A teacher writes that she has quit, saying the lockdowns, masks and testing were bad enough, but the final straw was being told to hide a child's 'gender change' from their parents.
When Hindus are offended, the BBC describes what's offended them. When Christians are offended it does the same. But when Muslims are offended, it doesn't and the reader is left in the dark. Why the double standard?
Not only is the BBC refusing to quote the words that have sparked the latest Muslim 'blasphemy' bust up (on the specious grounds that they are "offensive") but it won't even entrust its audience with the general gist.
Many NHS trusts have forgotten to pass on the news to their employees that patients are no longer required to wear face masks. A GP tells the Daily Sceptic it's time the NHS abandoned these mini comfort blankets.
We now face the entirely likely and illogical situation whereby HMRC will attempt to close businesses which may have a Government-backed loan, the cost to the taxpayer of which may be higher than the actual debt itself.
The Daily Sceptic is publishing a letter from a teacher to the Chairman of his local Conservative Party Association explaining why he'll never vote Conservative again following the news about masks in classrooms.
The Daily Sceptic is publishing a semi-autobiographical, satirical short story by a Scottish reader about how one Edinburgh family have been celebrating Hogmanay this year.
In a recent article, we considered the implications of the U.K.’s spring rise in infections, given that before now the assumption has been that coronaviruses are seasonal at northern temperate latitudes. Do we have to dismiss that hypothesis in light of the ‘Third Wave’? Here we argue that, contrary to Government claims, the British summer is indeed finally impacting viral transmission, with sharp falls in positives reported across the U.K. In England, reported cases have more-or-less halved in a week, from 50,955 to 25,434. This sharp fall runs counter to all three of the most recent SAGE models driving Government policy, which predict rising infections leading to peaks in hospital admissions in high summer – and by implication falsifies the assumptions upon which these models are based. Parsimony predicts the summer troughs and winter peaks evident for SARS-CoV-2 In spring and summer 2020 and winter 2020-1, SARS-CoV-2 infections parsimoniously followed the pattern of seasonal respiratory viruses, falling away in the summer months and rising again in the autumn, with peaks in deaths occurring between mid-November 2020 and mid-April 2021 in different northern temperate countries. Although falling infection levels were sometimes prolonged into early summer or began to rise again in late summer, there were no peaks in fatalities in summer or early autumn 2020. Most notably, while cases in Sweden...
The pre-Covid scientific literature indicates there are already four known coronaviruses in circulation, which are – like ’flu – predominantly seasonal in the northern temperate climatic zones, which include Northern Europe and the north part of North America. Although not entirely without exception, the typical pattern – as has been pointed out previously in Lockdown Sceptics – is for coronavirus infections to peak between late autumn and early spring and dwindle away in the summer. Scientific parsimony would – in the absence of evidence to the contrary – lead us to anticipate SARS-CoV-2 would behave in the same way. Indeed, infections in Spring 2020 did follow the typical pattern. Although peaking earlier or later in different places, infections fell to a baseline before picking up again from the autumn – including in countries of Eastern Europe that escaped the first wave altogether. Reported deaths followed a similar pattern. In the autumn and winter of 2020-21 positives and deaths again peaked, with shouldered or distributed peaks in some areas. This is not unusual for seasonal respiratory virus outbreaks as can be seen in the excess deaths reported to EUROMOMO during the 2017-8 ’flu season, for example (small summer peaks in excess deaths are attributed to heatwaves). What would be unexpected, other than in quite exceptional circumstances, would be substantial peaks in...
Summary Population immunity played a major role in ending each wave of SAR-CoV-2 infectionHerd immunity thresholds differ by about two-fold across England, and have been reachedDifferent herd immunity thresholds correlate with regional differences in ethnicity and air temperature – possibly both operating by changing the rate of indoor contactsThe Infection Fatality Rate has changed dramatically during the pandemic: it first rose during (and possibly because of) lockdowns, and then fell by over eight-fold as older and vulnerable individuals were vaccinated. It is now so low, and herd immunity so well established, that vaccinating younger adults and children with novel genetic technology vaccines cannot be medically or ethically justified. 1. Population Immunity is a Substantial Factor This chart shows the % positivity rate in Pillar 2 testing over the course of the pandemic, and compares this to when lockdowns were initiated and when the initial wave started to slow. Clearly, each lockdown was initiated after the virus spread had either started to slow or had peaked and was already falling. That is not to say the lockdowns did nothing to assist in subsequent declines, but some other factor(s) must have been acting to limit the spread of the virus. Reasonable candidates include:(i) people instinctively deciding to shelter and keep their distance from others due to concerns over the virus(ii) growth in...
