As week eight of the lockdown comes to a close, there are some rumblings of dissent – although it’s coming from people unhappy from the Prime Minister’s easing of the lockdown rather than the fact that we’ve been confined to our homes for two months. Opinium polling for the Observer over the past week has seen a significant drop in public confidence in – and approval of – the Government. Approval ratings have been dropping steadily since a highpoint in late March – and those who disapprove now form the majority for the first time since the lockdown began:
Anti-Lockdown Protests
What little genuine dissent there is was confined to a handful of anti-lockdown protestors yesterday. One such demonstration was in Hyde Park where, according to the Mail, 19 people were arrested, including Jeremy Corbyn’s brother. My friend James Delingpole attended and was threatened with a £30 fine merely for trying to report on the demo for Breitbart. You can read his piece about that here (includes video footage of him being confronted by a police officer).
I’ve received several reports from readers who attended the Hyde Park rally, including this one:
I went to Speakers’ Corner today. Britain’s traditional fee speech locale in London. I counted 255 people, but there were more than that, perhaps as many as 300. No “far right” evident. People from all sides of the political divide, including pro- and anti-Brexit. What the people I spoke to had in common was getting their news and info and trying to make decisions based on information from ‘alternative’ sources. All were dubious about the number of deaths from COVID-19 being recored by doctors in the absence of testing evidence, although most were also dubious about the accuracy of the standard PCR tests. Huge mistrust of official “science” and officialdom in general.
It was therapeutic being with these people. Heart-warming after these weeks of terror and house arrest. Odd looks from passers-by, as if we were all mad. Like being a Brexit-voter while working at a university. Some humorous looks, but others aggressive and combative. One cyclist deliberately accelerated towards some protesters who managed to avoid a collision by the skin of their teeth.
I was asked to move on by a police officer after being told I was “breaking the law”, even though I was just sitting on the grass in the sunshine with a few others. When I asked the officer which law I was breaking he got a bit twitchy. Said assembling with others not from my household was against the rules enshrined in the 1984 Public Health Act. When I challenged the lawfulness of these rules and mentioned Simon Dolan’s lawsuit, he said “don’t start being clever” and threatened to arrest all of us.
Spoke with many afterwards. Was told that weekly protests are planned from now on. All the people I met have gone from respectable to deplorable in a matter of weeks.
If you want to see some footage from the Hyde Park demonstration, including the arrest of Piers Corbyn, click here. This was shot exclusively for Lockdown Sceptics by a professional filmmaker who attended the event.
I’ve also been contacted by someone from For Freedom’s Sake, the Manchester-based anti-lockdown group, who attended the demo in Platt Fields Park. Smaller turnout than in Hyde Park and no arrests:
There was a turnout of around 60 people, mixed gender and ages and a largely ordinary working people crowd. Police presence was pretty heavy, including officers mounted on bikes and horseback, but thankfully there were no arrests or fines doled out (as far as we witnessed.)
You can see some footage on Twitter of the Manchester protest here.
Lord Gumption
One person who would defend our right to protest, even in the midst of a pandemic, is Lord Sumption, the former UK Supreme Court judge. He has consistently been the most high-profile public figure to criticise the lockdown – a great advocate for the sceptics’ cause. His lead opinion piece in today’s Sunday Times is worth reading in full (and sharing on social media), but his point about “Protect the NHS” being the main reason for shutting us all in our homes is particularly good:
It was never much of a rationale. The NHS is there to protect us, not the other way round. How could its unpreparedness possibly justify depriving the entire UK population of its liberty, pushing us into the worst recession since the early 18th century, destroying millions of jobs and hundreds of thousands of businesses, piling up public and private debt on a crippling scale and undermining the education of our children?
Since the Prime Minister’s broadcast last Sunday, the lockdown has found a new rationale. The Government has dropped “Protect the NHS” from its slogan. The reason is plain from the paper it published the following day. The NHS is not at risk.
Sumption’s conclusion is withering:
The Prime Minister’s broadcast was supposed to be his Churchillian moment. Instead, we beheld a man imprisoned by his own rhetoric and the logic of his past mistakes.
The lockdown is now all about protecting politicians’ backs. They are not wicked men, just timid ones, terrified of being blamed for deaths on their watch. But it is a wicked thing that they are doing.
Failings of Irish High Court
It’s a pity the High Court judge in the John Waters and Gemma O’Doherty case – they’re the two applicants trying to get a judicial review of the lockdown in Ireland – isn’t more like Lord Sumption. I’ve published a piece today by an Irish social scientist (whom I’ve given the pseudonym “John William O’Sullivan”) explaining what the judge in that case got wrong when he refused their application last week. Here’s the key paragraph:
Justice Meenan’s argument against Waters’ and O’Doherty’s case is rather simple: he claims they must prove that the Irish Government’s actions have been “disproportionate” in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. He claims, citing previous cases, that constitutional rights are not absolute and that if a government acts against them to deal with a threat “proportionately” then the government is allowed to trample on those constitutional rights.
The problem with this argument is that it implicitly sides with Government action as against the constitution. The Government is assumed to be in the right and the onus is on the citizen to prove not that the Government’s actions are unconstitutional, but that they are “disproportionate” given the threat of the pandemic relative to the constitutionally-protected rights they override.
Not So Rich List
Elsewhere in the Sunday Times is the news that the pandemic has wiped £54 billion from the wealth of Britain’s super rich in the past two months. “More than half of the country’s billionaires are nursing losses as high as £6 billion, with the combined wealth of the 1,000 wealthiest individuals and families plunging for the first time since 2009, in the wake of the financial crisis,” it says.
UK Government Petition Finally Approved
At last, the UK Government Petitions site has approved an anti-lockdown petition. Not as militant as some of us would like, but better than nothing. You can sign it here. If it gets 10,000 signatures the Government will have to respond; if it gets 100,000, it will be considered for debate in Parliament. Last time I checked it had just over 500.
Epidemiologist Condemns Lockdowns
There’s a great Q&A in Spiked with Knut Wittkowski, former head of Biostatistics, Epidemiology, and Research Design at the Rockefeller University’s Center for Clinical and Translational Science. A more sceptical epidemiologist you’re unlikely to find, and that’s going some given how many we’ve already featured on this site. Here’s one of the highlights:
Spiked: Have our interventions made much of an impact?
Wittkowski: When the whole thing started, there was one reason given for the lockdown and that was to prevent hospitals from becoming overloaded. There is no indication that hospitals could ever have become overloaded, irrespective of what we did. So we could open up again, and forget the whole thing.
I hope the intervention did not have too much of an impact because it most likely made the situation worse. The intervention was to ‘flatten the curve’. That means that there would be the same number of cases but spread out over a longer period of time, because otherwise the hospitals would not have enough capacity.
Now, as we know, children and young adults do not end up in hospitals. It is only those who are both elderly and have comorbidities that do. Therefore you have to protect the elderly and the nursing homes. The ideal approach would be to simply shut the door of the nursing homes and keep the personnel and the elderly locked in for a certain amount of time, and pay the staff overtime to stay there for 24 hours per day.
How long can you do that for? For three weeks, that is possible. For 18 months, it is not. The flattening of the curve, the prolongation of the epidemic, makes it more difficult to protect the elderly, who are at risk. More of the elderly people become infected, and we have more deaths.
Spiked: What are the dangers of lockdown?
Wittkowski: Firstly, we have the direct consequences: suicides, domestic violence and other social consequences leading to death. And then we have people who are too scared to go to the hospitals for other problems like strokes or heart attacks. So people stay away from hospitals because of the Covid fear. And then they die.
COVID-19 and the Cult of Anxiety
I published a piece last week called “COVID-19 and the Infantilisation of Dissent” by a maverick academic whom I called “Wilfred Thomas”. That went down well, so today I’m publishing a follow-up: “The Hyper-Rationality of Crowds: COVID-19 and the Cult of Anxiety“. This academic, a social scientist, is trying to understand why governments around the world seemed to panic simultaneously in response to the viral outbreak, gripped by the same irrational fear. But this isn’t a dry, academic paper. On the contrary, it’s like a rant delivered at 100mph by your best mate in the pub after he’s taken a superdrug that temporarily boosts his IQ to 200. Here’s a particularly good paragraph:
So how did we get here, to a world in which children can be herded into their little playpark Guantanamo cells not as a punishment but – remarkably – as an indicator of a society’s love and care for those same children? One word that springs immediately to mind is “madness.” “We must be mad – literally mad – to be permitting all of this,” you may very well say to yourself (if, that is, you have a fondness for paraphrasing Enoch Powell). Madness. It’s a good word, isn’t it? Rolls off the tongue. Helps to burn off steam. After all, who doesn’t like to channel their inner cab driver every now and then? “The world’s gone mad, mate. Take that wot’s-’is-name. Bonking Boris. That’s ’im. I had ’im in the back of me cab once. Screw loose, if you ask me. It’s all that sex wot’s done it. And that Ferguson? Shag other people’s wives all you like mate, but take your mathematical modelling back to the funny farm wiv ya when you’re done!” And yet, sadly, individual madness can’t really explain our current predicament. It’s a bit like blaming the invasion of Iraq in 2003 solely on President Bush and his family’s supposed mania for oil. Nice and comforting and all that, but hardly convincing when considered in light of the messy complexities of 21st century geo-politics. The problem with any individualised idea of madness is that we have a large group of people in the West right now who have allowed – have willingly and happily enabled – our lockdown societies to emerge. You and I may not be directly culpable. We may not agree with what’s happening. We may turn the cold eye of reproof upon our fellow citizens. If society were a golf club, we might even go so far as to write a strongly-worded letter of complaint to the club secretary. But whether we like it or not, right now we’re individual members of a society that, precisely as a society, has decided that battery-farming kids, playing football without tackling and hiding under the bed in order to avoid social interaction are all genuinely, 100% bona fide great ideas.
Please do read the whole thing.
Welsh Government Angling For First Prize As Most Incompetent Regional Executive in UK
A reader in Wales has got in touch to vent his despair about the idiocy of the Welsh Government, which seems determined to ruin the economy. “The tourism industry, and especially the holiday accommodation and sporting sector (which I am involved with), is being decimated,” he says. He points to this story as evidence of how brain-dead the official response to the pandemic has been – it relates to how police stopped people fishing at Cledlyn Lake Fishery in Ceredigion on Friday, even though the initial advice from Angling Cymru is that fishing is a permitted form of exercise and people are allowed to drive short distances to do it. The revised guidelines now state only disabled people can drive to go fishing. (They may have changed again since going to press.)
US Government Was Advised Against Closing Schools During 1951-52 Polio Pandemic
A reader has drawn my attention to a paper published in the Journal of School Health in 1951 on the US polio epidemic entitled “Should Polio Close Schools?“. Then, as now, one of the biggest questions was about the efficacy of closing schools to prevent the disease being spread. Here’s an extract from the abstract:
Anderson and Arnstein in “Communicable Disease Control”, 1948, in discussing poliomyelitis, say: “School closure, as well as closure of moving picture theatres, Sunday schools, and other similar groups, is frequently attempted in response to popular demand that ‘something be done’. Although tried repeatedly, it is of no proved value, never altering the usual curve of the epidemic: nor has the disease been more prevalent or persistent in those communities with the courage to resist such demands.”
The author of this paper comes to the same conclusion about the 1951–52 epidemic. For context, the number of Americans diagnosed with polio in the epidemic of 1948–49 was 42,173, with 2,720 fatalities. The 1951–52 epidemic was the worst in America’s history. Of the 57,628 cases reported that year, 3,145 died and 21,269 were left with mild to disabling paralysis. By contrast, the number of people aged 19 and under who have died in English hospitals after testing positive for COVID-19 in the UK is currently 12. For those aged 15 and under, it’s two, according to Channel 4 Fact Check. Professor David Spiegelhalter at the University of Cambridge estimates that the risk to children of catching and then dying from coronavirus is one in 5.3 million. In the light of this, might Anneliese Dodds, Labour’s shadow chancellor, reconsider her decision not to send her six year-old back to school?
Scottish Mum Starts a Petition Urging the Government to Reopen Schools… and is Cancelled
Last week, Kathrine Jebsen Moore, a journalist based in Scotland (and a friend of mine), started a Change.org petition urging the Government to re-open schools across the UK. In the hope of getting some signatures, she posted a message about it on a Facebook group she’s a member of called Edinburgh Gossip Girls. Perhaps naively, she was expecting this group of about 16,000 women in the Scottish capital – many of them mothers – to be sympathetic. I’ll let Kathrine take up the story:
Within a few minutes my post had 62 angry emojis, six stunned ones, three sad ones, and only 26 likes – and one heart. The comments reinforced the mood. As well as the simple “that’ll be a no” and “wouldn’t dream of signing this”, it quickly progressed to mud-slinging, strawmen and high tempers. Some comments were, worryingly, from teachers, who failed to show the professional pride that has been apparent among NHS workers and others who’ve continued to do their jobs during the pandemic. Although a few were supportive, I’ll include a selection which conveys the general spirit:
“Eh, not a chance. Most kids are fine without school.”
“Education matters but so does not dying.”
“Can everybody please report to admin and get this goady post taken down?”
Another accused me of having had “too many daytime G&Ts”.“Boo hoo, my kids miss their friends… they’ll miss them a lot more if they’re dead.”
That was the last comment before the admin switched off comments, with the words: “I’m not sure you’re going to get much support here, and this is a post that clearly stirs up a lot of angst and emotion which I’m trying to avoid. This is one for your personal FB, thanks.”
I’ve published the whole story on Lockdown Sceptics under “Is Shutting Schools Really Necessary?” on the right-hand side. You can read it here.
A Doctor Writes…
I received an email from a doctor today which notes that, among other things, the two-metre social distancing rule isn’t observed by doctors and nurses at her hospital. Nor do they wear masks when off the wards.
I’m a critical care consultant in a non-London District General Hospital and have been working throughout the pandemic.
There has been adequate PPE, which has been used in compliance with Government guidance, throughout this time by staff having patient contact. There has been a noticeable difference in how different areas apply this though, with some areas or specialties being extremely cautious, e.g. full PPE for procedures involving patients who’ve tested negative, making procedures slower, more difficult and more prone to complications.
As part of the escalation plan, more staff have been moved into critical care to assist with patient management. As our facilities have not increased, we have therefore had crowded coffee rooms and offices, with everybody sitting at a normal distance next to each other, without masks – it’s difficult to eat with a mask on) – sharing kitchen facilities and changing rooms. We then have the farce of going to the hospital dining room or coffee shop, and sitting spaced out two to a table, as we are visible to the non-clinical world. Several junior doctors at my hospital tested positive, and had a week off, returning once symptoms had resolved, although as they are not re-tested, and are allowed to return to work with a persistent cough, who knows whether they were still shedding the virus. My personal belief is that a significant proportion of the nursing and medical staff have had the virus, with either no or minor symptoms, and have some degree of immunity.
In my opinion, the hospital I work at did an admirable job of preparing and escalating, and managed well with a significant number of very ill patients. The de-escalation, now that we have far fewer patients, seems to be less logical, although this is probably due to the national guidance.
On a separate note, the news from NHS England earlier this week that showed that patients with diabetes have a higher chance of dying with covid was really unhelpful. Type 1 and Type 2 diabetes are completely different diseases, with Type 2 being associated with obesity, which we already know is one of the strongest risk factors for a poor outcome from covid. I’m not aware of any evidence showing an increased risk from having Type 1 diabetes. I haven’t seen any seriously unwell people with Type 1 diabetes, compared to Type 2. While it seemed logical before we had first hand experience to assume that people with Type 1 would be at increased risk, this hasn’t appeared the case, but statements like this from NHS England will continue to terrify those people with Type 1 who are otherwise fit and at low risk.
By the end of last week, we had no Covid patients left in critical care. As the pandemic dies down, paradoxically, the public’s paranoia and pointless mask-wearing is increasing. I have no wish to wear a face covering in public that will become saturated with the vapour I breathe out, including the many normal bacteria that colonise my nose. Face coverings are wrong for so many reasons – being a harbour for viruses and bacteria being one, but also for reducing facial recognition, contact and empathy with those we are interacting with, which I worry will cause increased friction between members of the community.
I was delighted to find your Lockdown Sceptics website, and know I’m not alone.
Latest on Slow-Mo Car Crash that is the NHS’s Contact-Tracing App
My correspondent who’s been covering the roll-out of the NHS contact-tracing app draws my attention to a leak over the weekend:
Can’t usually bring myself to read the Guardian but I may have to develop a tolerance as it seems to be the go-to paper for leaks from the Ethics Advisory Board overseeing the NHSx ‘public panic’ app. Not surprising, given that the majority of the board are legal and philosophy academics. Not a technologist amongst them as far as I can tell from the publicly available data.
The news is… the Board was not told about the development of a second version of the app (the Zulke developed one). According to the Guardian, which has spoken to some Board members on condition of anonymity: “Some members are particularly concerned that they were not informed about the development of a second, parallel NHS app that was being built in secret until its existence was disclosed by the Financial Times last week.”
If the Ethics Advisory Board cannot speak out publicly and is dependent on Matt Hancock reading the Guardian to get its message across then no wonder Parliament’s Human Rights Committee felt the Board was inadequate (as previously reported on Lockdown Sceptics).
The apparent lack of a tech member of the Board is astonishing. It means dropped balls – such as asking for all app code to be open sourced, but not asking for server-side, backend code to be included. Given the centralised data model, that’s a big deal.
As things stand, the Ethics Advisory Board appears to be a political fig leaf, whining about how powerless it is to the Guardian while Hancock charges ahead with his Big Brother apps.
Sue Denim Responds to Imperial College’s Statement to the Sunday Telegraph
The ex-Google engineer who reviewed Neil Ferguson’s code for this site under the name “Sue Denim” has sent me a response to today’s news story in the Sunday Telegraph – “Coding that led to lockdown was ‘totally unreliable’ and a ‘buggy mess’, say experts“. That story is based on a comment piece in the same paper by two senior software engineers. In response to their scathing assessment of Ferguson’s computer model, Imperial College has dug in. It gave the following statement to the Sunday Telegraph:
The UK Government has never relied on a single disease model to inform decision-making. As has been repeatedly stated, decision-making around lockdown was based on a consensus view of the scientific evidence, including several modelling studies by different academic groups.
Multiple groups using different models concluded that the pandemic would overwhelm the NHS and cause unacceptably high mortality in the absence of extreme social distancing measures. Within the Imperial research team we use several models of differing levels of complexity, all of which produce consistent results. We are working with a number of legitimate academic groups and technology companies to develop, test and further document the simulation code referred to. However, we reject the partisan reviews of a few clearly ideologically motivated commentators.
Epidemiology is not a branch of computer science and the conclusions around lockdown rely not on any mathematical model but on the scientific consensus that COVID-19 is a highly transmissible virus with an infection fatality ratio exceeding 0.5pc in the UK”
Sue Denim has responded as follows:
ICL is asserting here that once a few academics with the right kind of politics agree on something, that’s science. Replicability, accuracy versus observed outcomes and not being buggy are things that apparently only partisans care about. The claim about ideology is probably a reference to my comment about the insurance industry, but they then immediately prove the point by claiming “epidemiology is not a branch of computer science”. That’s exactly the sort of explanation for failure that companies can’t give to their customers, because nobody cares. Refusal to work cross-discipline is a mindset problem unique to academia, one that companies cannot and do not tolerate.
Finally, their claim about the Government never relying on a single disease model to make decisions doesn’t seem to match the official SAGE publication from March 9th, “Potential impact of behavioural and social interventions on an epidemic of Covid-19 in the UK“, which cites the ICL Report 9 paper and its assumptions as the only source of predictions for what would happen. The claim about consensus is equally dodgy: nearly as soon as the UK changed course in response to ICL’s model, a team at Oxford (Gupta et al) publicly contradicted them.
In my second post I asked if Imperial College’s administrators knew how out of control this department had become. Now we know the answer: yes, and they don’t care.
Worth noting that Imperial has just sealed a deal with with the Chinese company Huawei worth £5 million. The Mail on Sunday has the story.
A Banker Writes…
A banker has got in touch to express his astonishment that last weekend’s leak from Her Majesty’s Treasury (HMT), revealing how much the Government’s expenditure is likely to increase by this year, didn’t result in more comment:
I was a banker for 30 years and have worked with governments in the NL, France, Germany and the UK as well as major European corporates on privatisations and major capital raisings. Never have I seen a finance ministry send up what I can only describe as a distress flare to advertise the trouble its economy is in. Most finance ministries would avoid doing this like the plague (pardon the phrase). They all borrow internationally and the rule of the game is do nothing that damages your credit rating. If you damage it, not only does your cost of borrowing go up, but your very ability to borrow may be impacted. This matters when you’re going to have to rely massively on the kindness of strangers to finance your spending by massively increased debt issuance.
He can think of three possible explanations for the leak:
- There is serious alarm in HMT about the Government’s reaction to Covid and the economic cost of the lockdown, including Rishi Sunak’s expensive and over-generous bailouts. Maybe a worried official hoped the international capital markets could be used to put the frighteners on the PM.
- There’s tension between No 10 and No 11 and Sunak was trying to appeal to the international capital markets to put a brake on his boss’s recklessness by pointing out the financial and potentially political cost of an extended lockdown.
- HMT officials are scared shitless about the cost of Sunak’s crowd-pleasing and trying to put a shot across his bows.
He continues:
I’m astonished how little serious reflection this leak has occasioned. The FT barely noticed it. More tellingly, it didn’t spark a week-long comment war on Bloomberg, Twitter or the Wall St Journal. All it did was spark a straw fire about “no tax increases” with some sensible reactions from former Chancellors.
But it still puzzles me as to why it ever happened. And why it didn’t cause utter pandemonium. Because the economic cost of this madness will only be felt once we get out of lockdown’s phoney war and the “Blitz” proper gets underway later this year, by which I mean when all those who are unemployed and don’t know it yet have a bruising encounter with economic reality. I wonder what the Blitz spirit will feel like then? How many royals will have to be axed from the civil list so that Buck House can once again look the East End in the eye?
Or maybe the leak was just mistimed, premature. We’re still all too busy clapping Captain Tom and the nurses (God bless them) to cope with any likely reality 3-6 months down the road. Hence the damp squib?
Round-Up
And on to the round-up of all the stories I’ve noticed, or which have been been brought to my attention, in the last 24 hours:
- “Coronavirus offers another excuse for the New York Times to bash Britain” – Douglas Murray on the relentless Brit-bashing of the New York Times
- “Coronavirus in Switzerland: restaurants reopen but have diners lost their taste for eating out?” – Sunday Times reports that in spite of restaurants reopening in Switzerland, customers are staying away
- “Liberal Treated With Hydroxychloroquine Hopes He Still Dies Of COVID-19 To Prove Trump Is Stupid” – More laughs from the Babyloon Bee
- “Lemming Immunity” – Omar Khan says we need to stop worrying about herd immunity and figure out how to immunise ourselves against herd opinion
- “Lives vs lives – the global cost of lockdown” – Jayanta Bhattacharya and Mikko Packalen, two professors, argue that when assessing the costs of lockdowns we should consider their devastating impact on the developing world
Small Businesses That Have Reopened
On Monday, Lockdown Sceptics launched a searchable directory of open businesses across the UK. The idea is to celebrate those retail and hospitality businesses that have reopened, as well as help people find out what has opened in their area. But we need your help to build it, so we’ve created a form you can fill out to tell us about those businesses that have reopened near you. Please visit the page and let us know about those brave folk who are doing their bit to get our country back on its feet.
Shameless Begging Bit
Thanks as always to those of you who made a donation in the last 24 hours to pay for the upkeep of this site. A journalist called David Oldroyd-Bolt lent a hand today and I’d like to pay him something, so if you feel like donating please click here. And if you want to flag up any stories or links I should include in tomorrow’s update, email me here. Incidentally, hope you like the new format with sub-headings and more pictures.
And Finally…
I seem to have taken a leaf out of the News at Ten and begun to round off each daily bulletin with a funny bit beginning “And finally…” Today’s “and finally” is brought to you courtesy of our friends at Comedy Unleashed and features Meggie Foster, a performer who specialises in lip-synch comedy. Her Boris is particularly good. Until tomorrow…
Discussion
Comments
This week across the site:
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> Worth noting that Imperial has just sealed a deal with with the Chinese company Huawei worth £5 million.
Oh great, now we’ll have an explicit feeder school/thousand talents loop in the UK. Thanks.
Sweden in the news again. Negative headline of course and no mention of other countries death tolls where the virus also spread widely:
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8332363/Sweden-suffered-deadliest-month-nearly-30-years-April.html#comments
I really feel for Kathrine Jebsen Moore. I was shot down this week for even raising the point amongst other parents that I believed that kids should be back at school. Opposing the fear-fueled view that we all must be safe 100% of the time and that the government is entirely responsible if things go wrong is tantamount to being a Holocaust denier.
Listen, a Facebook ‘friend’ of mine recently watched contagion and she knows an epidemiologist. She KNOWS that sending her kids back to school ‘this side of 2021’ is the dumbest thing she could do. She loves her kids more than that.
Oh and then there was this comment I saw recently which sums up the ignorance, the social media fear-mongering and the level of which virtue signalling trumps all rational discussion…
“I tell you this… the situation in care homes WILL happen in schools once their doors open and MY kids will not be sent to the slaughter”.
Check they’ve got the right shop, add delivery charge: 3 hours’ driving at £15 per hour. Take payment upfront!
Boys and Girls, we are not going to like Melanie Phillip’s just posted comment on Times online (for tomorrow’s copy). She is having a right go at Lord Sumption for not backing up his stance against lockdown, by er, not backing up her stance in its favour (scientifically, that is). Suggest this usually sensible journo is showing signs of lockdown derangement syndrome in her bunker in Israel!
Looks like there’s not going to be any reconciliation between Peter and Melanie, then.
I’ve never had much time for her anyway, even though she’s on my overall side of the political divide. As far as I’m concerned someone who supported the attack on Iraq at the time could claim to have just been ignorant, stupid or deceived on the issue, but anyone who continued to support it after 2004 or so can only be deranged, dishonest or corrupt.
I agree with Peter Hitchens on most things, although not all. On Iraq, and lockdown, he is completely right. For those who had originally gone along with the Blair/Campbell stance on Iraq, the obvious point to jump ship was the change from ‘WMD’ to ‘WMD programmes’. Politicians, of course, have their speaking tours to think about, but journos?
I’ve always found her inflexibly opinionated and arrogant.
Melanie Phillips has always been a deranged loon. Weirdly she talks in the tone of The Guardian despite, of course, rreeaaaaaaaalllllllyyyyy not being on their wavelength
Arkansas, Iowa, Nebraska, North & South Dakota never locked down. Georgia came out of lockdown 3 weeks ago. Where is the predicted apocalypse in any of these states? The numbers are statistically insignificant.
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/
Have we seen the London data from City Hall? Only 128 deaths in London with covid on the death cert! Despite 5k odd deaths where they tested positive, am I being thick, so that means only a handful of people died OF it, not with it (a bit like being eaten by a lion when you have a headcold)?
https://www.london.gov.uk/coronavirus/coronavirus-numbers-london?
That’s just for one 24-hour period. Not the total since March.
Thanks for this: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/2020/05/16/neil-fergusons-imperial-model-could-devastating-software-mistake/
Given its importance, I wonder if someone with a Telegraph subscription could nick it and put it in pastebin.com? Thx
Just copy and paste the url into the search box at outline.com.
Or easier still in the url after https:// type outline.com/ Easy as pie
Neil Ferguson’s Imperial model could be the most devastating software mistake of all time
The boss of a top software firm asks why the Government failed to get a second opinion before accepting Imperial College’s Covid modelling
DAVID RICHARDS AND KONSTANTIN BOUDNIK
16 May 2020 • 1:22pm
Neil Ferguson
Neil Ferguson of Imperial College London
In the history of expensive software mistakes, Mariner 1 was probably the most notorious. The unmanned spacecraft was destroyed seconds after launch from Cape Canaveral in 1962 when it veered dangerously off-course due to a line of dodgy code.
But nobody died and the only hits were to Nasa’s budget and pride. Imperial College’s modelling of non-pharmaceutical interventions for Covid-19 which helped persuade the UK and other countries to bring in draconian lockdowns will supersede the failed Venus space probe and could go down in history as the most devastating software mistake of all time, in terms of economic costs and lives lost.
Since publication of Imperial’s microsimulation model, those of us with a professional and personal interest in software development have studied the code on which policymakers based their fateful decision to mothball our multi-trillion pound economy and plunge millions of people into poverty… Read more »
I’ve just been speaking to my cousin who is a lockdown sceptic too and she reckons over the last few days them stupid lockdown adverts on the t.v are becoming less and less, I haven’t noticed as I don’t really watch t.v so was just wondering if people on here have noticed it ?
I haven’t seen the very scary one with the ambulance and Mark Strong voiceover for quite a while, thank god!
https://youtu.be/9SqRNUUOk7s
They don’t make scary ads about viruses like they used to…. kids today don’t know they’re born!
I remember the scary measles ones from the early 1990s. They never admitted that was a vaccine-driven con, so don’t hold your breath re this latest fiasco.
That’s the one I believe terrorised the nation. If people thing they or their kids are going to die then I suppose if they haven’t the brains to look at the evidence this is what happens.
I try to reassure people but the government will have to admit they were wrong to deliberately exaggerate the threat before all this corona madness can end but we will never be the same in my lifetime I don’t think.
Can’t find it – do you have a link?
A case of a panicdemic morphing into a pandemic of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder?
Fear of going out, masks, hand washing, gloves, snitching on neighbours, aversion to the workplace, recitation of slogans… lives before the economy, protect the NHS… ritualistic clapping on the streets for a State run institution.
https://apple.news/AoUiOjn_aM-2tzVILtQsRoQ
They’re talking about you Toby!
This is everything I despise about The Guardian and more.
Glad Glenn Greenwald (my personal journalistic hero) took his bat and ball home. They’re a bunch of hacks.
A deliberately inflammatory opinion piece. All posturing with zero facts.
And noticeably devoid of a comments section.
It’s funny how conspiracy theorists (“Peter Geoghegan is…author of Democracy for Sale: Dark Money and Dirty Politics) use ‘conspiracy theory’ as an insult. The whole piece is about branding lockdown scepticism as a giant conspiracy (Arron Banks, booh!, ‘far-right’ activists – hisssss!) but they don’t seem to realise the irony.
That’s quite entertaining stuff. Yes, it’s all grossly hypocritical for leftist conspiracy theorists to use the conspiracy smear against others they disagree with, but also there is the shameless refusal to see their own complete failure to question authority on the fundamental level, even as they declare that to be the core requirement for journalism. Guardian “journalists”, as all too commonly the case, acting as wannabee enforcer’s for authority’s official truth.
They compare lockdown scepticism to euroscepticism, and clearly Toby had that comparison in mind when he devised the title of this site. And the similarities they point to are actually quite valid – both involved pointing to genuine societal problems with profound bias in the media, political and social establishments. “Elites” do exist and they do have biases on particular issues, which they push and on which they try to exclude dissent from respectable discourse.
The Guardian piece is too ignorant or too biased itself to recognise that the eurosceptic attacks on elite bias were proved to have had substance and force.
In the end, we can only hope that the lockdown story has a similar conclusion for Toby as the euroscepticism story had for one of its early… Read more »
All they’ve got is that the lockdown sceptics are sceptical of “experts”. It only takes one example of where experts were unequivocally wrong about something for their ‘argument’ (such as it is) to evaporate. I give you: the dash for diesel.
“From backroom deals between European leaders to the burying of the bad news of 23,000 premature UK deaths on the day Jeremy Corbyn was elected Labour leader, the scandal that has engulfed the diesel car is a startling tale.”
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/sep/30/emissions-scandal-how-the-drive-for-diesel-ran-out-of-gas
You see, that paragon of non-conspiracy theorism The Guardian is alleging a conspiracy involving the EU and car manufacturers, and highlighting how a recommendation by experts turned out to be disastrous, resulting in 23,000 premature deaths per year in the UK.
In the light of this, it is perfectly reasonable at any time for a person to be sceptical of “experts”, even if they are virtuous and read the Guardian.
“But in the comment sections of some of the rightwing press, a new, virulent strain of Covid-19 scepticism has emerged that is the precise opposite of journalism. Rather than holding power to account, it distorts and bends reality to serve elite interests – and to warp public debate.”
Wow, that’s rich coming from the Grad!
Stick your finger up st it every time you walk past. Blue light.
Bedwetter Nudge Tactic:
So I just walked to my supermarket and back (hour round trip). Lots of people out. Most of them doing the ‘pause, wait for oncoming people to pass’ distancing bollocks. I’ve found that if I pause when they do, look them straight in the eye, beckon them forward, than say “It’s OK, I’m not scared”, then start walking forward slowly, they do the same thing and will pass me normally. I must have done it about thirty times today and it’s worked every single time. People like being nudged which means we can nudge them in the opposite direction.
(Disclaimer: I live in a big suburban town filled with lower-level working class/lower middle class (For Now) Comfortably Unbothereds. You might not get away with this in a big city without being stabbed)
MINDBLOWING FACT KLAXON:
122 million people are now unemployed in India. That fact alone should change people’s minds.
I have been deloying a similar tactic in SW London and haven’t encountered any problems to date.
I’ve started to shout “TROUSERS!!” at anyone appearing to be in the 20-40 age cohort who engages with me in the Dance of Death. This is in reference to Toby’s assertion on the falling London infection rate last week ,that that group were statistically more in danger of injuring themselves putting on their strides than they are contracting the virus. Perhaps if other readers adopted this we could start some sort of trend.
I saw a figure of 122,000 people who die in India every year of tuberculosis. No social distancing for that
We’ve suspended global TB and Malaria programmes as well! Due to lockdown, not the virus.
Some regions of India have actually seen death rates drop due to less accidents etc. Not sure they can argue the economical cost is worth it though. Which then begs the question if it’s not worth it for other types of death then why should it be more worth it for this virus.
It definitely won’t be worth it once they all start starving.
I wish there was a ‘ha-ha’ button as well as a like one !,your town really sounds fun,I bet it will encourage loads of shoppers to go there !,you probably don’t want to say,but what kind of shop thinks they need human traffic signals ?
A few more symptoms are listed as:
Broken figure nail
Earwax
Lack of backbone
Gullability
Bed wetting
Paranoia
Been to my local Lidl today. Was only in there for 15 minutes and heard the indoctrination/propaganda message about physical separation and washing hands five times. No one speaks, no one smiles much any more. Actually encountered trouble at the end of my drive on my way out. Older couple coming towards me practically jumped into the road because I kept on walking to go past them. There was the WHO 1m distance between us so what’s the problem? What science is physical separation based on? Why does UK gov. stipulate 2m? It got me a shake of the head from the old guy. Well, I’m an old gal and I asked him what’s his problem, not that I got a reply.
I’ve put Dennis Prager’s sign in my front window. It reads, ‘Until it’s safe means never.’
The large Asda near me is really quite relaxed. Don’t want to jinx it but once you get past the massive queue to get in most people are not bothered. No one is following the stupid arrows on the floor, most people are happy to reach across and squeeze by to get what they want. No being told off by staff. There are obviously a few mask wearers but even a lot of them you can see the mask simply becomes that false sense of security and they brush by without mandated distancing.
I almost look forward to the shopping trips there as it feels, well, normal. The old type of norma, the only normal I am willing to accept.
Same with our local Asda. Maybe it’s a “thing”
Good to hear.
I refuse to queue to get into a supermarket (ffs! – they expect me to wait in line for the privilege of spending money in their shop!?). I suppose I’m quite fortunate that my local mid-sized coop is quite spacious but not busy enough to have a queue outside most times of the day. I walk there most days and have only once found a queue – that day I just walked away and came back later.
It helps that my offspring are all grown up and my shopping needs are limited compared to what they used to be when there were four children at home!
Delores Cahill, an eminent scientist totally debunks all this rubbish in an interview on Highwire. Well worth a look.
Also UK Column news from today looks at the issue of the totally made up 2m diktat. It is of course, not enforceable.
Yeah saw the Highwire interview yesterday. It’s insane (though not surprising at the moment ) that she hasn’t received any airtime here in the UK, considering she is so close to home and hardly under qualified on the current subject.
Went to share a link to the interview with a like minded sceptical colleague earlier but YouTube had pulled it! Found another copy, but thats really not the point.
I watched her in an interview a few days ago. What I didn’t understand was how she is so sure that we have full immunity once we have had the virus, given it will probably mutate and no one would be immune to a new strand/mutation… similar to influenza? I wonder if “adaptability of our immune system” would have been more accurate, meaning our bodies won’t go into overdrive anymore…Or maybe I don’t remember it correctly but I am not sure I agree with her “it’s all a storm in a teacup and done and dusted” approach.
Similarly she fails to mention that many people ie African Americans can’t handle hydroxychloroquine as they are deficient in a particular enzyme, meaning it causes them more harm than good especially at higher doses. Prof Wodarg has blogged extensively on this…wodarg.com – She made it sound as if anyone anywhere just had to take HCL even preventatively… so maybe a bit of medical caution is warranted tho she is very solid but should be challenged in some issues.
She does say that the full immunity would only be in the care of it being the same strain, and that it could obviously mutate.
But of course she should challenged, as should anyone pertaining to speak with any authority on this subject. However this is really the issue at the moment, this discussion and debate is just not happening – this is partly what she is calling for in the interview.
Sorry lots of unspotted auto predicts in the above! But I think you can catch my drift.
https://twitter.com/profshanecrotty/status/1261052353773363200
To translate the science here- his study shows that about 50% of people who had not been exposed to Covid-19 have T- lymphocytes that react to Covid-19. In other words many people have some form of immunity from previous exposure to other coronaviruses such as the common cold. The may explain why so many people get mild or no symptoms and why the epidemic is going away with apparently low herd immunity.
‘Same thing in our local Morrison’s. Shopping seemed to trump fear and social distancing was nowhere. But the best was the Co-op. A slightly tipsy late-middle-aged man shouted right across the store, ‘What’re you wearin’ that for?’ at what was obviously an acquaintance wearing a filthy mask. We were the only people to laugh, everyone else looked embarrassed. We pointed out to the mask-wearer that it was doing him more harm than good and he mumbled that we could do what we wanted and so should he (fair enough.) The best bit though was, as we were leaving, Mr Shouty bellowed at another big bloke on the other side of the shop for not following the arrows and made him go back down the aisle and up the other one. A total piss-take of course but the guy obeyed – priceless!!
Just received the following email:
Dear Sir,
Sorry, we can’t accept the petition you supported – “End lockdown immediately”.
There’s already a petition about this issue. We cannot accept a new petition when we already have one about a very similar issue.
You are more likely to get action on this issue if you sign and share a single petition.
You may wish to sign this petition calling for the same action: https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/315979
On 10 May the Prime Minister gave a speech about the Government’s plans for reopening society: https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/pm-address-to-the-nation-on-coronavirus-10-may-2020
The Government has also published a more detailed recovery strategy, and updated much of its coronavirus guidance: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/our-plan-to-rebuild-the-uk-governments-covid-19-recovery-strategy
You can find out more about coronavirus and how you can protect yourself and others here: http://www.gov.uk/coronavirus
https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/coronavirus-covid-19/
The Government has also created an online service to help you out what you can do if you’re struggling because of coronavirus: https://www.gov.uk/find-coronavirus-support
You can read NHS tips to help if you are worried about coronavirus here: https://www.nhs.uk/oneyou/every-mind-matters/coronavirus-covid-19-anxiety-tips
You can read impartial analysis of the Government response to coronavirus and policy developments here: https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/coronavirus/
You may also be interested to know that because of the large number of… Read more »
I’m now looking overseas for the next job role. It’s not just the awful lock-down, it’s the falling earnings too.
What do you do? I’d consider going online if at all possible. It can be lockdown proof depending on the type of work involved.
Two new official symptoms declared.
I guess that will help get the numbers back up a bit and help to provide more questionable data to justify continued lockdown(,
Sorry are Lockdowncynics allowed as well as Lockdownsceptics!
I thought the same thing!
Load of old pony really. Loads of viruses can cause loss of smell and loss of smell means, for the most part, loss of taste. I lost mine about eight years ago after a particularly nasty something or other (not flu, no fever) which went on for about ten weeks. Coughed like a trooper though.
Ah ha did you see the Kings story, they say we’ve under estimated infections by excluding other symptoms, here’s the article https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8302467/Two-thirds-coronavirus-cases-Britain-going-undiagnosed.html
https://www.cebm.net/covid-19/covid-19-have-we-forgotten-our-children-in-all-this/
An absolute read about the absolute insane school closures worldwide.
Strongly recommend anything coming out from CEBM Oxford. Last time during the swine flu pandemic 2009 they were the main group seeing how Big Pharma was shamelessly promoting vaccine (government had to pay for the adversary effects) and Tamiflu which dozens of countries were tricked to buy in enormous quantities. The whole thing was an enormous scandal but mainly silence now from MSM BBC (left wingers!) about this now. I didn’t know at that time that it was just the general rehearsal for the real thing now.
The most pertinent line for me:
“In a pandemic, the proportion of deaths among the young should increase, but this has not been the case”
Also, if you click on the definition of pandemic in the link:
Pandemic, as the definition goes, is the worldwide spread of a new disease. Most of the historical analysis point to those in younger age groups being disproportionately affected in a pandemic. **As opposed to seasonal outbreaks where older people are more likely to be affected**
This article and the transmission paper that it links to should be super spread as fast as possible!
Schools need to be open again, and without chalk play prisons.
Dr Wolfgang Wodarg also saw through that one and has been skeptical about covid from day one.
The argument that lockdowns work is a false one. Most conflate the result of isolating the virus with the effect of locking down. They use countries such as NZ to show that lockdowns work but ignore that the same result was achieved in South Korea without a lockdown.
They claim that countries like the UK saved thousands of lives by locking down on the basis that modelling predicted more death. Yet conveniently ignore that Sweden must also have saved lives without locking down on the basis of similar modelling. Excuses such as topography, demographics or population density are used to claim we cannot compare but are pretty much irrelevant.
The simple fact is that any virus can be controlled using different tools. If two countries get the same or similar results, where one country uses a tool such as lockdown and the other doesn’t, then it is fair to say that lockdown was not necessary.
Right. I found out the population density of Stockholm is about 13,000/sq mile, and of Greater London 14,500/sq mile (the City is 7,700/sq mile). Not much difference really.
And Stockholms where they had the vast majority of cases.
Also, they make a tremendous fuss about number of cases without emphasising that most cases will have mild symptoms or none at all. Why do you need to stop the progress of a virus that that isn’t really dangerous for most people.
From the SAGE report:
“Modelling suggests that the stringent interventions introduced in Wuhan from 23 January (quarantine and movement restrictions) may have reduced the reproduction number to below one. However, there are differing views across the scientific community about whether other factors were involved in this.”
Note the use of the word “may”.
There’s not necessarily the consensus that Imperial College assert:
“As has been repeatedly stated, decision-making around lockdown was based on a consensus view of the scientific evidence, including several modelling studies by different academic groups.”
As Sue Denim points out, the only model referred to in that report is the Imperial College one.
At the point that government used the Imperial model to justify lockdown, the model and dataset had not been peer reviewed. The paper submitted to The Lancet (published online on 30 March) had a different IFR and modified dataset, if I have interpreted correctly. Somewhat problematic is the fact that The Lancet turns submissions round in 72 hours. In my opinion, as someone who referees academic articles, albeit in a different field, this is not sufficient time to have interrogated the model and data properly, if at all. Consequently, the first time this work has been scrutinised is by Sue Denim and the team at Edinburgh, and even then, the model had apparently already been ‘cleaned up’ before it was released to the outside world. Why?
The problem is that for non-scientists ( and a lot of scientists) peer review is seen as something being ‘correct”. It’s nothing of the sort. All peer review is for is to pass muster to be entered into the discourse. Something being correct has not changed for centuries: it doesn’t break when you try to break it, everyone can repeat it and see it doesn’t break and even with that it’s only as good as your last try to break it.
Publishing a paper isn’t a mark of correctness. The quality and repeatibilty of the work does
If you look at the process of developing a vaccine, and if you read anything about ‘vaccine-induced enhancement’ (the possibility that a vaccine could make the virus worse, or might react badly with a future virus), and that humans vary in their previous vaccination history and the illnesses they have previously caught, and vary in their genetic make-up, and that people’s immune systems vary as they age, and the virus is mutating constantly, etc. etc. you would have to think that developing a safe, effective, universal vaccine in 10 years would be hugely ambitious, never mind by this September(!)
On the other hand, we know that the virus was never that bad for most people and that by September the epidemic will largely be over. Who agrees with me that the vaccine they will ‘develop’ will probably be a bit of sugar in some distilled water? It would solve a lot of problems for the government…
I’m not fussed about what’s in the vaccine. I’m not going to have it. Rushing through a vaccine as quickly as this year is likely to lead to a vaccine that’s ineffective or potentially harmful.
I’ve not had a flu vaccine since I was about thirty.
I’ve also not had flu since then either.
Yea, there was a discussion about this a few days ago in the comment section. I also never take the flu vaccine and never catch the flu either. The more you read about vaccines and about the industry around them the less likely you will ever take a vaccine again. Obviously if you criticize the vaccines or discuss about the worrying side of them you are labeled as an antivaxxer conspiracy theorist. Usually when media and the big money is eager to label or silence people, there is something to hide.
I wouldn’t worry about a COVID-19 vaccine! As I’ve been saying since this started, no vaccine against any other human coronavirus exists and this will be no different. The Telegraph reports today that the animal trials on Rhesus monkeys with the Oxford vaccine (the one they say they can produce 20 million doses of by September) have failed to demonstrate any protection.
Barney,I don’t think a vaccine is the endgame in all of this. It’s a stalling tactic and a distraction, spinning out this nonsense to prepare us for whatever they really have planned for us. As you say, they could offer us any old crap right now and the bed wetters would be lining up to take it.
I agree – you don’t need a real vaccine. Simply develop a sugar tablet, tell people it’s a covid vaccine and they’ll all feel safe again. They know people still get flu even if vaccinated so if one or two of them get covid in the future then it won’t be the vaccine’s fault, just one of those things that happens with vaccines.
Never touch sugar myself!
Fraser Nelson (Editor of The Spectator) banging the lockdown sceptic drum very loudly today on the mag’s daily podcast.
https://audioboom.com/posts/7584867-is-labour-s-stance-on-reopening-schools-worsening-the-education-gap
Looks like an opinion piece so likely to be dismissed for not being an expert. However, countries around the world are opening up to be more like Sweden whether they like to admit it or not.
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/sweden-has-pioneered-an-alternative-to-lockdown-and-it-works
Still amusing myself, sent a message to 10 Downing Street via the online link but not going to hold my breath for an answer:
Self-isolating is a guideline and therefore only guidance so does not have force of law. I think you are deliberately misleading people into voluntarily self-isolation as then you do NOT have to go through the due process as laid out in law to test and prove they have the coronavirus as stated in law as there is no test that can be used to confirm this and then to have a notice signed by a Justice of the Peace and served on the individual by a proper person of the local authority who are then liable to pay compensation. This also goes for premises or companies that are either closed or operating under restrictions.
Why is the government not following the law in this matter?
The onus on isolating individuals and restricting trading is a responsibility of the local authority, not central government.
I look forward to your answer.
Just don’t hold your breath!
I know, I know. I expect to be dead of covid-19 before I get any response (under 60, no co-morbidities). All this keeps me sane though and my way of fighting back a step wife won’t let me run amok with a big stick hitting idiots. Apparently this is anti-social and not a good idea.
I vote for the big stick approach.
If all fails … 🙂
Excellent, just sent one off to my council. Let’s see what occurs.
Sorry, meant the FOI post ! 😱
Got bored waiting to watch today’s UKColumn so sent a FOI request to my local council for the hell of it:
In the Public Health (Control of Diseases) Act 1984 once the notice of a “serious and imminent threat” is issued by the Secretary of State for Health the onus in shutting down individual premises or to impose operating restrictions on them and for isolating infected individuals is down to doctors, a “proper person” employed by the local authority (in this region Newcastle-under-Lyme Borough Council) and Justices of the Peace, not central Government.
This notice was issued on the 10th February 2020.
Compensation is payable by the local authority to any business or individual that is shut down using this legislation.
A test specifically for the disease stated in the Statutory Instrument Coronavirus Act 2020 must also be used to confirm the presence of the stated disease as defined:
Meaning of “coronavirus” and related terminology
(1)In this Act—
“coronavirus” means severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2);
“coronavirus disease” means COVID-19 (the official designation of the disease which can be caused by coronavirus).
Under a Freedom of Information Request I would like the following information:
1 – the name… Read more »
Oh, you are awkward, but I like you!
This is brilliant. I doubt you’ll get a reply that’s anything other than a brushoff but it would be great to be a fly on the wall if they actually tried to answer your points.
I like this guy’s rant, I know exactly how he feels:
https://twitter.com/Joanne95535806/status/1262174419595735043
Interesting that the US has also gone from ‘flatten the curve’ to ‘wait for a cure’, exactly like our lying government.
Right, although in the USA it’s on a state by state basis – most don’t have lockdowns as far as I’m aware…
Maybe people will start moving state to state so they restart their lives?
Great link. Any MPs here? – please look at that!
Some info I found out today:
3 twatter feeds coronafraud, coronahoax and coronabollocks – can be read by those without twitter accounts like me
I’ll see if I can track down the exact quote/link:
In Virology you can’t test for something you can’t isolate
The current Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) testing was invented in 1983 and, according to the inventor Dr Kary Mullis, must never be used to diagnose dangerous contagions
FACT there is no test for Covid-19
Colorado just reduced the official number of covid-109 deaths from 1150 to 878 as these were confirmed as “with” and not “from” and were being counted the same -as if they died “from covid-19”.
I’m not impressed by Imperial College’s response, especially this:
“We are working with a number of legitimate academic groups and technology companies to develop, test and further document the simulation code referred to. However, we reject the partisan reviews of a few clearly ideologically motivated commentators.”
That they’ve resorted to rewriting the code and testing it suggests they don’t have confidence in the original code. Then claiming that those who reviewed the code and found it wanting are ideologically motivated is disgraceful. They should address the specific criticisms of the code rather than try to brush them away as having no merit because the reviewer supposedly has a political motivation. Argumentum ad hominem is a pathetic response from a respected academic institution, but it does imply they see the world through a partisan lens.