There’s a depressing report in MailOnline. A Downing Street source says there’s a 50:50 chance stage four of the roadmap could be delayed, pending more data about the spread of the Indian variant. Not surprisingly, the pressure to delay is coming from various members of SAGE.
A Government minister today acknowledged England’s June 21st Freedom Day could be in jeopardy after a number of SAGE scientists publicly called for the end of restrictions to be pushed back.
During a round of interviews this morning, Environment Secretary George Eustice said the Government couldn’t “rule anything out” when asked if the next phase of the roadmap could be delayed or watered down.
He insisted a decision would be made in a fortnight’s time when ministers will know more about the effect of the Indian strain – which is making up three-quarters of all new infections – on hospital rates.
The comments mark a significant shift in tone from No10, with ministers claiming just days ago there was no reason to deviate from the lockdown-ending plan. The remarks come after several high profile SAGE experts and Government advisers today lobbied for the June 21st easing to be moved.
Professor Ravi Gupta, who sits on the Nervtag subgroup of SAGE, urged the Government to push back the unlocking by “a few weeks” to allow more people to get vaccinated before ditching all social distancing rules.
The Cambridge University expert claimed there were early signs the third wave had already begun – after daily infections breached 4,000 on Friday for the first time in nearly two months – and warned it could become ‘quite explosive’ over the next few months.
Professor Gupta said the jab rollout was giving people a “false sense of security” because infection rates were still relatively low, but claimed it was inevitable unvaccinated people would eventually start to fall ill with the highly infectious strain.
The roaring success of the vaccine programme has seen almost 40million adults given at least one dose of the jab and 25million fully inoculated. But it leaves more than 5million Britons over 50 either unvaccinated or only partially protected.
Professor Gupta’s comments were echoed by SAGE professor Susan Michie, who warned Britain was on a “knife-edge” as it approached the June 21st deadline. The University College London behavioural scientist, who sits on the SPI-B committee, said said [sic] fully opening the country as planned could lead to a serious spike akin to the second wave in the winter.
“Either it could run away as it did before Christmas, which would be extremely serious and we’d have more restrictions, or it could be contained,” she told Sky News.
Professor Adam Finn, a member of the panel which advises No10 on its Covid vaccine rollout, also urged ministers to be “cautious” amid rising cases. He said the impact of May’s lockdown easings on Covid cases – which saw restaurants allowed to serve indoors and Britons able to invite up to six others into their homes – would not be clear for another two to three weeks.
Former Tory leader Sir Iain Duncan Smith accused scientists of bullying the Government into extending lockdown.
Let’s hope Boris sticks to his guns – for once. After all, only six people were reported as dying from COVID-19 yesterday. Worth reading in full.
Stop Press: The Times has written up Professor Rav Gupta’s interview on the Today programme in which he warns of a third wave.
Stop Press 2: Just one Covid death has been reported today and, according to the Spectator, “England is currently running below SAGE’s best case scenario for hospitalisations following the restriction relaxations”.
Discussion
Comments
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There’s never going to be a ‘freedom day’ until we take back the freedom that was stolen from us.
Why is the UK gov’t determined to destroy even more hospitality businesses? What exactly are they doing. Open up the country and stop ruining lives. The USA has opened up, no increase in cases or deaths. What could this government possibly be thinking? It is beyond belief.
I don’t know one person who is going to continue with this nonsense beyond 21 June. Even the most avid mask-wearer I know now walks into the local store with her nose showing and another wears a see through muslin muzzle. I know, better if they wore nothing at all, but considering they were both very much into all of this a short while ago, I’d say they are finally waking up. Neither of them have any intention of carrying on with any of the “rules” beyond 21 June. The whole pathetic scaremongering has just scared them out of their stupor and woken them up. SAGE can take a running jump off a cliff.
Mass revolt if they do
How many times does it need saying, I repeat, this has nothing to do with our health it’s about controlling the people and what better way to accomplish this but by fear! However Im hoping the public will be sufficiently angry if Bozo the Clown reneges on the Big Opening.
And to think the same experts were not just telling you to go to the pub ‘to eat out to help’ they were paying you (and adding to the mountain of debt) to do so. Track record not to good then 😉
Lying Boris needs to get some advice from the Governors of Florida, Texas and S Dakota on what to do with Prof Ravi Gupta’s advice
These SAGE experts need to learn to keep their mouths closed outside of their team and stop leaking stories and opinions to the press. It undermines the entire process and simply causes fear. I’d have fired anyone who I had in trust doing this.
Dr M Yeadon states that these so-called variants are so close in nature to the original as to be meaningless, so one wonders why such ‘sage’ people in such powerful positions are claiming otherwise and basing their misrepresentation upon advice given to the Gov regarding ending lockdown. Seems we will never get out of this hideous loop until people decide for themselves to live normal llves. I now pity the terrified for the gullible fools they are.
So the unelected SAGE party is in power headed by? Ferguson?, Hancock?,Whitty?
Who voted for these people? Johnson is a puppet
Undoubtedly he is a puppet but the puppet master is ultimately Bill Gates whose largesse has greased many a palm of the weak greedy and cowardly.
I can’t honestly remember what SAGE stands for but isn’t the E for emergency? In which case why are they still being taken any notice of I mean where is the emergency?
There is no emergency there never was a pandemic! The people have been conned by political charlatans, unfortunately too many people are unaware of the extent of the deceit. I hope they wake up soon.
We’ve known all along. Who, with half a brain couldn’t see this coming? They are all lying fu(ks. All part of the agenda which was forecast in several places to the letter as early as last June. Propaganda, lies, censorship. Most of the MSM is complicit. None of the “Normy’s” are even aware. And the next year’s COVID propaganda budget nearly tripled and contracts awarded!
Interesting observation…I finally had enough and cancelled my subscription to The Times and Sunday Times, Daily Telegraph and The Independent, yesterday after many years of loyal readership. It wasn’t a tough decision.
The guy at The Times who was trying to talk me out of it and who seemed pretty ‘with it’, and you would have thought, well-read, didn’t even know there had been a huge march in London on Saturday or any previous protests!! He’d heard there was some trouble caused by ‘ mindless morons in a shopping centre‘ that was all. Suffice to say, we had a long chat. I think we may have a new convert.
Oh, and what’s this I was told was on one of the MSM Telly ‘news’ prog’s this morning? “Unfriend The Unvaxed”. Jeez, Who the fu(k is… Read more »
Well come the 21st if we don’t open up the government is screwed! Business will go under Pub’s and Village halls will be no more and all because Boris has been brain washed by SAGEs deeply unpleasant psychologists and modellers! If Boris esteemes Churchill so much then it’s time he told SAGE to bugger off Boris’s hero wouldn’t have given as stuff about the third wave he would have gone with what he was seeing in the real world
Cruel but clever. Give people hope – then take it away – repeat.They soon become so demoralised that they just don’t care – because if they do dare to care – they will get very angry and very scared. Nobody wants to be angry and scared – so they keep their heads firmly in the sand – hoping the nightmare will end. I still can’t work out why/ in whose actual interests this obviously destructive agenda is being pursued. Answers on a postcard please……
Nuremberg 2 can’t come soon enough!
Prof Gupta is a behavioural psychologist, so hardly an expert in epidemiology. The real crime if that a fuckwit like him is given airtime to propound his crap ideas.
I’m no fan of his pronouncements on lockdowns either, but on a point of fact he is a Professor of Clinical Microbiology:
Professor Ravi Gupta – Networks of evidence and expertise for public policy (cam.ac.uk)
No, they are nit on the brink. This was always the plan. Gaslighting, demoralising, breaking a nation. It makes me so angry that people are falling for this AGAIN……
They can say what they like- people are now wakened to the hype so are doing their own thing
I have just heard another useful idiot on Today on Radio 4 promoting the variant scare. Boris the Boneless is bound to cave in.
“Let’s hope Boris sticks to his guns – for once. After all, only six people were reported as dying from COVID-19 yesterday.”
FFS…. “DYING FROM COVID”
Its been a year now.. Why are you still saying “From” . That was put to bed a year ago.. People die with covid. Hardly anyone dies from covid. These are people who have died from something else within 28 days of a positive test. Yet you are still perpetuating this myth
Credibility is going downhill
I have not yet read the comments buuuuut
Are these people on the committees so bloody stupid that they are unable to realise that you cannot ‘contain a virus’?
Did they all attend a special university to learn how to be stupid? My contempt for these arseholes know no bounds.
Speaking of universities peddling stupidity…. Princeton has dropped the Greek and Latin requirement for Classics majors. Should we laugh or cry? Cry. Then laugh.
How much does anyone not want to put money on Kim Jong-Johnson caving in at the last possible millisecond?
He’s a great fat communist fraud and Susan Michie knows it.
How can SAGE be so dismally useless? If you want to predict the next wave, you could look at other coronaviruses, which peak between December and March in northern temperate latitudes – typically in the first weeks of the New Year. You could then look at the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus, which has done exactly that, peaking in late March 2020 and early January 2021 in the UK. The excess deaths diminished this winter and therefore will probably do so again this coming winter. The vaccines, of course, will mean serious illness and death will be massively further reduced (not sure I believe that, but it’s what I think I’m supposed to believe). Last summer, percent positivity bobbled around a baseline, but rises were not sustained until autumn (September / October) and could be predicted to be the same in 2021. I’m surprised SAGE’s models don’t predict predictable empirically observable coronavirus behaviour. What do you think?
Lockdown is the goal of SAGE, as an end in itself
Does Ravi Gupta by any chance get funding from Gates or the Wellcome Foundation?
This Mail story is just PR pressure for Ze Vacczines. Get vaxxed or we lock you up forever.
We all have to stop doing as they say. Just stop. And spit in their smirking faces.
Irrelevant. He’s a witch doctator
Who do these Sage monkeys work for?
To play devil’s, the Conservative spin masters will eek this out. They know the people are growing tired of SAGE and their continual doom laden announcements. Especially that they have taken the medicine required for entry to the Church of Pharma. The party will want to to be seen to ride to the rescue. They will no doubt have seen the popularity gained by Governers in Texas and Florida, it’s an open goal. They know this is over, but they have masses perfectly on their strings. They’ll be loving this.
The 21st will happen. Maybe keep masks but that’ll be the only thing because it’s a useful way to keep the fear in at no cost. Then, as the winter comes, push for the vaccine boosters amind new variants. More lockdowns, especially on the non vaxxed.
The non vaxxed will have destroyed the conservatives’ sure fire road map to freedom. The camps will be readied and the police will march them off to their punishment.
If Julia Hartley Brewer says no to masks as of 21 June then I can’t see them continuing. Ok she isn’t the greatest media influencer but she does have some clout .
The face mask on public transport regs automatically expire on 20th June, to continue with mandatory face masks on public transport after that date will require new legislation, it would send a weird signal to simultaneously open up and enact new face mask regs! I think they want to draw a line in the sand over these dodgy face mask regs and consign them to history. Doubtless there will be guidelines and train and bus companies may bring in their own rules but my hunch is that as a full mandatory requirement, they are on the way out.
“It would send a weird signal”. I think they’ve sent plenty. Few have noticed.
I am a regular bus user and there are lots of unmasked now. Wear one to get on as a courtesy to saving the driver’s job in case of Karenism (they really don’t care) then take it off on sitting down.
They will keep masks, track and trace (we already know that), mass testing, vaccine bullying/lies/moneywasting/boosters, travel restrictions, furlough, WFH guidance. My life won’t change. Lockdown continues, unabated since March 2020. The Big Lie continues.
So George Useless can be added to the list of heads we want to see roll at the end of all this shite.
The marvels of rhe behavioural psychotics unit
Listen to this. Laura Dodsworth on savage minds.substack.com interview about the misuse of behavioural psychology.
Well at least we know who is running the country and it most certainly is NOT those we nominally elected.
So Billy boy Gates’ SAGE puppets have revealed who is really in charge. No wonder Bozo and Nut Nut could piss about in a wedding all day while the country burns around them. Echoes of Adolf and Eva?
Two things, “it’s inevitable that the unvaccinated will start to fall ill.” Bollox! I’ll take my chances and prove you wrong.
“Give people chance to get the vaccine,” Double Bollox, try to force and coerce more people I think you meant to say.
These evil liars know no bounds and I seriously don’t give a tinker’s cuss what they say anymore.
Thank you for expressing it so well … I’m originally from Yorkshire too and they can F off witch their vaccine coercion. 3 letters, 3 phone calls and 3 texts so far. It is intrusive and pressuring. If I have to have a covid vaccine to be allowed any semblance of life then I will see what the Valneva trials look like. No to this current lot.
I have had multiple reminders too. Maybe it’s just me, but I find the social pressure far more intrusive and , in a way, persuasive. But a post on here recently persuaded me that caving in would be an act of betrayal of freedom, and that’s where I am sticking for now. But like you, open minded about future treatments.
It would more be a betrayal of reason than freedom- unless you have a better insight than I do into the relative risks and benefits of the jabs?
I’m hugely disappointed -only one letter , one call from GP surgery and one call from national who gave up when I declined to confirm my dob. They really are giving up too easy.
You will be subjected to a “second wave” later, I was😊.
Yes. For me it’s become far more than issue of not wanting to take a ‘vaccine’ (and a highly dodgy one at that). It’s become a moral standpoint against being bullied and co-erced by a band of people (the majority of whom I have absolutely no respect for and no longer trust) who I do not believe care about us as individuals at all. It’s about not being allowed the fundamental right of looking after my health in the way that I want to. If bodily autonomy has gone, life for me will be a mere existence and the right to retain this must be fought with everything we have.
Not much of this “inevitable” illness last summer when restrictions were eased and we didn’t have masks, vaccines, tracks and trace (to begin with)
Given that it’s mostly pure bloods on the marches, at SITP, and who have been meeting as normal indoors, unmasked and up close and personal for ages, I don’t see them (us) dropping in the streets in any great number.