Signalling a change in tone and perhaps strategy, new Health Secretary Sajid Javid has said that “we are going to have to learn to accept Covid and find ways to cope with it, just as we do with flu”. Writing in tomorrow’s Mail on Sunday, according to a preview tweet from Freddie Sayers, Javid says that while the economic arguments for reopening are well known, “for me the health case is equally compelling”, pointing to record NHS backlogs that are getting worse.
In a possible nod towards the “new normal”, he adds: “We need to build on the changes we’ve all embraced in the pandemic.” However, the examples he gives are not contentious for sceptics: improving the delivery of healthcare using NHS 111, the NHS app and pharmacies.
It’s certainly an encouraging message from the new Health Secretary, and better than anything we ever heard from Matt Hancock. Now for the hard bit: putting it into action, against the doom-mongers on SAGE, the vested interests of those profiting from the emergency, the psychological comforts of those who seem to like the idea of permanent restrictions, and the unions for whom no imposition on others is too great to achieve a slight reduction of risk.
Already there is the notable absence of the promised review of the lockdown extension in time for a possible July 5th reopening, which was supposed to appear on June 28th. Boris Johnson appeared to rule it out last week but there has been no official announcement and July 5th is this Monday. It seems that we are just supposed to assume it isn’t happening.
Why was nothing published to justify and explain the decision? After all, we’ve had Government scientific advisers saying they got it wrong and Britain is in a much better place than they predicted when the Government used their models to extend the lockdown. So why aren’t we reopening early? We are not told. Despite dangling the possibility of early release in front of us two weeks ago, the Government does not deign to provide us with a formal decision and written explanation. More than anything this silence reinforces the terrible sense that lockdown has become the default, and that it is freedom that would require explanation, not the continuation of restrictions.
Instead, we have further noises of the possibility that the end might be delayed yet again, and that even if it is not some measures may have to stay.
On the other hand, there are reports that Boris Johnson has signed off plans to end the mask mandate and other restrictions on July 19th. I don’t want to speak too soon – and there’s a long way to go yet – but maybe Javid is the Health Secretary Boris needs to get his priorities back on track.
Stop Press: You can read Sajid’s article here.
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PCR testing contracts have berm extended for another 2 years, I’m told.
Tens of thousands of ‘Covid Marshalls’ start work this month.
Borders are effectively closed over lies (variants) & several countries have made it clear they don’t want us visiting (by imposing quarantined).
Anyone who thinks our freedoms will been given back to us imminently, please would you explain your thinking?
Well said Mike. The Fat Lady hasn’t even gargled yet, certainly isn’t on stage and won’t be singing for a long time yet.
Most people who post here would agree with you. It’s the sceptical mainstream political commentators and some rich sceptics you need to convince that a long-term, well-funded campaign of counter propaganda is going to be needed, and hopefully drawing together anti-lockdown political parties into a coalition.
More lies to compound the lies already told. Same Shit Different Day. What happened to the review|? Blowin’ In The Wind? I cannot bring myself to trust anything this Government says and damn me to hell and back I voted for them. I will never vote Tory again.
You might never get the chance to vote for anyone.
If digital ID/CCP style social scoring comes in, only fully “vaccinated” mask wearers who are otherwise fully compliant will be allowed to vote.
Dear Savid, to deal with covid, you just open everything up, and provide hospitals and GPs with the capability to administer Ivermectin. It’s very effective and safe, even for those who cate (& won’t) have the experimental vaccines, and even deals with ‘long covid’. You then instigate a program to ensure everyone’s vitamin D levels are maintained, as this is vital for the maintenance of our immune system.
Couldn’t agree more. Also force the NHS to open up the Nightingale Hospitals and treat Covid patients there as with fever hosptials of old.
It’s like you decided to rent out your house for 18 months. The tenants proceed to trash the fittings, use the furniture as firewood and defecate on the carpet. Then they turn round and say “No need to take us to court. We’re going to tidy this all up now. Promise.”
So let’s get this right…
“Case” numbers are soaring. The government has always stressed the importance of case numbers. The R rate is well above 1. The government has always stressed the importance of the R number. A key defence standing between us and total plague-scale disaster, according to the government up to now, has been the wearing of masks.
Full vaccination even does not prevent Covid deaths (46% of Covid deaths are in people who have been fully vaccinated, even the Government admits).
And it is at this precise moment the Government intends to remove the mask mandate?
Really?
How can that be?
I suddenly have almost a smidgeon of sympathy with the SAGE radicals who want lockdown measures to go on “forever” as Stalinist Susan Michie said – because at least they are consistent in their lying.
But this government by its own lights, is prepared to take a huge gamble on the public’s health. It seems like “saving lives” is no longer top priority.
Of course, now the super-cynical Javid chooses suddenly to deploy the argument that lockdown measures are undermining the health of the nation. Has the government shown any previous interest in this phenomenon backed… Read more »
Agree totally. I’m now in high gear, planning emigration (initially to anywhere with low to no ‘measures’ & ultra low vaccination rates).
I am extremely concerned about U.K. to the extent I’m leaving while it’s legal so to do,
This is very disruptive but I’m not willing to pretend it’ll right itself.
U.K. is an advanced crime scene.
Firstly I’ll believe it when I see it.
In the future when (or if) the people realise they’ve been conned, will it be like France after WW2, most of the people complied and capitulated with the Germans but come the end every French man was in the resistance. Will everybody say they were a sceptic?
Well, I detect a change in tone from the authorities. Your Sajid now says we have to learn to live with the virus as we do with the flu. In Australia, the federal and all state governments are saying exactly the same thing and have just run up the white flag in their quixotic quest for Zero Covid and that we must treat Covid as we would the flu i.e. sans lockdowns (important caveat – depends on coerced mass ‘vaccination’ but still …) whilst the US is up and running lockdown-free and restriction-lite.
Perhaps they all realise the error of their ways and are looking for a (‘vaccine’-enabled) way out? Perhaps their corporate donors have had a word in their shell-like about the economic damage of repeated lockdowns? Perhaps the electoral magic of lockdown is wearing off a lockdown-fatigued public?
Something does seems to be shifting, however – the Australian move was a bolt from the unexpected blue.
Perhaps, however, it is all a triumph of hope over experience – we are dealing with shifty-eyed politicians, after all. I’ll need to see more tea-leaves.
It’s looking as though the likely course of events could spell doomsday for the failed experimental liberty-pummeling measures exacted upon us, but the one thing that will remain will be a deified vaccination programme, which, to serve political ends, will be credited for the enduring health of the nation. Natural immunity, pre-existing immunity, people’s diet, exercise, lifestyle choices and vitamin D intake, for instance, will all be summarily demoted to irrelevance. “In Vaccines we trust”, will be the new religious mantra.
Nothing has changed or will change any time soon
Vaccines will be rushed out again after lockdowns
The new model is cemented in now
With Johnson reverting to his previously bullish political persona, whilst this is without a doubt a step in the right direction, it goes to show that he is relatively incapable of making decisions independently of his advisors, since this is only happening now as he take’s his cue from the “Saj”. (You’re the man, Saj)!
The Mancock Javid theatre has clearly been staged. A Political spin and a route out, to protect arses from the kicking that will ensue once restrictions are eased; if they actually are as intimated, and thoughts are focused on, what the hell just happened?
Mancock could not have been allowed stewardship for the reinstatement of any of our previous hard won freedoms. Not when he was the lackey responsible for imposing them on us all.
The Cabal know that even the mind-washed masses might start to suspect something hasn’t been quite what it has seemed for a little while now.
Savage Jabber can start the new narrative, as the Knight in Shining Armour come to release HomoBovinus.
“My beloved Sheeples, your health and well-being are my top priority, don’t ye know? The economy is a bit important, but you my children are my top priority…”
Hang on a minute…
Beware the new and oh so scary “LAMBDA” Scariant.
I guess they thought the “Triple Mutant Yorkshire Variant” was just maybe a little bit OTT. That one quietly faded away, a bit like the Kent scariant. Remember that one?
As the normally bucolic Ivor Cummins recently posted about this one…
“The… Read more »
This is coded language for, how much can we get away with to build a base for further theft of ancient liberties. How daft are the public.
Haven’t we learned anything from the last 18 months?
In a well run psyops you dangle ‘goodies’ on a regular basis, only to take most of them back at the last minute and then give out one or two in exchange for the next surrender of a freedom or two. Its ‘hope’ that becomes the killer.
Javid is a vampire squid alumni , don’t take anything he says literally, he knows how to ‘talk his book’. Normally traders hear Goldman’s advice and do the opposite, it usually works.
The trouble is that now people who think like us are called miseries and told off for being pessimistic. This is usually by people who don’t know the long term plan and have short memories when it comes to the u turns over the last 16 months. We may get a short time of
somewhat normality but sure as eggs are eggs, it will not last.
I wonder if somebody in Westminster will find a dusty document in a drawer called “UK Influenza Pandemic Preparedness Strategy”. You know the national procedure for dealing with viral pandemics.
Not only are there national procedures for dealing with pandemics but international ones and I wonder if any countries followed them, oh yes Sweden.
Almost every time you read about Sweden the lying so-called journalists make some reference to Sweden’s “novel” or “risky” approach to covid, conveniently ignoring the whole of recorded history up to when the CCP went mad in Wuhan.
Yep – you might call it the Great Leap Backwards.
Lol, that’s very clever.
What worries me is that it’s now the blueprint. People are still deluded that it was a success.
Given the ‘upbeat’ messages coming from Javid, expect massive push-back from the usual parade of misery. They will be even more ubiquitous on media – MSM and alternatives – and so my expectations will remain realistically low until the restrictions are actually lifted.
“we are going to have to learn to accept Covid and find ways to cope with it, just as we do with flu”.
So after fifteen months of one disastrous government policy after another that has trashed the economy , damaged the national psyche possibly for generations to come, cost more lives than the virus itself not even counting the poor souls who have missed out on early screenings and medical treatments for other more fatal diseases , a mass vaccination rollout with an experimental vaccine that no one knows what the mid-long term affects are and which could cost even more lives still – we are now told .. oh well, we’ll just have to live with the virus like the flu – this makes me so effing mad when I hear this because this has always been the case since day one – an outcome that many others have been predicting and shouting from the rooftops since we were told ‘just three weeks to flatten the curve’ – leading experts have been saying over and over again that lockdowns don’t work only to be dimissed as consipracy theorists, anti-science or lunatics – yet Sweden had no lockdowns and… Read more »
We really do need to reintroduce the death penalty for treason by public officials and for misconduct in public office.
No shit Sherlock, like what you should of done 16 months ago. What damage has this joke of a government done to the economy, the national health (physical and mental), education, industry etc.
Why don’t I believe a word Javid says? Because he’s a Pakistani Muslim? No, it’s because he’s a Davos man and fully paid up supporter of the WEF and he voted for every extension of restrictions in the HoC. He has never uttered a word of criticism or doubt about out loss of civil liberties. He has only said something vaguely sceptical now because he’s got the Health Secretary’s gig and he’s trying to polish his image.
How can anyone trust a man who was MD of a criminally corrupt Bank, who left the job earning £1m a year for a career in politics, earning 90% less?
The last para I don’t know enough about, but the first para has to be spot on. He’s positioning himself as a reasonable man to move on the chessboard to become PM. But anyway, letting us out on parole for the state school summer holidays was always the plan.
We will see what Javid is really made of as autumn approaches: he will bow down to Sage.
He had not cast himself on the breadline, however. This from digitalhealth news. “Health secretary Sajid Javid has stood down from a £151,000 advisory role with artificial intelligence company C3.ai upon taking up his new role.
Javid’s most recent register of members’ financial interests to parliament, as at 14 June 2021, show his advisory role with the company began in October 2020 “until further notice”.
A spokesperson from the Cabinet Office confirmed to Digital Health News that Javid is no longer an advisor to the company.
The former chancellor was receiving £151,835 per annum from the company, paid monthly, for 80-96 hours work annually (10-12 days per year), according to the register. It works out to roughly £1,500 per hour.
Javid was paid to advise the company, which provides analytics support to healthcare organisations, on the “global economy, geo-politics and market opportunities”.
C3.ai defines its work in the healthcare sector as helping “payors, providers, and suppliers analyse massive amounts of clinical, claims, pharma trial, EMR, and sensor data to clarify and optimise decisions about how best to care for patients and reduce the overall cost of care”.
It provides a suite of products to help design, build and deploy enterprise-scale AI applications… Read more »
5 eyes front group perhaps?
Former Chancellor of the Exchequer providing ‘guidance’ to J P Morgan? Current Health Secretary formerly advising a company that ‘provides analytics support to healthcare organisations, on the “global economy, geo-politics and market opportunities”‘? No potential conflicts of interest there.
Going to “let it rip”, then? Good.
That’s exactly what should have been done from the start.
The weak, frail and obese DO tend to die early, that’s just tough. That’s nature.
If these people were so scared of a bad cold, then they should have stayed indoors and let the rest of the normal population get on with their work, leisure and travel.
Anyone else’s “health” is NOTHING to do with me or you – screw them and screw the NH-SS!
‘The unions for whom no imposition on others is too great to achieve a slight reduction of risk’.
Ďisagree. The Unions, inc the hard left Teachers and Doctors, see Covid as an opportunity to launch their Marxist ambitions. It has nothing to do with risk.
Maybe Lockdown Sceptics could produce a graphic that shows three categories of stakeholder: those whose interests are served by lockdowns/vaxines/passports etc; those whose interests are adversely impacted; and those who dont care/dont understand (ie the low information group)
Maybe they’re learning, but it’s taking a long time. However, they have all caused a lot of damage to the general public, while pretending to do the exact opposite, in effect.
Embraced!! I’ve embraced non of the crap put out to frighten the public. I will continue to ignore all of their cowing actions so what ever the prat dreams up is of no consequence !
There are lots of memes flying around with Sajid Javid sporting a Hitler moustache
Thanks Will. It IS encouraging. We hear this, and then the doomsayers here bring us right back down again. What a choice…live in fear, or live in fear.
I am sorry to say that this is true. What is happening politically in this techno takeover is much, much more frightening than Covid.
Doubtless on 19th, and not before, there will be some “easing” of restrictions but a great deal will remain in place. It will still be nothing like normality.
Having a wife with cancer, I know all too well the madness and cruelty of “saving” the NHS by shutting down large parts of it. Surely we can’t have another Health Secretary who is too stupid and self-obsessed to see that? Maybe he will be able to influence that area of policy even if the rest of the bullshit stays. But don’t hold your breath.
We live with it by taking steps to boost our own immune systems, having a supply of treatments (Ivermectin etc) at hand, taking vaccines (*if* they ever get properly tested and approved) and booting out lockdowns and masks and anyone who advocates for them – which would be virtually all of those currently in government office around the world (Ron Desantis excepted).
“Ron DeSantis excepted” and Kristi Noem, Greg Abbott or even Anders Tegnell.
Has anyone that isn’t a total hysteric who already had a diabolical life before 2020 embraced any change from the lockdowns?
I mean what possible “benefits” are there in that to take forward?!
I suspect that there is no shortage of opportunists. Lot’s of ‘traders’ are happy to dish out junk for cash in hand, and so on. Certain contractors will have received financial benefits from us all, via tax, and are probably looking forward to more, if they get their way.
We cope with it by not testing, not publishing daily cases, hospital, ICU or death figures and basically pretend it doesn’t exist and just giving booster vaccinations to the small demographic that require it. Just as we do with Flu.
So we don’t “learn” to live with it. We just get back to living and forget about it. Anything else is refusing to live with it.
Er, no. Au contraire. The lockdown measures have embraced us – tightly bound us like a straight-jacket. Our fault for being mad enough to accept them, I suppose.
What the fuck are you smoking?
In what possible way is that encouraging?
Meet the new boss. Same as the old boss.
Would be good if he could sort Sage out, like ask them who elected them and gave them power above the government.
They could have done this at any point and chose not to.
They don’t have power above the govt. It might seem like that, but the PM is in charge. He is responsible. That’s how having the top job works.
Doing a “top job” in politics means it’s actually strongly influenced by undemocratic specialists and/or so-called ‘experts’. That’s how it really operates, at all levels, unless we’re lucky to have someone competent at the task in hand – and most of them are not, unfortunately.
I don’t think competence is the issue. It’s character. I am no dummy but I am not genius. The PM is undoubtedly possessed of sufficient intellectual skills to evaluate the evidence and conclude that covid was not a societal threat and that the original pandemic plan was the right one – actually not that hard a conclusion to draw given it was adopted by more or less every country in the world and was the product of decades of thinking, experience and consideration.
Any leader in any organisation or setting is going to have to listen to experts and evaluate what they tell him. It’s really not that hard, if you want to do it and have the courage to make a judgement and accept responsibilty for the consequences. That’s called leadership.
Yep, they could have changed SAGE membership any time, slowly or quickly. They could have set up a LARG (Lockdown Assessment & Recommendation Group) to counterbalance all the pro-lockdown propaganda from the “scientists”. Just stuff LARG with people who will give you the right recommendations.
Er – the Government did! Duh!!