Matt Hancock’s Bad Day at the Office
The Health Secretary didn’t have a good day yesterday.
It began with an interview on Good Morning Britain in which Piers Morgan attacked him unrelentingly for refusing to appear on the programme for the previous 201 days.
“Do you think it’s right and proper than in the biggest health crisis this country has faced for a hundred years, that you as Health Secretary and the entire Cabinet and the prime Minister have boycotted a big morning breakfast television programme and our viewers for six months?” asked Piers. “Did you support the boycott? Did you agree with it?”
Gurning and waffling didn’t really cut it. After cataloging all the health failures on Hancock’s watch, Piers told him he should resign.
That was followed directly afterwards by an appearance on Julia Hartley Brewer’s talkRADIO show in which she pressed him on whether the Government had “ruled out” a mandatory mass vaccination programme.
“Honestly, I’ve learnt not to rule things out during this pandemic because you have to watch what happens and you have to make judgements accordingly,” he said.
That surely wasn’t part of the script? It generated headlines afterwards, such as this one in the Telegraph: “Matt Hancock refuses to rule out making coronavirus vaccine mandatory.”
He then had to step in for Boris at the Downing Street briefing, where he made a series of implausible claims, including that “the virus remains a potent threat… not just to the oldest and the most vulnerable but to anyone of any age and of any background…”
Eh? As I pointed out yesterday, 88% of those who’ve died so far in Scotland are aged 70 or over and only 8% of the people who’ve succumbed to the virus have had no underlying health condition. According to John Ioannidis, Professor of Medicine at Stanford, the infection fatality rate for healthy under-70s is 0.05% – hardly a “potent threat”.
Worse was Hancock’s admission that it was “too early to know” whether the second lockdown would end on December 2nd, or whether some areas might be plunged into Tier 4 restrictions on December 3rd, prompting an angry exchange afterwards between the Prime Minister and member of the Covid Recovery Group. The Telegraph has the details.
Conservative MPs have blasted the “grim” and “terrible” suggestion that lower tiers could be “strengthened” after national lockdown is lifted, with Boris Johnson on another collision course with his backbenchers.
Tories had hoped for a general loosening of restrictions ahead of Christmas, with those in the lower tiers particularly aggrieved at the blanket measures.
Hancock claimed daily cases were still rising, comparing the daily average last week with the daily average the week before. But as Carl Heneghan pointed out on Twitter, the latest ONS infection survey suggests otherwise.
Mass Testing – an Unevaluated, Underdesigned, and Costly Mess
Mike Gill, a former regional director of Public Health England, and Muir Gray, a visiting professor at the Nuffield Department of Primary Care Health Sciences at Oxford, didn’t pull their punches in an editorial for the BMJ about the Government’s £100 billion mass testing programme.
With incidence across Liverpool already falling, attributing and quantifying any additional effect from the programme may prove complex. Instead, similar programmes are being rolled out across the country to universities and local authorities even before this pilot is complete.
The queues of people seeking tests in Liverpool suggest the initial acceptability of this pilot is high, at least to some. Its ethical basis, however, looks shaky. The council claims, wrongly, that the test detects infectiousness and is accurate. In fact, if used alone it will lead to many incorrect results with potentially substantial consequences. The context for gaining consent has been tarnished by the enthusiasm of some local officials and politicians. In the case of schools, the programme has been culpably rushed: parents have had to respond unreasonably promptly to a request to opt out if they do not want their child screened.
There is no protocol for this pilot in the public domain, let alone systems specification or ethical approval. The public has had no chance to contribute, as required by the UK standards for public involvement in research.
Spending the equivalent of 77% of the NHS annual revenue budget on an unevaluated underdesigned national programme leading to a regressive, insufficiently supported intervention – in many cases for the wrong people – cannot be defended. The experience of the National Screening Committee and National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) tells us that allowing testing programmes to drift into use without the right system in place leads to a mess, and the more resources invested the bigger the mess. This system should be designed with up to 10 clear objectives to deliver the aim of reducing the impact of covid—for example, to identify cases more quickly or to mitigate the effects of deprivation on risk of infection and poor outcomes. Progress in each objective (or lack of it) should be measured against explicit criteria. Screening programmes based on experience and on the literature relating to complex adaptive systems offer a model for rapid progress.
At a minimum, there should be an immediate pause, until the fundamental building blocks of this mass testing programme have been externally and independently scrutinised by the National Screening Committee and NIHR. In the meantime, nobody’s freedom or behaviour should be made contingent on having had a novel rapid test.
Worth reading in full.
Stop Press: A panel of scientists form universities in Newcastle, Birmingham, Warwick and Bristol sounded the alarm yesterday about the dangers of mass testing. The Mail has more.
They described it as the “most unethical use of public funds for screening” they’ve ever seen and claimed it had the potential to “actually do a lot of harm”.
The panel said it was telling that population screening for COVID-19 has not been endorsed by the World Health Organization (WHO) or the Government’s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE).
At a virtual press conference today, Professor Allyson Pollock, clinical professor of public health at the University of Newcastle, said: “The evidence for screening is not there.
“The evidence around the tests is poor and weak at the moment, and needs to be improved.
“We’re arguing the moonshot programme really should be paused, until the cost effectiveness and the value for money of any of these programmes is well established.”
Also worth reading in full.
Is the Pandemic Machine Similar to the German War Machine in 1914?
What follows is a guest post by longtime contributor Guy de la Bédoyère.
Reading the interview with the epidemiologist Tom Jefferson in Der Spiegel flagged up in Lockdown Sceptics yesterday really made me think. When he said:
The WHO and public health officials, virologists and the pharmaceutical companies. They’ve built this machine around the impending pandemic. And there’s a lot of money involved, and influence, and careers, and entire institutions! And all it took was one of these influenza viruses to mutate to start the machine grinding.
I was instantly reminded of Germany’s Schlieffen Plan. Human beings always want to plan for the future, offset future disasters, protect the population and so on – and it’s usually for the best possible reasons. The Schlieffen Plan had a totally different purpose in mind. It was supposed to protect Germany in a war with France.
In 1914 the Plan was all set up and ready to go and had been since Count Alfred von Schlieffen had dreamed it up in 1906. Except that the circumstances in 1914 weren’t what Schlieffen had quite imagined. A Serb had killed the Archduke Franz-Ferdinand, heir to the throne of Austro-Hungary, in Sarajevo. The Austro-Hungarians were outraged and threatened war. Russia said it would support the Serbs. The Germans said they would support the Austro-Hungarians. It looked like Germany was about to go to war with Russia – but France was Russia’s ally and that meant – wait for it – that Germany might have to go to war with France.
And that’s when the Schlieffen Plan came off the shelf and how a conflict that started in Sarajevo ended with a war between Germany and France, leading to four years of unbelievable brutality and bloodshed, millions killed and a fallout that echoes down to today via the Second World War. Let’s not forget that huge amounts of money were involved – every one of the belligerents believed they could get the defeated enemies to pick up the bill. They all got that wrong: the world has been paying for the Great War ever since.
No, that’s not a bit like dealing with a pandemic. Of course it isn’t. But it’s a real warning from history about overplanning in advance of circumstances that will always be unrecognizably different from what actually happens. Then put in charge the sort of people who can only operate to a rule book and the scene is set for believing that just following the bullet points means the problem will be sorted. Instead, the pit just gets dug deeper and deeper, positions get entrenched, money gets spent. But perhaps that’s just the way human beings are. I’m not suggesting for a moment the intentions aren’t sincere.
I have a creeping feeling that however things look right now, when our descendants look back on this time in the decades to come, there’s a more than sporting chance that just like us looking back at 1914 they’ll be saying, “What on earth were they thinking?”
Just imagine how different everything would have been if the powers that were had got together at Xmas 1914 and said: “This is absurd, let’s stop now and rethink it all – there’s no point in destroying the world.” But they didn’t. They just ploughed on to save face.
Government Admits It’s Been Miscounting Cases – Again
Oh dear. Public Health England announced yesterday that NHS Test and Trace has been wrongly identifying the location of people testing positive, using their address on the NHS database rather than the location where they’ve been tested. Until recently, there wasn’t much discrepancy – only 4% of people were living in a different area to the place they got tested, according to PHE. But between September 1st and October 12th, this increased to 12% of cases, driven mostly by younger people aged 17 to 21 relocating from their homes to universities.
The upshot is that the number of positive cases per 100,000 has been inflated in London, while the cases per 100,000 in university towns has been understated.
The Evening Standard identified this problem over a month ago, running a story on October 12th pointing out that the number of cases in Richmond had jumped by an implausibly large amount at exactly the same time that term started at universities.
The coronavirus rate jumped in the borough to 130.8 new cases per 100,000 population in the week to October 8th (259 cases), compared with 78.8 (156 cases) for the previous seven days, according to an analysis.
Borough chiefs believe a significant part of the rise in recent weeks, possibly more than 16%, may be due to students from Richmond at universities in other cities around the country, including Leeds, Exeter, Manchester and Durham, being included in its figures.
One obvious question is whether London needed to move from Tier 1 to Tier 2 towards the end of October, given that the number of positive cases in London was being inflated by this glitch. At the time, Sadiq Khan told the London Assembly that the decision was based on “expert public health and scientific advice”. But was the Mayor aware that the students who were pushing the numbers up were located in cities like Leeds, Exeter, Manchester and Durham rather than the capital? I doubt it.
According to a well-informed Twitter thread by Dr Duncan Robertson, a Fellow of St Catherine’s College, Oxford who specialises in COVID-19 modelling and analysis, this was a cock-up by the commercial company NHS Test and Trace hired to run the programme and can’t really be laid at the door of PHE. “It is unfortunate that PHE are making this statement as opposed to NHS Test and Trace or DHSC (who is responsible), as the error appears to have been with the methodology employed by commercial DHSC Test and Trace,” he Tweeted. Presumably, Hancock and co thought it would be prudent for PHE to take the blame because the agency is due for the chop shortly.
The Law Commission Wants New Blasphemy Law by the Back Door
Andrew Tettenborn, Professor of Law at Swansea University, appeared on Julia Hartley Brewer’s talkRADIO show yesterday morning to raise the alarm about the Law Commission’s new hate crime proposals. According to Andrew – a member of the Free Speech Union’s Legal Advisory Council – if these proposals become law an author of a novel like The Satanic Verses could be jailed for seven years.
You can read the Free Speech Union’s briefing document about these dreadful, anti-free speech proposals here.
Why is the Medicines Regulator Seeking an AI Software Tool to Process Vaccine Side Effects?
Several readers have alerted me to a recent invitation to tender by the medicines regulator that seems to suggest the Government is expecting a huge number of negative reactions to the Covid vaccines. I asked the Lockdown Sceptics test and trace correspondent – who tracked the failure of the NHSX Covid-tracking app for us – what this was all about and whether it was cause for concern.
There has been some excitement over an announcement spotted in the Official Journal of the EU by the UK Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA):
MHRA urgently seeks an Artificial Intelligence (AI) software tool to process the expected high volume of Covid-19 vaccine Adverse Drug Reaction (ADRs) and ensure that no details from the ADRs’ reaction text are missed.
Adverse Drug Reaction? Expected high volumes? Is this playing into the hands of the vaccine conspiracy theorists? Not so fast. The actual story is a familiar one in this pandemic response: failure of Government planning, wasted money and a last minute dash to build an IT system, all summarised rather nicely in the announcement itself:
Award of a contract without prior publication of a call for competition in the Official Journal … Reasons of extreme urgency — the MHRA recognises that its planned procurement process for the SafetyConnect programme, including the AI tool, would not have concluded by vaccine launch.
The collection and analysis of Adverse Drug Reactions (ADRs) is a standard part of all drug development. Pharma companies employ hundreds of experts in “Patient Safety” teams and numerous IT systems and processes to handle it, and it is partly why drug development takes so long and costs so much. But if that is done by the drug companies then why does the UK regulator, MHRA, need its own ADR processing system?
The scrutiny of drugs does not stop when they get a license. Following the thalidomide tragedy in the 1960s, the WHO set-up adverse event [AE] vigilance systems in countries like the UK. Here it is called the Yellow Card scheme. You may never have heard of it, but there have been over 700,000 ADRs submitted since it was established. With the number of adverse events increasing dramatically each year, pharma companies and regulators are reaching the limits of what people can do accurately and efficiently. Heaping the nation’s largest ever mass vaccination campaign onto the regulator’s human based systems was not going to work. A problem for AI to solve? Perhaps Matt Hancock’s £250m National AI Lab, announced in August 2019, could help? Indeed MHRA were onto a similar idea as early as Oct 2018 when their board said:
MHRA has been encouraged to put forward bids to several government programmes for funding/ external resources to explore the utility of artificial intelligence (AI) to deliver enhanced vigilance capability.
Nearly two years later and how has the time and money been spent? Not all that productively it seems as on Sept 14th EU procurement rules had to be bypassed as a £1.5 million contract was urgently awarded to GenPact (UK) to process an estimated 25,000 to 50,000 ADR reports over a six- to 12-month period. Even then, the MHRA said the system would not be ready for the vaccine launch date.
Someone should tell Kate Bingham, chair of the UK’s vaccine task force, who said the use of AI was “just what the MHRA should be doing”, adding that the UK is “incredibly well set up to do this given we all have NHS records which are electronic and connected”. Err, no we don’t. Connecting all patient records in the NHS was the NPfIT programme, which cost £12.7 billion before being cancelled and described by a House of Commons enquiry as “one of the worst and most expensive contracting fiascos ever”.
Still, I am sure it will be different this time.
Why is Sweden Imposing Restrictions When ICU Admissions are Falling?
What follows is a guest post by Will Jones.
Stefan Löfven, the Swedish Prime Minister, has announced he will pass a law to ban public gatherings of eight people or more.
“Do your duty,” he said. “Do not go to the gym, do not go to the library, do not have parties. Do not come up with excuses that would make your activity OK. It is your and my choices – every single day, every single hour, every single moment – that will now determine how we manage this.”
This shift in strategy to a nationally enforced “Rule of 8” does not appear to have the backing of state epidemiologist Anders Tegnell, who has said he wants to use the same no-lockdown approach for the “second wave” as he did for the first.
Perhaps the PM is listening instead to Fredrik Elgh, Professor of Virology at Umeå University, who recently claimed Sweden is two weeks away from surpassing the first wave’s peak hospitalisations. Has he not noticed that ICU admissions are currently in decline? And does he not recall that the health service coped fine in the spring?
Prof Elgh also noted that lockdowns appear to have worked in Belgium and the Czech Republic. But it’s cherry-picking data to look just at two countries where a decline happened to coincide with restrictions.
What about the fact that Sweden’s first wave declined with no lockdown, while in the UK the R rate dropped below 1 before lockdown both in the spring and in the autumn?
Why is the country introducing lockdown measures now, when there is nothing to indicate an autumn out of the ordinary? It may be because the country had hoped to have a milder autumn surge than they are experiencing. But that disappointment doesn’t change the basic parameters, which is that Covid has not been responsible for more than a medium to severe flu season anywhere, whatever restrictions have been applied. The graph below illustrates this point perfectly, showing Sweden’s 2019-2020 flu season death toll scarcely higher than earlier years. Not locking down does not result in a death toll much beyond the normal range, and most of those who die are already past the average life expectancy.
Lockdown zealots have recently taken to arguing that Sweden is so different to the UK and the rest of Europe that its example is of no practical relevance. They claim, for example, that Sweden has lower population density than the UK. But they fail to mention that most of it is empty space and that Sweden is in fact a more urbanised country than the UK (87.7% vs 83.4%). They also omit to note Stockholm has a similar population density to London.
They argue Sweden has more single occupancy households (39% vs 28%), but fail to mention that that translates to 17.8% and 15% of the population respectively so isn’t really significant.
They argue Swedes are a more naturally compliant people who studiously follow all the guidance so don’t need coercive rules. However, Stockholm in April was notorious for young people crowding into nightclubs and cafes while the rest of the world locked down. Karolinska Institute immunologist Marcus Buggert was quoted in the BMJ in September saying social distancing in Sweden was “always poorly followed, and it’s only become worse”. Conversely, Brits have been surprisingly conformist (and fearful of the virus), especially in the first lockdown.
In terms of the unfavourable comparison of Sweden to the death rates of its neighbours, that appears to be largely a result of a run of mild flu seasons in the country, leaving more “dry tinder” (older people vulnerable to respiratory infections), which is why 70% of Covid deaths in Sweden occurred in nursing homes.
What a shame that the chin-wobbling Swedish politicians seem at this late stage to have developed a hunger for locking down. Whatever restrictions they now impose though, Sweden remains an important demonstration of what happens when a country refuses to lock down. Sweden may not want to heed the lessons of its own example, but others can.
Round-Up
- “Denmark throws epidemic law in the bin” – Great news out of Denmark yesterday. Its proposed new epidemic law, which would have given Danish health authorities the power to force people to be vaccinated, among other horrors, has been scrapped after several days of protests outside the Danish Parliament
- “Children must be excluded from ‘rule of six’ over Christmas, MPs say” – MPs are demanding children are excluded so traditional family Christmases can go ahead
- “The ‘nanny-in-chief’ is wide of the mark on Covid and obesity” – Christopher Snowdon in CapX says Dame Sally Davies is wrong about obesity being a major factor in Britain’s above-average Covid death toll
- “Medical Doctor Warns that ‘Bacterial Pneumonias Are on the Rise’ from Mask Wearing” – American doctor suspects bacterial pneumonias are becoming more common and blames face masks
- “Can We Challenge the Official Covid Vaccination Narrative?” – Niall McCrae on why not everyone who has reservations about the safety and effectiveness of the Covid vaccine should be dismissed as an “anti-vaxxer”
- “The Moderna vaccine offers more hope” – Ross Clark in the Spectator says the Moderna vaccine looks, at first blush, to be better than the Pfizer/BioNTech one
- “Boris’s ludicrous self-isolation has brutally exposed the idiocy of test and trace” – And here’s Clark in the Telegraph pointing out how absurd it is that the PM has been asked to self-isolate given that, in his own words, he’s “bursting with antibodies”
- “Fear, not data, shapes the public’s view of COVID-19” – The Telegraph‘s Tim Stanley says our response to the virus has been hysterical, even though we have access to more data than ever before
- “Who’ll grab the steering wheel from out-of-control Johnson?” – Coruscating profile of the Prime Minister by Daniel Miller in the Conservative Woman
- “If Sacha Baron Cohen wants to ‘stop hate for profit’, why is he still making jokes at Kazakhstan’s expense?” – Excellent comment piece about Sacha Baron Cohen’s hypocrisy by Noah Carl in RT
- “Scotland’s largest teaching union issues strike warning and demands return to part-time schooling” – Down tools, comrades. In the incredibly unlikely event of one of us catching Covid, there’s a 0.05% chance we’ll die. Time to throw the kids under a bus
- “Angela Merkel faces rebellion from regional leaders over Covid rules” – Regional leaders openly accuse the German leader of trying to bounce them into accepting a detailed set of new restrictions
- “Labour’s plan to censor anti-vaxxers would only make things worse” – Good piece by Benedict Spence on why censorship will not allay the fears of vaccine worrywarts
- “We don’t have the luxury of being semi-locked down until vaccine is rolled out” – Excellent leader in yesterday’s Sun
Theme Tunes Suggested by Readers
Just one today: “Highway to Hell” by AC/DC.
Love in the Time of Covid
We have created some Lockdown Sceptics Forums, including a dating forum called “Love in a Covid Climate” that has attracted a bit of attention. We have a team of moderators in place to remove spam and deal with the trolls, but sometimes it takes a little while so please bear with us. You have to register to use the Forums, but that should just be a one-time thing. Any problems, email the Lockdown Sceptics webmaster Ian Rons here.
Sharing stories: Some of you have asked how to link to particular stories on Lockdown Sceptics. The answer used to be to first click on “Latest News”, then click on the links that came up beside the headline of each story. But we’ve changed that so the link now comes up beside the headline whether you’ve clicked on “Latest News” or you’re just on the Lockdown Sceptics home page. Please do share the stories with your friends and on social media.
Woke Gobbledegook
We’ve decided to create a permanent slot down here for woke gobbledegook. Today, I’m flagging up Christiane Amanpour’s bizarre comparison of Donald Trump’s four-year term with Kristallnacht, the infamous night in 1938 in which the Nazi Party and its supporters ransacked Jewish schools and hospitals, damaged or destroyed over 7,000 Jewish-owned businesses, arrested 30,000 Jewish men and murdered at least 90.
“This week, 82 years ago, Kristallnacht happened,” Amanpour said at the top of her CNN show last Thursday.
It was the Nazis’ warning shot across the bow of our human civilization that led to genocide against a whole identity. And, in that tower of burning books, it led to an attack on fact, knowledge, history and truth.
After four years of a modern-day assault on those same values by Donald Trump, the Biden/Harris team pledges a return to norms, including the truth. And, every day, Joe Biden makes presidential announcements about good governance and the health and security of the American people, while the great brooding figure of his defeated opponent rages, conducting purges of perceived enemies and preventing a transition.
CNN hasn’t exactly been pro-Trump for the last four years, but even by the network’s partisan standards this was over-the-top. To compare Trump’s Presidency to Kristallnacht is to wildly exaggerate his sins – the ultimate example of Trump Derangement Syndrome – and, at the same time, minimise the crimes committed by the Nazis on that terrible night.
Not surprisingly, top Israeli officials have demanded an apology, according to the Jerusalem Post.
Diaspora Affairs Minister Omer Yankelevitch said on Sunday that the US news network “should be a partner in the global effort to fight antisemitism and not fuel the fire”.
“Using the memory of the Holocaust for cheap headlines or a political agenda is concerning and distorts the historical and moral truth,” Yankelevitch said.
Stop Press: Liz Truss has been accused of “gross negligence” by a Lib Dem MP after appointing David Goodhart, a member of the Free Speech Union’s Advisory Council, to the Equality and Human Rights Commission. His sin? To describe the claim that Britain is systemically racist as “statistically naive”.
Stop Press 2: There’s a good piece in the Times on the difficulties various companies have got themselves into by trying to appear woke.
Stop Press 3: Suzanne Moore has left the Guardian, presumably forced out as a result of dissenting from woke orthodoxy. Watch me sticking up for her in a ding-dong with Owen Jones on Sky News a few months ago.
“Mask Exempt” Lanyards
We’ve created a one-stop shop down here for people who want to buy (or make) a “Mask Exempt” lanyard/card. You can print out and laminate a fairly standard one for free here and it has the advantage of not explicitly claiming you have a disability. But if you have no qualms about that (or you are disabled), you can buy a lanyard from Amazon saying you do have a disability/medical exemption here (takes a while to arrive). The Government has instructions on how to download an official “Mask Exempt” notice to put on your phone here. You can get a “Hidden Disability” tag from ebay here and an “exempt” card with lanyard for just £1.99 from Etsy here. And, finally, if you feel obliged to wear a mask but want to signal your disapproval of having to do so, you can get a “sexy world” mask with the Swedish flag on it here.
Don’t forget to sign the petition on the UK Government’s petitions website calling for an end to mandatory face masks in shops here.
A reader has started a website that contains some useful guidance about how you can claim legal exemption.
If you’re a shop owner and you want to let your customers know you want be insisting on face masks or asking them what their reasons for exemption are, you can download a friendly sign to stick in your window here.
And here’s an excellent piece about the ineffectiveness of masks by a Roger W. Koops, who has a doctorate in organic chemistry.
Mask Censorship: The Swiss Doctor has translated the article in a Danish newspaper about the suppressed Danish mask study. Largest RCT on the effectiveness of masks ever carried out. Rejected by three top scientific journals so far.
Stop Press: Joe Biden, in his first economic address since the election, said he supported a national mask mandate to help curb the rise of the virus.
The Great Barrington Declaration
The Great Barrington Declaration, a petition started by Professor Martin Kulldorff, Professor Sunetra Gupta and Professor Jay Bhattacharya calling for a strategy of “Focused Protection” (protect the elderly and the vulnerable and let everyone else get on with life), was launched last month and the lockdown zealots have been doing their best to discredit it ever since. If you Googled it a week after launch, the top hits were three smear pieces from the Guardian, including: “Herd immunity letter signed by fake experts including ‘Dr Johnny Bananas’.” (Freddie Sayers at UnHerd warned us about this the day before it appeared.) On the bright side, Google UK has stopped shadow banning it, so the actual Declaration now tops the search results – and my Spectator piece about the attempt to suppress it is among the top hits – although discussion of it has been censored by Reddit. The reason the zealots hate it, of course, is that it gives the lie to their claim that “the science” only supports their strategy. These three scientists are every bit as eminent – more eminent – than the pro-lockdown fanatics so expect no let up in the attacks. (Wikipedia has also done a smear job.)
You can find it here. Please sign it. Now over 650,000 signatures.
Update: The authors of the GDB have expanded the FAQs to deal with some of the arguments and smears that have been made against their proposal. Worth reading in full.
Update 2: Many of the signatories of the Great Barrington Declaration are involved with new UK anti-lockdown campaign Recovery. Find out more and join here.
Update 3: You can watch Sunetra Gupta set out the case for “Focused Protection” here and Jay Bhattacharya make it here.
Update 4: The three GBD authors plus Prof Carl Heneghan of CEBM have launched a new website collateralglobal.org, “a global repository for research into the collateral effects of the COVID-19 lockdown measures”.
Judicial Reviews Against the Government
There are now so many JRs being brought against the Government and its ministers, we thought we’d include them all in one place down here.
First, there’s the Simon Dolan case. You can see all the latest updates and contribute to that cause here.
Then there’s the Robin Tilbrook case. You can read about that and contribute here.
Then there’s John’s Campaign which is focused specifically on care homes. Find out more about that here.
There’s the GoodLawProject’s Judicial Review of the Government’s award of lucrative PPE contracts to various private companies. You can find out more about that here and contribute to the crowdfunder here.
The Night Time Industries Association has instructed lawyers to JR any further restrictions on restaurants, pubs and bars and is challenging the 10pm curfew. The hearing date is set for December 3rd, the day after we come out of lockdown.
Christian Concern and over 100 church leaders are JR-ing the Government over its insistence on closing churches during the lockdowns. Read about it here.
And last but not least there’s the Free Speech Union‘s challenge to Ofcom over its ‘coronavirus guidance’. You can read about that and make a donation here.
Samaritans
If you are struggling to cope, please call Samaritans for free on 116 123 (UK and ROI), email [email protected] or visit the Samaritans website to find details of your nearest branch. Samaritans is available round the clock, every single day of the year, providing a safe place for anyone struggling to cope, whoever they are, however they feel, whatever life has done to them.
Quotation Corner
It’s easier to fool people than to convince them that they have been fooled.
Mark Twain
Men, it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, one by one.
Charles Mackay
They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.
Benjamin Franklin
To do evil a human being must first of all believe that what he’s doing is good, or else that it’s a well-considered act in conformity with natural law. Fortunately, it is in the nature of the human being to seek a justification for his actions…
Ideology – that is what gives the evildoing its long-sought justification and gives the evildoer the necessary steadfastness and determination.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
No lesson seems to be so deeply inculcated by the experience of life as that you never should trust experts. If you believe the doctors, nothing is wholesome: if you believe the theologians, nothing is innocent: if you believe the soldiers, nothing is safe. They all require to have their strong wine diluted by a very large admixture of insipid common sense.
Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury
Nothing would be more fatal than for the Government of States to get into the hands of experts. Expert knowledge is limited knowledge and the unlimited ignorance of the plain man, who knows where it hurts, is a safer guide than any rigorous direction of a specialist.
Sir Winston Churchill
If it disagrees with experiment, it’s wrong. In that simple statement is the key to science.
Richard Feynman
Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.
C.S. Lewis
The welfare of humanity is always the alibi of tyrants.
Albert Camus
We’ve arranged a global civilization in which most crucial elements profoundly depend on science and technology. We have also arranged things so that almost no one understands science and technology. This is a prescription for disaster. We might get away with it for a while, but sooner or later this combustible mixture of ignorance and power is going to blow up in our faces.
Carl Sagan
Political language – and with variations this is true of all political parties, from Conservatives to Anarchists – is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.
George Orwell
We’re Hiring
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Shameless Begging Bit
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And Finally…
In the latest episode of London Calling, my weekly podcast with James Delingpole, we discuss how Boris became Prince Harry to Princess Nut Nuts, condemn the Labour Party for demanding that anti-vaxxers be even more censored on social media than they already are and review The Queen’s Gambit, which James thought was unrealistic because, according to him, you need an “autistic” male brain to become a chess champion.
You can listen to the podcast here and subscribe on iTunes here.
Discussion
Comments
This week across the site:
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Not sure if this has been posted already, but it is certainly something that ought to be spread to the greatest extent possible.
https://youtu.be/01psekGKn3Y
Here follows part 1 of a reply from my MP. I don’t know which of my several contacts she is replying to because it does not specifically answer any of my points and is clearly a cut and paste. There are many factual inaccuracies used to justify the government action and I may decide to respond if I have the energy but really these people are impervious: –
Thank you for your recent e-mail regarding the new national measures in the ongoing response to the coronavirus pandemic. Whilst I note your comments, I will continue to support this Government’s efforts to defeat the virus .As a strong supporter of freedom, liberty and enterprise I can assure you that the decisions that havebeen made by the Government have not been taken lightly.As your local Member of Parliament and as a member of the Government I do not want to see restrictions on our way of life in place for any longer than they need to be. I entered politics to work to give people more freedoms and to empower businesses. As we take action to suppress the spread of this dangerous and deadly disease I am working to get as much of society… Read more »
Part 2:
This aggressive action allows us the prospect of a better December. The alternative would be even more stringent, and longer-lasting, interventions through December and thereafter. These measures are necessary to help control the spread of the virus which thrives on social interaction. Unfortunately, we know that the virus spreads readily in indoor environments where members of different households and/or support bubbles spend time together. These restrictions do not single out restaurants, pubs or gyms but apply to a wide range of settings where the risk of transmission is high. These findings were highlighted by SAGE, who stated that: “A wide range of social, residential and workplace settings have been associated with transmission. The highest risks of transmission, including those from super-spreading events, are associated with poorly ventilated and crowded indoor settings with increased likelihood of aerosol emission (such as loud singing/speech, aerobic activity) and no face coverings are worn such as bars, nightclubs, parties/family gatherings, indoor dining, gyms and exercise classes, choirs and churches.” (Source:https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads /attachment_data/file/933225/S0824_SARSCoV-2_Transmission_routes_and_environments.pdf) I understand the points and views you have raised and would once again reassure you that I am working to support the freedoms and liberties that we cherish in this country… Read more »
If there’s ever a documentary about the government’s response to CoVID-19, the theme music will be played on a kazoo.
Piers Morgan is a giant douche. So glad his attempt at being an American didn’t work out.
I am not!!! His wife is equally dreadful.
Dolores Cahill was on Richie Allen today, second segment. She and 45 other people are in the process of creating an international organization to replace the United Nations,
The World Freedome Alliance. Check it out. She is also working on the creation of an organiztion to replace the W.H.O. That woman is phenomenal. She’s a great souled woman.
Someone who wants to befriend me on fb posted the HofC clip of this. Listen carefully:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eH179rKQGPQ
“Half of whom have had the lie!!!!”
Matt Wankock 11 Nov 2020
Think I’ve found a new friend!
About time we had some politicians on polygraphs.
Beginning to think we can bypass the polygraphs for some and go straight for the noose.
Some have shown that they are far beyond knowing they are part of wrong doing.
https://summit.news/2020/11/16/forced-vaccination-law-in-denmark-abandoned-after-public-protests/
Mike Graham (TalkRADIO) does a feature on YT called Plank of the week, I probably do not need to tell you who this weeks plank is, but I found this comment from Simon Dolan interesting.
Simon Dolan talking about Johnson
Kier Starmer. Honarary plank of the week every week. He defines planks.
A very big study in Holland about the other 4 coronaviruses.Not so good news for the vaccine if Sars-Cov2 has the same pattern.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-020-1083-1
Seasonal coronavirus protective immunity is short-lasting
“In our study, the months of June, July, August and September show the lowest prevalence of infections for all four seasonal coronaviruses (Fig. 1d; Wilcoxon signed-rank test, P = 0.004), confirming the higher prevalence in winter in temperate countries, and SARS-CoV-2 might share this feature in the post-pandemic era.”
“We show that reinfections by natural infection occur for all four seasonal coronaviruses, suggesting that it is a common feature for all human coronaviruses, including SARS-CoV-2. Reinfections occurred most frequently at 12 months after infection, indicating that protective immunity is only short-lived.”
Presumably they’ll just want to give it to everyone every six months, then. Very good for the vaccine makers and our biological overlords.
In my experience, if you spend time in a different area you catch a lot of colds in the first few months and then only catch them rarely. I surmise once you’ve had a certain cold virus, it will most likely be a barely noticeable mild sniffle if you catch it again.
Like Freshers flu
but what will Thailand do without the tourists? Does its government buy into the great Reset or is it beginning to wake up?
I always considered myself a law abiding citizen but I invited my friend tonight for supper and a chat and it felt so good! It’s horrible though you half fear a knock on the door. We agreed it was like Soviet Russia.We decided on ‘support bubble’ should anyone ask.
My cleaning lady told me her uncle in his 60’s died earlier in the year of covid. That’s the first death of anyone in any way connected I’ve heard of.
Neither my friend nor my cleaning lady want to be a vaccine guinea pig.
I get a feeling more East Germany than Soviet Russia.
I am a law abiding type, but my patience for following the law is rapidly running out. Too many goal posts being moving in the last few months.
Yes, with quite a bit of Cultural Revolution thrown in for food measure.
This was an interesting discussion amongst friends the other evening – it’s such a Conservative Right response of ours to feel worried about breaking a law even when we don’t agree with it.
It’s a concern the Left don’t experience! They feel if they decide it’s a bad law then it doesn’t apply to them. Let’s just do what they do!
Or just be like Antigone. If moral law is contravened by national law, national law can have no moral legitimacy.
That’s what I believe.
I must be Left then!
I’m left wing but have always been law abiding through I’ve a rebel streak in me. When I was young the law seemed to be about serious things like not stealing or murdering, not having a friend to visit!
More on the curious case of the mysteriously vanishing influenza.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/health/flu-season-2020-canada-public-health-1.5804673
Yes, I’m sure in the end there will be no difference in all-cause mortality because flu will have disappeared and Covid will have taken its place. I also surmise that because uptake for the flu vaccine has been so high this year, we’ll see ICU admissions and deaths due to other respiratory viruses and Covid; the flu vaccine *may* protect from some strains of flu but makes one more susceptible to other respiratory illnesses. Unfortunately, Canadians believe the flu has disappeared because of masking, hand washing/sanitizing, anti-social distancing, etc. but haven’t figured out that those same measures should have made Covid disappear. Meanwhile people here think we should try a Melbourne-style lockdown. Give me strength…
That cannot be the case that masking and SD has reduced flu.
Sweden and Belarus have also greatly reduced flu.
Meanwhile, Cambodia with no covid fatalities but with plenty of masks has plenty of flu.
Flu went to almost zero here in South Australia over winter. No one was wearing masks.
And now you are to be locked up for 14 cases?? What’s happening?
Why yes, of course masks and SD have eliminated the flu but covid still prevails because it is MUCH MORE CONTAGIOUS than influenza – I have read people expressing this logic all day on various tweets.
Canada is a write off, don’t bother sending help when we go full tyranny 🙁
With Trudeau spouting the Build Back Better slogan we are definitely in trouble. But there are a lot of people fighting back — Vaccine Choice Canada is suing all levels of government, Stand Up Canada, Hugs Over Masks, and Parents for a Mask Free Education to name the ones I know of. Don’t write us off quite yet!
https://twitter.com/FrancescoLari/status/1328742432998121472
“Italy, today hospitalizations new record. Lombardy, the most hit region, has now double the people in hospital and more than double in IC than in April. Yet Lombardy authorities are asking to be put out of the lockdown areas, as people need to work and life must go on.”
Italy has the worst air pollution levels in Europe.
And the highest rates of smoking and the greatest proportion of people over 70 in the population in Europe
And a high Chinese population (about 2%) employed in the clothing factories in Milan, Lombardy..
On an illegal basis using false papers. An EU scandal that the EU won’t even admit exists, Because false papers are being used , when someone dies they are disposed of unofficially. The workers both work and sleep in their factories. It’s slavery but of a type the WEF has no problem with. A large proportion of the workers are from the Wuhan region. The numbers are large – in the hundreds of thousands. Even at the height of the pandemic I don’t think flights with China were suspended.
Sounds like smoking and air pollution might not be the touted problem.
Today published this important paper about immunity and memory for Sars-Cov2.So Boris J shouldn’t have worried !
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.11.15.383323v1
Immunological memory to SARS-CoV-2 assessed for greater than six months after infection
“Spike IgG was relatively stable over 6+ months. Spike-specific memory B cells were more abundant at 6 months than at 1 month. SARS-CoV-2-specific CD4+ T cells and CD8+ T cells declined with a half-life of 3-5 months. By studying antibody, memory B cell, CD4+ T cell, and CD8+ T cell memory to SARS-CoV-2 in an integrated manner, we observed that each component of SARS-CoV-2 immune memory exhibited distinct kinetics.”
Yes I read this, this was very interesting, especially that the spike-specific memory Bs are actually more abundant at 6 months. You wouldn’t think you’d still be refining your immune memory that far out.
Another thing they found was a huge range in how many antibodies people ended up with after an infection (most of the people they were looking at were fairly mild cases):
Spike IgG titers were heterogenous among subjects (range 5 to 73,071; 575 median), as has been widely observed (20, 48). This gave a wide confidence interval for the spike IgG t1/2 (95% CI: 89 to 329d)
This goes some way to explaining why antibody testing is such an inexact science– huge variation in the levels of antibodies and how long they last.
I complained about BBC gender madness. This is the smug reply
“Why does the BBC want to push gender ideology and gender confusion at our children?“
The same reason it pushes coronapanic alarmism and climate alarmism and the same reason it has pushed antiracist and every variety of politically correct identity lobby ideology and the same reason it has pushed anti-British internationalism and hatred of British history, by exactly these methods, for decades.
Because the kind of people who run the BBC overwhelmingly believe that those things are right, since they fanatically believe in them, and that people who don’t believe in them are not just wrong, but bad.
They only believe these things are “right” in a formal, public sense. In their private lives, they ensure their children achieve a pretty good formal education, their friendship groups tend to be from their own ethnic group and class, their personal carbon footprint is much larger than the national average and hugely greater than the world average, their gender roles are much more traditional than their rhetoric would suggest, and they would ensure any child of theirs got a lot of expensive psychotherapy before they approved their bit being cut off or messed around with.
Interesting one. You are probably correct about the hypocrisy, but I wonder if part of the problem we face is that the older generations were hypocritical about all this – ie sensible in their actual behaviour, but over the couple of generations this has been proceeding at pace, the younger generations have become ever more brainwashed by their parents’ sanctimony.
Maybe hypocrites don’t do as much actual damage as true believers.
No, I don’t think the upper middle classes have given up on hypocrisy but with higher education a kind of sub Marxism has been absorbed -sincerely – in the lower middle classes. That’s v dangerous I think.
This is the original BBC page:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/articles/zp6ftrd
If someone else uses the wrong pronouns when referring to your friend, you might want to gently correct the person who made the mistake. You could say something like, “Actually, my friend uses ‘they’ for themselves.”
I honestly have no problem with anyone identifying as whatever gender they like. That’s all absolutely fine with me. It’s the mutilated grammar that results from avoiding all pronouns and then using the wrong ones that’s making me feel excluded here. This is not making me a safe space to share with!
A trans friend of mine: ‘I’m sick to death of politicians using my journey to score political points. FFS! Let people use whatever pronouns they like. I couldn’t give a toss’.
Imagine it said in a Lancashire accent
Good for them. I am sure most people understand what we need here is mutual respect for each other’s freedoms.
Yep their freedom to demand to be called whatever they like and my freedom to ignore them.
I have a longstanding dislike for using the plural pronoun for reasons of political correctness. In fact, for all attempts to impose language changes on others to enforce political acquiescence under the guise of supposed politeness.
I think it’s the same basic reason I won’t wear a mask to signal acquiescence to the panic.
There’s a place for basic politeness of course, but there also comes a point where imposing changes on others’ traditional usages is itself impolite.
As for gender I don’t really believe in it. There are males and females and a vanishingly small percentage who are physically in between. Then there are men pretending to be women and women pretending to be men. If they leave me alone, I’ll leave them alone.
I insist on being called “the Lord on High whose will must be obeyed at all times”. I am sure the BBC will go along with that and remind their weirdo friends, if they have any, to respect my choice of pronoun,
Re the earlier green debate…
1. It is not irrelevant to the lockdown debate. It is clear Globalists are using each and every weapon to hand to destroy populism and advance or re-establish elite control. They will use Covid, they will use social media, they will use concerns over the environment,
2. We need to be very careful I think to distinguish green issues, from climate change alarmism and those two areas from the XR-Greta death cult.
Regarding green issues, most sensible people favour reducing air pollution, ensuring water courses and coastal waters are clean, and preserving our flora and fauna. Indeed the love of our green and pleasant land has long been part of our patriotic tradition (it’s the Globalists who want to import another 10 million people, and concrete it over).
Green energy is a more controversial area I accept but any objective observer will soon discover that all around the world wind and solar power are winning tenders against other energy sources, without subsidy. The price-drops for wind and solar have been huge over the last 20 years and will continue. Yes, storage remains a challenge. But ultimately as the price falls further it… Read more »
Agree with all that. For me, the leverage being used to coerce Davos attendees is some critical climate related prophecy. Maybe Ferguson has been testing his hand at climate modelling too. I suspect at the end though, the elephant in the room is population growth. There’s an exponential curve if ever I saw one.
Population growth is the key threat to the environment, particularly loss of habitat. Population growth has slowed dramatically in many parts of the world often in places you might not expect, like Saudi Arabia. However the UN projects the population of Africa will rise to 4 billion (!) by the end of the 21st century. Sort of thing that BBC reporters so concerned about the environment never mention. Africa is such a fertile continent that it can probably support that population but the effect on the natural environment will be devastating.
I am often bewildered by how casually fossil fuels are dismissed as if they are an easily dispensable and replaceable luxury, when in fact they are the absolute foundation of our civilisation. Without coal, oil and gas, there would have been no industry, electricity, transportation, intensive agriculture, technology and much else besides.
The fantasy of zero carbon simply means a massively reduced population living in medieval feudalism and poverty. Forget all material advances from the last 250 years.
That’s a view not backed by facts.
Japan had huge urbanisation and intensive agriculture in the late 18th century. Japan had the largest city in the world at that point – over 1 million people. Their literacy rare at that point was probably the highest in the world.
We have seen societies leap forward in prosperity with hydroelectricity. The Scandinavian countries were some of the poorest and most backward in Europe until hydroelectricity came on the scene in the 1920s and 30s.
While I wouldn’t deny fossil fuels have created a huge energy surplus, they’ve had their day. You will always have to dig or drill them out of the ground and that is inherently expensive. Meanwhile the price of green energy falls year by year. In particular there is no reason to think the price of solar won’t continue to fall for many years to come.
The largest economic power China are still building coal fired plants.Cheap energy equals cheap manufacturing.This headlong rush into renewables will destroy what is left of western manufacturing and crown China the new hegemon.
It probably would have happened anyway but we have just sped the process up.
You cannot provide for 70 million people with renewables.It will never happen and it is utopian dreaming to think it can.
This is a person with a rare immunosuppressive disease getting C-19 and the virus persist and also an evolution of the virus in the patient surprising scientists. This type of virus evolution is of course a night mare for vaccine producers.
https://twitter.com/AntGDuarte/status/1326687092072734720
“Accelerated viral evolution in an immunocompromised patient? This sure sounds a lot like the Mojiang miners passage hypothesis”
https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMc2031364?query=featured_coronavirus
“Although most immunocompromised persons effectively clear SARS-CoV-2 infection, this case highlights the potential for persistent infection5 and accelerated viral evolution associated with an immunocompromised state”
I’ve read before that the virus mutates in every infected person. I’ve yet to get to the bottom of how scientists differentiate between mutations, variations, strains and novel viruses.
The only place it does anything (including mutate) is inside infected hosts. Outside them it’s just an inert object a bit like a seed.
Good point…but I meant to focus kn the fact that in every infected person mutations occur.
I think I’ve had enough of scientists. I just want to live my life and be free.
I agree. For every “scientific” view about Covid, there is a diametrically opposed alternative. So eff ’em. Our liberty is more important . Totally agree.
“Whenever we check the so-called unique genetic markers for SARS-CoV-2, recorded in the WHO protocols, we find complete or high percentage matches with various fragments of the human genome. This suggests that the genetic sequences, which are supposed to identify SARS-CoV-2, are not unique. They could be anything from microbial sequences to fragments of human chromosomes.”
https://off-guardian.org/2020/11/17/covid19-evidence-of-global-fraud/
Are bars open on campsites?
No idea, but there’s one in my flat that’s always open. A.k.a. the refrigerator.
Just needs a name eg “The Prince Harry” – used to be fun but now implies dependency.
Currently on Burton Brewery Tower IPA, very drinkable.
Fourpure Shapeshifter West Coast IPA for me this evening.
This type of article would probably not have been published in medical press earlier but now in an an ordinary scientific paper. There are signs that this taboo has been broken and more people interested. This together with the Italian study finding widespread SarsCov in Italy Aug-Sept is also a sign in the right direction about the origin of this pandemic.
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/bies.202000240
The genetic structure of SARS‐CoV‐2 does not rule out a laboratory originSARS‐COV‐2 chimeric structure and furin cleavage site might be the result of genetic manipulation
On a related topic, did you see this withdrawn paper? The title is enough
to raise an eyebrow.
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.01.30.927871v2
Found the original.
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.01.30.927871v1.full
Given we are now learning about DNA viruses I guess you couldn’t rule out a vaccine experiment that went wrong.
Not the first to make the error! Viruses = vaccines.
“OVID 19, and the subsequent governmental responses, appear to be part of an international conspiracy to commit fraud. It seems there is no evidence that a virus called SARS-CoV-2 causes a disease called COVID 19.”
……..
“In the U.S. the Centre For Disease Control (CDC) RT-PCR Diagnostic Panel state:
Last updated on 13th July 2020, the CDC are yet to obtain any pure viral sample from any patient said to have the disease of COVID-19. They openly admit their tests don’t necessarily show if SARS-CoV-2 is either present or causes COVID 19.”
https://off-guardian.org/2020/11/17/covid19-evidence-of-global-fraud/
“OVID 19” is a great neologism in any case !
A poetic pandemic, now that would be something I’d enjoy!
If you have Long Ovid do you undergo a metamorphosis?
You become a Juvenal delinquent.
I may have to impose Martial law here to end this classical punning.
‘Martial law’
Bringing us down to earth – right back to the present situation.
You could even say … bringing us Homer.
So immunity is long lasting, just as the likes of Wolfgang Wodarg were saying at the start.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/17/health/coronavirus-immunity.html
Something you would be censored for saying before now. But will they apologise? No.
It’s simple – it wasn’t necessarily longlasting when they needed to argue against herd immunity, but it is longlasting when they need to promote vaccine use.
part 3 (some of these links already censored I think)
………………
Lord Sumption calling out the British gov’s actions as unconstitutional, etc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=amDv2gk8aa0
https://resources.law.cam.ac.uk/privatelaw/Freshfields_Lecture_2020_Government_by_Decree.pdf
…………..
This site is trying to keep track of what’s happening https://www.europereloaded.com/how-to-become-part-of-dr-reiner-fuellmichs-class-action-suit/
8 October: “We got in touch with the German law firm of Dr. Reiner Fuellmich via his website http://www.fuellmich.com / Kontakt (contact) and left a message in English.
On his site, you’ll see this German announcement: Wir beraten und unterstutzen aktiv die Aktivitaten zu der Corona Schadensersatzklage. Which translates as: We actively advise and support the activities regarding the Corona claim for damages. https://www.corona-schadensersatzklage.de/ Which translates as ‘Corona action for damages’.
They replied that they themselves are only representing German clients, but plan to publish names of lawyers and law firms internationally who will be taking part in legal action for redress against the corona measures.
5. Margareta Griesz-Brisson
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pd22FGeuyog
https://www.technocracy.news/german-neurologist-on-face-masks-oxygen-deprivation-causes-permanent-neurological-damage/
The most terrifying criticism of masks – damage to every organ in the body. Permanent lowered IQ for young people. Triggers dementia for ten years time.
6. Ines Kappstein
Prof. Dr. med. Medizinstudium in Freiburg….
https://www.thieme-connect.com/prod
Part 2
3. The Stephan Kohn story/KM4 report
https://dailysceptic.org/analysis-by-a-senior-official-at-the-german-ministry-of-the-interior/
The author of the leaked document, which was written on April 15th, is Stephan Kohn, a senior civil servant in the KM4 section of the Ministry of the Interior, which is tasked with the protection of essential infrastructure.
4. By October 2020 there are two main organisations campaigning against govt policy [this info is probably correct, it’s very hard to follow and mostly in German which I don’t speak].
One is Stiftung Corona Aussschuss https://corona-ausschuss.de/
composed of lawyers and judges. It has countless hours of hearings. i.e. interviews of expert witnesses on many subjects. A video summarizing where they are in German, 1 October 2020
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b5NsnjyWhqo
With Dr. Reiner Fuellmich (who looks so tired). About one hour. Plans to bring various establishment players to court in the USA, Canada and Germany on charges of fraud (like Volkswagen, but obviously much bigger). Plans to prosecute German politicians at The Hague for crimes against humanity.
In English Dr. Reiner Fuellmich’s – Crimes Against Humanity
For 26 years, Dr Reiner Fuellmich has been a lawyer in Germany and California. He’s one of four members of the German Corona Investigative Committee. On October 3… Read more »
Especially for DRW. This is why we are going to win. Excellent bedtime listening for all.
What we need to do is turn the tide of public opinion, one person at a time.
And remind people in positions of responsibility of their duty of care, which operates regardless of what latest malign rules and guidelines are proposed by the government. Headteachers imposing masks in schools without doing a risk assessment? Wouldn’t like to be in their shoes a year from now.
Dr Reiner Fuellmich and colleagues.
Here’s the video of the formal hearing to the corona committee concerning the PCR test. It’s their final hearing, so I understand from the earlier videos.
Last week, two UK scientists Dr. Mike Yeadon (a former CSO at Pfizer company) and Dr. Clare Craig (an NHS pathologist) gave their evidence concerning the UK’s Testing programme to the Corona Committee. The video of this can be seen here:
https://youtu.be/kANkpqtWLN4
this is Fuellmich speaking to a Spanish interviewer a few days ago. Legal actions to begin next week, starting with the relatively small fry. Need to educate the public, etc.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RPd5l2ekdu4&feature=youtu.be
Background summary:
Corona Ausschuss (Committee) is lawyers and esp. Reiner Füllmich, interviewing witnesses… Read more »
From the Speccie: Matt Hancock has said that at least 43 new NHS clinics will be dedicated to helping those suffering from long Covid-19, a number which is currently estimated to be around 60,000 people.
Have there been any proper studies that debunk (or prove!) the long Covid phenomenon, other than the ‘self certifying’ studies?
There are 67 million Long Covid sufferers in the UK. No prizes for guessing the symptoms or the causes.
It is an affliction of largely middle class metropolitan women who work as teachers, nurses or in the charity sector.
Are you suggesting, by any chance, that a lot of them will be called Karen?
Exactly and probably a similar demographic to the ones who have fibromyalgia or ME. Working class women can’t afford the luxury of this kind of malingering.
I’ve a friend in her 80s with fibromyalgia. She still runs a business.It is a very painful condition and all too real.
I’ve had Long Covid for at least ten years before it became fashionable. I never realised I was such a trend setter
There’s a hell of a lot more people that are going to be suffering from Long Lockdown Syndrome.
A decent summary by a doctor, here:
What is long covid?
“First, long covid is rare. Around one in fifty people still have symptoms at the twelve week mark, and since the number with symptoms dropped significantly at one, two, and three months, it is likely that the reduction continues after twelve weeks, and that it is a tiny fraction who still have symptoms at six months.”
I thought it was “hundreds of thousands” of sufferers the other day.
As for evidence… no more than people who tested positive then reporting long term issues, as far as I know. Anything anyone says seems to be faithfully added to the list of possible effects. I’m sure people who had serious illness will take a while to recover, especially if intubated or in ICU, as you would for any other serious illness. But I think even people who had no symptoms from the initial “illness” are deemed to suffer Long Covid too.
Presumably these clinics are only for people suffering post viral illness from covid. From any other illness – go away, it’s not important.
It seems just one poorly conducted study mentioned here and given prominence in the ‘Guardian.’
https://sebastianrushworth.com/2020/11/17/what-is-long-covid/
What about boring old long flu etc? No post viral syndromes existed before now of course.
The harder the government and MSM push the narrative, the more obvious their lies become, to steadily increasing numbers of people. Casual alternative speculation from the past 8 months is becoming government policy and MSM talking points at a bewildering rate.
Has the state got the guts, the ability or the resources to really go for broke and choose the hard totalitarian crackdown path (which I believe they will have to at some point)? In some respects I dare them to, because once that Rubicon is crossed I think our total victory will be assured.
I think they might have to go there sooner rather than later while the compliant and apathetic are still in the majority and can be relied upon to collude. I’m hoping they’ll leave it too late.
Yes, it struck me today how quickly everything is moving. As you say, they have to get a move on before people begin to get too savvy and get over confident, and while they still believe in the Magic Potion, that it’ll be an answer to everything, and before too much negativity begins to circulate.
“Hopeful people are more easily controlled, but the volume must be managed. Too much hope leaves a person emboldened and resistant. Too little leaves them disabled and useless. But just the right amount of hope subjugates them. They cradle it like a dying ember, and they’ll do anything to keep the wind from extinguishing it……”
That describes it perfectly.
It’s a given that a majority will be queueing up for the death shot. The crackdown will only be needed for us. And I believe our will is much stronger than that of the so-called oppressors. Nazis or Soviets they most certainly are not.
I’m hoping by the time us youngsters would be in the crosshairs there will have been enough side effects from enough people to force a withdrawal. Unless the ultra-zealous collaborators running my university who have undoubtedly signed it up as a vax site decide they want to get ahead of the game.
Then you can politely explain that even being threatened with deadly force will not be enough. If this happens to me, I will create such a kerfuffle that the soldier will have no option other than to shoot me dead on the spot.
As I’m not ever willingly visiting my horrible campus again they can’t force it if they tried. The worst they can do is kick me out but I will take that.
Cheers to my fellow martyr in waiting. I too plan to get a serious kerfuffling going and then a nice instant death from multiple bullets will be my final outcome.
No danger of it getting to you by May.
Concur.
Especially the vaccination issue.
The opposed NHS group and Ticketmaster reaction suggest that might be harder than anticipated. Hence why they’re desperate to roll it out as soon as possible before too much opposition sets in.
Yes.
All measures so far are superficially plausible to mainstream Joe and Jill.
Eventually they will have to do something which reveals openly that is is a naked power grab.
You’d think that blackmailing people into taking a rushed-through vaccine might ring a few alarm bells, wouldn’t you?
If they go full on totalitarian, there will be plenty of people who’ll remember being tested positive and who had a sniffle or who felt fit as a fiddle and the penny will drop. Soldiers with machine guns for a sniffle. The sound of tens of millions of pennies dropping
https://www.thinkscotland.org/thinkpolitics/articles.html?read_full=14336
Another article by the excellent Linda Holt
Thanks for sharing. This article hits the nail on the head, there is no push back from the so called opposition parties in Scotland. The death rate here is just 0.09%, hardly worth imprisoning and destroying the lives of the entire population for.
Thank you for your replies earlier, I really do appreciate it. Everything just feels worthless now but you are a great support. I don’t know what I’ll do after Zoom University ends in May but we just might still win this.
Stick with us! While you’re here you are DEFINITELY not ”worthless”!
Thanks, everything just feels so empty and meaningless now. But there are still some causes for optimism.
Keep fighting the good fight DRW !
I think you should cause some mayhem. You’re a student and you and your mates should play merry hell. I know you’ve posted a lot here and have indicated that you are suffering mentally and for that I hope you have support, but you’re a student. Where are all you guys in the resistance? My creaking joints find it difficult to man barricades these days but I still went to a local-ish demo a couple of Saturdays ago and I don’t reckon in the couple of thousand people there there were more than 5% under the age of 25. When I was a student a bomb was placed in a lift on campus. I’m not advocating that, it was a sugar bomb (hardly lethal) and a stupid protest but there was much more unrest then and the threat from the authorities/establishment nothing like it is today. You have your whole life to fight for, we were just larking about and knew we had any job we wanted (more or less) at the end of it. Fifteen years later in the middle of the miners’ strike I was teaching at a university in the north west of England. I asked one… Read more »
Thanks. I have the odd contact with fellow students, they aren’t enjoying this but are just bored with it all.
OK, so the odds seem to be moving towards conspiracy?:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2020/11/17/people-have-covid-vaccine-could-get-qr-codes-allowing-access/#comment
‘People who have Covid vaccine could get QR codes allowing them access to major events’Political conversation’ about proposal that would potentially enable people to attend large gatherings currently deemed high-risk’
Discriminatory, a massive erosion of civil liberties and possibly dangerous to our health. But, hey, only this virus matters now, right!? We must observe the new national religion Covid. Including the rituals, whether they be clapping, masking up or pointless, costly, potentially dangerous and unwanted vaccinations.
I almost dare them to do it. Wanna see just how Nazi they want to go…
Except that they will barely be able to operate a smart phone after their DNA has been totally fucked up. A major event for them will be remembering to sit on the toilet to take a shit.
Something to look forward to. We’ll be able to smell the nanoparticle vaccinated before we see them. Eau de Bill & Melinda
On the plus side our government are so fucking moronic that they may struggle to put together such a sophisticated system. Can Pratt Hand Cock even tie his own shoelaces, never mind organise such a database?
They’re clearly teasing their plans.