“I will be voting to curtail the Government’s powers in this area” – MP backlash begins
Sir Charles Walker, the Vice Chairman of the influential Conservative 1922 committee of MPs, slammed the new restrictions on social gatherings saying he would vote to “curtail” the Government’s powers. The Telegraph has the story.
The changes will impose a legal limit on gatherings in private homes, parks, pubs and restaurants and will come into force in England on Monday.
Sir Charles argued that ministers needed to come to the Commons and “win the argument” on policies, admitting he was “increasingly uncomfortable” about the way the Government was running.
He said: “I am incredibly exercised about the continued use by the Government of powers that we granted it six months ago admittedly, to basically restrict people’s civil liberties without any recourse back to Parliament.
“Now these powers are due to be reviewed at the end of September, or the beginning of October, and hopefully there will be another vote on them.
“And I will be voting – if given the chance to vote in this rather strange Parliament – to curtail the Government’s powers in his area.”
Commons Speaker Sir Lindsay Hoyle was visibly livid that Matt Hancock had failed to make the announcement in the chamber first:
It is really not good enough for the Government to make decisions of this kind in the way which show insufficient regard to the importance of major policy announcements being made first in this House. I’ve already sent a letter to the Secretary of State. I think the total disregard for this Chamber is not acceptable. I know the Prime Minister is a Member of Parliament as well and he will ensure that statements should be made here first.
The Government has clarified that – for now – the restrictions apply specifically to private gatherings in homes, restaurants, parks and so on (see here and here). They do not affect workplaces, schools, churches, etc. But for how long? The Prime Minister seems to be abandoning his earlier hope of getting back to normal by Christmas, with chief medical officer Chris Whitty warning that “people shouldn’t see this as a very short term thing” and it is “very unlikely to be just over in two or three weeks”.
The reason? Because “cases” (actually positive PCR tests – almost none of these people are unwell) have been approaching 3,000 in recent days. But even the BBC has pointed out that this spike is a result of the massive increase in testing (Toby wrote about this in the Telegraph here). There is no corresponding rise in hospital admissions and deaths. Here’s today’s graph:
As the three eminent scientists, Paul Kirkham, Mike Yeadon and Barry Thomas wrote on Lockdown Sceptics yesterday: “Daily deaths from and with COVID-19 have almost ceased, having fallen over 99% from peak. All the numbers monitored carefully fall like this, too: the numbers being hospitalised, numbers in hospital, number in intensive care – all are falling in synchrony from the April peak… The evidence we’ve presented leads us to believe there is unlikely to be a second wave.”
The COVID-19 epidemic is over in the UK. Any further local outbreaks are very likely to be well within health service capacity. COVID-19 was never a peculiarly deadly disease and we have anyway become much better at treating its more serious forms. Now is not the time to increase restrictions. It is time to declare the epidemic at an end and return to normality. Happily, more and more MPs appear to agree.
That Damned Elusive RNA
We’ve published an original piece today by Dr Clare Craig about the guidance issued by the Government on September 7th that introduced a new PCR testing paradigm designed to reduce the number of false positives. Understanding the change requires some mastery of cutting edge molecular genetics, but the short version is that the more amplification cycles a lab runs when searching for Covid RNA in a swab sample, the more likely the virus is to be detected, regardless of whether it’s present in a sufficiently concentrated form to indicate the person is infectious or even, in some cases, if they’ve had the disease at all. So the more cycles a lab runs, the greater the risk of false positives – and if the number climbs as high as 34 cycles, the result will always be positive, irrespective of whether the sample contains microscopic fragments of Covid RNA or none at all. The Government hasn’t ordered its testing labs to keep the cycles below a certain number, but it has said that if the virus is only detected after 30 amplification cycles the lab has to retest to confirm that the subject in question is actually positive.
This guidance was almost certainly issued in response to this paper by Carl Heneghan and his colleagues at Oxford’s Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine that was published on Friday drawing attention to the over-sensitivity of the test, whereby someone who’s had COVID-19 and recovered could still have fragments of the virus in their system, causing them to test positive. Heneghan et al also point to the wide variation in the number of cycles the labs typically run, meaning the same subject could test positive in one location but negative in another. (It’s also possible the change was partly prompted by the paper that Lockdown Sceptics published on September 7th by three eminent scientists, highlighting the same problem).
Clare is a Consultant Pathologist who’s been writing about the pandemic on her blog called “Logic in the Time of Covid“. She’s written some excellent pieces, including this one in which she makes the point that a ‘zero-Covid’ strategy is fatally flawed because the PCR test will always throw up some false positives. Carl Heneghan linked to that post on Twitter on Monday, saying it was “worth a read”.
Clare thinks the new guidance is a step in the right direction, but doesn’t completely solve the problem.
The causes of false positives are myriad. From other viruses, to contaminant human DNA as well as cross contamination between cases and residual RNA fragments in patients who have cleared the virus. The risk of these can never be completely mitigated. Changing the cycle threshold does not fully address the potential for contamination or sub-optimal test performance in general. So more work needs to be done than just setting an albeit sensible number of amplification cycles.
By addressing the cycle threshold, PHE will eliminate some false positives. The cases that needed more than 30 cycles will be examined further to decide which are real. This ought to include input from the doctors caring for those patients and a repeat PCR test is likely to be carried out too. The numbers will rise again once this additional data is available. We will have to wait and see how low the new baseline is.
That is not the end of the problem with false positives. Other false positive test results look like true positive test results. If this were not the case we would not mistake them for true positive results. And for some false positives the cause will still be there when a second confirmatory PCR is attempted. We desperately need a robust definition of a ‘COVID-19 case’ with criteria beyond a single positive PCR result.
This is an excellent post by a top scientist. Clare worked for Imperial College Healthcare Trust as a cytopathologist and then became the day-to-day pathology lead for the cancer arm of the 100,000 Genomes Project.
Worth reading in full.
Neil Ferguson Defends his Model, Sue Denim Responds
A couple of days ago, Neil Ferguson posted a comment on the GitHub thread that started when someone asked Imperial College to publish the original source code used to power the epidemiological model in Report 9. (Ooh, the cheek!) As readers will recall, this was Imperial’s March 16th paper warning the Government that if it didn’t replace its mitigation strategy with a suppression strategy, 250,000 people would die. Many people have raised doubts about that code, including the ex-Google software engineer known as “Sue Denim” who has posted several critiques on Lockdown Sceptics. (See the first six posts under “How Reliable is Imperial College’s Modelling?” on the right-hand menu). Rather unexpectedly, Ferguson jumped into the thread on Tuesday to defend his work.
Another academic group has independently exactly replicated the Report 9 results using the original code and input files as part of the Royal Society RAMP initiative. They are preparing a paper on their analysis which should be out in the next month or two.
For those who believe that discovering a fatal flaw in this code might bring the the scientific support for lockdown tumbling down, I’m sorry break it to you to that other (notably LSHTM) academic groups informing SAGE in March used completely different models to reach nearly identical conclusions to our Report 9 in March. The relevant documents are online in the SAGE archive. The key conclusion that severe social distancing measures were required to prevent health systems being overwhelmed hinged only on estimates of R0/doubling time, hospitalisation rates and IFR (mortality risk). Given those estimates, any epidemic model would give basically the same conclusions we reached.
We asked Sue Denim to respond.
Well. This comment by Ferguson demonstrates how epidemiology has become so corrupted.
As we’ve seen before in this paper, at some point epidemiologists started to define success for their predictions as “matches what other epidemiologists predict” instead of “matches reality”. This probably occurred because their theories are incomplete and produce predictions that deviate significantly from what really happens (see: BSE, Foot and Mouth Disease, Zika and COVID). But it seems nobody knows how to improve them. Dangerous virus outbreaks are rare and experiments can’t be conducted, so there are few opportunities to refine the theories. Rather than admit defeat and switch to doing something else until new ideas emerge, epidemiologists have developed a series of highly evolved (but wrong) arguments as to why they are doing useful work.
Ferguson states: “For those who believe that discovering a fatal flaw in this code might bring the the scientific support for lockdown tumbling down, I’m sorry break it to you to that other (notably LSHTM) academic groups informing SAGE in March used completely different models to reach nearly identical conclusions to our Report 9 in March.”
He’s probably referring to this paper. It says: “Interpretation: The characteristics of SARS-CoV-2 mean that extreme measures are likely required to bring the epidemic under control and to prevent very large numbers of deaths and an excess of demand on hospital beds, especially those in ICUs.”
That is indeed a nearly identical conclusion. Yet we know from counter-examples where “extreme measures” weren’t used that ICU capacity was never exceeded at all, and there was no “very large number of deaths”. So this paper is just as scientifically invalid as Ferguson’s was. It actually reinforces the point that there is no scientific support for lockdown, only pseudo-scientific support using non-validated models and theories – theories that were disproven over the summer. Actual scientists compare their predictions against the real world, and if the predictions are wrong they refine their theories. (As Richard Feynman said: “If it disagrees with experiment, it’s wrong. In that simple statement is the key to science.”) This last step is missing in epidemiology, where for decades academics have been declaring success regardless of observed outcomes, even though their theories/models are general and hardly altered for new viruses.
What of his claim that the LSHTM model is “completely different”? The code is different, and of somewhat higher quality. The assumptions it makes are not really different. It’s another minor elaboration of an age-stratified SEIR model. For example, it assumes a totally susceptible population, which appears not to be true. Indeed the idea that SARS-CoV-2 is “novel” seems to be at the root of many of the incorrect decisions to lockdown.
He finishes by saying, “The key conclusion… hinged only on estimates of R0/doubling time, hospitalisation rates and IFR (mortality risk). Given those estimates, any epidemic model would give basically the same conclusions we reached.”
This is a surprising assertion. Rephrased, his conclusions could have been worked out on the back of a napkin, as “any” model would give the same conclusions given just three variables. Therefore it didn’t require 15,000 lines of code or any particular expertise to do his job. Literally “any” model would agree. He also seems to be disclaiming responsibility for the correctness of the data he uses.
Still, the core point he’s trying to make is correct – replicability bugs in his code don’t change the overall conclusion he reached. But who claimed they did? Certainly not the analyses I’ve written for this site. The point here is a different one: computational epidemiologists pose as scientists. That means they are meant to follow the scientific method, which means making testable predictions that follow from their theories. If predictions don’t reliably follow from theories in a reproducible way, or if they never update theories in response to failed predictions, the work they are doing is not scientific and should not be treated by governments as such.
While it seems unlikely that governments will hold academics to account this year, by blowing off basic methodological failures in such a visible way the scientific community are setting themselves up for a major reckoning in future. Trust in scientists has fallen significantly over the summer. Future generations of politicians will start to ignore the claims of academics across an ever-wider set of fields, as has already occurred for economics and – in the USA – climatology (another field that relies heavily on modelling).
“I’ve Seen Enough Failure in Corporate Life Through Groupthink to Understand What’s Happened to Our Politicos.”
We got a message yesterday (and a donation) from an exasperated consultant. Many people will feel the same way.
Since the start of this, the interpretation of the data has been clear to me. It’s the job I’ve done for 30 years, albeit in consumer behavioural insight not virology. And I’ve seen enough massive failure in corporate life through groupthink to understand what’s happened to our politicos. I’ve spent most of my career trying to get well educated corporate executives to practice fact-based decision making, rather than the other way around. We’ve had months of evidence now (not bloody models) about the asymmetrical nature of the pathogen’s effects, veracity of data, metadata & testing regimes, scientists and medical experts brave enough to speak out. Like many others, I thought that the propaganda wouldn’t survive contact with the bright daylight of facts (and the v obvious shifting of Govt ‘strategy’). But here we still are, in Sept, threats of lockdowns, maskism, MSM still pumping out fear, claiming asymptomatic (poss. false) positive tests ‘cases’, no context etc etc. With the democratic process shut down (and/or locked in orthodoxy) and Govt ruling by capricious diktat, backed by the Police and prosecutors, our judiciary silent and anyone who asks reasonable questions about the proportionality of NPIs (let alone wants to protest) closed down, the big question I’d like answered (or at least discussed) by the assembled brains of the Sceptics is: “What can we actually do to stop/change the narrative and pressure the Handy Cocks of this world to switch their critical reasoning back on?” Despite all the evidence and growing numbers, ‘we’ Sceptics seem to just to be a flea bite on the elephant. I’m tired of feeling angry, frustrated and impotent. I’d love to hear some creative options for those without power or voice! (sorry; tried to avoid the rant but failed).
We’re All Corbynistas Now
No, not an email from a supporter of Piers Corbyn – I think we’re all Corbynistas in that respect at least as far as lockdown is concerned – but from a supporter of his brother, Jeremy. Heartening as always to know that there are some on the Left who share our concerns about the collateral damage being done by the lockdowns.
My background is a postdoctoral molecular neuroscientist with 15 years experience looking and recording trends in scientific data. I have experience working with bacteria and viruses in the lab environment (I’d be more than happy for you to review my latest publications). I am a staunch socialist and fervent supporter of Jeremy Corbyn so would normally not share your ideas and values. Many of my colleagues in academia sit on the left and almost all have fallen for this utter nonsense and most all support condemning the Government for not locking down earlier. The very idea we had protocols for dealing with epidemic/pandemics is lost on them. I believe Bari Weiss and Melanie Phillips to be the worst of the worst, both in the cancel culture of anyone outspoken on Israeli apartheid and the continuation of the neoliberal agenda. I’m adamant that global society collapse is inevitable in the next few years (regardless of Covid) due to the Energy Cost of Energy conundrum, and there is no way GDP figures are anything more than a continual debt accumulation (essentially it’s impossible to have continued growth in a planet with finite resources, no amount of renewables is able to counter this). All this is aside from SARS-CoV-2.
I started reading your posts in late April, and, like you, I thought this over-reaction would soon self-correct. By summer this will die down as mother nature will have flattened the curve. I agreed lockdown would be catastrophic, but accepted that the Government wanted to be seen to be doing something and would go on to explain that the virus wasn’t as dangerous as first feared. Sanity would soon return, maybe with increased alertness about things like personal hygiene and a commitment to look after the vulnerable population, etc. How wrong I was. I too was expecting the Left to have a voice, a message challenging every step the Government had taken. Even my political hero Corbyn has been flagrantly useless. And yet here we are, months later, about to witness the collapse of many Western economies and plunge millions in this country alone into relative poverty and allow hundreds of millions to succumb to starvation and medical abandonment in the developing world. I do wonder why the Left has just allowed this nonsense to grip when this was known to be the inevitable outcome back in April. One didn’t have to be a socialist soothsayer to see that. Of course, I had a strong feeling collapse was inevitable very soon, but under the guise of this virus? Never in a million years.
My fear now is the impending authoritarian future and biosecurity state – to ‘stay safe’ – and I might just take up base jumping. However this plays out, I don’t see any answer but a closely monitored population. I’m not sure if my values are outdated and I’m not seeing something obvious? I do hope I’m wrong.
Stop Press: Left-wing advocacy group Liberty are also opposing the lockdown as a violation of human rights and unwarranted stripping away of civil liberties. About bloody time!
Protect the NHS, Go Private?
A reader writes to say that his annual private health premium is up “by an eye-watering 53% this year”. Why? Because, he is informed by his insurance provider, “so many people are using private services due to the inaccessibility of the amazing NHS”. (Er, why’s it so “amazing” then?) Maybe this could inspire a new Government slogan: Protect the NHS, go private.
Did a South Dakota Bike Rally Really Cause 260,000 Cases?
Toby asked yesterday for a riposte to the story going round that a motorcycle rally in Sturgis, South Dakota was responsible for 260,000 cases of COVID-19. A reader in America has looked into it and explains why it’s fake news. In short: dodgy modelling again.
A new study estimates that the bike rally increased the case rate in South Dakota by between 3.6 and 3.9 per 1,000 people – or a total of more than 3,000 cases across the state as a whole.
In a press briefing, the South Dakota Department of Health cast doubt on these numbers, noting that just 124 state residents who tested positive for COVID-19 had reported attending the rally. “The results do not align with what we know of the impacts of the rally among attendees in the state of South Dakota,” state epidemiologist Joshua Clayton said when asked about the new study.
Friedson said that self-reports like those used by the state’s Health Department are unreliable because people may not report accurately. Such reports also don’t account for other people attendees may have infected. “You cannot rely on these types of reports to tell you the number of cases,” he told BuzzFeed News…
Instead of looking at contact tracing and trying to identify specific people who had the disease and passed it on to others, the San Diego researchers behind the 260,000 figure looked at the areas that sent the most people to the rally and how case trends changed after the event. In other words, one big guesstimate.
The researchers looked at county-level data on new confirmed COVID-19 cases, as well as anonymised cellphone tracking data released by the company SafeGraph. This included the recorded home location for each phone, allowing the researchers to determine how many attendees came from each county across the nation. They then compared the trajectory of cases in counties with many Sturgis attendees, such as Clark County, Nevada, and Maricopa County, Arizona, to those with previously similar case trajectories that had few residents who travelled to Sturgis. This allowed the researchers to estimate the number of new cases resulting from exposure to the coronavirus during the rally – including cases caused by secondary transmission after attendees returned home. Extrapolating to rallygoers nationwide gives the figure of more than 260,000 new coronavirus cases caused by the Sturgis gathering.
460,000 people gathered without masks and without social distancing and they linked it to one death from Covid. Meanwhile, the Trump rally is also being painted as a virus-spreading event in the entire US media, yet all the rioting has yet to produce a single case of infection.
Stop Press: A solid rebuttal has also appeared in Reason. Well worth a read.
What Sort of Person Will Become a Covid Marshal?
The Government has announced that it will recruit an army of snoopers Covid Secure Marshals to enforce the draconian new lockdown rules. The Mail has collected some of the best memes mocking the ludicrous idea that are well worth a perusal.
Postcard From LA
A reader in Los Angeles has written to tell us about the unexpected success he had in introducing friends to lockdown scepticism. Might embolden some of us in bringing the subject up with our own brainwashed pals.
I am a conservative in what is, of course, a liberal city in a very liberal state. Even more of an anomaly for being a gay conservative. Needless to say, I generally keep my opinions to myself when politics come up, even among close friends (90% of whom are liberal and think President Trump is akin to Hitler).
Monday we had friends over for a Labour Day lunch. Three families with whom we have grown close through our son’s school. When they arrived, all of them were sporting masks. I wear a mask under mostly-quiet protest, and only when absolutely necessary to go shopping or get on a plane. I immediately told them that they only needed to wear a mask if they felt it necessary for their own safety, and that I would not be wearing one. In an instant masks were off, with a visible sigh of relief from all. We had a lovely lunch, crammed elbow to elbow around the table. For nearly all of them it was their first real social event since the madness began in March.
The subject of the virus reared its head throughout the afternoon and evening, as it will. At a point in the conversation I saw my opening and, perhaps emboldened by a couple glasses of wine, decided to stay silent no more and politely challenge their views of the virus, the use of masks, and the lockdowns. Given the authority of what I do for a living (I’m an attorney at a large healthcare organisation), they began to listen. I walked them through everything – the ineffectiveness of masks, the lack of science behind social distancing, the survival statistics even among the elderly, the falling CFR, etc. At first I got a lot of “yeah, but what about,” but I kept going. And to a one, it was the first time any of them had heard anything other than the left-party line (it’s sad that it seems mostly a left-right debate, but it is). By the time I was finished there were jaws on the floor and they were asking me to email links so they could read for themselves. As one of them said, “It’s hard to change your own mind.” But I think I may have begun to change a few. When they arrived, my friends who normally greet each other with hugs stood at arms-length. When they left there were hugs all around. I went to bed happy that night. I feel that if I can help my friends out of Plato’s cave – and it appears possible – perhaps there is hope for the madness to end.
Round-Up
- ‘Viral Issue Crucial Update Sept 8th: the Science, Logic and Data Explained!‘ – Ivor Cummings with a lucid, data-driven explanation of why the pandemic is essentially over
- “AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine study put on hold due to suspected adverse reaction in participant in the UK” – The female participant began to suffer with a rare and serious spinal inflammatory disorder. Pausing was a “routine action” apparently, but who knows – this is the second time the trial has been paused due to a participant suffering with neurological symptoms
- “If Covid doesn’t kill granny, loneliness will” – In a heart-wrenching column Alice Thompson in the Times writes that only 15,415 of the 99,560 care home residents who have died this year have died with COVID-19, yet so many care home residents are being treated like prisoners and dying of loneliness
- “The Oscars’ woke McCarthyism is a step too far” – Brendan O’Neill in the Spectator takes the Oscars to task for letting identity politics interfere with art and entertainment
- “Police in northern Spain arrest surfer who refused to quarantine after positive test” – Have the Spanish been getting tips from Kim-Jong Dan?
- “Should countries aim for elimination in the COVID-19 pandemic?” – Head-to-head piece in the BMJ with the UK’s Independent SAGE lockdown fanatics arguing for zero Covid against the New Zealand Covid Plan B group who provide the sanity
- “Has the world gone mad? More bizarre Covid rules (all in the name of science)” – Oliver Smith’s latest in the Telegraph with a rundown of Covid craziness around the world. Costa Rican drivers are banned on different days of the weeks depending on their number plate. Seriously
- “COVID-19 could reverse decades of progress toward eliminating preventable child deaths, agencies warn” – As lockdowns and economic collapse severely curtail children’s health services around the world, the WHO issues a grim warning
- “The UK can’t stave off the second wave without a zero-covid strategy” – Diane Abbott comes out for the zero Covid team. A brilliant plan, if only a vaccine wasn’t months away if it ever arrives, it had a realistic chance of giving full immunity, we weren’t imposing ruinous lockdowns every time we find a bunch of false positives…
- “Enough! The Government has gone too far – people want to make their own decisions” – Michael Deacon calls time on lockdown lunacy in the Telegraph and thinks people have reached the limits of their willing compliance. I hope so – but according to YouGov 62% of Brits would support a new curfew. Project Fear on steroids has worked
- “Britain’s second lockdown will be even more terrible than the first” – With the Government today only warning of worse to come over the winter, Allister Heath sees troubled days ahead
- “Government’s ‘Moonshot’ programme aims to increase coronavirus testing to 10 million a day” – Everyone tested every day, with the 0.5% or more who get false positives each day being required to quarantine for weeks – welcome to Boris’s idea of new normal
Theme Tunes Suggested by Readers
Today, themes for the successive phases of the Government’s Covid strategy: “Panic” by The Smiths, “Panic In The Streets” by Praying Mantis, “Panic In Detroit” by David Bowie, “Panic In The World” by Be Bop Deluxe and “Panic, Sheer Bloody Panic” by Hans Zimmer.
Love in the Time of Covid
We have created some Lockdown Sceptics Forums that are now open, including a dating forum called “Love in a Covid Climate” that has attracted a bit of attention. We’ve also just introduced a section where people can arrange to meet up for non-romantic purposes. We have a team of moderators in place to remove spam and deal with the trolls, but sometimes it takes a little while so please bear with us. You have to register to use the Forums, but that should just be a one-time thing. Any problems, email the Lockdown Sceptics webmaster Ian Rons here.
Small Businesses That Have Re-Opened
A few months ago, Lockdown Sceptics launched a searchable directory of open businesses across the UK. The idea is to celebrate those retail and hospitality businesses that have re-opened, 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 opened near you.
Now that non-essential shops have re-opened – or most of them, anyway – we’re focusing on pubs, bars, clubs and restaurants, as well as other social venues. As of July 4th, many of them have re-opened too, but not all, and some will have to close again on September 14th. 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 – particularly if they’re not insisting on face masks! If they’ve made that clear to customers with a sign in the window or similar, so much the better. Don’t worry if your entries don’t show up immediately – we need to approve them once you’ve entered the data.
“Mask Exempt” Lanyards
We’ve created a permanent slot down here for people who want to buy (or make) a “Mask Exempt” lanyard/card. You can print out and laminate a fairly standard one for free here and it has the advantage of not explicitly claiming you have a disability. But if you have no qualms about that (or you are disabled), you can buy a lanyard from Amazon saying you do have a disability/medical exemption here (now showing it will arrive between Oct 12th to Oct 22nd). The Government has instructions on how to download an official “Mask Exempt” notice to put on your phone here. You can get a “Hidden Disability” tag from ebay here and an “exempt” card with lanyard for just £1.99 from Etsy here.
Don’t forget to sign the petition on the UK Government’s petitions website calling for an end to mandatory face nappies in shops here (now over 31,500).
A reader has started a website that contains some useful guidance about how you can claim legal exemption.
And here’s a round-up of the scientific evidence on the effectiveness of mask (threadbare at best).
Stop Press: A video from Spain shows citizens preventing police arresting a woman for not wearing a face mask. The clip shows officers attempting to pull the older woman away from the crowd, but they manage to wrestle her away from the cops, while also removing their own masks in solidarity.
Shameless Begging Bit
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And Finally…
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Rip it off, yeah!
‘Covid passports’ for pubs coming to Wales
Covid passes may be used to keep pubs open at Christmas – BBC News
Passports macht frei
Open for me
But not for thee
The Indians who let Drakeford dance away at their Diwali Disco seemed to like him, they let him go unharmed.
What’s Impfen Macht Frei in Welsh?
Mae brechu’n rhyddhau.
Or, in better Welsh, celwydd noeth – a big fat lie.
Welsh is unusual in that the word for Big Fat Liar is Drakeford.
Perhaps the quicker this is brought in, the quicker it will bring things to a head.
Only if it’s resisted. There’s been no sign of that thus far.
Can’t help but agree. This has got to play out fully for people to see how dark it is. And it’s going to get very dark. And many STILL won’t WANT to see it but they’ll have no choice. And then they’ll be left with only their conscience to decide where they go next.
The accomoanying covvimap shows ‘cases’ in my county just over the 400 mark Last week it was well over 600.
It’s called ‘rising numbers’.
“It appeared that there had even been demonstrations to thank Big Brother for raising the chocolate ration to twenty grams a week. And only yesterday […] it had been announced that the ration was to be reduced to twenty grams a week. Was it possible that they could swallow that, after only twenty-four hours? Yes, they swallowed it. […] The eyeless crature at the other table swallowed it fanatically. passionately, with a furious desire to track down, denounce, and vaporize anyone who should suggest that last week the ration had been thirty grams. Syme, too-in some more double complex way, involving doublethink-Syme, swallow it. Was he, then, alone in the possession of a memory?”
― Orwell George, 1984
Should read
“Pubs to be used to enforce introduction of vax passports via vax compliance. “.
Surely the BBC headline reads:
“Covid passes will be used to close pubs for good this Christmas.”
As we all know, even the injections don’t provide any protection so we can be damn sure that a bloody ‘phone app won’t be of any use.
The pub landlords and restaurant owners should stand together and refuse to comply.
Pubs can be closed down by local authorities using licensing regulations which would be much more difficult to defend in Court than Covid laws of dubious legality.
Segregation passports, so evil they don’t even hide it now
As with previous interventions they are picking on pubs because most people do not use them regularly and many look down their noses at people who do.
There is a YouTube channel in which a pleasant young chap takes us on twenty minute walking tours of ordinary areas of Victorian London. At least twice in each presentation he will say
“Now this building used to be a pub . . .”
We can expect many more of those shortly.
Archbishop Vigano Appeals for a Worldwide Anti-Globalist Alliance
https://rumble.com/vpelhb-breaking-exclusive-archbishop-vigano-appeals-for-a-worldwide-anti-globalist.html
Is this the same study that the Dr Hillary quoted this morning on GMB as showing the huge benefit of masks?
GMB are amongst the worst with him and Sridhar pushing their nonsense every day. Long since stopped watching!
“Sridhar pushing her nonsense every day”
‘Hammer of the Scots!’
Have their been studies in Luton, Dewsbury, Rochdale, Burnley, Rotherham and Bradford so see the effects of wearing a burka/niqab? Infection rates down in those towns? If face masks work, so must a niqab, eh?
Anyone engaged in such a study would be denounced as racist.
Well, it is a “face covering”. Mind you I’ve seen face masks under “face coverings”!
If so, two different interpretations of the same study clearly demonstrate there is still no clear evidence that masks are effective, No study anywhere has come down heavily on the side of the benefit of masks. The best they have ever come out with is ‘they may reduce infection’ which is another way of saying ‘they may not’. The last time I looked the government’s own website was very vague on the subject saying masks might be beneficial in certain settings. This is nowhere near strong enough for requests let alone mandates.
It goes back to yesterday’s conversation, masks are solely about gauging the public mood for compliance in general.
It’s a clever ploy since nobody can complain that wearing a mask is complicated, it’s inexpensive although some choose to make them a fun but costly fashion accessory and it rarely inhibits normal daily activity.
Equally there are plenty of easy get out clauses to avoid the government being sued but at the risk of opprobrium from the Lockdown conscious or Covid Wary’
“I wear my mask to protect others, including uou”. Bareface-shaming.
Christmas is coming,
For what will you ask?
Please kindly Santa,
Give me a mask!
There’s something so jockstrap about them, isn’t there ..
Men with them on…looks like they’re wearing their wife’s knickers across their face.
Nearly opened up Photoshop just then but decided against it.
Next year they’ll be selling ankle tags that play Christmas carols.
Uptick from me but
+ 
= 
There are two worlds out there. My weekend was spent in busy pubs and similar places where not a mask was to be seen yet supermarkets (at least in my area) are still a mecca for the dear old muzzles. I often wonder how many wear them or don’t wear them depending where they go. Wear them in shops but not in pubs / restaurants. Mind boggling.
Face nappy wearing is well down on trains now – and they were one of the worst places for it until relatively recently. Even Northern Rail’s persistent passive-aggressive announcements are clearly not stopping more and more people from abandoning the muzzle!
There’s an ad on YouTube about the post lockdown reintroduction of a Stagecoach inter-region service in which nobody is wearing masks which I found strange.
Most people on.local Stagecoach buses still seem to wear them.
In a supermarket you’re anonymous, so you can’t be ridiculed or called out as irrational, and you’re just a fish in a large school. In a pub, you might have to face criticism and disapproval from those who know who you are. It’s about identity and being responsible for that position.
The may / may not debate is only even relevant in a theoretical untried situation. Fact is that now we’ve had 18 months of enforced muzzling on and off in many countries around the world, and in not a single case can muzzle mandates be seen in the stats – it’s literally impossible to tell whether there was one, and when it was enacted / removed (and the same applies to lockdowns, antisocial distancing and other vicious measures too, of course.
Therefore the only reasonable conclusion can be that in practice face nappies don’t work – all the Maskivist ‘modelling’ in the world can’t explain why something which they claim works has no measurable impact anywhere!
I agree. I have no doubt whatsover that over the past eighteen months extreme efforts will have been made by WHO and world governments to prove conclusively that masks work but they’ve repeatedly come up with zilch.
I would like to demonstrate in Dr. Hillary’s face that masks are no better at keeping out Covid than my underwear and trousers are at keeping in farts.
Hillary said a publican who objected to lockdown should stick to pulling pints, conveniently ignoring that lockdown shut his pub.
I remember that telly screen encounter, the Dr. came over as an arrogant prick.
The publican had come to public attention for for publicly berating a politician, to his face, about the effects of lockdown on his business.
Something to do with this?
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/nov/17/wearing-masks-single-most-effective-way-to-tackle-covid-study-finds
i haven’t been able to read it as my iPad won’t let me! Probably recognised a crap piece of journalism in a crap newspaper and said “computer says no”.
It’s utterly bizarre that they can make claims like this when there’s well over a year of worldwide stats showing absolutely no benefit – if muzzle mandates are completely invisible in the stats (which they are), any claim that muzzles are ‘the single most effective way to tackle covid’ should be treated with the contempt it deserves!
Tell me something I didn’t know.
But but just imagine if we didn’t wear masks cases would be through the roof… they say.
The frankly perverse obsession with these things is purely to do with signalling ones virtue.
And of those that do why do they wear some home made piece of filth? Surely an FFP3 one would be better?
Nutters.
There’s a lot of elephant trumpet reactions going on with covid.
People keep on telling me that it is important that they play the trumpet all the time because it scares off the elephants, and when you respond that there are no elephants they say ‘that shows its working’.
This is actually rather a difficult ‘logic’ to overcome; I’m sure that some people will be wearing masks to the shops etc for the rest of their lives.
Yes and it’s simply because for the vast majority of the public it’s easier to go along with consensus that to ask the tricky questions and find that everything is based on flawed logic. Which is why there is so little critical resistance to these measures.
“…some people will be wearing masks to the shops etc for the rest of their lives”
Those to whom I’d suggest such an idea a year ago, who’d then dismiss it as ridiculous, now react with a shrug and a sigh inside their muzzles.
Saw a ‘new’ dentist yesterday; new for me anyway as my previous dentist had packed in his practice last year because of the pressures. My new torturer seemed helpful and pleasant enough but she had no face at all. Disturbing.
No virus either is there?
Yet they’re still a legal requirement in Wales.
There never has been any scientific evidence that they offer anything but the most puny of protection, but governments around the world have created laws to force people to wear them. It is rather weird.
No, FACE COVERINGS (not masks) are compulsory. Showing it’s there to keep the scare going not for health reasons.
Scotchland too, plus vaxxports for a “vaccine” that doesn’t prevent the spread.
It’s only weird if you assume that the goal is public health rather than public submission.
Not only do they provide no protection they become a nice little petri dish for all the stuff the wearer has been unable to exhale properly.
There’s a good reason why we cough and masks prevent that.
In all these studies there is never any discussion about the basic policy *which is the wrong way around*.
Everybody must wear a mask to protect who exactly, and why can’t that person be protected just by wearing a better mask themselves? That way it has a fighting chance of working due to physics – a filter works better under suction rather than under pressure because there is less likelihood it will leak
The whole thing is backward at the most basic level, which means the enterprise must be about tapping into a weakness in the human psyche, not fixing a physical problem.
We’re all in this together that’s why….
You’re right of course. If said individual is so terrified that they need a mask then surely staying at home would be “safer”. Then I can carry on with no mask.
If said individual has a requirement to be out but is still terrified then they could wear a respirator or an ffp3 mask and goggles. Then I can carry on with no mask.
The problem is that a certain group expect everyone else to protect them which is the definition selfish. Yet as the non mask wearers, we are deemed selfish for not protecting others!!!
Totally backward!
or out yourself as even more paranoid than average and wear this
%3Ffit%3Dscale
TV drama seems to largely ignore the masks, implying that they don’t exist and that the world is just as it was in 2019. The only drama that has embraced masks is Grey’s Anatomy and they wear things just like this guy and oh my goodness, talk about killing off your drama – it seems so weird.
It does make me think about what it might actually mean at a deeper level, to blank off people’s faces … it’s pretty shocking when you think about it and shocking that so few people do consider the impact of this on society.
Was noting that very phenomenon last night watching big Apple+ drama Invasion. It’s like they’re representing a different world isn’t it. Don’t know whether to see this as a source of optimism or not; imagine if they all wore masks upon leaving the house like that fucking nauseating HSBC advert with sell out and traitor to humanity Richard Ayoade.
Oh that one make my
blood boil – quick, where’s the remote!
Would be rather fun if he suffocated. We could all have a laugh then.
But you have to protect the NHS. Apparently.
Have you noticed that those who smugly claim that ‘we’re all in this together’ are the financially-secure middle-classes who are least affected? Don’t hear many people in the hospitality industry making that sort of comment. Can’t imagine why not…
yes I apologise for repeating myself… they’re face coverings, not even masks!
Everybody wants to be Hannibal Lecter! Or, with the black masks, a mysterious Ninja warrior!
I’ve looked at a few recent (November 2021) airport videos on YouTube and there you see the extent of this utter madness. A sea of face masks. All destined for landfill, the oceans, or to be hung from trees or thrown on the ground just about everywhere.
Buying shares in companies that make/distribute face masks could be profitable!
Whereabouts in the world is most of the PPE manufactured? (Rhetorical question)
China is my guess. I have not made an investigation into this. A company in Finland makes face masks – TehoFilter in Sievi. There is a company in Finland that makes the material for the masks (Ahlstrom-Munksjö in Tampere) and a company that makes them, or at least packs them, in Hanko.
I haven’t bought any face masks, my collection consists of those I’ve grabbed where they’ve been offered, such as at my workplace, at my workplace’s private health centre, and at Toyota where we’ve had our car serviced. I’ve been fortunate to be able to avoid wearing a face mask most of the time – just for the shops, health centre, and at Heathrow airport last January (and on the two planes I took, and at Amsterdam airport).
There are one or two people on this forum who claim you don’t need to wear a face mask at an airport, and just have to pretend to wear it on the plane. I’m sure you can get away with the odd moment, when no-one is looking! But if I were going to fly anywhere, I wouldn’t be setting off to any airport without at least one face mask with me.
I’ve used a face mask in the shops when shopping with my partner as she really believes in The Virus, and is also worried about people looking at her if she isn’t wearing one. I don’t use the ‘hand sanitiser’ and she has given up on nagging me about washing my hands when we get home. After 20 months of not having caught ‘Covid’ I think even she is coming to realise it’s really not a big danger.
Anyway, ‘Vaxx Passes’ have already been introduced for domestic use within Finland – and the same is coming for Norway, Denmark and Sweden. Not very restrictive now, but, of course, the screws can be tightened down at any moment.
There was an early video showing the cheap pale blue masks being made in a sweatshop in Vietnam or The Philippines by heavily sweating individuals in highly unsanitary conditions with raw materials and finished product scattered around randomly including on the filthy floor.
well you see they backed themselves into a corner at the start by all coming out and saying masks don’t protect you and of course anyone sensible was also pointing out that even the packaging says the same thing.
So then some genius came up with the brilliant but highly illogical idea that masks only blocked things in one direction and therefore they were to stop others getting infected.
Hey presto, not only do we have a useless policy but by claiming it’s to protect others people will be shamed into doing it because who would want to be the person seen to be wanting to infect everyone else.
There are so many ways that masks don’t work.
Even if they were 100% effective when worn, as soon as you move it away from your mouth it’s not working.
So at a very simple level, if you’re wearing a 100% efficient mask 10% of the time, 90% of the time it’s not working.
The simplest way to visualise this would be to think of a 100% efficient mask as holding your breath. All good as long as you’re not breathing…
Don’t talk about not breathing on Twitter btw, it’ll get you banned for 24 hours.
When the Govt first decided to have a crisis, I was doubtful about masks so started looking. I found a study by the University of Alabama from 2010, so unaffected by Covid politics, that wanted to know how masks dealt with dust and pollutants. It was sophisticated in measurement and tested a surgical mask, and cloth covering, a DIY dust mask and an N95.
It found that the masks stopped the following percentages;
Dust mask 6.1%
Bandana 11.3%
Surgical mask 33.3%
N95 89%
Average particle size was 1-6 nanometres
The report did mention in passing that viruses such as coronaviruses have a particle size of 0.125nm or smaller.
So, I was immediately aware they were effectively useless, without all the leaking and constant fidgeting. The Govt were clearly in no doubt and never insisted, because you didn’t have to prove a reason not to wear, but was entirely about showing compliance.
Try getting the BBC/Sky/ITV to explain this to the masses….
Not in a million years, which is the tragedy of the whole shit show.
I’m still waiting for the panorama uncovering the covid un truths…
Micrometres?
A surgeon explained that if he absolutely had to cough during an operation he would face directly at the patient because most of the bad stuff was expelled through the sides of his mask.
A pre-covid study showed that there was no difference in the final outcome whether surgical teams wore masks or did not.
FDA Asks Federal Judge to Grant it Until the Year 2076 to Fully Release Pfizer’s COVID-19 Vaccine Data
https://aaronsiri.substack.com/p/fda-asks-federal-judge-to-grant-it
Wonder WHY? Something big to hide????
Still talking about the benefits of face masks? Wasn’t this thoroughly discussed back in March 2020? And now it’s November 2021 and we’re still on the same subject?
Round and round we go.
It’s irrelevant if face masks work or not, if they are mandatory to be worn in shops in Wales and Scotland, that’s all there is to it. You can always say you’re ‘exempt’, can’t you? Problem solved!
Try saying ‘exempt’ at an airport or on a plane/ferry/Eurostar/long distance train in Italy or France, and see how that goes down.
Problem solved when you’re the only human being, surrounded by a heaving sea of faceless zombies?
Hahahahaha.
I’ve never worn a mask in an airport and have travelled a few times during the pandemic. In the UK no one cares anymore. On the flight they don’t even say anything as long as it’s under your neck so you’re at least pretending
Seeing is believing. I’ll let people know my experience next time I fly. Having a face mask ‘under your neck’ counts as wearing one, in my book.
Yup did six hours on a plane with it under my chin. No problems or complaints from the aircrew
From memory just before the first mask mandate. Dictionary definition
‘To wear’ = to have about ones person
I agree with your last point. I’ve never worn one in the UK, but in France in early summer 2020, the armed police would target anyone unmuzzled in their muzzled city zones. So I just wore it around my neck until seeing police, as most of the locals did. At St Pancras, UK immigration “randomly” selected me being the only non-muzzled (and wearing an anti-lockdown t-shirt), but their intimidation failed because I had avoided their little trap by retaining my photocopied QR docket provided on the French-side (which many had binned). They seemed most disappointed, but it made me feel happy that the queue had seen how powerless they were to take any action against me.
Separately in late summer 2020 I had to wear a muzzle in all sorts of settings in Europe because the fascism was much more established. On long distance trains, armed police were getting on at stations to remove any filthy unmuzzled.
At least I know how to deal with the pathetic UK attempts at enforcement, thankfully the pig dictator hadn’t got the balls to do what most of Europe was doing.
An unexpected benefit of life with a government composed of idle, incompetent Eton schoolboys interested solely in laughing at the great unwashed with rampant profiteering and Bullingdon club antics.
Competent, efficient, industrious government = Population poisoned weekly and muzzled permanently.
Whichever way, we’re cornered.
Bully Boys Club. All people you wish to avoid on dark alleys.
I don’t know what your photocopied ‘QR docket’ means – at what stage it was photocopied (and why?), and what it was for?
The ‘environmentalists’ are strangely quiet when it comes to the billions of face masks being manufactured – apart from the littering the environment, it must use a fair amount of ‘fossil fuels’ to manufacture them and distribute them. What a waste of the Earth’s resources.
Where is the Little Goblin of Doom when you need her?
It was early on where they had introduced the passenger locator forms. If you flashed your phone screen at the departure border staff they would give you a printed QR code. Only problem was that they were all photocopies of the same QR code that had been hastily cut out by hand. It was a detailed QR that if real would have contained a lot of data. I wish I had scanned it to see what it really contained – it was probably something like “Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet…”.
Obviously they had assessed the intelligence of the sheeple and decided that they were too stupid to understand that all the QR codes were the same.
Many of them were left on the train at St Pancras and they were demanded from the people that they “randomly” selected. It was just more pointless theatrics to make sure everyone knew there was an emergency and they were doing “stuff” about it.
Is this real? Presumably a 20th generation (say) photocopied QR code would start reading “Looremsch iphshurmndulllor shitammetsch…”
Great to check this out but I enjoy not owning a pocket policeman phone.
The government has brought the discussion back into play.
Just yesterday bozo left No.10 wearing a mask to get to his Prime Ministerial car.
It’s all theatre.
Meanwhile out in Guardian land
The article references the BMJ but there is no link to the actual paper.
I expect they have cherry picked data to deliver the results they wanted, which seems to count as “scientific research” these days.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/nov/17/wearing-masks-single-most-effective-way-to-tackle-covid-study-finds
Unfortunately it is this bent research that our Government and its corrupt advisors will take as gospel.
They use this research because it backs them up.
Actually, given their diet of lies I don’t know why they bother. A statement backed up by garbage research is still a lie.
Nowhere in that piece is anything said of the problems caused by obliterating peoples’ faces. Nowhere do journalists ask the reason why many do not, will not, wear the fucking things – or like Pig Dictator and his henchmen, rip them off whenever they forget the cameras are on. Why do MPs remove their muzzles when standing up speaking in Westminster?
Worth repeatedly asking; barely worth answering.
and that’s why all those places that still have strict mask mandates have very few covid cases. oh wait…
Boris nearly died of Covid. How can you be so cruel?
I took out an onion and cried.
A while back, they were saying 92%.
Take a card. Any card.
I wonder if the timing of the Guardian article is concidence?
More lies from the Groan.
Here is the study: https://www.bmj.com/content/375/bmj-2021-068302.
It is infuriating. Here in the US, masks and NPI’s are almost entirely partisan. For those of us who just want our lives back, bunk studies like this are used to enforce social distancing in blue states. It doesn’t matter that the researchers are using a bunch of old observational studies from the Spring and Summer of 2020 in which seasonality and preexisting immunity were entirely discounted. They just cherry pick studies that give them the conclusions they want despite the fact that none of those observations have held up.
In my son’s place of work (Wilco’s in Halesowen, West Midlands) he reckons that among the customers, the maskateers are now less than 50%.
Must be time for another mandate then. The people are insufficiently fearful.
Spread the word that the Chinese spray their masks with The Virus when they are manufacturing them. That might put a few people off using them? Pre-infected. Great way of spreading a bio-weapon!
The authors of the report may inadvertently missed one very useful aspect of mask-wearing: Mask-wearing among the population illustrates the wearer’s compliance with government directives, their continuing fear and acquiescence indicates the success of the Nudge (Fear & Propaganda) Unit, and nicely continues the deteriorating health of a large part of the population through increased bacterial infection and oxygen reduction.
That’s not a very useful aspect. That’s the main purpose.
I’ve not read the study – so the following comment may be completely wrong – please correct me if this is the case. . . .
As I understand it, the remit of the study was to review the evidence regarding the benefit of masks at preventing the spread of the virus. That’s only half the story. There are an increasing number of studies (some published here on DS) that suggest there could be harms incurred by those who wear a mask for prolonged periods. When one takes this into consideration, it’s clear to me that there are no net benefits to masks at all, and the net loss could be very substantial indeed – especially if the psychological impacts of mask wearing are thrown into the mix.
had a few doc appointments in the last few days, problem being lack of hearing and each time have had to explain that I need to lip read or just can’t hear, glad to say the masks including the doc’s were removed. Deadly pandemic, no, visual control, yes
Wow. Hang on. Isn’t the Cato Institute a deep-state idea-laundering asset? What’s going on here?
Personally, I did my research and come to the conclusion that there was absolutely no benefit in wearing a face-nappy and since day I never wore one and the longer this nonsense went on the more convinced I became that mask-wearing seemed to be little more than a psychological trick with which to increase public fear and coerce people to conform and adhere to all the daft rules – for me mask wearing became political theatre to control the masses and the masses fell for it hook, line and sinker.
Now I think there is nothing more depressing than the sight of people who are still wearing their flippin masks – its the equivalent seeing grown mature adults still sucking there thumbs – its ridiculous.
Ditch the mask and get rid of those stupid plastic face shields too.
That battle (but not the war) has been lost. It would not matter who or even which authoritative body (plural bodies even) made UK public announcements that masks do not work or actually cause diseases – the sheep have absorbed the previous message too deeply and some will continue to mask up for the rest of their lives. Time to stop bothering and move on to more serious matters of concern UNLESS a new mask mandate is announced without self- exemption.
Benefit was not the object of mask mandates.
They are designed to get people to eat shit and say it tastes delicious, exactly what they have done.
This is a review/meta analysis of dozens of already existing studies.
Just as the BMJ/Monash/Edinburgh one which comes to the very opposite conclusion, peddled by the Guardian today, is.
There is as such zero new evidence in both.
They can both be summarized as such:
Biased garbage in, weighted as per ones bias, desired garbage result out.
Anyone with an IQ above room temperature KNOWS that masks have zero positive benefit here but many negative side effects.
Anyone living in the real world KNOWS that people do not wear masks properly, exacerbating their negative side effects and rendering lab studies totally unrealistic and invalid.
Anyone aware of Swedish schools and their non-existant case, transmission and death rates KNOWS that masks haven’t and cannot have made any positive difference elsewhere, only negative ones.
Sadly, most people therefore can be classified as having an IQ below room temperature, not living in the real world and being unaware of Swedish schools.
In particular, politicians, ‘journalists’, ‘public health’ professionals, scientismcists and ‘doctors’ aka quacks.
“politicians, ‘journalists’, ‘public health’ professionals, scientismcists and ‘doctors’ aka quacks” Ah, those at the top of the tree in these “professions” know very well they are telling Big Lies. They very much live in the real world.
From the paper ‘They are concerned by the lack of interest in getting to the truth on masks, putting it down to the widespread public commitment to masking policies making the scientific endeavour politically fraught.’ Applies to all NPIs.
From what people have written on this site, I think the face nappy wearing in UK and Florida is very similar. Despite there being no State enforcement, about 50% still wear them inside any public area. Doubtful if these people will ever stop now.
Depressed this morning as its only 2 weeks before we fly back to the prison state that is France. Dreading what we will find there as ‘cases’ are going up substantially so all the NPIs will be rolled out again for Xmas. No doubt about the conditioning of ‘prison’. When you are ‘in’ you get used to confinement. When you escape you realise what freedom feels like, but the reinternment is going to feel worse. To a greater or lesser extent this psychological ‘warfare’ has effected everyone. They are changing the way we think, behave and react , often without us appreciating it.
The slightly worrying thing in all of this Covid shite, and especially the denigration of the un-jabbed is that I saw a poll that said 58% of the British public supports measures against the pure-bloods. Whilst most polls can be taken with a pinch of salt, I’m sure there is a rather large portion of the population who would be quite happy to go full camps and ovens for us.
can we start calling vaccinated people muggles?
The same British public that claim to be concerned about Climate Calamity but which only 10% say they are prepared to pay to do anything about it.
What has the effectiveness or not of masks got to do with this legislation? It is purely a power exercise by the elite medical activists to see how far they can push their control.
https://brownstone.org/articles/do-masks-reduce-risk-of-covid19-by-53-how-about-80/
As I indicated below.
On the crap Guardian/BMJ 53% mask efficiency story aka fairy tale.
I recieved an email the other day about how beards render dust masks useless. Great big lumpy bits of dust. Not viruses. Dust. https://mailchi.mp/afssupplies.co.uk/beardafs?e=e8e053fe5e
Too right. Hence the (Cold War, Gulf War 1 etc era) requirement for soldiers to be clean shaven in the event of NBC activity. Tight seal between respirator and face. It was never just about looking smart, as it had been in the past.
Will somebody PLEASE tell sadist Khan, and the rest of the know-nothing politicians that take such pleasure in creating fear!
No point. They won’t listen.
Give it a couple of days and it will be retracted, the authors will apologise deeply, and the doomsday fetishists will get to breathe a mask-obstructed sigh of relief that the end is still coming.
Perhaps the best way to put this to bed is if everyone, and I mean everyone, wore a mask for a month or two and let’s see what happens. We should have done this last year because we know what the outcome would have been and we could have finally debunked this myth.
The benefit is I can see who complies.
They test for the flu since they’ve never isolated Covid-19. Which makes me wonder how they can tell there is a delta variant. They never isolated the virus but they use a test to show the damage of a solution does on monkey kidney cells then show the cellular debris as proof of the virus. So, they can use this method to claim an UNENDING! amount of variants. A lot of cancers and “viruses” are probably just different forms of parasites. Since the tests can’t differentiate between cold and flu and covid then doesn’t that mean ivermectin cures both the cold and the flu? Welcome to “they’ve been lying to us our entire lives about everything”. Get your Ivermectin while you still can! https://ivmpharmacy.com
Two types of people in this world. Mask wearing fuckwits and the rest of us.
“…but if they save just one life…” . I can hear the converted sheep uttering that mantra every time the evidence is put before them. Give me strength!!
Yeh, OK, so they don’t work. But, hey, let’s keep wearing them just in case, eh?
In early 2020 I raised questions about the efficacy of face masks with my MP. In reply he stated that no RCT (Random Control Testing) or Medical Risk Assessment had been conducted on masks for daily use outside a sterile environment such as an operating theatre. I realised then that it was about subjugation and not about the virus.
“…No Evidence of Benefit”
No Shit Sherlock?
On Wednesday on passing a neighbour walking down the street, they shouted I should be wearing a mask because apparently, “cases” are soaring in the town. Really? Anyhow I offered to send her several papers which dispute the efficacy of masks. She stood silent for a moment, furrowed her brow and said: “No, I don’t want to read them,” and scurried away.
The psychological damage is very deep and I’m thinking irreversible.
Well, it kept them busy. Over a year ago I read a relevant BSI standard on the subject, and came to the conclusion that it was junk, and never used them at all. Here is an extract of the summary part of a set of notes I cobbled together in Summer 2020.
Great document