cruel-evil-and-psychotic-people?utm_source=LifeSiteNews.com&utm_campaign=523805f1ac-Freedom_9_15_2020&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_12387f0e3e-523805f1ac-407771586
This sort of confused grabbing hold of hobby-horses is what contaminates rational explanations of the clear and present danger of the Covid scam, and perpetuates the ‘conspiracy theorist’ stuff.
It’s important to stick to the knitting.
I admire Toby hugely and am immensely grateful for the work he does with this site (and other, similar undertakings, e.g. the FSU.
However, I think he is so desperate not to be painted as a conspiracy nut that he strives to describe the behaviour of the idiots who ‘lead’ us to their groupthink and unwillingness to give up on the path they’ve decided to take. In other words, they’re ‘mad’, rather than ‘bad’, i.e. they are stupid, cloth-eared, stubborn, petrified of having to admit error, unable to function in any logical way, or whatever ….
In this way he risks adopting exactly the same thought patterns as he ascribes to BJ and Commissar Handy Cock, when, in fact, these people are in fact ‘bad’. Not necessarily committed to plans hatched by others (Common Purpose, UN, Davos Man, Bill Gates, The fucking Elders of Zion or the Masons), or playthings of the Lizard People David Icke talks of or familiars for the Vampires in Blade movies …, but instead enraptured by their own taste of power, enslaved by promises of wealth. They are plain ‘bad’.
Of course, it’s also possible that they are both ‘mad’ AND ‘bad’.
There’s no doubt that politicians are driven by the desire to be reelected and most want to be popular and liked (as do many human beings in whatever role they fulfill). And being elected gives power which is of course seductive and strokes the ego. Once you’ve been/felt important its a massive blow to the ego to go back to being a nobody. So all those things are drivers to people like BJ and as can be seen by the polls the majority of the UK population are fult supportive of stringent lockdowns. BJ’s actions and Handy cock are driven by their egos and their need to keep hold of power/popularity but not for any further nefarious purpose. Power is intoxicating in of itself.
I have a natural resistance to ‘conspiracy’ explanations for events. I believe always in subjecting things to an Occam’s shave.
But – if in the current situation, we substitute the word ‘intentional’ as an adjective, the idea takes on a different shape. We get rid of cartoon notions of people in dark glasses and turned-up collars in darkened rooms, and come up against the much more ordinary notion of powerful groups pursuing their own ends.
It seems to me that there are a mixture of motivations sustaining the present shit-show, and it’s not a case of ‘either/or’. There is certainly a powerful amount of incompetence and gullibility in the mix – but there is also intentionality. That the boundary is hard to distinguish doesn’t vitiate the notion.
In terms of that intentionality, the wielding of power is a generalised motivation that clearly exists – and one that Johnson has admitted to in wanting to be ‘King of the World’ (which doesn’t contradict the fact that he’s also a notable incompetent and liar.
But then there are the very ordinary motivations inherent in global capitalism : massive amounts of money bending the public interest in favour of both profit and ideology. The confluence of interests between the Pharmaceutical, IT/Data and Finance interests are in plain sight, and nowhere so clearly visible as in the vaccine scam now being operated.
What we are being subjected to right now is mental torture. Amnesty International’s report on torture, from 1975 clearly lays out how we are being manipulated right now. Amazing Polly did a great video on this a while back. Very much worth a watch to see how governments are mentally abusing us all. https://www.bitchute.com/video/NueHMknavG1z/
I agree. I find it doesn’t to ignore scare mongering.
.
WTAF?
If the threat is so serious how can this be?
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/health/coronavirus-nhs-testing-hospitals-shortage-b485589.html
I wonder why?
Maybe we could hire a private company to test people who have had a positive result. Then publish the results.
So in my town of 20,000 if all tested this afternoon, we would have 160 false positives. We are told Bolton is bad with 192 per 100,000 but my town would have 800 per 100,000 and they wouldn’t even have it !!!
192 positives out of 100000 tests suggests a prevalence of 0.2%
From the table on page 6 of the paper referenced in LS on 16th sept (see link below)…
100/100000 positives, prev of 0.1% would get 2090 positives out of 100000 tests of which 2000 are FALSE – 95% are false positives.
1000/100000 positives, prev of 1% would get 2880 positives out of 100000 tests of which 1980 are FALSE – 70% are false positives.
sooo….
Out of the 192 positives in Bolton only between 10 and 57 actually have covid19 present out of 100000 (more likely much nearer 10).
and out of these approx. 50% are just picking up old wasted viral fragments.
Please tell me if I have made a mistake…
ref;
https://gov.wales/sites/default/files/publications/2020-07/core-principles-for-utilisation-of-rt-pcr-tests-for-detection-of-sars-cov-2.pdf
This would give an actual prevalence of 0.01 to 0.05 % sooo….
does that mean the percentage of false positives are far greater than 95%…
now I’m really confused…
help…
If FPR is 0.8% that means we can expect 800 (false) positives per 100,000.
So if Bolton has only 192 positives, I think the only conclusion is the data is complete bollocks, unless they have already adjusted for FPR?
This may have been posted before but I found this clearly presented 6 minute video is an effective way to introduce newbies to the sceptical view:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IRlPPzydSyM
This is a great video concise and explain a lot. A must see for all.
I guess it’s coincidence that the mood music has changed in the last couple of days just a week before the Coronavirus Act comes up for renewal
And after that, bye bye Parliament.
Well spotted!!
The vice is tightening…
Local Costa Coffeee now requires pre-registration on website with lots of personal details for the privilege of sitting on. No thanks.
Local greasy spoon café.. temperature checks, online menus, nappy faced servers, ritual annointment of holy water (aka sanitiser).
I thought modern society valued convenience if not freedom.
I’m also finding it more difficult to be naked faced in any shop. Nothing has happened yet, but I feel the level of censorious paranoia ratcheting up.
Just hold your head high, smile when you can and if any self-appointed Covid Womble decides to have a go ‘I am not answearble to you’ is all you need to say.
I’ve not had to do that yet but having a prepared response helps keep confidence up. That and knowing that they are the crazy ones not me!
Just go out expecting nothing to happen. That’s what I do. So far nothing has happened.
Costa has been abominable throughout this crisis so it doesn’t surprise me.
Will continue boycotting them.
Ha. Doesn’t sound much like a greasy spoon to me. Keep looking.
Could it be possible that we are being put through all this nonsense simply because one or two individuals in high office, with an over inflated opinion of themselves, simply cannot bear to admit that they have got it all hopelessly wrong?
I think it’s more because it gives them more power to wield. They can use it as an excuse to steal money off the electorate and hand it to their friends, or make laws that help them cement their corrupt power structure.
Intersting to see what happens when furlough ends, and the mortgage holiday finishes,both in october.
Without government ,taxpayers help will the people be so keen to follow the mad rules.
The Keep Britain Free YouTube channel has bust published an interview with a lawyer specialising in working with the elderly.
If some of the stuff she is saying happened is true why are the general population rising up.
See the video here
Can you give us a timestamp of roughly where in the long video some of these shcoking stories are covered. Thanks.
Seems to be the same interviewee all the way through. I’d give it 5/10 minutes, see what you think.
The general population don’t know.
I’ve just emailed Hancock at his parliamentary address matt.hancock.mp@parliament.uk
(probably won’t get anywhere as not a constituent) and at his company email address I think I saw here- it’s not bounced back so it may be correct matt@matt-hancock.com I’ve adapted Toby’s words to direct it at Hancock himself. Why doesnt everyone here do the same – email him and also forward a copy to their own MP? I headed it ‘Trying to stop you making the same mistake as on Julia H-B’s programme.
I feel I really must point out to you the howling error you made on Julia Hartley-Brewer’s radio programme when you casually said you thought the False Positive Rate was “less than 1%”. You then went on to say: “Under one percent means that for all the positive cases the likelihood of one being a false positive is very small.” Actually, no. The FPR is the percentage of all the people you’ve tested who are found, falsely, to be positive. And when the prevalence of infection is low, that means that the likelihood of a positive test result being a false positive is very high.
To illustrate this, let’s suppose that 11 in 10,000 people in the UK have the virus, which is what the latest ONS infection survey estimates. So according to your understanding, if the PCR test has an FPR of 0.8% and you test 10,000 people and 91 test positive, that means that 0.8% x 91 are false positives, i.e. less than one person in the 10,000 is a false positive; one out of the 91 who tested positive. But in fact the numerator is all the people you’ve tested – that’s who the FPR applies to – not just those who’ve tested positive. So the number of false positives is 0.8% x 10,000, i.e. 80 people. To be clear, 80 of the 91, not one out of the 91, are recorded as positive WHEN THEY ARE NOT. Which leaves exactly 11 ‘true’ positives. Just one in 9 of those getting a positive result actually carry the virus! In other words, because the you appear not to understand what an FPR is, you are over-estimating the number of true positives by ~700%.
Of course, the true number of people who should self-isolate – and hand over the details of those they’ve been in contact with to NHS Test and Trace – is actually much lower than 11 in 10,000 because about half of those 11 will be ‘cold positives’, i.e. people who test positive because they have fragments of the virus still in their systems even though they’ve long since ceased to be infectious. And 40% of the remainder will be asymptomatic – and, as we know, cases of asymptomatic secondary transmission are extremely rare. That brings the total of people who should be self-isolating per 10,000 to about three. That’s a far cry from the 91/10,000 you think should be self-isolating.
I am assuming that you really believed what you said. The alternative hardly bears thinking about. Perhaps you were tired.
It’s always either ‘follow the money’, or ‘cherchez la femme’, or even both!. So, the man at the top is not in hock to anyone, is he?
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8750253/Subdued-Boris-Johnson-worries-money-salary-shrunk-150k.html
Maybe the priapic pisspoor politician should learn to pluck his plonker than prowl for poontang.
It’s his weakness, and therefore the axis for infiltration. I watched the brilliant Day of the Jackal (again!) a few months ago, and it all made sense – is Ms Carrie a ‘plant’?
With a new pandemic anyone should realise that deaths will go up and down as activity is increased or suppressed.
That in all likelihood we might end up seeing a 100+ death total a day or a lot more over a winter period should not and is not going to be a shock. And it is not a wave, it is realities of disease infection.
If we lost 1000 people a day for the next 365 days in the U.K. We would lose 365,000 people, that is 3.5 times the capacity of Wembley stadium.
The population of Brent, where I think Wembley is location, is around that figure (365K) but the population of London itself is probably 8 million.
The population of the U.K. is probably 67m. So as sad as it is it is not a huge number of deaths at the extreme end of the estimates Reads callous I know.
But a % of those who will pass away would pass away anyway, maybe as high as 90% – so we end up focusing on preventing the deaths of 40,000. Which why noble, is insanity. So let’s assume it’s 100,000 we are trying to save. But that’s 100,000 at the expense of 66,900,0000.
To try to achieve context the current Government policy seems to be that to reduce the 1k a day figure they will be sacrificing the current and future life opportunities of absolutely everyone else. Plunging millions of people into immediate poverty, costing jobs, mental well being, destroying any hope of preventing actually avoidable deaths, putting debt on future generations beyond imagination and mentally scaring the population for generations to come.
Could we blame the media? Yes, but Johnson himself has condemned the country yesterday with his careless babble and poor language yesterday. A look at the papers today shows the fear porn is back up to 11. Which guarantees a second lockdown and guarantees even greater disaster ahead. They got it wrong in March and doubled down in September. This is not leadership. This is governance by group think and lacks credibility and courage.
In May. This should have been declared a success. There should have been a warning, clear and concise that there was still a job to do and people needed to be aware and respect the virus, but the objective had been met and then the whole issue needed to be handed over to the health officials and the story killed. That we got out of May and straight into the Second Wave fear is as unforgivable as what happened in March. It’s been a summer of threats. This is days of our lives we will never get back.
Even at 1k deaths a day I am not convinced it is a story that dominates everything else. What am I missing ? How is this possible? We assume that lockdown will kill many more than the Virus, so why is lockdown about to happen (many times) again in Autumn.
I just had breakfast with my kids on a beautiful Saturday morning and was honestly sitting there wondering 1) how will I feed them with no job. 2) how will we keep our home when the mortgage can’t be paid. 3) how can I tell them they can’t go to their grandad’s house for his 80th birthday next month 4) how do I tell them no Halloween/ fireworks night nor Christmas this year 5) how can I convince them that the world is not an absolute shit show and that everything we work for can be flushed down the toilet at the whims of Alexander Boris De Piffle Johnson ?
Their policy is blasting people back generations. Kill the story, before they kill everything else.
Look at this shit, spreading mass fear & panic. More so the twat who has commented on Twitter. I am seriously getting pissed off at the amount of people who are just buying into all this second wave nonsense.
https://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/scottish-news/anger-edinburghs-portobello-beach-rule-22708623
Utter twat. & so is the Daily Record.
Can they seriously scam a second wave? How are tgey going to get tge deaths up. The dead are needed for their mug shot on the hourly msm death count remember those?
How can they scam the bodies?
Somone linked yesterday (?) to something saying hospitals want to clear the decks into care homes again.
Going for the seeding of the most vulnerable again you mean?
Genuine question. I realise how cold it sounds. They already did that one, and pushed away the concept of investigation citing we are in the middle of a pandemic as reason not to divert into an investigation of probable manslaughter.
Boris To Use Army? – HDTV Parliament Video
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K8cPB4bXx6E
How has this not been covered my the MSM? This is massive and I can’t see ANY coverage anywhere from MP Tobias Ellwood request you Boris Johnson
Alex Belfield – THE VOICE OF REASON
The People’s Liberation Army. Who will be the brave student standing in front of a tank?
What army? What tanks?
True, there are not enough of them.
These are empty threats. They are toothless without the psyop working.
Holy shit. we need to get our act together against this.
A couple of sceptic leaning artclies in th DM today covering two prime pages by Karol Sikora and Alex Brummer. Maybe a bit equivocal for our tastes, but still…
I simply can’t find any rational explanation for this state of affairs. It is obvious even from the Government’s own – probably exaggerated – figures that the pandemic is over. Either our government is preternaturally stupid or the country is being made the victims of the world’s largest and most expensive backside covering exercise ever known.
What can we do about it? We are living in a country that has literally lost touch with reality. Kafka isn’t in it. It is genuinely damaging my mental health.
It is a coup, stop looking for rational reasons in the old paradigm. You and I have just been deprived of all our rights.
Agree. Where Extinction Rebellion failed, Corona Scam has conquered.
Its very interesting to watch the extinction of extinction. A state apperatus having to fizzle out – it looks very much like morale sapping depressing work for all the state operatives involved. A good bout of depression is nothing more than they deserve.
XX= Extinction Extinction
Perhaps some of it can be explained by ‘regret aversion bias’? This bias “seeks to avoid the emotional pain of regret associated with poor decision making. People who are regret averse try to avoid distress arising from errors of commission and errors of omission.”* Particularly as many of those responsible for the poor decisions are members of the intelligentsia. *See: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/9781119202400.ch22
I think the item on David Seedhouse’s book (above) gives a good insight into various cognitive explanations for the mess.
How much longer can poor decision making be blamed for governments around the world making the same policy decisions?
And they all, with a few notable exceptions, made the same wrong decisions using the same words, the same timescale and across the whole gamut of differing regimes.
We are being shepherded into the ‘promised land’ of annual Big Pharma vaccines. Boris, Hancock, Whitty, Vallance, Ferguson …all in the ‘pockets’ of the drug companies.
The explanation lies in USA, Corona and BLM were the Democtrats’ cunning plan and they have follwed it regardless of collateral damage. Why else ban HCQ?
Word of mouth is my preferred solution, With all due respect I believe stickers to be tacky though lapel badges could be usefull both to recognize each other and to elicit questions from the undecided/waverers.
More use could be made of amusing images such as that Policeman interviewing Yul Briner of the Magnificent Seven and the Last Supper being broken up by the filth.
“I don’t care who your dad is this is still an illegal gathering.”
Totalitarian types always particularly dislike humour being used against them.
Word of mouth is by far the stringest method of any advertising.
Social shaming employs the word of mouth methid for evil, because it is the most effective method.
Yes it is very, very bad. Protect your mental health however you can – dp as many normal things as you can. You see what’s going on which is proof that you are mentally sound.
The woke gobbledegook is worth pointing out as a bad thing, but lockdown sceptics might not be the place for it. Much as most of usagree that those who consider themselves “woke” are infact asleep to most of the real issues, criticising them HERE might make it harder for lockdown scepticism to be sold to “the left”. And in truth we need to convert over that type to lockdown scepticism, just as much as we need to convert over anyone who is in the grip of rabid coronaphobia. Would be better to only criticse those fools HERE when they do something disgustingly pro-lockdown, and set up a woke sceptics site on which to criticise all their other stupidity they perpetrate.
Totally agree – it’s a hobby-horse diversion from the key issue.
Even the term ‘woke’ is sloppy and ill-defined. The issues need to be argued about in far more specific terms, or you end up with just a mirror image of unthinking assertion.
But – above all – the focus here should be on the very specific, uniting issue of the Covid assault on civil liberties.
Good point. I agree.
The tendrils of the oppression are far reaching and limits to what is and is not core LS subject matter can be hard to keep to, in my experience. A good idea is not to belittle others views and keep respect for all viewpoints – if possible. This has the effect of keeping the skeptic viewpoint one others might engage with.
Theory.
Yes. We need to pick our battles wisely and solely concentrate on the pandemic/casedemic/positivetestdemic (my favourite). No 5G/Gates vaccine/lizards/NWO/Great Reset/Agenda 21 regardless of what you think of it as it just damages our case.
I was just pondering that, whilst investigating the numbers at each stage of the shit-show, we should always keep the basics of evidence in sight. Here’s the top of my list :
Just a couple of points.
“High consequence” diseases include such things as Ebola and the Black Death: CFR of the order of 90%. Saying Covid is not that bad is not saying it’s negligible.
“Eighth highest since 1993” true, but the highest seven were 1993-1999. Equally true to say “worst this century”. Incidentally, this is excess mortality (per head of population).
I think you confirm my point by indulging in hyperbole. Nobody is saying that Covid is ‘harmless’ – just that it’s not particularly ‘harmful’ when put into context – particularly when the deaths attributed to it are corrected to compensate for inaccurate registrations, the ‘dry-tinder’ effect and other data aspects. The mild effects for the majority of the population are in plain sight.
The over-riding point is, to counter the 77th Brigade stuff, that we have never shut down society for equally, or more damaging, events; and there is no scientific basis for doing so – as all prior planning documents illustrate..
As to the higher seasons being before 2000 – true. We have just gone through ten years of abnormally low mortality infection seasons – but you have resorted to the technique of limiting the perspective to that selective sample of years rather than broadening it to a more representative span
As to ‘excess mortality’ – this is a theoretical figure based on picking and choosing (as you have done) a shortened basis for comparison and then citing the error figure as ‘excess’. It’s one of the confusions that dogs the shattered reputation of theoretical epidemiology.
I have just presented the population corrected data for a reasonable span of time.
There’s a simple test. If you had not heard of it would you be worried?
Course not because we aren’t seeing mass casualties.
Apart from health workers I’ve never met anyone who had heard of anyone else who has had it with the one exception of a chap whose elderly father died of/with the Covid but who had not been advised that his dads diabetes AND dementia were among the three top co-morbidities.
You’ll have noticed that I replaced “harmless” with “negligible”, probably while you were typing your reply. “you have resorted to the technique of limiting the perspective to that selective sample of years rather than broadening it to a more representative span” — well, another way of putting that is to say that I pointed out that the time range makes a difference. You claim that 27 years is “representative” and “reasonable” while 20 years is “selective” — no, they’re both selective and both reasonable. I made a different selection to illustrate how much difference that selection makes. You chose a range to bolster your case, that’s all.
I’m not going to argue about the term “excess mortality”. You don’t like the words, it seems. Oh dear.
Point 2. I’ll ask again if we ste not in an epidemic how can we be in a pandemic ?
I rather think that’s because the “definition” of an epidemic is something someone on the internet made up. I’m willing to be corrected, by a pointer to a UK Government or WHO publication, saying what the “official” definition of an epidemic is. Until then, I’m going to go with it having been made up for rhetorical purposes.
Lovely day outside. Going for a mask-free shop. Have fun and play nice!
Livestream of London protest. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xx4gjL62zxI
Mmmm … not exactly a morale booster, I fear.
The Israelis aren’t very happy though – they are certainly out and about:
https://www.zerohedge.com/economics/trying-break-us-down-mass-protests-hit-israel-2nd-nationwide-lockdown-takes-effect
Not much support for the 5g speaker.
Rolling in the 5g issue is very helpful!
Not.
Its looking very lively. Worth watching !
Looks a bit chaotic to me, worrying that the police have now been brought out.
There’s too many mixed messages here rather than just focusing on the one message. Looks a complete mess and will more than likely work in the Govs favour.
Yeah there’s multiple groups there, not clear what they’re actually protesting for.
Professor Pantsdown: screwing young people’s lives so he can screw other people’s wives.
Doctor lockdown, or how he learned to start worrying and screw the country, the economy and a married woman in one week
Prof. Cockup seems a more accurate moniker.
Imagining the vaccinated future.
Two options globally mandatory vaccinations or not mandatory. Suppose not mandatory.
It apparently follows there needs to be a system of identifying those who have vaccines so they can mingle. Because – reasons. It makes no sense that a non vaccinated person is a threat to a vaccinated person.
So, a Vaccine Visa will be required. Suppose each vaccine/individual will carry with it an alotted amount of immune time after which revaccination is required unless individual circumstances change mingling factor.
Who pays for the vaccination and visa? We do. Do we have a choice? No. Taxes and death.
Suppose the following senario. A daughter wants to make a visit to her father who lives in a carehome. She has an up to date Vaccine Visa with vaccine A and her father has an up to date Vaccine Visa with vaccine B. They are therefore allowed to meet. The carehome does the allowing. However, sadly in my senario the carehome later sees infections of Covid19 with sad outcomes. Who is responsible at insurance level?
The vaccine is a supposed route out of here. In reality the Vaccine Visa is equally important. The administration of such a visa is going to be a huge burden in daily life, checks before each mingle.
It’s actually insanity to contemplate the workings of it. Yet it genuinely appears this is the predetermined destiny in store for us.
There is a precedent in Yellow Fever Vaccination certificates.
1. Can’t see the insurance companies wanting to get involved in that one.
2. “Makes no sense that a not vaccinated person is a threat to a vaccinated person”
That position is rejected by those who oppose anti-vaxxers (of whom I am not one).
1. The carehome may lose custom. Life insurance pay outs.
2. I simply don’t understand the updated reasoning. It was that vaccinations were individual protection not a communist blanketing.
3. Thanks for commenting because it is a strange futures thst makes little sense to contemplate.
I can’t see it working.
https://www.globalresearch.ca/africa-testing-ground-trust-stamp-vaccine-record-payment-system/5718374
Almost one third of Covid deaths in July and August ‘primarily caused by other conditions’
Oxford research finds someone who had heart attack may have been included in figures if they had also tested positive for virus
Daily Telegraph
30% NOT Related | Carl Vernon
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u0YpAd1FX4k
I have no doubt that there will be many such downwards revisions as time passes
Great guys Carl Vernon and Vernon Coleman.
So, now we know why there were rumours of Boris resigning. He can’t manage on a salary £150,000. No housekeeper, no nanny.
As I posted earlier, attaching the Mail article, you never want anyone in that position where someone could have a hold over them, either because of money, or because of an affair or such. Sadly, most of ‘the elite’ have skeletons in the cupboard, which is why they end up at the top – so they can be controlled. Problem is during war, famine and ‘pandemics’, competence and full mental capacity is rather more important. The men in gray suits are, in my view, only a matter of weeks away from getting Boris and Hancock out of the way.
Should be the men in white coats.
First things first!
And to be replaced with exactly who?
I dread to think who they could put into office next.
Maybe Dominic Cummins will come out from the office under the stairs, buy a suit & tie and lead an emergency cabinet.
He is already in office. That’s the trouble.
There is nobody left within either of the main two parties with any claim to leadership at all.
Nigel is a one trick pony, successful one granted.
I am not a Socialist but have some regard for David Miliband and thought him very wise to keep himself scarce during Mr Corbyns leadership.
I am still awaiting his Charles de Gaule ‘My country needs me’
moment. Whether he could pull it off remains to be seen.
Think again on David Miliband!
Yes, I struggle too. William Hague?? But he’s Lord.
Jeremy Hunt, the previous runner up, is tainted. Mr Javid has been very quiet, and is surely plotting.
I’ve been meaning to write to my MP, Geoffrey Cox, telling him that his hour has come.
Cox may have potential. good shout.
John Redwood? sorry, “Sir” John Redwood?! hahaha – well at least he has form when it comes to leadership challenges….!
I was kind of joking about Mr Cox, but thought I’d write something to boosting his ego for a change. Such is the dearth of potential leadership material in the Commons though, the Conservative Party will have to dig deep.
A few years ago, yes, I was probably in line with you re: David M.. at one point I thought he was real definite leadership potential, and I figured his keeping well out of any Brexit-related shenanigans was by design, not accident. However he has been damaged somewhat – pretty sure the charity/non-profit he runs was littered with dozens of sexual assault allegations, as well as doing questionable things with its financing (alongside some of the billionaire usual suspects you may or may not see mentioned here..); he’s seriously been coining it in, in the private sector in recent years, & is not going to just drop the goose that lays the golden egg, imo.
In my view, there will be a caretaker PM (IDS, David Davis) prior to finding the next Tory leader. By New Year, Boris will not be in office, in my view.
Even if the plug is pulled on Boris, will the madness be stopped?
Quite. Whoever is frightening Johnson will surely do the same to the next incumbent.
Mrs Doubting briefly working in “the public sector” she used to talk about “the Peter principal” where people are promoted into roles which are above their ability but once they are in those roles they simply muddle along, until it it time to draw their pensions.
Maybe this is another factor.
I certainly agree about those in power being controlled by having skeletons in the closet.
Yet another truism brilliantly portrayed in Yes Minister/Prime Minister.
I want to believe you’re right TT.
Hang on in there DRW. My elder son is back to second year at Uni next week!
The Ides of October …
TODAY’S HEADLINE ARTICLE explained in a helpful video
(If you didn’t understand Toby’s paragraph about false positives)
PLEASE SHARE THIS FAR AND WIDE!
https://twitter.com/RealNormalPod/status/1307257907017383937?s=20
Plus listen to our podcast ‘The Real Normal’
https://therealnormalpodcast.buzzsprout.com/
Toby’s PCR testing False Negative paragraph as a video…
https://twitter.com/RealNormalPod/status/1307257907017383937?s=20
This really the crux of it all and should be central to the sceptic’s message. Even the most innumerate should be able to grasp this.
Yeah, we need video and pictures to help visualise this to a wider population…
Much too complicated, lost most people by about third box. Ignore false negatives, makes little difference at this stage. Using your 5% infected and 10% false positives. 50/(50 + 95) = 34% (close enough). True figures are more like 0.5% and 1% which gives 5/(5 + 10) = 33%.
Did you watch the video I’d made in the first post? That’s a lot more clear!
You stop testing because your noise is greater than the signal, or you get a more precise tool.
Metrology 101
Thanks. fantastic video and needs to get out to as many as possible. However, if you want this tweet/video to be distributed it would be great to explain this is the FPR that Hancock got wrong, or something like it. Maybe do with a re-tweet. I don’t have twitter but have distributed the link
I had a rather dispiriting conversation with a GP acquaintance of mine who very much followed the mainstream line – 65k excess deaths, the success of lockdown and the need for ongoing measures to prevent the spread and prevent a second wave of fatalities.
The arguments against this are well-rehearsed on this site, but I was left wondering (given a background in economics) how I could have better conveyed the folly of the governments response without straying into contentious areas where proof one way or another is largely going to be a function of time.
The National Audit Office has made an estimate of the costs of the measures announced to date to deal with the pandemic of £210bn. That, as far as I can see, does not include the as yet unknown impact on tax revenues or the increased spending on unemployment benefits due to the economic consequences of lockdown and subsequent measures. Suffice to say that the £150bn borrowed in the first four months of the fiscal year is already equivalent to the entire budget deficit for the 2008/09 year of the financial crisis, which subsequently ushered in years of “austerity “.
However, that’s all just numbers. For some context the NHS budget for 2018/19 was £115bn. So the financial cost is on track to be at least twice that. That’s tantamount to saying that you could have increased the NHS budget by 20% for a decade. What might that have achieved? How many Grannies “saved”?
Of course it’s hypothetical because in the absence of COVID that money would not have been spent. But it is a least a way to introduce the financial consequences without being accused of trying to put a value on human life.
1). It’s never been said 65k Covid dead
2). At it’s max it was 55k Covid deaths
3). Since reduced to 46k+ with more downward reductions to follow.
4). They are neither excessive or excess deaths.
As one bright young lady, who is neither an Economist or a G.P., succinctly put it to me yesterday
“Everybody knows that everyone who died was dying anyway”.
Yes, two certainties, death and taxes.
The 65,700 “excess deaths” is from the FT page. 41,732 attributable to Coronavirus from Worldometers. Both likely too high, but it begs the question as to what accounts for the difference between the two.
As for deaths neither excessive or excess, that suggests no role for healthcare, hence the concept of quality adjusted life years. Oddly I came across a sceptical write-up of the costs of lockdown factoring this in, even if you believe the Imperial estimate of 500k lives at risk, in the Guardian of all places.
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/sep/06/how-much-did-the-covid-19-lockdown-really-cost-the-uk
Just looking at Boris’s dishevelled and nervous state on Alex Belfield’s video of Tobias Elwood’s request for the Army to be employed on the streets. Boris is not in charge any more (if he ever was). His body language shows that he is scared. No doubt scared of implementing what he will soon be instructed to do.
This might have something to do with it:
“Last night Mr Johnson was spooked by Government scientists with warnings of hundreds of daily coronavirus deaths ‘within weeks’ as they told the terrified Prime Minister: ‘There is no alternative to a second national lockdown’.”
Someone is deliberately terrifying Boris, and he’s passing it on to the rest of us.
I have to disagree with Toby as I think this is being done on purpose.
There are too many of these advisors who are on the Left in politics, and are using it to undermine this country, government, and our economy.
Seconded on your point there LMS. Deliberate.
The quote painted a picture of boris having bedtime stories being read to him.
Give over on ‘the left’ shit to try to feel better about your own political prejudices.
This nonsense has a wide base, reaching across the conventional political spectrum.but the right have been in power for ten years – so don’t come the ‘nothing to do with me, guv’ utter f.ing nonsense.
Its as much a delusion as Covid itself.
Beam me up, Scottie.
Why is this bugger ever given column inches?
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/sep/19/england-wide-covid-lockdown-needed-sooner-later-says-former-adviser-neil-ferguson
Then again, it is The Guardian.
Why is this guy still in a job?
WEell – Imperial ‘do a job’ … as their funding shows.
Of course the twat wants a lockdown so he can try and claim he was right. His problem is Sweden.
That twat was given an airing on
R2 News this morning to spout his bilge, nothing to counter it, of course.
Did he sound broken? His eyes look broken in recent pictures. He is a harmful danger to our nation.
More softening up in the MSM again.
Now … Why is he a former adviser??? …. Let me think.
… but it wasn’t that he got things spectacularly wrong, was it?
& on the flagship (!) Today programme, and leading the headlines on the 1 o’clock news, all Radio 4
Gates foundation pumps the guardian .. is it their future cities section or the enironment secyion? Rothchilds sponsor one section gates foundation another I get mixed up. Why its relevant is gates foundation pumos imperial college london. I believe directly fergussons research. Same as C Whitty got a got pump too from gates foundation for his research, that was prior to current dealings. I think Witty is now in a position at the Gates funded WHO.
But don’t let any of that stop you from buying with money a printed guardian. It’s good for the bottom of budgie cages or can be scrunched into balls to dry the toes of damp shoes.
I think I’ve found the reason why people are being sent long distances for tests.
The country is divided into regions (8-10-12?) each centred on a lab. If your regions’ lab is at full capacity no tests may be booked within that region.
So if your London lab is busy you get sent to the Midlands but if they are also at full capacity you get sent on to The Brecon Beacons.
This is what happens when you try to run something with computers without human intervention.
If I can figure this out why can’t wankcock, the tosser?
Yes, it’s an “algorithm” at work again.
“Computer says no!”
Wildly swinging one way and tother, this from the DT.
Anyone with access tell us what this article says?
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/09/19/uk-needs-follow-swedish-model-learn-live-covid/
hotrod, click on the link and as it loads into your browser click ESC twice. Then it shoud load for you. (I use Firefox). It is a very good article, everyone should try and read if possible.
This is written by Mark Woolhouse, SAGE member who broke cover a few weeks ago saying lockdown had been an enormous mistake, just suppressing, we should do a Sweden. Hopefully there’ll be a longer extract in tomorrow’s round up
Shared already. Sharing again.
Tim Spectre, Epidemiologist, Kings College London.
London may have herd immunity.
Children are super unlikely to have Covid and dont need testing or sending home from school.
98% of tests are negative.
https://youtu.be/wuMZaBL-M80
Starts at 11 mins in for 10 mins.
Richie Allen dissects the bbc 5 live interview.
I hope people understand why posting again, the BBC don’t want you to hear this. It stands listening to twice.
Basics…thanks so much for sharing. That’s a great listen and I would have missed it if you hadn’t posted. This deserves a slot above the line and a load of tweets!!
As discussed already Richie Aleen has being doing great like work exposing the media coverage, he is hugely experienced to do so. His media rundown segments are always worth listening too.
fascinating how Campbell’s attitude to Prof Spector changes s the interview goes on!
Great piece. I could sense the BBC drones squirming.
“The ‘Dunning-Kruger Effect’, in which people with low ability at a task overestimate their competence while feeling superior to others has been equally widespread;“
Like a lot of psychology this effect suffers from a replication issue and there have been recent papers showing that the effect arises when you apply statistical techniques to random sets of data.
It now falls into the category of Urban Myth.
The second part of the effect is when people who are very well qualified underestimate their skills
Just checked the London protest livestream. Large group advanced on police shouting “choose your side” – very antagonistic. Just saw a baton employed. Gutted. This is what is going to be in the media, if anything.
Should say that the huge majority are, of course, listening and gathering peacefully as far as can be seen.
Riot police arriving – calmly.
Mostly peaceful?
Very small band standing infront of police line. All others are leaving well alone and are in the square away from the police.
The media will always pick the image that fits their story not the image that shows the day best.
Can you link to live coverage of speakers please.
“Large group advanced on police shouting “choose your side” – very antagonistic”
I’d consider that fair comment. The RIC were the British police force in Ireland up to independence. They weren’t the police force after independence. Only 13 members of the RIC in what was the Free State joined the new police force. The rest (my great great grandfather included) were not welcome. In my ancestor’s case, he emigrated.
So what,this is what it will take.If anyone thinks they will give us our freedoms back they are deluded
The band of antagonists melts from the police line. The day is peaceful and clearly in good spirit. The crowd are listening intently and cheering positively.
I was in a kebab restaurant the other night.Behind me were 2 police officers having dinner.When I got up to leave I watched one of the officers take a chilli pepper from the other ones plate after asking whether he could have it.
10 years ago I said just that on a police officer blog (Nightjack I think).
Got quite a positive response.
Are some people just bloody stupid, or what? This from The Telegraph live feed:
Family make 200-mile round trip to get tested
A North East mum has described the “crazy journey” she and her family had to make to Scotland to get a Covid-19 test.
Karen Reynoldson revealed how she, her partner David Smith, and their daughters Sofia aged four and eight-year-old Neve had to make a 200-mile round trip from their home in Burnhope, County Durham, to Moffat in Dumfries and Galloway.
To make matters worse, during their two-hour drive there, she was told by her mum, who was also checking the availability of test times, that slots had become available in Newcastle.
“We were half way to Scotland by then so couldn’t turn back,” said Karen, 39. “I was spitting feather.”
Worse still, she said an official at Moffat told her, unofficially, that she and he family could probably have used the ‘QR codes’ they received to access their tests at any testing station.
“He said they wouldn’t turn you away. I’ve heard this a couple of time now,” said Karen, a medical secretary in the NHS. “We must have passed loads of testing stations on the way up there and I can imagine there were lots of people travelling in the opposite direction to us for tests down here.”
Yes.
Did they mention why they were so desperate to get tested?
My local test centre (north-east) was deserted as ever this morning.
Good info keep keeping an eye on it!
Is spitting feathers one of the symptoms now?
Karen being more Karen than a Karen ought to Karen
I posted about why this happens about an hour previously. This family was failed by a crappy computer system.
Apart from that people have been turned away from.testing stations for having the ‘wrong’ QR codes.
A conversation my dad had with the local environmental health department yesterday gave another insight into how clever and selective the cv 19 is.
At the side of the road adjacent to my mum and dad’s house is a parking area that is constantly being used as a big open air toilet,it is covered in urine and yesterday someone went a stage further and did a nice big dump on it and left used toilet roll blowing around.
I think this disgusting behaviour is connected with the local petrol stations and takeaways having their public toilets closed.
My dad eventually managed to speak to a council health inspector after the council initially showed no interest whatsoever.The inspector didn’t think it was anything to be concerned about ! and pretty much wasn’t interested.My dad decided to play the Covid fear card,the council themselves are always using CV as a reason to do/not do things,he said that surely with an apparently deadly pandemic underway human waste on the street where pedestrians have to walk because there is no footpath can’t be a good idea ?,the inspector was sure that CV can’t be caught from urine or feces.My dad said if that’s the case why are so many public toilets closed due to CV ?,the council chap said it was because people don’t wash their hands when using public toilets !,my dad said ‘so you think people who crap on the street do wash their hands then ?’.
So apparently a couple of centuries of advancements in hygiene and sanitation can be sacrificed on the high altar of the new covid religion along with everything else that makes a civilised society.
Your dad should have mentioned the much more deadly cholera and dysentery caused by unsanitary conditions, such as occurred in this country before people had toilets and a proper sewage system.
He did say he thought human waste was a far greater risk than Covid but the council chap didn’t reply,most of them at our council are completely onboard with the covid narrative and can’t cope with a dissident viewpoint.
More like a couple of millenia, pray to Cloacina for delivery from this insanity.
And people can’t wash their hands because the bloody toilets are closed. Catch 22.
Error
Something that particularly annoyed me as an out and about key worker was garages displaying Covid Safety signs
‘Use Gloves provided when taking fuel
Wash your hands frequently’
Glove dispensers empty, toilets closed!
This chart shows call to 111 re Covid. There is an up tick but it’s pretty small, the middle chart shows calls by age, the whole thing is mainly driver by the parents of 5-14 year olds. Take those out & it’s just about flat. Ironic when you think they’re the least likely to ever get ill.
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/918415/PHE_Remote_Health_Advice_Weekly_Bulletin_2020_Week_37.pdf
What I can’t understand is if people are showing symptoms of CV,flu or a cold why don’t they stop at home/self isolate and treat themselves with patient medication with lots of fluids,etc and of course contacting the doctor if it gets serious instead of travelling halfway across the country possibly infecting countless others only to be told to go back home/self isolate,etc,etc and save themselves journeys, time, money and very likely people’s lives.
No, I don’t understand it either.
Perhaps some people are thicker than we thought.
I’d suggest it’s a lot of them….
Most of them?
One possible silver lining is that people may think of doing this during annual ‘flu season rather than coughing over fellow commuters and workmates.
As they should anyway.
Children aren’t allowed back to school unless they have a negative test, so that would be one reason, and the same applies to those who work as they will have to isolate for 14 days unless they get a negative and would be paid SSP rather than their full wage.
Fair point, I see what you mean.
Overheard from my front garden yesterday as parents walked their children home from school.
“The doctors just aren’t seeing children, what if ‘katie’ comes down with meningitis?”
‘Probably depends who you are” replied her friend.
London Protests steaming live.
https://youtu.be/xx4gjL62zxI
Encouraging front page of the Telegraph:
by Prof Mark Woolhouse is Chair of Infectious Disease Epidemiology at the University of Edinburgh
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/09/19/uk-needs-follow-swedish-model-learn-live-covid/
Yes, SPI-M (though I’m not quite sure where they fit into the picture) and also Scotland’s Covid-19 Advisory Group. Good to see some sanity filtering through to MSM, though there is still a long way to go.
Think Ferguson is with SPI
Ah this outfit:
https://www.gov.uk/government/groups/scientific-pandemic-influenza-subgroup-on-modelling
Looks like the modelling team, I suppose that is good then that at least one them has some sanity to counter Ferguson.
Just for added info. Sturgeon admitted in press cinference her scientific info comes from SAGE identical to uk gov she said with abvisors to interpret for Scotland.
Good to read but for every sceptical article in the Torygiraffe there’s always about five or six doomer ones.
David Kelly wet job coming his way.
https://www.leicestermercury.co.uk/news/local-news/oadby-restaurant-temporarily-closed-council-4530103 reports on a large gathering for a wedding, which personally I cannot see a problem with. Some of the comments are horrible including wishing death on the individuals concerned.
I bet people who make comments like that have “Be Kind” on their Facebook pages.
https://3speak.co/watch?v=rairfoundation/mwtnhqvw
A very interesting just published interview with Sucharit Bhakdi 19 min with Austrian TV.English subtitles.Even if you might not agree with 100% what he says ,he is very eloquent and says many sensible things
Soooo… if my limited understanding is correct (unlikely)…
With a false positive rate of 1%;
If we have a theoretical population of 100,000 people and non have of have had covid19…
Testing 1000 of these people would yield 10 false positives, or ‘cases’ as the government calls them, even though nobody actually has the disease.
And the next day 10,000 test are done and 100 false positives (cases) result – then the infection rate would be exponential and the population locked down – even though nobody actually has covid19.
Makes perfect sense to me – don’t know what you’re all banging on about.
That’s right. And the masterplan (“moonshot”) is to test 60 million people every day (with some technology that hasn’t been invented yet). Assuming it has a similar FPR of 1%, then means everyday there will be 600,000 (false) positive cases, who will have to self-isolate for 14 days. Day 2 – another 600,000 etc. By Day 14 we’ll have 8.4 million people out of action, on a rolling basis.
This is the plan to get back to normal from the Prime Minister.
Well I’m in awe of the geniuses who thought up this truly masterplan…
Words fail me!
Designed to fail.only way to be sure you are safe is to take the vaccine
Moonshot aka lunacy
Why didn’t everyone carry a handkerchief as a matter of course, keep their distance from people, stay at home, away from the elderly, away from work when carrying symptoms of a cold before this minor common cold coronavirus epidemic in any case?
Exactly.
You would not want to know about the state of the hankies I carried about as a 60s schoolboy.
Coughing on Nan though, that was always a no-no
Usual lies from the media: Mail on line:”Conspiracy theorists clash with police, etc”
No surprise. Was surprised to see this there though!
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8750139/Scientists-claim-UK-covid-19-victims-July-August-died-causes.html
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=8VXch7mULLE
Why Has Victoria, Australia Become a Totalitarian Basket Case?
https://caldronpool.com/victorian-government-pushes-new-bill-to-detain-conspiracy-theorists-anti-lockdown-protesters-and-families/amp/
Victorian Government Pushes New Bill to Detain ‘Conspiracy Theorists,’ Anti-Lockdown Protesters, and Families
STAFF WRITER ON SEPTEMBER 16, 2020
https://www.europereloaded.com/australias-state-of-victoria-sold-out-to-the-soros-backed-strong-cities-network-scn-with-privatised-police/
Australia’s State of Victoria Sold Out to the Soros-Backed Strong Cities Network (SCN) with PRIVATISED POLICE
Note: this story has been refuted, and it’s been denied that the Victorian police have been privatised. Police over-reach and brutality is not just a conspiracy theory, however.
https://www.isdglobal.org/programmes/policy-government-advisory/strong-cities-network/
“Launched at the United Nations General Assembly in September 2015, ISD’s Strong Cities Network (SCN) is the first ever global network of mayors, policy-makers, and practitioners, united in building social cohesion and community resilience to counter violent extremism in all its forms.
The SCN comprises more than 100 member cities from every major global region, each with specific lessons, practice or challenges surrounding violent extremism. It serves as a platform for communities, CVE professionals and local political leaders to connect with their counterparts around the world to learn from one another’s experience to inform and develop their own local practice.
We also work closely with civil society groups and partner organisations to support our cities in establishing inclusive, welcoming communities, safeguarding respect for human rights to prevent violence and the hate, division and polarisation which engenders violent extremism. Our programming spans training, research, and online and offline activities and resources aimed at enriching understanding of – and enabling more effective local responses to – the challenge of violent extremism at the local level and on a global scale.”
“Violent extremism” = people who post things we don’t like, not actual violent extremists.
https://strongcitiesnetwork.org/en/scn-regions/global-summit-2018/
Strong Cities Global Summit 2018
Took place in Melbourne, Victoria.
“Delegates from cities, municipalities and local communities around the world had the opportunity to focus on specific issues pertinent to their own context, ranging from local action planning, countering polarisation/populism…”
“Populism” = not socialist, left-wing, i.e. political parties that disagree with us
Victoria, Australia is a member, as is the UK Home Office and UK Foreign Office.
It’s a further step towards a global government, and Chinese-style social control. Exaggerating the virus outbreak as a devastating pandemic is a means to an end, as is climate change.
Countries with the most extreme lockdowns have higher per capita death rates.
Sweden is an outlier in Europe, but there are Republican states that have not gone with stringent lockdowns that have not had very bad outbreaks and death tolls.
In the UK, Boris is being advised by people who don’t have the UK’s best interests at heart. I think Toby underestimates the level of global collusion of the far Left. They are collectivist by nature, whereas right-wing conservatives are individualistic. The far left have infiltrated all the UK institutions, including universities and schools. The WHO has a discredited revolutionary Marxist as its head, and he kowtows to the CCP. If the Chinese scientist who appeared on Tucker Carlson is to be believed, the Chinese developed and released this virus to damage the world’s economy, presumably to further their goal of becoming the world’s dominate country, replacing the US.
The UN is dominated by corrupt socialist and leaders, and they have plans for managing the world’s population. They hate Trump.
I don’t see us getting out of this, unless Boris grows a spine and sacks his current advisors, and it doesn’t look like he will.
Excellent information. I noticed Canada has a lot of cities signed up to Strong Cities. Birmingham Manchester Leicester London in UK.
I honestly think that he along with the rabble that’s laughingly called a government would see this country completely destroyed rather than admit that they got it wrong.
I think some of this overlaps with the UN smart cities agenda. Interesting that apparently Auckland and Melbourne were signed up to be part of the smart city rollout.
The other day I had a routine blood test at my surgery – a rural practice that I have found to be ok during this time – and I was offered an antibody test. As I had an unusual and particularly nasty cough and fever back in February I agreed. The nurse did warn me about false negatives which I was aware of and of course it came back negative.
This may well be correct, however if taken at face value it shows that there are a lot of unpleasant viruses and infections out there all the time that we catch, our immune system kicks in ( sometimes with the help of penicillin) and most of us recover fine. This is how it’s always been and always will be. The idea that we can control these things is preposterous.
Indeed – that’s been part of the argument from the beginning. The last few years in particular has seen a number of viruses resulting in long-lasting coughs.
Exactly. The only unprecedented thing about this virus is that centuries of actual science have been thrown out the window for a new ideology.
Meanwhile Labour produce this
https://twitter.com/ClarkesLatin/status/1306891371312304128?s=20
As.. inspiration? Pr? Reassurance? Comfort? Fun?
Keir gunning for wistful lighthouse in stormy times and achieves man in foolish visor thinking about his breakfast.
https://drmalcolmkendrick.org/2020/09/19/growing-concern-about-lockdown-from-doctors-in-belgium/
Perhaps, Lockdown Sceptics ought to have paid attention to the vaccine consultation before it closed, and Jane Merrick is only telling us what was in it when it was launched three weeks ago. Most ominous was Johnson announcing the second wave yesterday evening just as it was closing. The probability is that you have still not got hold of the main narrative which is to stretch out the misery – come what may – until vaccines become available. We’ve had the fake rise in cases of the summer months and now we will have inevitably a real rise in hospitalisation and deaths simply because we are heading for autumn and winter and respiratory diseases go up. This will likely be made much worse by a phenomenon called viral interference from the flu vaccine drive – in fact they also intend to give coronavirus and flu vaccines together (which has never been trialled). Another interesting issue is whether any of the immunity from the vaccines is actually from the vaccines rather than just comparable to the immunity by now existing in the population at large – see Peter Doshi’s important article in BMJ. He may have put his finger on a major fraud:
https://www.bmj.com/content/370/bmj.m3563
Of course, back in 2009 less than on tenth of the population took the swine flu vaccine in the end which was just as well because it ended up causing narcolepsy:
https://www.bmj.com/content/364/bmj.l1259/rr
This time we are dealing with a whole collection of new technologies only trialled for a few months on well people, so God knows what will happen.
John, many of us did submit to the consultation. I certainly did, as a non-specialist objective bystander, but as someone who has a background in natural science. I also copied it elsewhere, so ‘the powers that be’ cannot pretend they were not warned.
I did too.
I think you will find that we know most of that John, thanks.
Thanks John – we were given plenty of notice on this site (and I wouldn’t have heard of the consultation elsewhere) – they have received my two-penn’orth.
NOBODY SEEMS TO BE LOOKING AT THE ‘BIG PICTURE’, it may be found HERE: http://www.nwo4ep.com
Worth reading RFKjnr’s book ‘American Values’ which links what his father and uncle were up against before they were assassinated with what we are up against now.
Just reading this at the mo – really interesting. Anything with RFK Jr piques my interest right now, he absolutely knows what went on back then, & what is going on now.
“Poor Boris” trending on twitter, what laughable tosh.
Bugger Boris more like, well perhaps not
You’ve spoilt my tea now!!
This is a test of mental endurance.
The government can throw as much shit as they like our way but it will have no impact as we are far tougher mentally than them or any of the pro lockdown, mainstream media obsessed zombies.
We will outlast them all, we will be proved right and get back to normal.
Well said!
I have discovered and drawn upon reserves of mental energy that I didn’t know were there. Plenty more where this came from as well.
The truth is our most powerful ally, and our greatest source of strength.
I’ve had very low moments these last months, but I’ve been finding new strength as well. We’ve got to believe truth will win the day eventually.
Same with me!
The last couple of weeks are really starting to get to me though, it feels like my reserves of mental endurance and positive energy are really starting to get worn down.
We have already been proven right, hence the great efforts underway to deny it. It’s if the majority will ever see the light before it’s too late.
MSM have kept this quiet.
Kept what quiet?
Ah apologies, see the link now!
The Army is already involved in the testing stations but, should the government try to use them against us in anything other than violent civil unrest, I can’t see them wanting to get so used. They remain our sons brothers and friends in real life.
Tobias is another tosser and johnson is clearly unwell apart from being unfit.
He doesn’t look well does he.
When he ended up close to death with cv19, the cabinet just carried on without him, I wonder what they would do if he falls again.
What army?
This country only possesses a small militia with tiny teeth arms, most of them already deployed in Estonia, Mali and elsewhere
yes – it is like our huge navy that protects our seas and prevents invasion … ah yes … i’ll get my coat
The army is full of patriotic young working class men.i cannot see them being used against the British people
Hmmm. The British Army have actually produced leaflets about how they identify extremism – they say to look for: ‘People who are angry about the loss of national identity.. people who make inaccurate generalisations about the left or government..’ among other things!!
I’ll probably regret asking but wtf are we doing in Estonia ?
Paras are out there modelling facemasks with EU for european flags on them
I’m curious—-What do these masked zombies do when they want to sneeze? Take their masks off? Leave their masks on? Prize open the mask and let it out sideways?Government advice is to sneeze into your elbow:
“Cover your mouth and nose with disposable tissues when you cough or sneeze. If you do not have a tissue, sneeze into the crook of your elbow, not into your hand. Dispose of tissues into a disposable rubbish bag and immediately wash your hands with soap and water for 20 seconds or use hand sanitiser”
I live in hope that I see someone who is about to sneeze wrestling with the conundrum of what to do. Whip off mask double quick? grope for hidden hanky? Sneeze into elbow?
I would imagine that the task of trying to do the right thing, in a split second, would be too much for the average zombie to comprehend and the face nappy would just get the full blast!
Oh, and by the way, what is so hygienic about the ‘crook of ones elbow’ that the government would recommend it?
Especially as you are told to open doors with your elbows; Houdini would have had trouble with that one.
I have often wondered this very same thing. It seems to me that face masks are primarily intended to take the place of tissues, because the argument goes that the main way this virus is spread is through the expulsion of droplets through coughing or sneezing, and wearing a face mask helps stop that. But it does make for a very awkward dilemma when one actually has to sneeze or cough – tissues are by far more flexible, and therefore more effective, than having a tissue tethered to one’s face, which must be removed to “catch” a cough or a sneeze effectively. On being challenged for not wearing a mask by a nurse in my local GP surgery, I assured her that I had tissues and would use them if I had to cough or sneeze. She really had no answer to that..
When these collaborators are challenged by logic they tend to go quiet or get angry.
In my experience masked staff in Sainsbury’s remove them, sneeze over nearest shelf, then put mask back in place. Nice!
Surprise surprise, today the Guardian published a letter about the end of Covid being closer than we think;
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/sep/18/is-covid-end-closer-than-we-think
Every day another little brick gets knocked out of the Covid wall, eventually it will fall down.
P.S. My thanks to everyone who replied to my earlier post about false positives, eureka! I think I have now got my head around the concept- wonders will never cease.
Thanks Steve
Bet they didn’t put this anywhere near their front page though?
What’s the email address if we want something featured in the next newsletter?
lockdownsceptics@gmail.com
Thank you!
Former BBC journalist Anna Brees does not think the public are “getting the truth” about the pandemic from the mainstream media and the government:
“It’s starting to look sinister”.
Speaking to talkRADIO’s Mark Dolan, Anna said “I want to know who is controlling what Boris Johnson says… you do not use language like that unless you want to induce fear… I don’t know who is behind this but I’m determined to find out”.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SwJXZmoJ-cA&ab_channel=talkRADIO
she doesn’t know who is behind it?
or can’t / won’t say?
Of course she does.
Her Channel
https://www.youtube.com/c/AnnaBrees/videos
Not sure if this has already been posted, but everyone should read the latest from Dr Malcolm Kendrick
https://drmalcolmkendrick.org/
Wow, that is devastating.
https://academic.oup.com/cid/advance-article/doi/10.1093/cid/ciaa638/5842165
This is the original article from Canada showing no infectivity in PCR test Ct>24.Later articles has discussed 30 or 35 Ct as a cut off for infectivity. However, this original article is impressive. They took 90 PCR pos samples and grew in viral cultures and could only grow virus in 26 samples.
It seems there are no justifications at all for saying any sample Ct35 and over being classed as positive. And probably the level could be reduced further. One wonders how many thousands of wrongly categorized cases in Europe. This is an enormous problem in the recent spike in Europe. We are wasting enormous resources and at the same time making it more difficult to identify true cases needing isolation.
“SARS-CoV-2 Vero cell infectivity was only observed for RT-PCR Ct < 24 and STT < 8 days. Infectivity of patients with Ct > 24 and duration of symptoms > 8 days may be low. This information can inform public health policy and guide clinical, infection control, and occupational health decisions. Further studies of larger size are needed.”
Agreed it is amazing that this whole lock-down edifice is now built on this extremely shaky testing foundation. The question is how to get anyone to do anything about it? I have tweeted and written to my MP but nobody seems to be listening or doing anything. Would there be any point in running a petition calling for a fundamental review of testing and the testing system?
Good post, and thanks to swedenborg for the original. The prospect of Mr Geoffrey Cox MP taking the time to get his head round this sort of stuff seems remote.
I don’t know how much longer he can ignore it though. This is building towards a break point, methinks.
If you were really trying to achieve containment you could be positive with a high Ct but be presymptomatic. So there are theoretical circumstances in which you might want to quarantine based on a higher Ct. In practice now there’s no point testing anyone anyway except ill people by doctors.
Just spotted this in the DT comments:
Have just got back from Trafalgar Sq and the police were agitating and doing their best to close it down …a peaceful protest with some provocative kettling, try to get a fight going…without question.
Anyone else got info about today’s demo?
I remember the police from the 60’s, nothing changes.
So no march to Downing Street? Is there a march next week?
Hours of video coverage on the link. 95% peaceful crowd, who attended for all the right reasons. A few of the ‘lads’ (obviously different profile) provoking the police in places and it got a bit messy here and there. This will be the bit that gets reported of course. I could never condone taking aggression to the police, but it’s probably a sign of things to come, unless the Govt steps back from the brink in a big way.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xx4gjL62zxI
Professor Neil Ferguson – whose modelling led the Government to order the lockdown in March – said the UK is facing a “perfect storm” following the easing of controls over the summer.
I’m speechless.
This week’s SAGE/ICL doom prophecy is sponsored by…
Why is anyone even speaking to him?!
Probably because of a “request” from a certain common sponsor.
If anyone is interviewing him it should only be to nail him for the irreparable damage ( including excess deaths) his flawed modelling and doomsaying has wrought.
Indeed but MSM are still just giving him the mic to announce his latest doom prophecies. Same with most of SAGE.
He’s right. We are facing a perfect storm of cancer deaths, mental health problems and poverty related issues. It’s down to his lockdown not the easing of it.
Pity Ferguson isn’t!
Why won’t this pr*ck just fu*k off ? Why is he the go to man. Lockdown kills people. It is not a solution. It is Murder. The man is sick.
He’s an utter, utter twat of the highest order, it’s tough to decide who’s the worst with Hancock also in the running.
After he got caught breaking lockdown how had this man got any credibility
I’m not saying Ferguson’s right but why do you think he’s wrong?
Let’s face it, all the speculation that the virus had burnt itself and/or the UK was close to herd immunity has been clearly debunked by the latest data. While it might not be spreading as fast as it did in March, it’s following a similar pattern of increasing cases leading to increasing hospital admissions and so on.
As we spend more time indoors in the coming months a significant surge could be on the cards.
Probably because he’s been wrong about everything else he’s ever predicted and not by a small amount but a ridiculous amount. He has no credibility.
The virus has burnt itself out in this country. There is no data out there that shows otherwise. Asymptomatic people and false positives do not count.
There is real evidence of increases in infections in the North East, North West and London in the ONS data. We will likely see the same thing happen everywhere else.
The fact that it’s happening in London is a good indication that this is a seasonal R0 adjustment. Whatever happens happens in London first as the conditions there are more efficient.
You’re right to disregard all the “Pillar 2” tests but although they are over 90% false positives provided that remains constant and that the sampling method does as well (who they say should get tests and who does) then it will follow the same trends. Those two provisions are occasionally true for short periods so there is some small signal of reality even in the Pillar 2 tests but its probably not worth the effort to try and dig it out.
It’s too early to say exactly how close we are to herd immunity, but looks like Sweden are pretty close.
Stockholm might be close. I doubt the rest of Sweden is.
Increasing hospital admissions?
See responses from Julian and Guy153 above.
I’m not really sure what your fundamental point and/or motivation is, Mayo. Julian outlines the argument against lockdown per se pretty well. I’m unsure whether you think that we should all be panicking or not. And, beyond questioning Levitt and Gupta and defending Ferguson, I’ve never seen you expressing an opinion.
My motivation is the “truth”. I find the evidence supporting the end of the pandemic is weak. It might be over but then again it might not.
Levitt and Gupta are guilty of making ridiculous claims. Gupta seems to have backed away from her “close to her immunity” drivel and is now promoting it as policy.
I don’t like Ferguson but he’s too often criticised for things he didn’t say or do. His predicted death toll for the March intervention was on the money.
No Mayo. You revealed what you are here on this page. You made a mistake. Overstepped the bounds of the reasonable contrary question. Good for you to robustly question matters, but oops, you made a mistake and overstepped. Good luck in your future career.
Which “mistake” might that be?
I criticise Levitt with some justification. I also criticised Sunetra Gupta who, some months ago, made the ridiculous claim that we might have herd immunity
So, again, what’s your point.
Of the 3 scenarios Ferguson presented, 1 tallied roughly with reality. As there is no on the ground, real life evidence that lockdown has made a significant difference anywhere and, as the is real, on the ground evidence that lockdown is irrelevant, okne might be tempted to assume that the “with lockdown” model presented was right simply because it included something near the right inputs, not because the fundamental model is relevant.
And even assuming (which is a huge assumption) the other two models had any bearing on reality, it’s still hard to make an economic, social, cultural or health case for lockdown. Even if we temporarily deferred 450,000 deaths, the cost to society is still too high.
So, again, what’s your point? I think we’re grown up enough here to accept that there will be a seasonal wave in the autumn/winter (autumn probably, more than winter given the behaviour of coronaviruses in general). This is what we would see with an endemic coronavirus. At the risk of sounding harsh – so what? We can’t change it.
Because what you do is turn up and defend the Ferguson model and attack Levitt and Gupta, you look like a troll. Personally, I don’t really care about the models, because we’ve seen a few months of reality. I would give you the benefit of the doubt, but you don’t ever actually answer the question “so what?”
For my money, as many people predicted to die by Ferguson might actually have been vulnerable to die. But nobody has yet proved that lockdowns changed anything and _anyway_ lockdown is still too high a price.
For my money, Gupta and Levitt may be completely wrong, though they don’t seem to be. It doesn’t matter.
So again – so what? What’s your opinion?
To me that is a meaningless stat. There is no context to it. What have they gone into hospital for in the first place? How old are the people admitted? How many pre-existing conditions have they got? That data needs to be shared for each hospital admission.
Considering the majority of people who test positive have no symptoms. You can’t then say that every hospital admission with a posture test result is a result of covid. It’s probably the opposite and Covid has nothing to do with why they are in hospital.
The “meaningless stat” is the number of daily Covid-19 cases who are admitted to hospital. I’m sure it’s just coincidence but the rate of increase correlates close with the rate of increase from the ONS survey (with about one week lag). It also correlates with the Covid symptom study data (also one week lag)
The data from a number of sources are pretty consistent.
Yawn.
Great comment. I’ll try to analyse it in more detail later.
Will you be using your special type of arithmetic ?
Are they admitted to hospital due to Covid or, more likely, gone into hospital for something else and testing positive based on a PCR test giving a horrendous percentage of false positives? IMHO, they are creating a problem to justify extension of their policies.
It’s too early to say exactly how close we are to herd immunity, but looks like Sweden are pretty close. Really need to wait until a whole year or 18 months has passed before we have a cleared picture.
HOWEVER, the fundamental point is that the virus is clearly nothing like as dangerous as was originally predicted, and kills mainly very old, very ill people. Even if we have a small or medium sized “second wave”, if the government had kept the Nightingale Hospitals open we would have ample NHS capacity, and the measures taken against the virus, which have clearly not been very effective, at best postponing the inevitable, are on no rational basis justified by the threat of the virus.
There have been numerous pandemics in the last decades of comparable severity, some of which would have had a much bigger effect in terms of lost QALYs than this one, and none of them have merited the response this one has had.
We can argue about precisely where we are on the curve, relative to other countries, but the sceptic argument really rests on the fact that the response has been disproportionate AND useless.
Your choices with a virus are simple:
1) Live with it or
2) Live with it
1) Lock down super hard until you have a vaccine (which may be never, and you’ll all be dead or utterly miserable by then anyway) or
2) Protect the vulnerable, provide the resources that healthcare needs within reason to cope with peaks in demand
Either way, you’re talking about reaching herd immunity by the least damaging route taking into account public health in the wider sense
I’m not sure there’s anything here i disagree with. I might draw the line at the “very old, very ill” bit and while we have had pandemics in the past this virus was something of an unknown quantity back in Feb/Mar.
If it turns out Ferguson has blundered it won’t be because of his model – he could have used a simple SIR model and got a similar result. It will be the assumptions he used in the model. The main one being an assumption of almost a wholly homogeneous population. While I’m incIined to believe herd immunity is well below the 60% level, I can’t be sure and as far as I’m concerned the jury is still out.
Really need to wait until a whole year or 18 months has passed before we have a cleared picture.
Amen to that. But you might pass the message on to your fellow sceptics who are too ready to use short term data – often cherry-picked – to call this pandemic over.
Demonstrate to me that this virus is especially severe. Nobody else has been able to do it – and I’ve been looking.
I didn’t say it was especially severe but even a relatively mild virus can cause a high death toll in a highly susceptible population.
Ferguson assumed an IFR of 0.9% which is a bit high but it wasn’t an unreasonable estimate at the time.
It certainly looks over in Sweden. Less so in other places, though looking at Sweden you’d think those other places were not far off.
I suppose if one is trying to make a case to stop the lockdown and other nonsense it’s easier to make if you can show people that what they thought was a terrible danger has passed. The evidence suggests that is has, largely, but it’s not conclusive. The more fundamental case seems to be harder to make, because people seem to have developed a somewhat distorted view of the world in which saving people from dying of one disease at all costs is rational.
I suppose if one is trying to make a case to stop the lockdown and other nonsense it’s easier to make if you can show people that what they thought was a terrible danger has passed.
I’m not so sure about that. If it turns out that the virus hasn’t passed then it damages credibility.
I’d prefer an argument which shows that lockdown is not an effective measure. This is close to what I think anyway.
Infections are going up a bit in some areas but it is nothing like the peak. We’re obsessing over an increase over a couple of weeks from 0.05% to 0.1%. At the peak of the epidemic, if we’d been doing any testing, we would have seen positive rates of 20% or higher at the peak with a doubling time of less than a week. If we still had a high level of susceptibility it is implausible that those conditions would not have already reoccurred in the summer.
You cannot have infections almost stable at 0.05% of the population for several months without being in an endemic equilibrium.
What we’re seeing is a seasonal adjustment, perhaps related to schools reopening. We will see an increase in hospitalizations and deaths but it will max out at no more than a few tens per day which the health system will easily be able to cope with.
We have all been saying we expected a modest increase in the autumn.
By your reasoning what does it take to disprove Fergie’s wild and fanciful claims? If cases don’t go up you say it was because of the masks and restrictions. If they do then you were right about the high susceptibility. But we see no signal in the data of the restrictions. What we do see is a graph of deaths that follows very closely a SIR model with a higher R0 in the winter. What the SIR model is modelling is herd immunity.
Infections are going up a bit in some areas but it is nothing like the peak.
Infections were going up a bit in some areas in February. That was nothing like the peak either.
Again – what is your point?
He let it slip higher up matt he, yes he, is a bored little person.
His point isn’t discourse.
My point is that you (as a group) seem convinced that this pandemic is over as far as the UK is concerned. This blog has consistently claimed that there will be no “second wave”.
I say the evidence for such a claim is weak.
What is the evidence for a second wave, is it normal for there to be a second wave?
His point is getting fed, surely ?
By your reasoning what does it take to disprove Fergie’s wild and fanciful claims?
Ferguson presented a range of scenarios depending on intervention strategies and timing. For the ‘suppression’ scenario he predicted about 40k deaths – and a second wave in October.
I predicted the same number a few days before he did as a simple extrapolation from where it was clear Spain was heading. The difference is I was honest about the fact that that was the “do nothing” scenario instead of creating a big drama about pretending that the inevitable outcome was a result of phony interventions.
Was just about to say similar. While one of NF’s three scenarios predicted 40k deaths based on suppression, it suggests that non suppression in places like Sweden and Belarus (even with the uncertainty with their reporting) should have led to magnitudes mores than the UK. Japan too.
The argument in favour of lockdown stop at flattening the curve. That’s it.
Oh and the idea that his 0.9% number was close to the mark or was justified seems incredible when we know how broad a way in which the Covid deaths were counted. The false positives, the assumed Covid deaths with no tests, the with Covid/of Covid.
How wrong can someone be? And even if I was willing to forgive someone being poor at their one job, the consequences for being wrong in this case have been horrific
Even if covid comes roaring back, the excess mortality from other causes during lockdown and the economic damage, missed cancer etc are strong evidence that lockdown is not the answer.
Mayo you just revealed what you are. Thumbed you down for this first time.
Why? I’m serious. I don’t mind criticism if it’s backed by a coherent argument.
You act as a joke mayo. Spout hypocritical morals like some one with business. Enjoy your 2020.
That’s not a coherent argument.
I hope I live to see him arrested.
I wish he was bloody speechless !
A short break in North Yorkshire has left me really sad. I’m hoping all the muzzled and distanced folk in shops, cafes etc here are not Yorkshire people. They look scared and we’ve given up trying to help local businesses as we’re treated as if we’re carrying plague.
Being of Yorkshire stock I always though we have a bit more grit & a sturdy backbone, sad to hear both have been lost.
Was thinking about popping up to Whitby for a day out and to put some money into the local economy, doesn’t sound like they want our diseased cash.
I was supposed to be staying near Fountains Abbey this week, am very glad that we were able to postpone to 2021. That said who knows what things will be like, it seems probable that many places will go out of business before then.
Seen today outside my local supermarket this morning … man lowers mask , wipes his runny nose with his fingers, then refits mask over his nose.
Then there’s the smokers.
Yes, at least smoking gives immunity though.
Seen lots of that – I normally say in a loud voice “that’s disgusting, wiping your hands all over a bacteria laden mask then your face then put it back, no wonder they are all getting ill. Disgusting behaviour.”
And these masks are supposed to keep us safe. The ones that rip my knitting are those who put it on the table in restaurants, pubs & cafes.
If infections, cases or whatever they call it today are indeed rising then it’s no wonder when people do this kind of thing. I honestly believe that masks are responsible for spreading more viruses than the actually prevent.
I’ve lost count with how many times I’ve seen that. It’s disgusting.
https://mobile.twitter.com/UKCovid19Stats/status/1307263726991675392
This chart is one of the best I have seen for ages. Plots cases based on doing the same amount of testing the whole way through the pandemic. You almost need a magnifying glass to see the second wave, even before discounting for false positives.
https://twitter.com/ChGefaell/status/1307294217987911681/photo/1
Interesting table of deaths in Spain comparing first peak and the current.One can see that regions spared last time seems to have gone up substantially i.e. Aragaon
Data from Spain as regards cases must be read with extreme caution as often total cases include serology pos patients as current cases!
From yesterday
“We see there’s a lot of confusion about Spain because the government is counting antibody test results from people who have already recovered.
New cases (including antibodies): 14,389 (vs 11,291 yesterday)
PCR confirmed new cases (current infections): 4,697 (vs 4,541 yesterday)
Just published about Spain Oxford Henghan group.Important to view the right figures.
https://www.cebm.net/covid-19/spains-outbreak-updated-on-regional-differences-and-proportion-of-asymptomatics/
Please correct me if I am wrong,
If a town with a population of 20,000 has 2000 tests on a single day and 20 people (1% False positives) are positive cases, then that town would be described as having 100 in 100,000 cases.
And if a further 2000 are carried out the following day with 20 false positives then it will be 200 per 100000 cases.
By day 5 there will be 1000 per 100,000 cases, even though every ‘case’ may simply be a false positive
20 / 2000 = 1% positive (false or otherwise), but this is 1000 in 100,000 (1%).
Next day another 20 / 2000 is still 1%, but combining both days should give 40 / 4000, which is still 1% (1000 in 100,000).
So the rate will stay the same (if the same proportion tested positive out of the total tested). I’m not sure how many days they average together to produce the official rate / 100,000.
A different question is how do they count total “cases” in some area. Is it just the total positive results in the last reported day?
Or maybe that’s wrong? Do they divide positives (20) by the population (20,000) (not the number of tests done – 2,000)? That doesn’t make sense to me, but doesn’t mean they don’t do that.
I think they’re counting total apparent positive tests as a proportion of the population, not extrapolating from the % of apparent positive tests to make an assumption about the number of “infections“ in the population.
Yes – they take a 7 day total, not an average rate over 7 days
Ah, I see, thanks
Is it worthwhile getting the Newsnight journalist to do a follow up piece looking at PCR testing and false positives and over sensitivity – given it’s the primary edifice underlying recent lockdowns and measures?. Also agree re the petition idea but think getting the message out now, on MSM is more important
She can be found at deborah@drdeborahcohen.com (if it’s her you mean)
Long time reader, first time post (from across the pond in mask-crazed New York City).
I little while ago, I started to write a post for my own site on the case against masks. I began by examining what seemed to be the most cited (at least in the media) pro-mask study, a meta-study funded by the WHO and published in the prestigious The Lancet. Long story short, upon examining in depth all 29 of the underlying studies referenced in the meta-study, I have concluded that the Lancet study is “junk science based on junk science,” is riddled with data errors and bad assumptions, should be retracted and should by no means be used to justify mask mandates by the general public.
I wrote up my findings, if anyone is interested: http://www.economicsfaq.com/retract-the-lancets-and-who-funded-published-study-on-mask-wearing-criticism-of-physical-distancing-face-masks-and-eye-protection-to-prevent-person-to-person-transmissi/
Keep up the fight. I wish we had a similar site to LockdownSkeptics here in the U.S.
No international boundaries on the internet so give them the link as it’s the masks hit being spouted most places.
Be good to hear from across the pond, like to be able to do some more major road trips in years to come in the US so need to hear the truth on what’s happening there.
Thank you for this! I read the whole blog post.
The kicker:
“All are observational studies based on questionnaires or interviews”.
That’s all any reasonable person needs to know.
THE SCIENCE
Welcome aboard Andrew, always pleased to see new names here.
Welcome! The mask craze is out of control in Toronto as well. Here’s a good roundup of the mask literature by Canada’s own Denis Rancourt to add to your collection.
https://www.rcreader.com/sites/default/files/Denis-Rancourt-Face-masks-lies-damn-lies-and-public-health%3Dofficials-a-growing-body-of-evidence-August-03-2020.pdf
Thanks for your post and interesting read of your article. Very similar to the findings of Denis Rancourt in Canada who completely destroyed one reference in the meta study used by Chu. It was truly an appalling reference. It is remarkable that Lancet has not retracted this meta study, which has had a devastating influence since published.
I think this short article in J Paediatric Health in June is well worth reading
Do face masks protect against Covid-19
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7323223/
It is very important in dismissing facemasks. This article is written by the very well-known Professor in Inf Diseases in Sydney, Australia, David Isaacs
Excellent work , very impressive
Nice piece on unpandemonium.org about face coverings and shopping.
Smile
From Prof Balloux
“It is interesting how divided scientists are on the best way ahead, so much for the ‘follow the science’ mantra. Though, it is probably fair to state that there is a trend for qualified ‘infectious disease epidemiologists’ to share Mark Woolhouse’s views.”
Woolhouse comments in DT has been commented here on the blog
I still look on my daily walks as an important part of trying to stay sane. With the news particularly upsetting today this morning went for a 4 mile long walk in our local woods. Quite a few others out there enjoying the lovely weather and without exception we exchanged smiling ‘good mornings’ and in some cases a short chat. Everything absolutely normal. Then as soon as I got back to walking through our local station and past Tesco it was back to dreary masked faces. Not even an attempt to say hello from anybody in this last five minutes. But at least for an hour or so I could enjoy life as it should be.
So sad man. This country is going to the dogs. And not the stripy type in number six chasing a stuffed teddy around a track…
Toby’s PCR testing False Negative paragraph as a video…
https://twitter.com/RealNormalPod/status/1307257907017383937?s=20
I think widely exposing the PCR numbers scam is extremely important.
It’s a prima facie case of manipulating the science to manipulate the public.
And is surely unlawful.
I agree Kevin. The lack of correction about Hancocks understanding shows something is wrong. Political vultures and journalists should be all over him.
The problem is the complexity describing a simple principle – even false positive is a hopelessly complex name, people switch off at that alone.
Toby’s PCR testing False Negative paragraph as a video…
https://twitter.com/RealNormalPod/status/1307257907017383937?s=20
We took a walk through Glasgow city centre today. A few weeks ago we did the same thing and noted the graffiti and general rundown condition.
Today was a bit different. We choose to walk along one of the city’s most famous shopping streets. 11am on a Saturday and it was more like 8am on a Tuesday in terms of people. The shops were literally deserted. 50% of people walking along the streets were wearing masks. We spotted plastic material on rollers (think window blinds) used in a cafe between tables, a masked guy having his temperature taken before entering a barber shop and on the doorways of the shops, cafes, etc that were still open, sign after sign reminding people about face coverings and social distancing and track and trace.
The brand new Queen Street Station concourse was deserted. By the time we reached it it was around 11:30am. Normally on a Saturday hordes of people would be disembarking trains from all over Scotland and spilling out into George Square and the surrounding streets. But it was completely deserted. I have literally never seen this station so quiet ever, at any time of the night or day. Not even late evening on a Sunday would it be this quiet.
We passed a clothes shop I used to visit regularly. A small, independent shop. The only person inside was the lone sales girl, sat at the till with a mask on.
At one street crossing we noted that on a Saturday it would be 10 people deep, waiting to cross. We were the only people crossing.
We stopped at a Tinderbox coffee shop on Ingram Street and sat outside. We had our 6 month old puppy with us. And while lots of people smiled at him as they passed, not one soul ventured close by to talk to him and us. That’s never happened before in our outings with him.
The job is now complete. We have been conditioned to stay apart. To keep our distance.
We walked east and entered Glasgow Green, which on a Saturday in June when we visited (and I reported on here) was crammed full of people sitting and standing around. Today, on a sunny and warm Saturday in September, the entire expanse from the east entrance all the way towards to the Peoples’ Palace (which is closed) was deserted. The occasional dog walker and one group on a patch of grass to the left playing touch rugby were all that we saw. The only sign of normality was the children’s play park which was packed. However, on the acres of green, mown grass of Glasgow Green, not a soul was to be found.
I have never seen Glasgow city centre like this apart from after 11pm on a wet, cold December Monday. But this was late morning on a sunny Saturday.
This is now our world. This is now our cities. This is now our lives. This is the new normal.
This is my response to all of that.
https://ibb.co/sVP70Yn
Heartbreaking Mark – particularly as I know exactly the route you have described. What has become of us?
Wear a mask upon entry and when heading to your table. Put the mask back on when you leave your table for any reason.
At the risk of being boring, unless exempt.
The good news is that a lot of people seem to have left the city for the day. I just cycled from Glasgow to Loch Lomond and back in a circuit and amongst other things I saw lots of groups of more than 6. This was 3rd time I’ve done that cycle on a Saturday in last few months in similar weather. Early on in lockdown I passed the popular Queen’s View car park and there was one car in it, a couple of months later it had been (probably illegally) closed by council and today it was completely full with some cars parked along grass verge outside. Balloch Park was the busiest I’d seen it as well. City centre is obviously a rather miserable experience so not surprised it was deserted but encouraging to see lots of people carrying on lives as normal. I hardly saw a masked face all afternoon.
“the Peoples’ Palace (which is closed) “
Something symbolic about that.
It made me shudder a bit. I didn’t know there was one. The Volkspalast (people’s palace) in East Berlin was the old DDR parliament building and was demolished.
As a dog owner I can relate to what you’re saying, though it’s not quite as bad in Toronto (where I spend very little time now). Mine is an Italian Greyhound and they almost always attract people’s attention, so I’ll know we’ve really sunk to new lows if next time I’m in the city my dog is ignored! I’ve had some great chats with strangers over the years as a result of my dog and it’s very sad that those days may be over.
It is so quiet in the city, but still a few tourists come. Arthurs Seat acsent path has been swamped, I wonder if this is people avoiding opression of masks in other tourist areas.
Tourist buses are running empty or with low capacity on top deck.
Black cab driver friend says the business is done for. Fares to the airport gone, same for stations and hotels and business meetings.
Was in Dunfirmline on Thursday night. A commuter satelite town. Dead. The bars and restaurants has a few customers in 3 couples per restaurant a little busier in others. Pubs desolate but lights on and open. Not sustainable imo.
Yes, the Arthur’s Seat trail seems quite popular.
And in the Meadows, on last week’s sunny evenings, there were plenty of people out socialising over a beer and a barbecue. Lots of students in groups of more like 15 than 6. A police van drove slowly along the northern Meadows path past it all, didn’t stop or pester anybody.
I think this is true of the local population too, perhaps without them really being aware of it as such. I’m not sure that people are making choices to not go certain places; it’s that the feel of the concept of it doesn’t draw them, perhaps to the extent that the idea of going to them (pubs, restaurants, museums) just never enters their head now.
This is the death of those places, of course, when they don’t even exist as a notion in people’s minds, not even subject to decision-making.
Another great update, Toby. Regarding the innumeracy of pols. I think the problem here is that most people have some background in statistics in the sense that they recognize numbers (frequency counts being the easiest) and can detect whether or not they go up or down. But they have no background or experience in where statistics come from, in other words they lack an understanding of research design, measurement and validity. In my experience as a social scientist (anthropologist), an understanding of measurement and validity is a skill that comes from working in the trenches, so to speak, of actually designing and conducting studies and then having to consider how the quantitative results might be wrong, in part due to measurement. Pols don’t ever bother with the sausage factory, just the sausage. So, if the numbers suit their policy agenda, they use them to push that agenda, but it simply does not occur to them how they numbers can be misleading or invalid.
“most people have some background in statistics”
Of course, we are partly in issues of terminology here. But I beg to differ. Probability and risk are at the heart of basic statistical literacy, and there are innumerable studies to show how poor people in general are at dealing with the two related concepts. It is partly a massive failure of mathematical education, which tends to focus on mechanical computation rather than the key relationships of mathematics to life.
The current shit-show is even more startling, with a revelation that many ‘scientists’ in fields such as epidemiological modelling and virology haven’t grasped the basics about data overview and hypothesis testing contained in the first chapters in the primer on statistical analysis. Even a sceptic such as myself has been shocked by the levels of basic mathematical illiteracy.
What competent ‘scientist’ with a grasp of probability and medical ethics would recommend mask-wearing on the basis of known evidence and analysis.? The ‘precautionary principle’ doesn’t require magical thinking.
It took me no longer than to mid to late April to diagnose that the Covid narrative was mythology on speed, using available weekly mortality figures and a spreadsheet. Similarly, it takes no more than the ability to read a bar chart to know that there is currently no panic-justifying resurgence of Covid. And that is before we get into the less intuitive issues of the probabilities regarding PCR test results.
I remember vividly an incident at the beginning of all this when one shouty wanker justified his religious faith in the government stories by saying that his job required the use of Principal Component Analysis. Doh! I hesitated to point out that anyone can feed garbage into computer models, but that it requires judgement and basic intelligence to grasp simple descriptive statistics that may have a more relevant story to tell. That seems to sum up too many in the epidemiological profession.
You don’t have to be good at statistics to be able to read a graph. A picture tells a thousand words and the covid death rate/hospital admissions says it very eloquently.
https://hectordrummond.com/2020/09/19/week-36-graphs-from-christopher-bowyer-2/
Re: the fanatics who run colleges and bureaucrats who run pandemic policy.
The SarsCov2 virus is now endemic in human populations and will remain so for some considerable time. So, blaming students for endangering the community or waiting for infections to mysteriously arrive from foreign shores is, frankly, silly. The virus being endemic also means that infections will increase and decrease with seasons just as all infectious viruses do, year in and year out. Since it is impossible to know all the assorted and sundry ways these respiratory viruses spread each and every season where conditions favor that virus causing more illness, it cannot be “suppressed” by silly administrative diktats.
Viruses are gonna virus. Reality bites. Get used to it.
A totally sensible post, could anyone mount a serious argument against it? The science to risk borrowing a phrase is ‘settled’ and yet none of it has any traction whatsoever in the mainstream media and not much within the parliamentary parties either, the simple question, which I suspect has a rather complex answer is why?
Excerpt from the GP Contract Agreement update (Feb 2020):
Reforming payment arrangements for vaccinations and immunisations
8. The findings of the vaccinations and immunisations review will be implemented over the next two years.The payment model will be overhauled to support improved vaccination coverage. Vaccinations and immunisations will become an essential service in 2020. New contractual core standards will be introduced. Item of service payments will be introduced and standardised across all routine programmes over the next two years. This will begin with Measles Mumps and Rubella (MMR) in 2020/21 and extend to other vaccines from April 2021. New incentive payments will be introduced to maximise population coverage as part of QOF, replacing the current Childhood Immunisation Directed Enhanced Service (DES)
https://www.england.nhs.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/update-to-the-gp-contract-agreement-v2-updated.pdf
“Other vaccines”. Hmm.
depressing stuff
Can they do them over Zoom?
Hahaha!
There’s talk of drive through vaccination centres. A post on fb showed an example. Looked suspiciously like two gazebos to me. That will be wonderful for the staff in wet, windy weather – not!
Our local GP already has a ‘flu treatment’ gazebo.
Johnson is now threatening us with total lockdowns because apparently we are not following the rules.
This man for the last 2 months has been pleading with us to return to the office visit bars eat out etc.
I’m 59 and the government have never threatened it’s people in my lifetime
The man and of course Hancock whitty and the rest of them have lost the plot they ste banking on a vaccine which might never happen ignore them be sensible and live your lives ,life is to enjoy dont let them destroy us.
Like badly behaved children who want their own way – they’re best ignored.
… and, of course, we are seeing the essential spoiled brat that was always the nature of the lying and narcissistic buffoon that was always Bullingdon Boris.
Of course – he’s never been to my political taste. But – hey ho – that’s politics.
What I can’t understand is how anyone with a brain could have been taken in by such a con artist of so little talent.
Some may have been taken in, others voted for him because they didn’t want Corbyn, wanted Brexit, wanted a Conservative government, didn’t want a Labour government. I don’t know about others but I’ve rarely felt enthusiastic about anyone I have voted for.
I take your point, Julian. But there are rational limits – and Mr Toad was always outside them.
Not absent a tolerable alternative. Though I agree to an extent.
Possibly, but wouldn’t the same be true of at least Cameron and Blair? They were slicker, but that’s about it.
I have no idea why but I had a soft spot for May – she seemed genuine.
She was a total bitch while Home Sec.
Same circus different clowns as far as I’m concerned. I’m seriously running out of options though. I have always voted conservative but as long as BJ is in charge I won’t vote for them again. I live in Scotland but nothing on this earth would persuade me to vote SNP. Labour are a non entity here as are Lib Dem’s and voting Green is essentially a vote for the SNP. We have an election here in May but as things stand I’m at a loss who to vote for.
Spoil ballot paper or vote for fringe party if they are any good.
How do we get ‘None of the Above’ on the ballot paper? A modern day Brewster’s Millions would win by a landslide.
Pretty much everyone I know voted Tory to keep Corbyn out, even my brother in law who is from the North East and has never voted Tory in his 61 years. All of us say, Never Again.
Early on in the life of this site there was a small discussion about a new party and what it would be called. KBF would be a great name.
“Keep Britain Free” doesn’t say anything about democracy to me.
It could mean lots of different things to different people, some of them not helpful.
And from the broadcast media comes there pushback..none, if anything the script is Boris and pals have not gone far enough, sentiments echoed by Labours noises off.
Our old dog passed away in early April and wife has been looking but not looking if you know what I mean for another dog as the house is empty without a slobbering, farting, smelly git in it (I don’t count on this count apparently) and is looking for a smaller one she can lift into the truck (my defender).
Today saw a muzzled couple with a dog of the breed she is looking at and went up to speak to them – we were both free-faced.
They were actually pleased that someone spoke to them as people and when they tried to answer I said “you’ll have to remove your mask, I’m deaf and can’t hear you properly” – all true).
No problem, lowered masks, stayed within 3 ft, wife and a good chat about the breed, problems and so on and when we are going they actually thanked us for the normal contact.
Johnson, Hancock, Gates, Soros et al need strung up for what they have done to this country and the world.
We met a couple of vague acquaintances at the outdoor market today, by chance. Both masked. They were very pleased to see us and enthusiastically removed their masks to start talking to us – exactly one of the things we’re told is most dangerous.
Doggy people are often more normal (I say this as a dog owner myself of course!).
Ffs, AG, get a dog that can jump ! (Lift ?!?).
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/09/19/public-could-adopt-social-interaction-diet-plan-plus-four/
Can anything top this? England 2020.
Government advisers are understood to have discussed the possibility of introducing individual “contact budgets” if the pandemic continues for months to come.
These would balance limits on interactions with still allowing people a certain measure of morale boosting leisure and social contact with others.
The contact budgets would be calculated in a similar way to an individual’s calorie counting diet or a household’s carbon footprint, with more numerous, “cheaper” casual meetings offset by fewer “expensive” interactions.
Behavioural scientists have suggested that just as a dieter might allow themselves one slice of cake a week as reward for daily soup and salads, an “expensive” contact could be classed as a prolonged meeting indoors, with a number of people from another household, which should happen more rarely than “cheaper” gatherings like a regular brief walk in the park with a single friend.
It does suggest this would not be compulsory (I mean, how could it be?) at least…
My scientifically modelled answer is ” F. Off and stop playing with things that your too immature/stupid to understand – like society.”
*You’re*
I think that there are more crucial issues here than typos!
Can someone please let me know when we have reached peak stupid?
Almost there !
You’ve got to hope so.
I wonder if they’ll give us all an easy to print off weekly chart to keep track of this crap?
I’m not saying you’re wrong about the message, but I’ve said this before: it is not possible to spend £10bn on developing an app and a database in that period of time. Not possible. Can’t be done.
You know there’ll be an app. £10 billion anyone ?
Snap.
An optimist!
I think we must have every day – but it’s the gift that keeps on giving.
How the F are they going to monitor that??
Only two words for that – second one is OFF!
Up to now they’ve been trying to micromanage our behaviour. This latest one sounds like nanomanagement.
as i am an antisocial bastard, can i sell my contacts to someone else ……. like carbon trading .. ?
Love it!
China
Effectively a sister of China’s social credit score.
And they want to tighten the Rule of Six even more – because we’re not obeying it in the right way?!
Government advisers fear people have begun to regard the rule of six, which allows as many as six different households to meet indoors or outdoors, as long as the individual limit is not breached, as a daily target.
Dr Adam Kucharski, associate professor in epidemiology at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, said: “With fixed numbers people see it as more of a quota than a limit – they think: ‘I can fill it every single day’… There is not a magic number that makes it not safe or safe.”
As a result further limits may be imposed on how many other people individuals can meet at one time. Alternatively these meetings may be allowed to continue if they are offset by fewer contacts in other circumstances.
I think my plumber is right – there are lot of human-looking reptiles among us, and this Dr is one of them
What kind of life does he lead, and what kind of people does he hang around, that makes him think this would occur to anyone?
I wonder this often. People who are dictating these rules are unelected and, while intelligent, think people can somehow be turned left then right then up then down. All to fix a problem for them. They treat the rest of the society like children and with contempt it appears to me.
They are intelligent in some ways, but many seem to understand little of what I always took to be normal life. They seem like weirdos to me. Who would want to wear a mask for the rest of their life?
He needs to get back into the play-pen and leave the world to adults.
[copied from duplicate post above]
Dr Adam Kucharski, associate professor in epidemiology at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, said: “With fixed numbers people see it as more of a quota than a limit – they think: ‘I can fill it every single day’… There is not a magic number that makes it not safe or safe.”
Arsehole! How the hell does he know that? It’s total supposition to fit his warped agenda. I doubt even arch sceptics would think like that. Nonetheless, it seems the government are listening to him.
They ought not to be – he might be bright but as he is only an associate professor (equivalent to senior lecturer/reader) he is still quite junior! Moreover, he hails from ICL, where he remains an honorary research fellow.
Well spotted. ICL does seem to be a focus for pseudo-science in this area.
Look who gives lots of money to where Kucharski works:
https://www.gatesfoundation.org/search#q/k=london%20school%20tropical%20medicine&sort=rec
No real surprise then is there?
.
Dr Adam Kucharski, associate professor in epidemiology at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, said: “With fixed numbers people see it as more of a quota than a limit – they think: ‘I can fill it every single day’… There is not a magic number that makes it not safe or safe.”
Arsehole! How the hell does he know that? It’s total supposition to fit his warped agenda. I doubt even arch sceptics would think like that. Nonetheless, it seems the government are listening to him.
Epidemiology is pseudoscience, individuals don’t get sick according to equations.
There are an awful lot of them! I don’t even remember it as a thing, until fairly recently. Apparently there is such a thing as theoretical epidemiology as well. So what the hell is “practical” epidemiology? Is it going around creating epidemics?
I am reminded of Patrick O’Brian’s expounding on immoral philosophy.
I am beginning to think that the extinction of epidemiologists is a more crucial target for the health of mankind than the extinction of the virus.
They’ve certainly proved that you should never let theoretical modellers out of their pen to interfere in public policy without a muzzle (a real use for masks).
Alternatively these meetings may be allowed to continue if they are offset by fewer contacts in other circumstances.
WTF??
The Government mantra is “we are following the science”. It’s their ‘get out of jail card’ to avoid blame for the Covid fiasco.
But they are not following the science. The science is clear – this video proves that the pandemic is over & it’s not even an epidemic now, it’s no more dangerous than flu. The video also proves that lockdown, social distancing & masks have had NO EFFECT on the virus.
They are lying.
https://youtu.be/8UvFhIFzaac
Which bit “proves that the pandemic is over”?
Troll alert!
Uh? Can we not ask questions now?
I watched the video in question some time ago. It was interesting but I don’t remember it proving anything.
That the ‘pandemic is over’ is unproveable, since the term ‘pandemic’ only means ‘widespread infection’.
The epidemic never was – with deaths in this country being unremarkable in historical and definitional terms. Simple fact.
Since the April peak, there has been no real indicators of exceptional events. Everything is as usual, despite the ludicrous attempts to portray the finding of random fragments of RNA as significant.
It’s the baseless narrative of an exceptional and continuing infection event that needs substantiation, not the null hypothesis, which stands failing some visible evidence.
Should be fairly obvious to anyone with a real grasp of scientific method, as opposed to a need to keep a fictional narrative rolling.
All the mass of accumulated evidence is on the side of the sceptical viewpoint. Let’s get back to reality rather than Fairy stories.
Since the April peak, there has been no real indicators of exceptional events.
Perhaps that’s because of the lockdown … or perhaps it’s due to seasonality … or perhaps people have maintained social distancing enough to ensure any increase in infection is undetectable – until now.
…not the null hypothesis, which stands failing some visible evidence.
The null hypothesis is that there is a virus within the population and it will continue to spread for the near future. The evidence needs to contradict this.
So, again – so what?
Yep, troll alert.
Or possibly someone so dim they shouldn’t be allowed to buy their own trousers …
Forget it.
Good evening Neil. Your cover is blown. It’s too late to salvage your reputation, suggest you stop digging…
Johnson now threatens us with stricter lockdowns etc if we dont comply.
Reminds me of certain football managers who criticise the players when things aren’t going well
It means the manager has run out of ideas and he turns on his players. The manager is soon sacked.
Johnson can do nothing now except criticise and threaten hes lost the arguement he should go to sweden he might learn something.
If only the Tory party was as ruthless at getting rid of failing leaders as professional football clubs.
To be replaced by who?
Hardly a good choice is there.
Kevin Keegan couldn’t do a worse job
It’s not always a good move to get rid of football managers too quickly.
It took Jurgen Klopp 6 years to win the PL title with Liverpool. It took Alex Ferguson 7 years with Man Utd. I believe he did pretty well after that.
Jurgen (pbuh) joined in October 2015. It’s currently September 2020.
What type of arithmetic are you using ?
Yep. I put a few weeks ago on here they are like a boxer who is on the ropes. They’ve got very little left to fight with. Hopefully the false positive test results debacle will be the knockout punch.
They can always keep the fear machines grinding though.
Come on Toby. OK, let’s go with the incompetence/no conspiracy line. For the gov’t, the only satisfactory solution is compulsory vaccination, if necessary with an unlicensed vaccine. The gov’t has invested heavily into the vaccine industry and they need a return on that investment and vindication of their Covid policy. There’s your conspiracy even that is the extent of it.
I’m sure that there are some in govt and among advisers who have links that are making them less than honest.
However it’s also plausible to suppose that the drive for the vaccine is because that’s what they have said all along was needed, and they cannot now simply say “sorry, false alarm, as you were” because it would mean admitting they were wrong.
Still think we should stay clear of speculation as to motivation when presenting case to a wider audience, unless you think that audience would be persuaded more by arguments regarding motive
I don’t know what you mean. I didn’t suggest there was corruption, I referred only to the available facts. The gov’t has invested heavily into vaccine development and needs to justify that investment – or be damned. This is taxpayers money, after all. The gov’t also needs to vindicate its overall Covid policy – that’s all. If I’m right, there is little doubt these considerations could distort policy.
OK, yes, that’s indeed true – I see what you mean. Any government action taken that they know is wrong or not needed, in order to save face, is indeed corrupt and dishonest, and if they talk about it amongst themselves it’s a conspiracy.
I thought that was fact not theory
Apologies if I missed earlier.
Tory backbenchers breaking rank.
https://mobile.twitter.com/lucyallan/status/1307336690500067335
IMPORTANT
Can’t access it. Any chance you can copy and paste some of it?
Text copy of the tweet:
Lucy Allan MP@lucyallan
It’s vital decision makers have robust data, a clear strategy, and understand the harm to health, lives and livelihoods caused by lockdown. Let’s focus on protecting those most at risk, and living with the virus, rather than unattainable ‘zero covid.’
Then a link to:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/sep/19/england-wide-covid-lockdown-needed-sooner-later-says-former-adviser-neil-ferguson
She tweeted that in the last hour. Hoping other Tory MPs will now stand up and speak out.
500+ likes and many positive responses
That’s great. Let’s hope those hiding under the backbench take note and crawl out!
“Let’s focus on protecting those most at risk”
No – let them protect themselves as they see necessary, unless unable to. It’s what grown-ups do.
Same for everyone else – if you wet your knickers less by hiding away – do so. It’s your right – but don’t interfere with mine.
All the old people I know realise that they are already at the back end of their life and could go at any time from anything. They are just getting on with life, seeing family, going out to eat, holidays etc
Brilliant! Thanks.
I was at the South Coast visiting relatives last weekend.
On Saturday, we sailed to Wareham quay, and visited the Old Granary pub for lunch.
The table was prebooked, so T&T was presumably covered. We were greeted by a young mask-free woman who showed us to our table. We were told we had the table for 90 minutes but if no-one else needed it, we’d be left to linger.
There was a distancing sticker on the floor outside and another in the entrance but otherwise there was a reassuring lack of covid paraphernalia, other than arrows marking a one-way system on the narrowish corridor to the loo, plus the mandatory posters telling grown-ups how to wash their hands.
I was glad for the staff that they weren’t bemuzzled but, presumably to allow this, our food was served in the most bizarre way. They brought a stand and a tray with our plates on, so we had to serve ourselves from the tray. Our knives were exchanged for steak knives, which were proffered on a plate at arms length. Very weird experience but otherwise much better than I’d anticipated. The steaks were good too!
We took the boat back to Poole and the boatman refilled the fuel and we had a very normal, unmuzzled and un-distanced conversation on the way back to his office. As we moved on, he put his hand on my shoulder as he said goodbye. It was a perfectly natural gesture, that normally would not have gained much attention but I was struck by the fact that some people would have freaked out his lack of antisocial-distancing! Weird times but fortunately ignored by many.
I live in Dorset. The vast majority of business people are acting very normally.
Good for them – much better for trade! I was impressed and relieved that our lunch felt very normal, once the food had been served, especially as the staff weren’t muzzled.
However, it was weird seeing people queuing for their orders outside the chippy – with face nappies on.
On the whole though, muzzle-wearers were in the minority, except for oriental visitors at Lulworth Cove.
At home, I don’t get out much, so have nothing to compare my Dorset trip with. My home town centre was totally depressing long before mockdown, so I keep away.
I tend to avoid tourist hotspots in the summer, not because of covid though. I am having lots of work done to my house. Maybe 10 tradespeople been around for work and quotes. No one wears a mask or even mentions one. All stand at normal ie about 3ft distance.
GOOD.
Tongs?
The Emergency and Disaster Information Service has a new website:
https://rsoe-edis.org/eventMap
What second wave?
Does anyone happen to know what happens to the swabs taken during a PCR test? Are the samples, complete with your DNA, stored or discarded?
I don’t know but the change to law which allows retention of dna led me to think that they will use it to compile a natuonal dna database. Another reason not to get tested.
Global DNA database more like!
They’ve been angling for that for some time. Promoted by the usual suspects.
I despair at the government and their useful fools in the media, all the fear-mongering and ‘preparing the ground’ for whatever awful decision they decide to impose on us.
However, anecdotally, in day to day life, there is far more resistance and just exhaustion with all this. People who were quite stringent in social distancing a few months ago are basically just being sensible now and the sense is, it’s not worth the cost in quality of life to treat everyone like an infectious zombie. They are getting close to friends and acting normally, but being sensible with people they know are vulnerable. No stupid laws needed; just sensible people who are adults and able to make free choices.
I see this all over. Mask wearing is dropping, too; people having them half on/half off or just can’t be bothered any more.
I have yet to meet anyone who thinks a second lockdown (or whatever new name they come up to call it) is a good idea.
People are also talking more freely about how we need to live our lives; most of those dying are people who are at high risk of death anyway, and the cure is worse than the disease.
Maybe that’s the way out – people just en masse politely saying, ‘no thanks’ to whatever awfulness the government might come up with. Alternatively, parliament might finally grow some teeth this coming week.
Unfortunately I think it’s not going to be government led. It feels like they’re in too deep, and are following a sunk-costs fallacy and doubling down; as well as selfishly covering their arses for any inquiry.
As I say I do hold out hope that even if the government does some BS, it won’t wash any more with the public who are able to decide appropraite risk without government sticking their noses in.
Whether business will follow is the next level – resisting the requirements on closing hours, shutting up shop etc, the insistance on government tracking… that would be serious rebellion if that happened.
Yes peaceful non-compliance has always been the way forward. Just say NO.
it’s half the battle, but the other half is businesses. When threatened with closure/fines, sadly many will simply be forced to continue with the ridiculous laws being put in place. Ideally someone who has nothing to lose needs to challenge in court all the nonsense and say “here is my risk assessment, that says there is no risk!” and force them to look at ALL the evidence. Normal life is not normal if you still can’t enter a restaurant without being tracked or sanitiser at every shop entrance.
Yes. If e.g. a pub flouts the rules they may lose their licence…not so easy
Old,old saying:Never trust experts.
No – just never trust those who claim expertise – particularly in areas of which they have no experience : e.g epidemiological modellers intruding into public policy.
… and that went well :-). Profound idiocy is no substitute.
Much longer ago before Gove unfortunately was ever thought of.
What’s the betting we get a BIG announcement this evening on more draconian anti-social measures?
What makes you think tonight?
Anything nationwide and significant would be done with a new episode of the Bozo the Clown show. This hasn’t happened. My guess is Monday. He likes Monday. Everyone’s already miserable on a Monday.
I’ve heard Tuesday
Tuesday would be new. But they do like to keep us guessing.
They usually leak it the night before the Clown Show don’t they?
They do. But occasionally they like to slip something unexpected into The Show itself, just to keep us interested. “Er… handsfacespace. Hands, er, face and umm space.”
C U next Tuesday, Johnson.
I don’t think you need the comma
Every day I dead the next dikat and when I’m reading on here I get nervous about hearing the next announcement. We shouldn’t be living like this.
In deepest/darkest Devon we have had a fantastic week, weather and getting out and about, we visited some lovely place’s, eateries and lovely people, all smiling and loving a good old chat (not a mask in sight). Then we go home, switch on the telly, the Biased Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) is full of doom and spouting Government propaganda, try the other channels and they are also doing it, so I have taken to wearing my version of a mask when Johnson, Handcock, Starmer, Ashworth, Nicola appear.
Someone else from Deepest Devon!
Bin the beeb, cloud6. You know it makes sense …
Spot on. Any broadcast where individuals ‘report’ on or are invited to comment on anything Sars-Cov2 related is treated as the mental, emotional and spiritual poison that it is and is banned in my home for this reason.
There is momentum building for sure –
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BIj1_Mtiv-Q
Wow, Christina Pagel lies like a professional!
Interesting exchange on the fb United Rebels group:
A: So, is the increased testing testing for Covid-19 coronavirus or any of the many other coronaviruses
I’ve been observing when the two different terms are used…Covid-19 or coronovirus.
This is an important distinction, the devil is in the detail and the gov etc choose and use their words very carefully. They have the Behavioural Insights Team working with them. Just wondering what others think or have noticed….
B: Noticed a couple of weeks ago BBC started using coronavirus test… Then they would cut off to a local test centre where the person speaking would say covid…. Its definitely a psychological game,,, many so engrossed in fear they do not notice…
C: I’ve noticed that they call it coronavirus then they are trying to convince you to comply or pretending to have a frank exchange.
But use Covid19 when using scare tactics or trying to be serious.
Excellent post from Dr Kendrick about Drs in Belgium who feel the lockdown has been an “unmitigated disaster”
Can Toby look at putting this up on tomorrows posting.
https://drmalcolmkendrick.org/
I’d encourage reading the whole article.
Maybe best to email directly so that it isn’t missed:
lockdownsceptics@gmail.com
Done, e-mailed to the above address.
The linked document is well worth the read. This link should be sent to all our dull-witted MPs, who have allowed the government to totally usurp Parliament. Of course, most MPs are too lazy to bother reading it, but one or two of them might just take it on board.
Awesome letter and thousands of signatories!
Where are the signatories please???
https://docs4opendebate.be/en/open-letter/
See signatories section on site menu.
Agree. Excellent link. Thankyou for posting.
Top comment.
One of the best articles I’ve seen. It covers most of the issues including civil rights and how their removal is damaging to health in the broader sense. I particularly like the description of the immune system. Non-medical folk such as myself sometimes talk glibly about the immune system without knowing much about it. I’ve downloaded the Belgian doctors’ letter as a valuable resource.
Lots of evidence from the belgian doctors on the danger of mask wearing.
I read it but it’s disappointing that it does not say how many doctors wrote the letter. Not v impressive or useful for educating the unenlightened if it’s only three!
Go to the original here:
https://docs4opendebate.be/en/open-letter/
and look at ‘signatories’. Signed by almsot 400 doctors and over 1,300 medical professionals. All named. Linked to others in Spain and USA.
WHY AREN’T OUR DOCTORS DOING THE SAME!
Thanks so much!!!V impressive and will send to a particular bedwetting friend who trusts medical professionals.
Much doom with Hapless Hancock and the mendacious media over hospitalisations, so just checked the latest hospital data.
For England Covid19 cases in hospital 1st Sept 472 19th Sept 1048
patients on ventilators 1st Sept 59 19th Sept 123
I left out Scots and Welsh data as these have recently been revised.
So yes, cases just over doubled in 19 days, not sure how many of these are patients in for other reasons who happened to test+ve?
Given English population is 56 million these are small numbers, more a slight autumn ripple than a 2nd wave. Reason to keep a weather eye on the figures, no reason to panic like buffon boris seems inclined to do, get a grip man, hold your nerve, don’t shoot until you see the whites of their eyes.
They put these poor people on ventilators as a way of speeding things along.
Thanks for sharing. Are these definitely deaths FROM Co Vid 19? Is there a way of comparing deaths with, say, flu in same period – if both showed similar rises then this may explain that its seasonal rather ‘the deadly Co Vid getting out of control. I suspect there’ll also be significant regional variations too. And average age?
Hello, no these are not deaths these are patients in hospital with Covid 19, hopefully all will be well in a few days and they will be discharged. The reason for posting this is that Hapless Hancock, has made a big thing about hospital cases rising, but in my view there is, as yet, no reason to panic.
Checking in.
After being away in wales for the last week, I have a few thing to report.
I met a lady on a windy costal path high up on some cliffs, she was carrying a scooter(!) and wearing a face mask. We got chatting, the lady was totally mental. Nice but crazy.
In ordinary times she would have been the kind of person who would have got all funny about global warning. Now she has gone all funny about covid, she fiddled with her mask constantly as we talked not putting it on but nearly….As we stood 3 meters apart in a 30MPH blast of the on-shore sea breeze.
I mentioned its all about the great re-set isn’t it? She said yes she had heard that term, AND SHE THINKS IT’S A GOOD IDEA she is very into Stinction Bellion too, citing a Pembrokeshire councillor who is very into it that she knows and thinks is GREAT!
It would seem that climate change fanatics are very susceptible to Cornoa Bollocks.
Coming through Newport on the M4 I saw a sign saying “slow down, air polution costs lives” and some insane variable speed limits in place “to help reduce air pollution”. FFS
I drove past the testing centre in Carmarthen, Eight tents or test bays, it was almost EMPTY, perhaps 3 cars there. That was last Monday and today, Saturday.
I walked around Tenby, what a lovely town, well it would have been if it wasn’t for the unholy spectacle of almost 90% mask compliance. Old frail people staggering about in face-nappies looking scared, EVERYWHERE. Social distancing outside the restaurants, all of them shut to inside eating. I went into the post office, (Prtemier stores) and instantly got the “Excuse me” from a lady behind a screen behind a visor. I ignored her and carried on, “Excuse me” have you got a mask? she said, “No, I am exempt” I said to the lady. All the other shoppers and staff were masked up, one grey frail little old man was peering out from behind his welsh dragon face nappy. I got my beers and went to pay. the lady said again, ” why haven’t you got a mask on?” I said again “I am exempt” she said, “That’s all I wanted to hear.”
Well, I gave her the full monty about how she shouldn’t of even asked me and how she is scating on very thin legal ice, I said I know the law and have been use to this mandatory face-nappy bollocks for longer than she has and I know the law
As she finished handling my cash she reached for the hand sanitizer.
FFS!
When we got home, I found that some twat from the local housing association had gone and adjusted a drain pipe I had installed at great expense and personal risk without asking me putting it back to how it was before I fixed it and totally un-doing what I had done. It has cost me more than £200 as I diverted it into a water butt. The neighbour didn’t even want them to do this. Why did they do this? Because its not on my property and I had no right to touch their drain pipe. Rules are rules. This is despite the fact that the water that comes out of it is damaging their property and mine. Absolute charlies! Empowered idiots are everywhere.
They put a card through the door that said “Sorry we missed you”
FFS!
To top it all off, Mrs 2-6 got this email from our bastard local council.
“The NHS Test and Trace app will be available 24 September across England and Wales. This follows successful trials with residents on the Isle of Wight and the London Borough of Newham, and with NHS Volunteer Responders. Please download and use the app from 24 September to keep you and other people safe. ”
“Sucessful trials in the Isle of Wight”????
FFS!
EVIL IDIOTS ARE RUNNING EVERYTHING NOW
EVERYTHING IS SHIT
Marvellously vivid post. Amusing but very disturbing.
Depressing, we were in Pembrokeshire on holiday the first week of august and the lack of masks was a blessed relief. How quickly the population can be brainwashed.
You have a great writing style Two-Six, always entertaining. Keep em coming
agreed. more please Two-Six
Thanks Eddie, I try, do you think I write well? Do other people think I write well?
Yer perhaps I do. I do enjoy writing stuff, shame what I am writing about is so horrible.
I think you write well. I appreciate your thoughts and also your badges! Just one thought…maybe chill a little?…..e.g. with the woman in the store after you said I’m exempt and she said “That’s all I wanted to hear”..maybe just leave it there….I dunno, that’s just me…My very best wishes to you, I enjoy your posts
Makes for great material, though.
FFS indeed!
Welcome back Two-Six and great to hear from you again.
Just watching a bit of the in car live stream from the Le Mans endurance race.
Looks like the event is taking place without spectators, anyone who has ever been to the event knows that spectators makes the event.
No fairground, no fireworks, no barbecues.
Next weekend is N24 at the Nordschleife, hopefully they allow at least a few humans to be present to add atmosphere. OK so the atmosphere will be bratwurst on the barbecue.
We shall see.
Anyone fucks with the Tour is toast. Almost as central to life in France as striped t-shirts and berets.
Plenty at Brands Hatch last week.
There are some good people out there fighting for our basic rights. We should always encourage and support them.
Interesting…..Swiss Policy Research Group
The early treatment of patients as soon as the first typical symptoms appear and even without a PCR test is essential to prevent progression of the disease. Zinc, HCQ, quercetin and bromhexin may also be used prophylactically for people at high risk or high exposure (e.g. for health care workers).
In contrast, isolating infected high-risk patients at home and without early treatment until they develop serious respiratory problems, as often happened during lockdowns, may be detrimental.
https://swprs.org/on-the-treatment-of-covid-19/
Good stuff on face masks too.
https://swprs.org/face-masks-evidence/
There are some bad people pretending to be good people. Easy to spot. They get angry easily.
A lot of us good people get angry easily now too! Face masked zombies make my blood boil every time.
You’re good. I have no doubt there. Your anger is real… and for good reason… should have more precise… I think some people are shutting down conversations by being angry and offensive rather than opening up discussions.
Agreed! I think masks are killing brain cells and these people are unable and unwilling to engage in any kind of rational conversation about what’s going on. I’ll tell you what organisms don’t seem to penetrate masks: FACTS.
Scaremongering propaganda? – Politicans and MSM shouting about shortage of testing facilities whilst people on this site consistently commenting on empty or poorly used testing centres. Surely they can’t both be right?
AIUI, the swabs taken at the test centres have a short shelf life, so the labs are restricting the numbers the test centres can take to the number they can process in time.
Politicians and MSM are lying. Who’d have thought it. A colleague of mine “needed” tests, phoned and was sent 100 miles away. Instead she drove to local centre – empty, got tested straight away.
Had a grand day at the protest in London today. Best day I’ve enjoyed in weeks. Full report tomorrow, have a long drive home now. Vive la revolution!!
Great to hear, I don’t have many good days.
Excellent. I looked to be jovial spirits what i saw online.
Great to hear and looking forward to the update! Are you going on 26th?
Thanks for going. You represented a lot of people who couldn’t be there!
Scope creep. The new restrictions on the number of people together indoors (down to 10 from 25) and outdoors (down to 25 from 50) which was only for Covid “hot spots” like Toronto have now been extended to the whole province. It would only affect me if hubby and I knew more than 8 other people who weren’t still in hiding under the bed. Kidding, sort of.
Sweden goes from 50 to 500 on 1st October! Just saying! I am so jealous – my brother lives there.
We’re boiling frogs
Yup, we are. Classrooms with 20+ kids are fine and the “new restrictions do not apply to events held in facilities such as movie theatres, restaurants, banquet halls, places of worship, gyms, or convention centres. However, Ford cautions against people who are currently joining “political protests” across the country. Over the past four months, Canadians have joined protests to demand racial equality and to shed light on police brutality against marginalized communities. Others have also protested against COVID-19 restrictions.” At least he included BLM protests and not just Covid-19 restriction protests.
I feel another lockdown coming…
Sorry to hear that.
We’re not. We have thermometers!
Mr Bart and I went to Walthamstow Wetlands today. Three observations:
All in all we had a nice day but its worrying if people wear muzzles outdoors and how many shops still continue to treat customers like lepers.
“No-one wearing muzzles save for this couple who were both muzzled and bloke was wearing t-shirt that said “Fuck Brexit.””
An occasion to produce a hat saying “Fuck Facemasks” across the front, and put it on in front of him. Prior planning……
And when you flip the cap the message reads :AND FUCK REMAINIACS! LOSERS!
That’s a good idea. Makes me wish I should have worn my Carl Vernon Man to sheep t-shirt.
Two can play this game.
You let down the site putting remainers with lockdownistas and mask zealots.
I’m a remainer and a lockdown sceptic.
Me too! Please stop assuming all remainers are pro lockdown, I’m getting sick of it!
Loving Kulvinder Kaur MD
@dockaurG (Twitter) – she is getting a lot of abuse for stating the obvious.
Lockdowns do not save lives
Lockdowns are catastrophic
Lockdowns are unscientific
Lockdowns cost human lives
Lockdowns cause suffering
Lockdowns cause suicides
Lockdowns harm children
Lockdowns cause mass global poverty, starvation & deaths
Lockdowns are crimes against humanity
Kulvinder Kaur MD
https://mobile.twitter.com/dockaurG
Indeed. We should never cease to remind people that lockdowns are unprecedented and unorthodox – they are the risky, controversial approach, and what Sweden did and is doing is the approach that has been used in the past and up until the Chinese went nuts was orthodox.
With Toby’s excellent blog, and the range of comments – technical, anecdotal, opinions, links, discussions – on here today, drawing on a mass of external source, to me this has been one of the finest days in the history of this site.
Hancock likes to talk about the cavalry (for him, a vaccine) being on the way. The cavalry’s coming all right, but not in the way he thinks, and it is going to blow him out of the water.
I was thinking this afternoon that the second lockdown or its milder ‘circuit-break’ equivalent in all but name is going to be fun personally. I expect my family will at least accept it as they are way too trusting of the Ministry of Truth and non-Independent. The first time there was some agreement, next time I’ll just have to try and not talk about it to avoid unneeded
conflict. Thankfully, I have you guys on here to share my feelings with.
I hope there’s at least one person among your family or close friends who share your views. Luckily my mrs and kids are all of the same mind as me, as is my mother in law. We socialise with other sceptics and keep other contact to a minimum, for the benefit of our mental health. We’re very lucky to have each other.
I have one distant friend who does but I feel like I’m the only sceptic around here. That said, I’ve not tried that hard to meet any.
My brothers, 80 year old widowed mother and daughter are now all of the same 100% sceptic view – though not all at the beginning. My mother is now firmly of the view, ‘Not in my name’. She’s furious about the impact on the young – ie her precious granddaughter. The Kill Your Granny Lind filled her with disgust. Hancock is a despicable man.
Line, not lind
I know how you feel DRW. I am in the same boat, the vast majority of my family are totally sucked into the crap. One of my close friends is on my page which is great and someone for me to see if we go into another ludicrous harder lockdown. I am lower than I can remember in my lifetime and struggling to keep positive. My anger is extreme and I am usually such a laid back and calm person. I have replied to some comments on the DM in rather a harsh way (on saying that many aren’t printed)people blaming the young or maskless for the (supposed) rise in cases.
France.
Erm, why can they have large crowds?
Live BT Sport now – Rennes
Meanwhile we lock down?
WTAF
Apart from the evil mask insanity they seem to have a bit more interest in getting the country back to normal – Italy seems similar – masks everywhere but fewer other restrictions and a sense that the governments want to move forward rather than floundering like embarrassing clowns.
The Tour de France has had crowds too. Meanwhile we are doing the opposite
So if this WAS a global conspiracy then that wouldn’t be happening.
Hope we can move on from that point now else it doesn’t add credibility to our reasoning.
Our issue is an arse covering exercise from Whitty, Ferguson and the UK Government.
Admit your mistakes and just move on now.
Take a second and third opinion.
That’s hardly impeccable logic, you know.
But maybe you’re auditioned for a job in the Health Ministry …
World wide conspiracy, remember we live on a flat plane.
rather than a globe.
If it isn’t a global conspiracy, how do you account for this?
https://docs4opendebate.be/en/open-letter/
Because France have a leader who has categorically stated that there will not be another lockdown. No ifs buts or maybes. Everyone knows where they stand and will act accordingly. That is leadership. I wouldn’t trust The Johnson with a dog lead without a dog on the other end of it.
Have any other European countries hinted at a second lockdown?
No, because none apart from BoJo the Clown are that stupid!!!
Susanna Reid: ‘I had vivid nightmares during lockdown – I’d wake up screaming’
These are challenging times for the Good Morning Britain presenter, with three teenage boys at home
– and having to work with Piers Morgan
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/life/susanna-reid-had-vivid-nightmares-lockdown-wake-screaming/
So that’s four then
Teenage lads have their good side …
I was at Trafalgar Square today.
It was very peaceful. I enjoyed chatting to ordinary people.
There was a lot of police in the crowd.
Then they all left and riot police arrived. First time there were only about 20 of them and the crowd pushed them down the road chanting Choose you side.
Then a lot more riot police arrived and people formed human chain to stop them clearing the square.
I spoke to riot policewoman and asked her why they were there. She said that 2 police officers got injured because someone threw bottles at them. Really?
People were peaceful.
People were taking selfies with riot police, chatted to them in a friendly way, didn’t want confrontation.
I left around 3. Then I read that 32 people got arrested.
“I spoke to riot policewoman and asked her why they were there. She said that 2 police officers got injured because someone threw bottles at them.”
Like “resisting arrest” or “racist abuse” – the standard justifications invariably given for violence.
Or having a bottle thrown at you?
Well done Julie for going – I wish I lived a bit closer to London. I’ve never protested in my life but this whole shabang has really got my hackles up! May see if can go up for next week’s march.
Anti-mask mayhem in Trafalgar Square: Conspiracy theorists clash with police as hundreds rail against Covid restrictions in central London protest
Hundreds of anti-lockdown protesters clashed with Metropolitan Police at a mass rally at Nelson’s column
Army of police moved in on angry demonstrators defying Boris Johnson’s coronavirus restrictions today
Protesters carried placards warning ‘this is now tyranny’ and ‘plandemic’ while others called Covid-19 a ‘hoax’
Outnumbered officers were pushed back by the huge Resist And Act For Freedom Rally in central London
Looking forward to finding out the truth from Nick Rose, JulieR and any other LS regulars who were there today.
It was good to see how the crowd pushed back riot police
Many people took videos.
Then they brought more riot police in.
I didn’t see any clashes. It was peaceful. Maybe after I left.
Sounds like it was genuinely “mostly peaceful”, though aggressive policing can always generate resistance that can be portrayed as violence if the authorities want it. Or they can “take the knee”, if the mob is pushing something the authorities want pushed.
JulieR did mention that the crowd pushed back riot police and not vice versa. As I saw on Youtube Ruptly live stream.
Thanks for your report.
The number of cases per 100,000 people over seven days is reported to have increased in London from 18.8 to around 25.
How terrifying!
Hundreds of anti-lockdown protesters including conspiracy theorists
No comment!
Social media says there was a police running charge at peaceful protestors. Its quite depressing to see tge video but unclear what was taking place.
Many twitter accounts are saying the police were violent the protests peaceful. I did not watch the day live to be able to comment more than it looked a very content engaged crowd – peacuful and positive.
The political policing we have seen elsewhere in Btitain and around the world leads me to suspect there may have been attempts to manufacture images and headlines negative to the protestors. The behaviour of the crowd was exemplary from what I have gathered online at distance.
Roving reporter Nick Rose tomorrow will file his report!
The organizers said many times that the protest should be peaceful and people should avoid confrontation. Many people chatted to police officers in the crowd, then chatted to riot police.
When I was leaving the rumour in the crowd was that riot police was going to clear the square soon.
Thank you for your report and earlier report. Good to hear it was peaceful and a good day
AND ANOTHER THING!
The camp site we were on overlooked a train line, I watched trains rolls past for days, every single one EMPTY, one or two had one or two people in them. It was the same for busses, apart from school buses, full of poor nappied-up school kids, every single bus was empty or almost empty and not just past our camp site, EVERYWHERE. Signs on the bus stops and presumably on the train stations say do not use public transport unless your journey is absolutely essential.
I talked to a fair few other people, some cleaners of the camp site bar and reception, local people, the lady was saying how horrible face masks were and how they make her feel like she can’t breath and how people she knows get spots and rashes from wearing them. They also think the powers of covid has been way over-exaggerated and for simple folks quite clued up.
Another camper was a believer, his wife worked for a pharmaceutical company. Normies. However I managed to get through my canon of covid scepticism without a challenge….Hummmm
About half an hour later the wife had a very animated phone call, waving her arms about holding her head and looking very stressed, they packed up and left in a hurry at about 6:30 at night. Hardly a picture of domestic bliss and harmony.
On another site, got talking to a couple in their late 50’s, windows cleaners. They were very pleased to discover that I was a non-believer. They let rip! They both thought that everybody has been brainwashed and it’s all bollocks. They also said they don’t watch the telly and cannot understand why anybody would…hummmm
I talked to an OLD farmer, I was very pleased to see he was still alive after I met him last year. He was saying in a rather shocked way how they have to wear masks now. He was a bit worried about catching it but not very….I told him not to worry then we had a talk about his 1950 Massey Ferguson tractor. It was a beauty.
Then off he went, presumably to shoot some vermin, strangle some stoats and badgers and round up a few sheep and cows to take to the knackers yard tomorrow. He was really quite happy, if only he didn’t have to wear a mask in the slaughter house.
I happened across some young hippy people in their party gear, last Sunday. They had had a good ole rave-up in a field on the Saturday night. Festival bogs and EVERYTING. That made my day, bless em.
Another guy who lived in a caravan full time was saying about how the local cops in the newly locked down welsh region of Rhondda Cynon Taff had NPR cars out last night “on the roundabout”, checking vehicles and pulling people who made their thing go ping. He also said how he thought the new rules were insane, had no idea what they were and how he was just going to break them anyway.
Local lockdown, how can they work? People from all over drive through these counties, stop their camper vans in them, go to the pubs in them, stop for supplies. Such bollocks.
Apart from that, EVERYTHING else that one would do normally do when away in a camper van like a bit of shopping, stopping for supplies, checking out interesting farm shops, buying gas, buying fuel, buying anything, checking out local attractions, going into a local pub, eating out, is now a horrible anxiety-ridden experience that I have to avoid.
It’s just evil what is going on. Everything is so broken. What the HELL IS WRONG WITH PEOPLE……
hi two-six – totally agree with you, but don’t let the bastards get you down and ‘carry on camping’! I’m hoping to get out next weekend in my camper but have an awful feeling about this latest lockdown threat being discussed by the gov/media and could start in the week. God I hope not but with the next demo next weekend I wouldn’t put anything past the gov to block this going ahead!
cheers
Sue (from garslade farm
Hi Sue, Who know what these crazy evil fools in government are going to do to us next. I haven’t heard anything about camp sites locking down again so far. Apart from having to interact with the normie world of covid safety and the very brainwashed, it really was great to get away, sit in a field, walk along the cliffs, (now strangely free from mental covid safety signs), drink some booze and meet other Lock Down Sceptics….;-) Shuuuuush
“ What the HELL IS WRONG WITH PEOPLE……”
A seminal question. The evil couldn’t operate without complicity.
You up for another beer soon if you are back? I can come over to you this time.
Hi yes that would be a good thing to do, I don’t know about the pubs round here as yet with the new COMPULSORY T&T bollocks. It might have to be somewhere where they don’t know me very well. Tonight Mathew I will be Crispin Oatcake..
This was a comment on the Daily Mail article linked by Toby (above):
According to data published by NHS England today, total covid deaths since all this started are 29,585. Those with pre-existing conditions totalled 28,385 (95%) with 1395 (5%) dying of covid alone. 91% of all covid deaths were over 60, with only 2534 being under this age. Only 307 people under 60 died of covid alone. And for this they have devastated the economy, taken away of freedom and denied proper medical care to millions!
I haven’t verified the data, but it sounds about right.
That’s deaths in hospital. ONS figures are
“Involving” …hmmm…. exactly. Not ‘from’.
… and based on supposition to a great extent.
Based on death certificates, I believe.
It is spot on. The penny is starting to drop with the lockdown left but it is too late…
Article by Simon Dolan:
https://www.cityam.com/saving-christmas-why-i-am-taking-the-government-to-court-over-its-covid-19-response/?fbclid=IwAR0xt5e6CAD1__se8w6DkQP3MnO-PisN31gKKMea4w4eWgIZsLRrnTyo-Ds
KEY UPDATES.
Please review this thread
https://mobile.twitter.com/stevebrown2856/status/1307354594633232384
The stats are fascinating and starting to become clear.
Yes, don’t know who this guy is, but he can do the figures. Main point is that 5 to 7 looks like having more positives than 12 to 14 Sept. The processors have upped their game averaging nearly 250 k tests a day.
Is this cricket….sorry I’ve had a few
Yes, by specimen date (which Carl Heneghan uses, I think) it is pretty flat since the big jump around 2 September (people back from holidays, back to school). The headline reported number is much higher, likely reflecting the catch-up in processing the swabs. We are being played!
But once this does settle down politically there will be hell to pay if the people realise they have been duped.
Agree, and more people, including MPs and leading business people are now starting to break cover. Problem is though, ‘they’ are in charge of the data, and we have seen how they have manipulated it to fit their narrative. Heneghan and his team have done a good job exposing it, but when caught out, they resort to misrepresenting, or outright lying (Hancock’s positive tests)
Is it too late though?
The exposing of lies on positive tests must be hammered home everywhere.
The public are easily influenced, but they don’t like being duped (especially when it is used as justification to remove fundamental human liberties).
People might start joining the dots a little more, now that Airlines are now advertising digital health technology as a passage to society – just seen ad tonight (think it was Turkish Airlines).
They won’t though. They’ll just say the Rule of Six and masks have worked.
Definitely cricket….sorry again
From the Daily Mail article on the protest today:
“Officials, including England’s chief medical officer Professor Chris Whitty and chief scientific adviser Sir Patrick Vallance, are thought to be arguing for tough restrictions as panic within official circles grows. ”
It does appear they are genuine believers that only the social distancing charade has kept us alive all these months. Remarkable!
That, or they are very good actors.
They absolutely believe it.
It’s a fact that 40,000 more people died in April than normal. They believe that, if you lift restrictions, then at least another 40,000 more than normal would die. Best case, 100,000 total more than normal, 700,000 in the year instead of 600,000.
These would all be people with dementia, alzheimer’s, chronic heart disease, advanced cancer etc. but the television doesn’t care about that. The television just needs one or two that are photogenic and you are a granny killer.
This is the awful trap we have put ourselves in. When you stop isolating, in the short term more people will die. Bound to. Or you could put it another way. Even without Covid, if we had wanted to prolong life by a few months regardless of cost, we always could have done it. We didn’t think it was worth it. Now we have done it, we can’t stop doing it because people would die.
“40,000 more people died in April than normal”
Let’s not argue about the precise figure. But nope. : … “than the short-term average”. There’s a difference, which critically depends on how you set the baseline. There’s no simple ‘normal’ – mortality rates vary. That’s life
Whatever the number, in relation to whatever average, why would the same short term increase not happen again?
They have gone too far down the wrong road to turn back.
Thus the term ‘scared Whityless’.
I was talking to my next door neighbour (about the bastard drain pipe), anyway he has had a kidney transplant during peak lockdown. Very nasty for him, he says he has no immune system. I think he probably does have one but he has been self isolation with vigor.
His children went back to school, they all got colds, he got one too, he said he was quite ill with it but he is OK now. It was probably about as bad a man-flu.
This makes all the social distancing, hand sanitising, self-isolation and face nappies that his whole family have been doing with incredible enthusiasm since March look totally useless.
I personally find Chris Whitty a bad actor (in both senses). Sir Patrick Vallance appears to keep out of video spotlight (or I just don’t go looking).
Then there is that certain SpAd, who is a very bad actor (in both senses).
“,,,,panic within official circles grows.”…..don’t know what to say to that, apart from what everyone on here has been saying for months.
Why is this not front page news? – Epidemiologist @SunetraGupta says if the UK is “aggressively protecting” the vulnerable then education, jobs and the arts can resume.
Because the media are bought-and-paid-for bastards ?
Yes. That is the answer.
Very depressing sights in Aldi today. Everybody waring masks, even the children, none of whom looked over the age of 8.
Just go about your business as much as possible and try not to let other people’s choices bring you down.
The latest goal post shifting around Sweden is that they all go away on holiday in the summer which has, miraculously stopped the spread of the virus. The cognitive dissonance becomes ever more absurd.
Where have they gone to? Given the extent of lockdown in other countries, including mask wearing, why would any Swede (or any sensible person) want to go on holiday elsewhere?
Technically we are allowed to leave Ireland (it is only guidance not to travel and allegedly guidance to self isolate on your return – or so the weasels argued in the High Court last week when Ryanair took the Government to court) but, in practice, I won’t wear a face nappy so no flights for me until this requirement is gone and I wont be visiting any country that has any restrictions (masks, social distancing etc).
I was thinking about hopping on the ferry to Wales but now that they have introduced masks in shops, that is out.
Why not go to Wales? It’s not all in a shop. And if you’re not wearing a mask in a shop they probably won’t question you and if they do just say you’re exempt.
LS as diary of these days.
The novichok guy, releases picture of himself making a full recovery from bioweapon as you do.
The relevance to LS is in his picture he is wearing gloves but no mask. Masks prevent identification. The point of his photo is identification. But his needs to virtue signal so gloves are worn. Symbol of our times.
https://twitter.com/27khv/status/1307276393907183618?s=20
I don’t for a second buy the msm story of this incident – but in the case of this photograph I believe it crossed into lockdown propoaganda.
Do you believe the Salisbury novichock incident?
It’s a loose question you ask Dave believe in what precisely. Out of respect for LS. I will answer simply no, why believe the msm? I don’t think its the forum to discuss. But equally don’t mean to belittle your question.
Nope
Craig Murray is a very brave man.
https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2019/03/pure-ten-points-i-just-cant-believe-about-the-official-skripal-narrative/
Only ten? Gagging self on this subject because it is off topic. Craig Murray is a good guy.
Maybe they gave him the Russian COVID-19 vaccine. Novichok probably has less side effects than a rushed untested vaccine.
The long dreaded second wave of Neil Ferguson Interviews has arrived.. (Courtesy: @timfprice)
What an utterly shameless c u next Tuesday Ferguson is.
Apologies if this has already been posted, but I’ve been looking at Boris’s facebook page today. Loads of negative comments on there, especially on his Battle of Britain day post, saying he’s taken away the rights the Few defended. Hopefully the tide is turning.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2020/09/19/speaker-angered-bymatt-hancock-locking-constituency-warning/
“Speaker ‘angered’ by Matt Hancock for locking down his constituency before warning Parliament”
Come on, Sir Lindsay! Time to let rip.
Needed a new pair of walking shoes so popped into GoOutdoors today.
The place was empty far more staff than customers, a few staff wearing masks, most not. Customers solidly masked.
If this continues I do not know how such businesses will be able to justify keeping what are fairly large retail sites open. I know that the business offers a discount to people who are doing the Duke of Edinburgh’s Award Scheme, well at the moment I understand it is all virtual so no outdoor gear needed.
I did my bit and bought a pair of walking shoes.
Ha. Can’t beat a virtual challenge.
Rather good result. Speeding fine (my first) and resultant awareness course is online! Now that is a bonus!
That’s a good thing, going to a socially distanced compulsory face-nappy wearing speeding awareness course would totally SUCK.
It’s vital decision makers have robust data, a clear strategy, and understand the harm to health, lives and livelihoods caused by lockdown. Let’s focus on protecting those most at risk, and living with the virus, rather than unattainable ‘zero covid.’
Lucy Allan MP
@lucyallan
Thankyou for being here. Please prioritise flagging up the fact that 70-100% of PCR positive test results are false positives. And therefore the latest round of lockdowns are based on fundamental scientific falsehood.
From Toby at the top of today’s page:-
Thanks for the verbiage. Flagging is the correct term. Have a lovely Sunday. #LockdownSceptics #LockdownSeptics
Here’s a radical proposal:-
All future meetings of full SAGE should be videocast, and fully minuted without redaction. And the minutes should be available to all. Only the chair should have authority to make a redaction in exceptional circumstances, and must record the reason why the redaction was necessary.
All SAGE subgroup meetings should have a minimum of two independent observers in person, with expertise relevant to that subgroup. A summary of discussion and all decisions made at a subgroup meeting to be released into the public domain.
All SAGE members must declare their individual conflicts of interests in a publically available register, for a first time, and then declare any subsequent changes.
Science must be open to parliamentary and public scrutiny and that of peer scientists, rather than be conducted secretively behind closed doors.
What objection could there possibly be?
Have a nice Sunday!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H06qf5gqcnE
”Choose your side” shouted to the police!
Best slogan ever!!!
Brutal stuff at Trafalgar Square today!
Watched from the link. No, not brutal.
I was there -interesting stuff-will report later-bit tired right now
Any statisticians out there who would like to examine Mat Hang Kok’s claim this morning that hospital admissions for Covid are ‘doubling every seven to eight days : https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/healthcare
(Peter Hitchens) @ClarkeMicah
*Prefer his brother to be honest.. but then.. any port.. as they say..*
https://twitter.com/WesPegden/status/1307401300489928710
This is really nothing controversial and accepted now by many. The problem is that SAGE/Gov UK is doing its utmost to stop that happening
“It is well-understood that the higher contact patterns among younger adults make those age groups the primary driver of the epidemic. Regardless of the relative roles of vaccines vs infection, the COVID epidemic will be over basically when it is over for 20-35 year olds.1/3”
This twitter thread from someone writing an article about these things is worth reading
Another ‘Must Read’ doctor, Sebastian Rushworth M.D. a Swedish A & E doctor, has posted an update re: the situation in Sweden. Another article that you should read.
Herd Immunity appears to have been reached in Sweden and life is more or less back to normal.
Back to normal? was reading a link someone posted here the other day, looks like an growing section of the population is getting medically and financially microchipped….
Sorry, forgot to add the link.
https://sebastianrushworth.com/
From Daily Telegraph.
Social contact ‘diet plan’….
Well I guess that is better than draconian.
Almost Swedish in its logic.
That and protect the most at risk.
You would like to think Johnson would be trying to find a workable solution this evening.
Yes, in that it entrusts the public to use their common sense it’s better than what we’ve seen so far, but of course they have to present it in the most patronising and dumbed down language-for-idiots possible.
What is it saying? Don’t want to read the doom and gloom in all the news at the moment…
Simon Heffer is the latest Tory journalist grandee to fire off a shot across the Johnson/ Cummings bow. And this after Charles Moore’s article. It is getting to squeaky bum time for The Johnson. The party will chuck him under a bus and, if Cummings knows too much, we all know what will happen to him…
Definition
Absolutely loving ‘Doris from Watford’ – Can we please get her involved with SAGE or NUTMEG or whatever they call themselves these days..
@doris_from : Why isn’t Neil Ferguson referred to as “the man whose model contained possibly the most devastating software mistake of all time”. Or, “the man who ignored the rules for a shag”.
@doris_from
(The beating heart of middle England. Travel by bus.)
Martin Kulldorf is heard more and more in the US. He is a Professor Harward Medical School. Disease surveillance methods. Infectious disease outbreaks. Vaccine safety. Free SaTScan, TreeScan and RSequential software.(He is from Sweden and trained there but career in the US).He is together with the Stanford group now one of the most vocal among the normal epidemiologists arguing with Project Fear. Worth reading.
“Contact tracing, testing and isolation is important against many infectious disease outbreaks, such as Ebola and post-vaccine measles. It is ineffective, naïve and counter-productive against COVID19, influenza, pre-vaccine measles, etc, and by definition, against any pandemic.”
“Problems when one or more of: (1) disease is widely spread, (2) there are many mild or asymptomatic cases, (3) there is pre-symptomatic transmission, (4) we cannot identify the first index case in a given population, or how that person got infected.”
He is also discussing the South Korean/NZ response.
https://twitter.com/MartinKulldorff
Hog of the ground day. Sky News sprcial report from “inside an ICU” in Italy or France… blah blah coffins blah graves.. graphic example… blah
The msm are a one trick pony out if tricks.
Oooh spooky steady cam shot of caskets in a chapel… hang on. Sky are showing right now a report of Italy at their peak months ago!
Wow such blatant spi-b nudge crap.
Scruffy grim voiced reporter couldn’t shave of course, at that level of considered manipulation.
Brainwashing on freeview 233 Sky News right now if you need it.
Just watching it on YT.
What a load of old *ollocks, lets stir up those emotions of fear, remind people what we convinced them about 6 months ago. why reinvent the wheel when the fear just needs reawakening.
You can see the thoyght planning and effort that has gone into making a compendium of the fist wave scares to play now for the brainwashing of in prep of wave two. Deliberate propagandising of our nation. They are enemies of the people.
NEW LOCKDOWN TOMORROW? Local Morrisons has been very relaxed, almost normal, UNTIL TODAY. New barriers enforcing distancing, new queuing system designed it seems to create panic buying, and signs asking customers to be considerate and not to buy too much. They’ve been given the nod….
Yeah I’ve head our local Morrisons has re-introduced queueing.
Or footfall and business is down. If they put up signs saying only buy what you need, they know it will have the reverse effect and people will panic and buy more. Maybe I’m too cynical.
The government don’t know what they are doing from hour to hour, I doubt they’ve informed Morrison’s.
My husband said pasta was gone in Sainsbury’s this morning.
Could I live without pasta/bog roll?….probably….
More likely they are making their own preparations for the approaching run on bog roll, flour and pasta now the govt have announced the arrival of the second wave and inevitable second lockdown.
I do self scan in Tesco and got flagged for a complete check today.75 items. The lady was NOT pleased, but she was very chatty. Despite my mask free face.
Anyway, she told me she had seen her first hoarder in a while yesterday. 12 tins of potatoes, 38 loo rolls. And he claimed this was his normal weekly shop for a family of 4.
Their bums must be pretty filthy.
Pathetic
mood music until the govt ratify the coronavirus act next week
Someone on here months and months ago mentioned that the civil service had been planning for a second October lockdown even back then. At the time I thought it was probably a load of rubbish……..
Rumours were mentioned in one of Toby’s London Calling podcasts from June/July.
My GP friend told me months ago that they have been told to expect second wave in October.
Wait for it – minor rise in hospital deaths (CEBM) – back to levels of late July as the autumn season commences. Expect massive hype and Fear and Panic generation.
My prediction – usually more accurate than the Whitty/Vallance kind. Imprisonment back to the centre of failed policy.
Hello, just wondering what data you are reviewing? I looked at this NHS data sheet
https://www.england.nhs.uk/statistics/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/09/COVID-19-total-announced-deaths-19-September-2020.xlsx
It gives 68 deaths for England, for the last 7 days out of a population of around 56 million that does not sound all that statistically significant?
As with hospital case data they seem to be making something out of nothing more than the normal ebb & flow of hospital data.
They seem determined to make us panic when in reality, as the old song says;
”ain’t nothing shaking but the leaves on the tree”.
Data is the relay by the CEBM :
https://www.cebm.net/covid-19/covid-19-death-data-in-england-daily-update/
… it’s the most reliable summary and tracking of hospital deaths. They do attribute everything to the relevant dates rather than the reporting date.
You’re only reiterating my point. The rise, beyond statistical noise, is minor and what might be expected at this time of year (I think it is a real slight increase)
If I’m going down, I’m going down sane. Thank you all for your company.
Anyone else just desperate for any good news? Feels like March again with the fear machines firing away and the sense of inevitable loss coming any day now. It’s twice as bad going through it all over again.
Yes, exactly, I feel almost just as bad as in March/April – the same unpredictability and no end in sight – and I don’t mean the virus, of course, but the insane government response completely decoupled from realty.
The worst part is that normality didn’t seem that far off back then. Now footage from Sweden feels like watching a lost world. Guess the past really is another country now.
Yes, I somehow managed to convince myself that it would all be over no later than Sept – seems I’m just as good at predictions as master Ferguson.
It’s like with POWs’ testimonies in a documentary I once watched (but the stakes are much lower of course) – don’t tell yourself that it will be over by some date or the disappointment will break you and you will not survive – good lesson for the future I guess.
I thought the epidemic would be over by early June, which I don’t think was a bad estimate, but of course I failed to take into account the relentless fear mongering media and even more relentlessly weak Government, getting less and less optimistic with each passing day now I am afraid.
It isn’t accidental.
BBC doing full on Project Fear & Threaten!
Persons unnamed are allegedly not isolating and will get £1000 fines if they don’t do wot police say etc.
So obviously they still don’t understand false positives as per Tobys explanation.
Rather disgusting the way the BBC has morphed into E German state news.
You can support the de fund the BBC guys. I haven’t had the BBC in my house since 2016. They have no place in a discerning, free thinking household.
But remember who controls the appointment to the management of the BBC. Discredit where discredit is due.
Isn’t it an obligation on every skeptic to remove their payment of the bbc ?
I have a suggestion for theme songs if this haven’t been suggested already:
In light of universities starting term in the next couple of weeks, how about Beastie Boys – (You Gotta) Fight for Your Right (to Party!!!)
The Party is now in the game:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/09/19/senior-tories-plot-backlash-against-pms-emergency-curbs-freedoms/
‘It’s time for Parliamentary scrutiny of Covid-19 restrictions, says chairman of the powerful 1922 Committee of backbench Conservative MPs’
Well, firstly, thank goodness, but secondly, it took them bloody long enough.
It’s time? No shit.
Any chance of full text of that?
Be clear. This couldn’t have happened without the Tory Party real controllers.
You mean Jeremy Corbyn and his panic-mongering friends, who back in March pressured the government to drop their original plans to follow pretty much the Swedish route?
UK’s chief scientific adviser defends ‘herd immunity’ strategy for coronavirus
“On Friday morning the pressure on Mr Johnson and his scientific and medical advisers to take more drastic action more quickly grew when opposition leaders, including Labour’s Jeremy Corbyn, challenged England’s deputy chief medical officer Jenny Harries and minister of care Helen Whately on why the UK was taking such a different approach to other countries.
An official with knowledge of the meeting said Ms Harries “came under sustained pressure” and “the meeting was quite fractious“
Oh dear – another Boris supporter in denial and trying to re-write the real history. Amazing what power the villified Jeremy Corbyn suddenly acquired as a back-bencher by this witless account.
Poor ickle Boris and his mates being bullied by power-mad powerful Jeremy!
And in MARCH? So that explains everything NOW?
What bollocks. Get a grip on reality.
Do you mean that you weren’t repeating yet again your regularly repeated attempt to pretend the coronapanic response in this country was “driven by right wing extremists” secretly controlling the “Conservative Party?
Just stating the bleedin’ obvious: that the Tory Party has been in government for ten years, and have initiated this shit-show. Those governments are of the right. The current incarnation is extreme. Quod erat …
I didn’t mention any ‘secret’ control – it’s plain to see when you follow the money. Not ‘conspiracy’ – just the usual suspects.
A fact, not an opinion.
You might note that I’ve never exculpated fellow travellers from other parties in adding to the shit-show, whether by action or inaction. But it’s a right-wing originated animal that they are riding. By definition – from the global corporate capital impulse provided to the local shambles here.
Just get real.
The government has no one else to blame but themselves. They have an 80 seat majority and should take full responsibility for this sh*t show. The fact there’s been no opposition and the MSM has been appalling is still no excuse.
I agree the buck stops with the Tories,but I wouldn’t describe them as right wing.They are a continuation of Blairism.That treasonous ideology has permeated deep into the British state.
The usual self-serving evasion, and the refutation is in the link I posted which upset you so much. Far from your fantasy of “right wing originated” and Tory “initiated”, the actual reality is that the government intended to follow the Swedish approach, broadly, and was hounded out of that by critics including Jeremy Corbyn and others of the left, who wanted to panic instead And they got heir way.
Persist in your self-serving delusion as long as you want, it won’t make reality conform to your heartfelt wish.
As to your straw man, I have never said the government is not responsible for what it has done. The point is that you are creating a fantasy in which it was “initiated” and “organised” by your political enemies. Your choice, if you want to live in comfortable delusion rather than reality.
Sorry, not sure I follow. What do you mean by ‘this’ – the response to the virus or the 1922 potentially intervening?
My assumption was that he was repeating his personal fantasy about the “driving force” behind the coronapanic being “right wing extremists” in the “Conservative” Party (LOL!)
Hadn’t occurred to me that “this” might have been referring to the 1922 involvement – could be, I suppose, though it doesn’t really make sense imo. Nor does the idea that the panic was “driven by right wing extremist”, nor that there should be such remaining in the Parliamentary “Conservative” Party, but he has repeated that assertion here numerous times – probably a desperate wish to avoid having to break the habit of a long lifetime blaming “the Tories” for everything.
I think it is a neo-Marxist coup. History alone will tell, but if you could seize all email and text traffic from the morning of 24 January 2020 from several key individuals you would know for sure the context for what has happened.
I think “The Left” want to give the stupid evil Tories enough rope to hang themselves with, so derailing brexit and the new global fascist cabal they want to build, so restoring their new communitarian carbon zero kind utopian globalist regime.
The problem is that the fake “neo-marxist” left and the fascist right are two cheeks of the same globalist corporate backside. Communitarianism, a hybrid of Fascism and Communism the deep state runs BOTH sides.
Democracy is an illusion.
I buy that. In much the same way that ‘capitalism’ became an illusion after the Financial Crisis and what has followed from the crushing of market discovery through central bank-enabled financial repression.
If you mean Tory Party donors then you might be right – I remember seeing a story somewhere in the last week about at least one of them pushing for an easing of restrictions.
It was Sir Mick Davis, former CEO Xstrata and of the Tory party. I cast it on here as a rallying cry to big donors to put pressure on the party to change tack. John Caudwell on Question Time went even further (he was the biggest donor at the least election), and Lord Wolfson spoke out on Friday.
Parliament is the best way this shambles will be resolved. The other ways are much messier.
If you want to add power to the Speaker’s elbow, he can be given support at:
speakersoffice@parliament.uk
He does read them, and his office responds.
Thanks for that. I think the 1922 is working with the speaker behind the scenes.
I think I might write to him, better bet than my stoogey MP.
About bloody time. Where have they been for the last 6 months?
In the garden with a glass of chardonnay!
10,000 calories = 1kg of lost weight.
Burn 500 calories a day (1 to 2 hours exercise), 500 calories less per day consumed. Cut out sugar/processed food, alcohol.
Assume that on some days you’ll fail so target 1 kg per month & in a year you’ve lost 12kgs, look better feel better, massive improvement in your immunity system.
Try the Harcombe Diet, no need to starve yourself, eat as much as you want, no need to feel hungry. Watch the weight come off with a diet that isn’t just a fad which you will eventually fall off and put the pounds back on, and the best thing about it is the lady who created it is a Lockdown Sceptic too!
I have just completed the 11th week of my simple diet plan – 6 days a week no processed sugar at all (berries are just fine) with one day (Saturday) to enjoy a treat or two. Combined with 7 days a week 5am gym sessions, and I’m down 22 lbs already without much hassle.
I don’t count calories or anything, just a good effort to eat well and keep the body moving. It’s a laugh because at 45 years old I have naked confidence for the first time ever. It’s great to feel some positive self appreciation for once.
Immune system is the boss!! Nothing’s getting in me this winter
Tune for a lockdown socially distanced totally fucked-up Saturday night.
Wall Of Death-Richard and Linda Tompson
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GcFhyy2kgdo
Any thoughts on the 77th Brigade?
They get paid a lot.
Thirty pieces of silver?
Nothing polite. The enemy within.
Indeed.
They work from a script. This is their downfall. They will fail.
I replied to a so-called first time poster this morning. Claimed he’d been reading the site since the outset but was prompted to post now because it was becoming “less balanced”.
I couldn’t help but challenge the post because we are the “balance” to this damn lunacy. I mean, who frequents a site like this for 6 months and posts for the first time asking for balance? Jesus wept.
I’ve only just joined this site. (few days ago).. An avid reader for some weeks… to be honest, I originally thought of this site as being too extreme. It’s quite clear that it’s been infiltrated by certain types who are hell-bent in dis-crediting other people’s opinions… they will fail.
Not necessarily a 77 though as I understand those play to the largest and most susceptible audiences. And he did make some good points, even if you disagreed with them.
Yes he did. I was probably wrong. Who knows? One could argue they would not venture onto sites such as this as the numbers are too small and the consensus of opinion is pretty rigid and unlikely to be changed. Still, seemed an odd position to take for a first time poster who has been here since the beginning.
Yes. Highly suspicious. I’ve seen that sort of gambit before – the “false friend” approach.
An absolute read from Prof Balloux.SD can paradoxically increase total deaths
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1307381101929926656.html
It’s simply about not kidding yourself about the balance of risk – which is why getting stupid about normal infections has always been the norm.
Forget everything except sensible precautions and trusting individuals to assess their risk and consequent actions.
Oh – Did I say Sweden?
If epidemiologists want to play in the field of public policy, instead of just sticking to what their job is – then I suggest they piss off to a desert island together to explore their theoretical models without bothering the rest of us.
please support Simon Dolan’s legal challenge at this stupid Government’s lockdown and restrictions Johnson Hancock & Witty must go https://www.newchartistmovement.org.uk
From The Telegraph (paywall):
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2020/09/19/fines-10000-failing-self-isolate/
Fines of up to £10,000 for failing to self-isolate
This is quite an appalling article. The thrust of it is that, according to the government and the two chief bullshitting vaxxers, the British people are to blame for the current situation, not the government.
This extract takes the bloody biscuit (my emphasis):
Boris Johnson cracks down as he prepares to impose even tougher restrictions on households and leisure
Mr Johnson hardened his approach after Prof Whitty and Sir Patrick said Germany and Sweden had managed to stop surging infections as compliance was higher than in the UK.
A senior source said: “Chris and Patrick made the point this week to the PM that one of the reasons that Germany and Sweden are faring relatively well at Covid was because of the public’s general compliance.
“They raised their concerns and one of the ways to bring that up is additional enforcement.”
Meanwhile, the British Medical Association warned that the NHS would “once again be crippled” unless the Government introduced stronger coronavirus measures.
How was the NHS crippled the first time? Staff had time to film dance routines and most of the Nightingales weren’t used.
The dance routines did at least reveal what a high proportion of NHS staff are obese. They shouldn’t be part of Covid care teams, given their propensity to acquire the virus. I would say the same of thin people if they displayed the same propensity. Of course the NHS would prefer people to die rather than they should appear non PC.
I guess that confirms more screw-tightening coming next week then.
Yes, I nearly burst a blood vessel when I read that comment about Sweden.
The “you were naughty so we had no choice but to do this new evil thing to you” is their standard “go to” items in their arsenal of evil bulshittery.
The comments are coming in rapidly and they are not pretty!
Nor were they last time and they still did it. The bastards always sneak these things out late in the evening.
Like this one:
Alison Deighan 5ptsFeatured
19 Sep 2020 11:25PM
The government is surprised to learn that the rule of 6 is being flouted. Well, no sh** Sherlock. Anybody with any experience of being a human person (apparently excepting Whitty and Vallance) would have been able to tell them that (and did tell them that) on day 1.
It’s not that Germans and Scandanavians [sic] are more socially responsible. It’s just that their governments are not judging their level of responsibility based on their compliance with a load of ever changing, incoherent, unjust rules. At no point have the British public been calmly given reasonable and clear advice without being threatened with sanctions. 5 minutes ago the government were haranguing people to get back to Pret. Now, for past 5 minutes, socialising is the great evil. Which it wasn’t really, till 5 minutes ago. Meanwhile, they haven’t the capability or even the common courtesy to tell us what (if anything) their strategy might be. All they do is shout one slogan then another as though we were all in the USSR.
Blaming the population for what, at the end of the day is a natural misfortune, naturally spreading (as surprisingly, viruses do) is a stupid error. Introducing £10,000 fines theoretically payable by grandparents with too many children in the garden is just criminally wrong. Disproportionate, overreach of police powers, not passed through Parliament. This path leads to Dan Andrews’ Victoria, and anyone who can’t see the real wickedness of what is happening there belongs nowhere near public office.
I wish I could see the rest of the comments- behind paywall
Oh Tigress, do you still think Johnson and all this are finished soon?
They are insane, how can any Tory MP’s read that and not see this has to stop.
… or any MP
Given the PM is doing his best to turn us into a replica of the old East Germany, perhaps he wish to recall Berthold Brecht’s sardonic advice to the Communist government that they should consider electing a new people.
Yes – one minute the Torygraph columnists are oozing common sense, and the next the frightened children in the news Dept are spreading manure over the readers. The management needs to get a grip.
Has it not occurred to them to wonder how the German and Swedish governments have managed to take their populations along with them without enforcement and whopping great fines? Better governance perhaps? A coherent and consistent strategy? Talking to the electorate like grown ups instead of like a third rate prep school headmaster to a class of unruly schoolboys?
Just a few ideas to be getting on with there.
Good point. As ‘leaders’, if that’s what they are, they just couldn’t be worse.
I have blog buddies in Germany moaning about people not complying. Germany sent medical students to check on the sick I believe rather than waiting till they were at death’s doorstep to treat them.
There is a venomous spider somewhere in your house. Its bite is extremely deadly to the elderly, but tends to be largely harmless to everyone else in your household, would you choose to
Burn down the house
Shelter in the bathroom
Protect granny
Ignore it
You can vote here
https://twitter.com/BallouxFrancois/status/1307410852434378753
Kill it with fire. Obviously!
Kill granny obviously
I think I have seen this somewhere – don’t they lock Granny and the spider in one room??
Unfortunately, yes.
The diktat dread is really messing with my sleep, I won’t be sleeping tonight again after the latest bombshell.
Have a few or get some sleeping pills from your online doctor. Don’t let them mess with your sleep!
Night night. MMXX
The inevitable second lockdown had me thinking of the Blackadder episode where General Melchett (Boris) is describing their brilliant plan for defeating the Enemy (virus). To which Captain Blackadder asks “ would that be the brilliant plan that involves us getting out our trenches and walking very slowly towards the enemy?” (Lockdown) “How could you possibly know that Blackadder that’s classified information” says Captain Darling (Hancock). “Because it’s the same plan we used last time. And the 17 times before that (rolling lockdowns). “Exactly!” Exclaims Melchett (Boris)“ which is why it is so brilliant”.
Current Government policy is basically on the same level. Link below.
https://youtu.be/rblfKREj50o
Captain Blackadder understood they were mad and tried to out-mad them but failed to understand that they were so far out that any sane person could not compete. That’s what we face now.
Yes! Hancock is Darling. How could I not have seen it before?
Oh my you nailed it Roadrash. The scene you mention is the my favourite of all the Blackadder series. I just love Stephehn Fry’s enthusiasm and buffoonery
Just stumbled across this
https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/press-release/2017/06/28/world-bank-launches-first-ever-pandemic-bonds-to-support-500-million-pandemic-emergency-financing-facility
And this
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pandemic_Emergency_Financing_Facility
May be common knowledge so apologies if flagged up previously.
Follow the money……
https://clincancerres.aacrjournals.org/content/26/18_Supplement/S04-01.abstract
In a normal world such a result would immediately trigger a large prospective RCT trial.A drug sold over counter (Pepcid) histamine-2 rec antagonist,cheap.One would think this would be a high interest to test whether it works. Do you think Big Pharma would tolerate that study?
“ The over-the-counter histamine-2 receptor antagonist famotidine is a putative therapy for COVID-19. We quantitively assessed longitudinal changes in patient-reported outcome measures in nonhospitalized patients with COVID-19 who self-administered high-dose famotidine orally.”
“Ten consecutive patients with COVID-19 who self-administered high-dose oral famotidine were identified. The most frequently used famotidine regimen was 80mg three times daily (n=6) for a median of 11 days (range: 5 to 21 days). Famotidine was well tolerated. All patients reported marked improvements of disease-related symptoms after starting famotidine. The combined symptom score improved significantly within 24 hours of starting famotidine and peripheral oxygen saturation (n=2), and device recorded activity (n=1) increased.”
The list of common OTC treatments that are effective gets longer all the time.
Who would have thought for such a ‘deadly’ disease?
Not sure I get the objection to the £10k fine if you don’t isolate.
Surely if you do test and you have been unwell then it’s common sense anyway.
If you there is nothing wrong with you then you won’t be tested anyway so what’s the problem.
What am I missing?
If you are genuinely sick and tested positive you are at home 14 days.
If people are going out despite being unwell that is actually curtailing freedoms for the rest of us.
BS. It’s the Lockdown laws that are curtailing freedoms. Are you working from a script?
I guess we’ll know you are working from a script if you don’t answer my question above.
….or below.
Sorry; I fed the troll earlier.
Not disagreeing at all, but if only 20% of those who are supposed to be isolating are isolating then that is contributing to liberties being taken away from the rest of us.
So you want to see this approach applied to the flu, STDs, TB and cancer-causing viruses, all policed by a vast and inefficient bureaucracy costing hundreds of billions every year? If not, why not?
No reply. Working from a script.
Sorry was asleep. Happy to carry this on via today’s thread.
Anyone silly enough to download the contact tracing app could be told to self isolate at any moment.
Edinburgh live deliberately misrepresents people who are cincerned about lockdown. Saturday they wrote:
Edinburgh coronavirus deniers to descend on Princes Street tomorrow
Locals have been advised to avoid the area as a crowd of people will be gathering illegally without face coverings tomorrow
I wonder if edinburgh live is as bad at reporting on other matter, I certainly would not rely on a paper using terminology associated wiyh the holocaust to class people who seem massive damage being do to our country and our lives.
Local Live (mirror group news) misrepresent everything and everybody everywhere. Seems to be their editorial policey.
Welcome on board again The Daily Mail.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8751369/amp/Second-wave-Covid-cases-Europe-not-causing-deaths-spike.html?__twitter_impression=true
Having spent the last six months helping destroy the UK’s economy, cultural life and health service…well done Mail!
And a great piece by Peter Hitchins suggesting johnson and the wanker need putting in a rest home.
Just one quibble. He claims to have discovered, from an unattributed ‘close to the top’ source the origin of the 2 metre rule.
“We knew that 1 metre was sufficient but didn’t think the public would understand that so we doubled it”
Apart from that sentiment being ridiculous, sorry Peter but that phrase was floating about on t’internet at least three months ago, possibly longer.
The UK has just gone back down the forest trail into the dark, dark wood. The economy will be shredded. Our cultural life will collapse. The health service will be no more than a skeleton service (literally one might say). Our old people will die lonely unloved deaths in care homes. Our children will grow up believing a Masked world is a normal world. With total lack of logic the government remains committed to keeping schools open…probably the surest way of spreading the virus around! Misgovernance on the grandest scale.
The rules for college students must be basically the same throughout the world. My daughter is a freshman music education major at Colorado State University. For this semester, all concert bands and orchestras have been cancelled. She was given the opportunity to participate in three wind quintets. From the first, she was told each group would only be allowed 30 minutes weekly to rehearse and that would have to hold off rehearsing for two weeks. When the two weeks were up, they put off allowing rehearsals another two weeks. At the end of that two weeks she was told that each part would be recorded separately and sent to be digitally mixed by an engineer. Unfortunately for her, the French Horn is now considered a weapon of mass destruction. It is so discouraging!
Discouraging and absurd, ridiculous, sad, pointless, nasty, outrageous, …….
The great majority of UK students go to University elsewhere than their home town. 95% failed to register in my city
on Friday as they should have.
Why would they bother given no face to face teaching, ‘virtual Freshers Week’, no sport, social or other extracurricular activities.
Confined to their room learning via zoom which they can do in the comfort of their own home and all the while being hectored about Covid as if they didn’t know already.
And, of course, opportunities for sexual activity greatly reduced.
SUNDAY PAGE IS HERE
https://dailysceptic.org/2020/09/20/latest-news-140/#comments
Last one to leave please switch off the lights and kiss your arse goodbye
Think the tide is turning ,most people will not put up with a full lockdown , even if it’s a local one
People need to earn a living time for some sensible discussions about isolating the vunerable and the rest of us going back to normal with handwashing and common sense no more lockdowns scrap all social distancing measures now!