As we tot up the unintended consequences of lockdowns across the world, it’s worth bearing in mind that the quarantining of entire countries for extended periods of time is a new and untried strategy for managing a pandemic. Historically, there are very few examples of lockdowns being used before. The earliest historical example I can find is Florence in 1631, when an outbreak of the plague killed 12% of the population. More recently, Mexico in 2009, during the first days of an H1N1 influenza outbreak, isolated those suspected of being infected, closed schools, banned public gatherings and cancelled a regional soccer tournament. But those measures weren’t replicated in other countries and Mexico abandoned them after 18 days, partly due to the mounting social and economic costs.
We’re often told by lockdown enthusiasts that those US cities that introduced extreme social distancing measures during the Spanish flu pandemic experienced fewer deaths than those that didn’t. But those measures stopped well short of a full lockdown. For instance, in St Louis, which is often held up as a model of how to manage the current pandemic, churches and schools were closed, business hours were restricted and people were ordered to wear mask in public, but the city never issued a stay-at-home order and only cancelled business activity entirely for about forty-eight hours.
Also worth noting that lockdowns weren’t even suggested during America’s deadliest bouts of seasonal flu since 1919. In 1967-68, flu killed about 100,000 Americans and in 1957-58 it killed about 116,000. As of yesterday, the COVID-19 death toll in the US was just over 100,000. As a side note, it now looks almost certain that the outbreak in Germany, which Angela Merkel described as the worst crisis to afflict the country since the Second World War, will kill fewer people than the seasonal influenza outbreak in 2018 – and no thanks to the lockdown Chancellor Merkel ordered. Der Spiegel has published the daily mortality figures for Germany, which show infections beginning to fall before the more extreme measures were introduced. And there’s been no sustained uptick in infections in Germany since the the lockdown was lifted, something that’s also true of every other country – and every US state – that’s eased extreme social distancing measures.
So why the rush to lock down citizens across the world in response to coronavirus? It’s all the more surprising when you bear in mind that the World Health Organisation (WHO) specifically recommended against quarantining as a strategy for managing the outbreak of a flu-like pandemic in a report it published in 2019. This was drawn to my attention by a reader with a background in epidemiology and public health who says she’s been horrified by the unquestioning acceptance of the Covid response measures by her colleagues whom she expected to be more capable of critical thought. The WHO report even stopped short of recommending the quarantining of exposed individuals. No doubt some people will point out that COVID-19 isn’t a flu-like illness, so more drastic measures are called for. But the WHO report says that quarantining wouldn’t have done any good as a way to mitigate the impact of Spanish flu, a much more deadly virus than SARS-CoV-2.
What changed the WHO’s mind and prompted it to praise the response of the Chinese authorities in Hubei province, which included the virtual incarceration of 60 million people? It was this, more than anything else, that persuaded governments across the world to lockdown their citizens.
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Chatting to someone local here in the Dominican Republic about their cocoa production – apparently it has suffered in recent years due to labour shortages. Work harvesting the beans is too hard. Brexit truly has long tentacles.
F off downvoting twat
I think you have upset a few Next Tuesdays tof. Must be over the target.
LOL exactly! There’ll always be more of us legit peeps than the toxic nob-jockies. The big tell is when somebody gets shit-loads of ‘dislikes’ but not one single reply from anyone explaining why…Hmmm.. The Hamster Penis Brigade strike again!
Keep it up boys! Oops, soz, I forgot that you can’t can you….? LMFAO
Cheers buddy.
Always disappointing when you see downvotes and no-one has the courtesy or courage to tell you what they disagree with and why – against the spirit of DS, IMO.
Perhaps it’s to do with John C Maxwell’s observation that great people talk about ideas, average people talk about themselves and small people talk about others. Amidwesterndoctor looks into this in his recent take down of Peter Hotez.
I agree against the spirit of DS but actually what is so upsetting about your comment?
Maybe someone thought I was serious about Brexit causing labour shortages?
I was merely reporting faithfully what someone said to me unprompted and I suppose put my own spin on the issue though it’s a fact that Brexit is blamed for labour shortages whereas they seem to be common everywhere- Sweden and Italy are two places I have recently visited where they are suffering from the same issues.
I expect the causes are myriad though I feel that lockdowns and furlough have been demotivating and of course there has been enormous government caused disruption to businesses.
I suppose my reply to myself was somewhat low class (posted while drunk) but an attempt to goad down voters into a debate. To be fair, overall for a largely unregulated forum the quality is high even when there is disagreement.
“Leading Conservative MPs launch pre-election push for bolder green agenda” – Champions of environmental protection, Alok Sharma, Simon Clarke and Chris Grayling are among 23 leading Tory figures to join a new Conservative Environment Network advisory council, says Business Green.
The name’s all wrong. It should be:
Conservatives for
Urgent
National
Transition into
Servitude.
Sharma’s my MP, the toe-rag. He’s definitely one of the above. He’s never received my vote, but it doesn’t seem to stop him unfortunately.
If so, then ask him why this graph has sent the government into a state of hysteria? It represents a small amount of warming since we left the LIA in 1850. Odd that it should warm after an ice age?
Ask him also. The hypothesis that CO2 controls temperature is a very simple one. Yet there is no proof of it, no papers, nothing. Also note to him, that (Popper’s protocol, now accepted as a means of determining the truth of any scientific hypothesis) the null hypothesis on climate is that natural variability controls it. Ask him for the papers that disprove that.
Ask him also if he is aware that any warming propensity CO2 may have is almost all played out.
Also note that long and short term, there is NO correlation between CO2 and temperature, that the planet has been warmer with less CO2 and colder with more.
Ask him also why he is an idiot.
Yeah.. but that’s the truth Jeremy, no politician or green zero fanatic is going to listen to that..
Yep, still a clown world.
we find:
Prof Ferguson et al’s Report 9 was demonstrably wrong on the day it was published (16 March). Extrapolation of the death toll up to that date showed that mortality would peak in early April at around 1,500/day.
Report 9 had the epidemic mortality in GB somehow marking time until April and then increasing to about 22 per 100,000 population ~= 14,340 per day in late May. To be fair the report authors do state ‘Epidemic timings are approximate given the limitations of surveillance data’.
With a height of 14,340/day and a total of 510,000 deaths the shape of Report 9’s mortality curve is defined. If we shift Report 9’s curve so that the date of the first few deaths matches reality then we can compare it to reality:
If we zoom in on early March it looks like this:
So at what point should our governments and SAGE have realised that Report 9 and the like was utter rubbish?
If ‘Horrifying predictions of upwards of 500,000 deaths are infamous for spooking No10 into declaring the first lockdown in March 2020‘ then why didn’t they unlock us again when they realised how wrong Ferguson et al were?
Did our governments do any analysis to see how effective the first lockdown had been? If so, why did they try the same failed experiment twice more?
The doomsday report was rubbish and they should have known that before the first lockdown announcement.
Lockdown was immoral, ineffective, destructive and futile.
Chris Whitty is wrong.
And this isn’t including the fact that Ferguson’s models have been entirely wrong for his entire career: why pick such obviously flawed ‘bad’ models, why not a range? Old Boy network of BMGF/WEF backscratchers, perhaps?
He has a DPhil in physics, surface chemistry.
“It gave ministers (a) chance to work out where they were going to “bury the bodies” he said.”
So actually where and how were they going to bury the bodies? Does he say and is it common knowledge? Have I missed it?
Well, there’s the useless HS2 workings?
Of course Chris Whitty is wrong.. he’s a paid off liar. I wonder if he ever looked at the graph below. Not that he would have needed to, because he knew the whole covid thing was a hoax..
“Morbid worst case models”….given that the country has bloated the public sector with managerial types, not actual workers wielding equipment to get a job done, where was the manpower going to come from to deal with the consequences? You can’t bandy numbers around without also assessing risk and probability, did they include safety engineers to assess the models?
The NHS employs 1.4 million, only a fraction of whom do medical stuff, and most are too lardy for any physical exertion. The army is probably less than 80000, 18 times smaller than the NHS, the navy is around 30000, the RAF probably less than 40000. The councils are mainly keyboard jockeys, the actual work is done by contractors. There will be a civil contingency plan at local level, but if everyone is shivering with fear under their duvet, that will go to ratshit in the time it would take an MP to swift a glass of Bolly. Was the purpose of lockdown to confine people so they died tidily at home?
The inquiry needs to hear from the undertakers, I wonder if John O’Looney has been invited?
The inquiry is a waste of time, particularly on DS, and money the country hasn’t got, for a conclusion that is already written and from which we know “lessons will be learned.”
God this is disgusting. It was known by the US Navy that the Titan sub imploded on Sunday but the Biden government deliberately withheld this information because it served as a convenient distraction from the latest BS controversy surrounding his scummy, vile, paedo, coke-head son. Those poor families who held on to hope. No words. And people would vote for such a disgraceful POS to stay in the White House?? The worst, most toxic and callous President in US history!
”The implosion of the Titan submersible submaraine that went missing Sunday was known to the US Navy days ago, though the US Coast Guard only found debris of the wreckage on Thursday.
Human Events Jack Posobiec made that connection, saying that “The WSJ is reporting the US Navy detected the Titan implosion on Sunday but Biden held the news until today’s whistleblower testimony on Hunter. The entire thing was a distraction op.”
The Navy was aware of the implosion only hours after the Titan began its journey to the Titanic, where the 5-man crew anticipated viewing the wreckage of the storied, ill-fate luxury liner that sank to the bottom of the sea in April 1912.
A US defense official said that as soon as tht Titan lost communications on Sunday, they began listening under the sea for signs of what was happening. The Titan imploded some 1600 feet from the Titanic, killing all 5 men aboard, including a 19-year-old. The defense official told the Coast Guard at the time what they had heard.”
https://thepostmillennial.com/breaking-us-navy-detected-titan-implosion-on-sunday-but-biden-admin-only-released-news-on-thursday-after-hunter-plea-deal-and-whistleblower-reports-released
Holy sh*t. I was even chatting about it with my chiropractor yesterday. How despicable – using the tragic deaths of 5 people just to get us to ‘look over there’ rather than Hunter Biden. How much lower will they go?
Oh a long way yet…
I must say, the thing that got me emotionally involved in this story was the fact a father was onboard with his 19yr old son. A family member was quoted as saying the son didn’t even want to go and was terrified but it sounds like he was guilted into it from his father. I was trying to imagine how his mother must have been feeling this whole time when communication was lost. But what kind of deluded and irresponsible parent puts pressure on their kid to go on a massively hazardous expedition like that, especially if the kid was voicing their very valid concerns? Now the father is dead and took his son with him. It would seem that both types of pressure are the cause of the poor kid’s demise.
Anyway, I shall never apologise for being a compassionate person. And this is just the latest example of what an extremely despicable and loathsome character that crazy, dangerous old slimeball fart is. I hope there’s another strategically placed obstacle for him to trip over and hopefully next time break his bloody neck!
Try not to be judgmental about the father or trusting about what the media say on the subject. People take risks every day and bad things happen, such as unnecessary deaths from reckless driving. That’s human nature and the reality of life. What gets me is the politicisation of such events. How a tradegy gets turned into another reason for us all to be angry and fearful.
Nothing surprises me these days Mog.. in fact I was aware the H Biden thing was going on and wondered. We are dealing with evil-ruthless people, the very same people who want the vast majority of us dead..
Small sub implodes and the acoustic data is picked up seconds later, analysed, and within a few minutes the result pings up the food chain from the matelots to the captain, and thence up the chain of stars to the generals, chiefs of staff and to the president. Given that the sub mission was not military or classified, loads of people would have known about it within a couple of hours, so why didn’t the information leak out? Were there orders from above? Why sit on it, given multiple nations were mobilising assets at vast effort and expense, with all the attendant operational risks?
Presumably the Baltic is also bristling with similar sonar and electronic sensors and yet NATO / US cannot find who blew up a pipeline with a shedload of explosives. Strange, really.
“How should schools handle ‘furries’?”
Nice article, but does Tobes realise that ‘furries’ are potentially something far worse and much more sinister? Robert Malone has just written about it.
https://rwmalonemd.substack.com/p/the-world-of-school-aged-furries
‘Furries can be something else all together. In adults, most furries tend to be male and two-thirds identify as homosexual. Furries are often truly attracted to animals (which would be type of sexual fetishism). Sexual fetishism is a sexual fixation on a nonliving object, animal or non-genital body part.
How are sexual fetishes formed? Many social scientists believe that a “critical period exists during an individual’s early sexual experience that creates a “love map” or Gestalt of features, movements, feelings, and interpersonal interactions associated with sexual reward. ” Sexual “fetishism could result from these abnormal early sexual experiences, when a “child is imprinted with an overly narrow or incorrect concept of a sex object” (Wiki).
This of course, is a tacit admission that imprinting, grooming, sexual abuse and early sexual experiences can impact on a person’s lifelong sexual preferences and behaviors.
A recent paper highlights some of the features shared by furries:
The “Furry” Phenomenon: Characterizing Sexual Orientation, Sexual Motivation, and Erotic Target Identity Inversions in Male FurriesArchives of Sexual Behavior volume 48, pages1349–1369 (2019)
Children indulging in the furry world may seem cute and even innocent. But don’t be fooled. Children acting as furries are being exposed to concepts, images and videos that are dangerous and sick. Children can be easily influenced by social media in ways that are extremely harmful to their psyche and their soul.’
“How should schools handle ‘furries’?”
(Reposted without all the links which got the first one deleted.)
Nice article, but does Toby realise that ‘furries’ have a potentially far more dangerous and sinister meaning? Robert Malone has recently written about it.
https://rwmalonemd.substack.com/p/the-world-of-school-aged-furries
‘Furries can be something else altogether. In adults, most furries tend to be male and two-thirds identify as homosexual. Furries are often truly attracted to animals (which would be type of sexual fetishism). Sexual fetishism is a sexual fixation on a nonliving object, animal or non-genital body part.
How are sexual fetishes formed? Many social scientists believe that a “critical period exists during an individual’s early sexual experience that creates a “love map” or Gestalt of features, movements, feelings, and interpersonal interactions associated with sexual reward. ” Sexual “fetishism could result from these abnormal early sexual experiences, when a “child is imprinted with an overly narrow or incorrect concept of a sex object” (Wiki)….
Children indulging in the furry world may seem cute and even innosent. But don’t be fooled. Children acting as furries are being exposed to concepts, images and videos that are dangerous and sick. Children can be easily influenced by social media in ways that are extremely harmful to their psyche and their soul.’
The Briggs article on the quagmire that is academia is worth a read. Peer-review is still held up as the gold standard but people have been sounding the alarm on the state of this system for years. I think Covid mania really highlighted the total corruption at play here and how easily Big Pharma manipulate the system so it’s always in their favour but it still isn’t common knowledge. I mean, we have the likes of such accomplished and highly credentialed academics like Prof Fenton who can’t even get his work onto a pre-print server but Pharma shill and fraud Hotez gets his crummy papers published in journals no probs. Here’s a 2min clip of Dr Jason Fung explaining the bad joke that is peer-review these days;
https://twitter.com/_aussie17/status/1671386895954354184
Recent discussion between Pierre Kory and Bret Weinstein on Darkhorse podcast is good on this. And it’s not just pharmaceuticals but most areas of research, including processed food producers and of course tobacco, who has corrupted science. (Steve Patterson is another good and independent source for a deep dive into this). However, business is just doing what it will do if not restrained. Our biggest problem is the total capture of governments and so-called regulators (who now consider themselves enablers) and the willful blindness of academia, medical professionals, etc. Most doctors struggle to come to terms with the fact that what they have learnt, their whole toolkit, is making us sick and they need to go back to basics, i.e consider themselves investigative healers rather than the technicians they have become.
‘Britain is “in the grip of a heart and stroke care emergency”.
No doubt, vaxxine deaths.
I’ve monitored the complete news shutdown of Shane Warne’s vax induced death this week. And this during the Ashes too.
If one of the greatest sportsmen of all time can be disappeared, don’t hold your breath for government and big pharma to come clean.
https://www.businessgreen.com/news/4118557/leading-conservative-mps-launch-pre-election-push-bolder-green-agenda
That should seal the deal for Kneel and Ranting.