The press is having fun today about the apparent “confusion” in Boris’s exit plan, with some papers flagging up new rules which weren’t included in his speech on Sunday. For instance, he originally said we could play sports from tomorrow, but only with members of our own household. That’s now been amended to one person from another household as well. Matt Lucas did an amusing impression of Boris getting in a bit of a muddle that went viral. (Are we still allowed to use that word?)
Boris’s response to all the noise about this, as set out on the front page of the Telegraph, is to urge people to use their common sense. This plumber interviewed by Channel 4 News last night seems to have got the point. “Boris is leaving it up to us a little bit,” he said. “What do you want, a full handbook to tell you what to do?” The editor of the programme must have spat out his almond milk latte when he heard that.
Needless to say, much of the mainstream media thinks Boris is being wildly reckless, accusing him of putting our lives at risk. He’s running down the mountain like Julie Andrews in The Sound of Music, not inching his way down like an experienced climber. (If only!) The Mirror, for instance, urges the Prime Minister to “protect the workers”, although doesn’t explain how destroying the UK economy would achieve this. The Guardian has a piece by David Hunter, Professor of Epidemiology and Medicine at the University of Oxford, flagged on the front page, that predicts “the virus spread will increase, there will be super-spreader events and local or regional lockdowns will have to be reconsidered”.
Much of the criticism focuses on the risk that the sacred two-metre rule might be breached, particularly on public transport. Worth bearing in mind, then, that the distance we’re supposed to keep from each other varies from country to country:
- WHO recommendation – 1 metre
- USA – 6 feet
- Germany – 1.5 metres
- Australia – 1.5 metres
- France – 1 metre
- Italy – 1 metre
- Sweden – Use your common sense
As William Sullivan points out in American Thinker, social distancing rules are snake oil, not science.
The same “we’re-all-doomed” line was taken by Anthony Costello, ex-Director of the WHO and a member of the ‘alternative’ advisory group shadowing the Strategic Advisory Group for Emergencies that’s due to publish its first report tomorrow. As Guido Fawkes pointed out, this group is packed to the gills with pro-Labour boffins and Costello is no exception. in a long long Twitter thread posted last night he poured scorn on the Boris’s exit strategy, predicting a second spike in infections. “In short, the Government plans will lead to the epidemic returning early, cases rising, further preventable deaths, and no guarantee that herd immunity will ever occur,” he concluded.
He urges the Government to instead follow the advice the WHO has issued, which he quoters as follows: “governments refocus the whole of government on suppression and containing COVID-19”. By “suppression” I think the WHO means keeping the lockdowns in place, although given how hugger-mugger the organisation is with the Chinese Communist authorities it’s hard to be sure. Does this mean the WHO has now decided the Swedish approach was wrong after all? Readers will recall that a senior panjandrum at the WHO gave a press conference two weeks ago in which he praised Sweden as a “model” that the rest of the world should follow. This was after the WHO said exactly the same thing about China a few weeks before that. Makes you feel almost sorry for the moderators at YouTube, given that the company’s CEO has said any content dissenting from the WHO’s official recommendations will be removed. Must be a full time job keeping track of the WHO’s constantly-changing positions.
It’s quite helpful that these lockdown zealots are nailing their colours to the mast, predicting armageddon if we emerge from under our beds and venture outside. It means that when they’re proved wrong, as I suspect they will be, any future advice they might have for the Government can be safely ignored. Then again, the reputations of various climate change alarmists haven’t been damaged in the slightest by their failed predictions, many of them based on similar computer models to that used by Professor Neil Ferguson and his crystal-ball gazers at Imperial. A quick reminder of what some of these soothsayers got wrong:
- Paul Ehrlich, author of the 1968 bestseller The Population Bomb. “We must realise that unless we are extremely lucky, everybody will disappear in a cloud of blue steam in 20 years,” he told the New York Times in 1969. Ehrlich also predicted America would be subject to water rationing by 1974 and food rationing by 1980. Ehrlich’s “bomb” failed to explode, but his career didn’t. He’s now the Bing Professor of Population Studies at Stanford and the president of Stanford’s Center for Conservation Biology.
- Peter Wadhams, Cambridge professor. Interviewed in the Guardian in 2013, he predicted Arctic ice would disappear by 2015 if we didn’t mend our ways. It hasn’t, obviously.
- Gordon Brown, former UK Prime Minister. He announced in 2009 that we had just 50 days to save the Earth.
- George Monbiot, Guardian columnist. He predicted a “structural global famine” in as little as 10 years’ time if we didn’t start eating less meat — this was in 2002. No such famine has materialised, although it probably will now thanks to the global lockdowns.
- Prince Charles, future king. He predicted we had eight years to save the plant 11 years ago.
In foreign news, the Times says on its front page that single French women are happy with the lockdown – the headline is ‘No hook-ups, Merci!’ “Not only have they discovered that they are able to survive on their own, but many have come to the conclusion that they are better off than their counterparts lumbered with menfolk and children at home,” reports Adam Sage.
The always-reliable Professor Carl Heneghan of Oxford’s Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine has just finished a piece of work showing that the coronavirus crisis is not technically an epidemic. The latest data from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) suggests that just 0.24 per cent of adults – approximately 136,000 people – currently have the virus and the Royal College of GPs puts it at even less – about 0.037%. The official definition of an epidemic is a disease that infects 40 per 10,000, but the new figures suggest it is between four and 24 in 10,000. The Telegraph has more.
The ONS also released data this morning about registered deaths in England and Wales in Week 18 (April 25th – May 1st). All deaths are down, including those involving COVID-19. You can see the year-to-date trend lines in the ONS graph below:
The total number of deaths in Week 18 – 17,953 – is lower that the previous week but still 8,012 more than the five-year average. 6,035 of the deaths mentioned “novel coronavirus”, meaning 1,977 excess deaths in that week weren’t from COVID-19, at least not according to the doctors who signed the death certificates – and, remember, they don’t even need a positive test result to write down “novel coronavirus” as the cause of death.
So why did these people die? When he appeared on Marr on May 3rd, Sir Ian Diamond, head of the Government’s Statistical Service, said the ONS had looked into the cause of non-Covid excess deaths since the beginning of the year and would publish its findings “in the next few days”. Evidently, he was nobbled because that piece of work has yet to see the light of day. Here’s a transcript of what he said on Marr:
The last week we had records for the excess was approaching 12,000 deaths of which, I would suggest, between eight and 9,000 were Covid and the rest were what we call indirect deaths. Those could be for example people who would normally have gone into hospital for some reason but the beds were not available. Just give you an example: in my late mother’s last couple of years of her life she went into hospital and back out again a few times. Had she not been able to go in one of those times she may well have died a little earlier than she did. So I think it’s important to recognise there are indirect deaths as well as the Covid-related deaths. We have a piece from the Office of National Statistics that we’ve done jointly with the Government Actuaries Department, the Home Office and Department of Health coming out in the next few days which will show also a third group which will come out over the next few years where changes in the prioritisation of the Health Service, for example, reductions in cancer screening, will lead to deaths over the next few years.
One reason the publication of this data has been delayed – indefinitely? – may be because the Government doesn’t want to face the kind of scandal that’s currently blowing up in Germany about the disastrous impact of the lockdown on public health. Roland Tichy, the editor of Tichys Einblick, a right-of-centre German magazine, has obtained a leaked impact assessment from the Ministry of the Interior saying that the lockdown is causing more more harm than good. The author of the paper is identified as “K”, reminiscent of the central character in The Trial by Franz Kafka. I couldn’t find any stories about this on any English-language mainstream media sites, although there are a few on the fringes, like this one. So I’ve published one myself. I got hold of the Tichys Einblick press release about the story, which someone has kindly translated into English, and you can read the whole thing here. This is the opening paragraph:
The lockdown and the measures taken by the German federal and central governments to contain the coronavirus apparently cost more lives, for example of cancer patients, than of those actually killed by it. This is the result of an internal analysis by the Protection of Critical Infrastructures”unit in the Federal Ministry of the Interior, which has been made available to members of the Ministry’s crisis team and leaked to Tichys Einblick magazine. The 86-page paper with its critical evaluations for example of the data submitted by the Robert Koch Institute, has in the meantime already been dismissed by the Ministry as the expression of an “isolated individual opinion”. According to information from Tichy’s Einblick, the paper’s author, a senior official at the Ministry, has by now been suspended.
The same German-speaking reader who helped me do a bit of digging yesterday on Widerstand2020 Deutschland has flicked through some German newspapers to find out more:
The official reaction to the story has been damning and defensive – the author is reported in some places as having massively overstepped his brief, and the paper is alleged to contain the author’s private view, rather than an official one. The author is seen as having acted particularly irresponsibly because the report is on official headed paper, giving it what the Government is saying is spurious authenticity. I don’t think there can be any doubt that the report is genuine, and the real issue is how damning it is, and the obviously pretty cack-handed cover up that is underway. The report apparently criticises the Robert Koch Institute data and other data sources as confused and inaccurate.
Tichys‘ view is that there was a massive failure to understand the situation in a clear and sober way and the leadership failure extends to the Chancellor who relied exclusively on flawed data. Couldn’t see anything in Bild about it. Was surprised to see nothing in the Sueddeutsche either.
This won’t come as a surprise to readers of Lockdown Sceptics because we’ve already crunched the numbers twice and come to the same conclusion: the ONS has confirmed that NHS workers, listed below as “Health Professionals”, face a lower-than-average risk of dying from COVID-19 than other workers. The BBC ran a story on this, pointing out that the most vulnerable group in the UK are, in fact, security guards.
There’s a great little guest post on Hector Drummond’s blog by Andrew Mahon, celebrating the 25th anniversary of Crimson Tide. As he points out, the plot of this film is extremely relevant to the predicament we find ourselves in now, involving a fight between a panicky submarine commander (Gene Hackman) threatening to over-react to incomplete information about a potential disaster and his more sober-minded second-in-command (Denzel Washington) who wants a few more facts before – literally, in this case – pushing the nuclear button. I recommend you read the entire post, but here’s the kernel of the argument:
The formula is as follows: a real but perhaps exaggerated crisis demands a response, but the information upon which decisive action can be justified is incomplete, so the dilemma becomes either to take action based on incomplete information, which may be premature, or to delay that action in favour of seeking out more information, which could come too late. Delaying action may mean catastrophe, but on the other taking action too quickly may mean a wholly different catastrophe.
In the current coronavirus lockdown this basic formula has just unfolded globally, although very little time was spent on the dilemma before Gene Hackman got his way in almost every country in the Western world. Coronavirus poses a crisis to be sure, but it is and has been exaggerated. The chosen response of lockdown – admittedly not quite a nuclear holocaust – has been based on the worst case predictions, notably those out of Imperial College London, which Nobel Prize-winning biologist Professor Michael Levitt of Stanford has claimed were off by a factor of ten. Other scientists, including those out of Stanford and Oxford Universities offered alternative findings, all of which ought to have been taken together to yield a comprehensive assessment of the threat. But instead most governments have ignored Denzel Washington’s caution, taking instead the incomplete and unreliable apocalyptic modelling as the justification for a premature and disproportionate lockdown.
Good news about Simon Dolan’s lawsuit. His crowdfunder has now raised over £100,000 – pretty good, considering it was only launched 10 days ago. Apparently, donations surged after Boris’s speech on Sunday night, which doesn’t surprise Dolan. “Boris Johnson has flapped and fumbled instead of leading Britain out of the disaster of lockdown,” he says. “Just two days after we celebrated VE Day and the freedoms it secured, millions of families tuned in on Sunday evening hoping for the Prime Minister to deliver decisive action – instead we got more garbled messages of surrender.” Anyone who wants to contribute to the crowdfunder can do so here.
Got an amusing email from a dissident academic who’s finding life under lockdown a bit of a struggle:
I’m a Senior Lecturer at a UK higher education institution currently stuck doing remote working amongst a group of typical identitarian, fair-trade, falafel-munching academics. It probably won’t surprise you to learn that my colleagues really don’t want this magic-money-tree-fuelled piss-about to end. They chirrup along quite happily to each other on Microsoft Teams about how it might bring down the “Tory Scum” Government and thus also cancel “racist Brexit”. Part of the ongoing appeal of the lockdown for them is the opportunity to spend all day safe at home baking Nordic-inspired loaf cakes, knocking out virtue-signalling blogs about sustainable living (whilst simultaneously planning their next foreign holiday, of course) and angrily taking to social media to demand more white deaths from COVID-19 as a form of reparation for colonial injustices. Okay, I might have made that last one up, but you get the idea. This has become a middle-class wet dream of what the revolutionary overthrow of capitalism would look like.
No doubt these wastrels will be delighted to learn that Rishi Sunack has extended the furlough scheme until October.
My correspondent attached a short essay about the use of the word “impatient” across various media outlets to describe those who want the lockdown to end. Boris used the word in his speech on April 27th and the BBC have also picked it up recently – see Jenny Hill’s ‘analysis’ here. It’s a way to position sceptics as childlike or unreasonable, one of the more subtler methods of sidelining us. I have published the essay on this site and given it pride of place on the right-hand menu under ‘Are Sceptical Voices Being Suppressed?’ It’s called ‘COVID-19 and the infantilisation of dissent‘. The byline is “Wilfred Thomas”, but that’s a pseudonym for obvious reasons. “As you probably know, higher education is a genuinely scary place if you’re thoughts are non-orthodox,” he says. Sounds like he should join the Free Speech Union.
An expat living in Spain has been in touch to ask if I’d be interested in publishing a short piece he’s written about life under lockdown which has been even more severe than ours. It’s evidently been quite tough-going, with this Spanish study estimating that the mental health of 46% of the population is at risk. I have published his ‘Postcard From Spain’ here.
A reader has emailed me to say he thinks my correspondent in Bexhill-on-Sea, whose message I published yesterday, was very wise not to publish a sceptical post in his local Facebook group. He incautiously did just that and reaped the whirlwind:
I’ve just read the latest newsletter and was pleased to note the comments by the reader from Bexhill-on-Sea. His wife and daughter were right to restrain him from posting on the local Facebook page. I live in the Forest of Dean and this morning responded to a post from a man in which he railed against concessions for exercise because it would mean folk coming to the Forest from elsewhere. I mildly enquired whether he was concerned for the loss of the peace and quiet we’ve been enjoying recently or worried about plague-bearers, suggesting that the threat of the virus was a little exaggerated. Having just read the hate storm I unwittingly called up I am now literally shaking – good grief! No doubt you get more than your fair share of abusive comment but I was a naive virgin. I checked my post again and no, I hadn’t inadvertently suggested selling off the village children as sex slaves!
Another reader has asked whether there’s any Lockdowns Sceptics merchandise he could buy, like a T-shirt or a face mask – although it would take a brave soul to publicly declare his allegiance to this cause in the current climate. Having said that, the tide will turn and we might as well get out ahead of it. I’ve had a brief look and there are lots of merchandise companies that will do the heavy lifting. All I have to do is submit the designs. Any designers out there who might be able to help? Might be able to pay you a modest amount. If so, please email me here.
Yesterday, I asked what had happened to the much-ballyhooed Porton Down antibody survey. Today, a reader has forwarded an email from a friend of his about an official survey. This may provide a clue about why the Porton Down results have been delayed:
We are one of the 20,000 household supposedly being tested for Covid 19 by Government scientists because we took part in a national ONS study last year and agreed to take part in future studies. We had to register by phone by April 29th – after about 47 phone calls I managed to do that by April 27th, and was offered an appointment on April 30th, with the promise of a phone call in advance of the visit. Guess what? No phone call and no visit. Numerous attempts to call them – got callbacks – carrying two phones around the house 24 hours a day so as not to miss a call – finally got through – to be told they hadn’t received the testing kits!!
I received a press release from the V&A this morning informing me it has put out a call for people to donate homemade signs and rainbow drawing celebrating “our NHS” so it can add these artworks to the Museum’s permanent collection. “The V&A is seeking signs that have been created by individuals and communities in response to the current isolation measures,” it says.
The possibilities to have fun with this are almost limitless, but I thought I’d confine myself to this photograph sent to me by a reader in Birmingham. It’s located outside the Art Department of Birmingham City University.
And on to the round-up of all the stories I’ve noticed, or which have been been brought to my attention, in the last 24 hours:
- ‘Escape From Lockdown – Episode 4‘ – Sceptical podcast series. This episode features arch-sceptic Dr John Lee
- ‘Air Travel Is Going to Be Very Bad, for a Very Long Time‘ – James Fallows has some bad news for us in the Atlantic
- ‘We should be very wary of the R value‘ – Tom Chivers argues that the R going up shows the lockdown has worked. Clutching at straws?
- ‘Why are minorities so hard hit by Covid-19?‘ – Thoughtful piece by Saloni Dattani in UnHerd. Can’t all be attributed to lack of Vitamin D, apparently
- ‘Elon Musk Says Tesla Is Restarting California Production, Defying Local Order‘ – Engineering wunderkind Elon Musk is defying California’s lockdown rules to reopen his company. Memo to Elon: If I make you ‘Sceptic of the Week’ will you send me a Tesla?
- ‘The expert opinion of the shaman and the caveman’s search for truth‘ – Part three of an excellent series of blog posts on lockdown madness by financier Barry Norris
- ‘COVID-19 is a frightening dress rehearsal of the climate agenda‘ – Ben Pile in Spiked on the all-conquering power of the precautionary principle
- ‘Icelandic Study: “We Have Not Found a Single Instance of a Child Infecting Parents”‘ – More evidence that children don’t spread the virus, this time from Iceland
- ‘AIDS, TB And Malaria Set To Get Deadlier Due To Coronavirus‘ – Article in Forbes confirming the dire prognosis of my friend Aidan Hartley about the impact of the lockdowns on the developing world
Yesterday, Lockdown Sceptics launched a searchable directory of open businesses across the UK. The idea is to celebrate those retail and hospitality businesses that have reopened, as well as to help people find out what has opened in their area. But we really need your help to build it, so we’ve created a form you can fill out to tell us about those businesses that have reopened near you. Should be fairly self-explanatory – and the owners of small businesses are welcome to enter their own details. Please visit the page and let us know about those courageous entrepreneurs who are doing their bit to get the country moving again.
Some more suggestions for theme songs from readers: ‘Just Keep Me Hangin’ On‘ by The Supremes, ‘Bedsitter Images‘ by Al Stewart and ‘Won’t Get Fooled Again‘ by The Who. Keep ’em coming.
Thanks as always to those who made a donation in the last 24 hours to pay for the upkeep of this site. It’s a Sisyphean task, let me tell you. If you feel like donating, you can do so by clicking here. (Every little helps!) And if you want to flag up any stories or links I should include in tomorrow’s update, email me here.
I’ll leave you with the latest episode of London Calling, mine and James Delingpole’s weekly podcast. Only one topic, obviously. And apologies in advance for the fact that we both get a little overheated at times.
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My give a shitometer now fully reads zero. Boris will always be the man who took away the right of an English man to have a pint, because he’s a cowering bed wetter. We lockdown and climate change sceptics, those in favour of free speach and empirical evidence need a new home. What’s say we take Antarctica when the ice melts? Oh, maybe not.
Yes, like Blair on Iraq, Johnson should never be forgiven for this. No Conservative PM should ever have considered confining the British people in their homes and having policemen telling them when and where they can walk as a legitimate policy. It should have been anathema for him, and he should have been prepared to go down fighting against it, if necessary.
Far from all guns blazing, as far as can be told there was barely a whimper of brief resistance from him.
There is no excuse.
Or from Labour who let him do it and then campaigned for poverty.
Indeed, as with Iraq both main parties were ultimately complicit. But the buck stops with the PM, imo.
Totally agree. And quite rightly Blair took the blame for Iraq, and BoJo will with this. BTW I’m uneasy of lumping climate change and lockdown in the same category, or at least our argument. I’m all for rigorous evidence, and factual debate, and think most climate activists are misanthropic fascists who loathe humans, particularly poor ones, but still anxious we are broad church, lockdown is bonkers on its own merits (sorry that last bit directed at the thread generally, not you).
I agree about other issues. I’m climate disinterested really, myself, although if pushed I’d come down on the sceptic side.
I just don’t want to scare people off, we’re right about this, why make it more difficult by having to win two arguments not one? I’m worried about biodiversity, think there’s stuff we urgently need to do there. I just find climate activists don’t pass the ‘sniff test’ and get the uneasy feeling something’s afoot that isn’t entirely what they say it is. They are distinct from the entirely sensible people I’ve met working in conservation or whatever. But don’t want to conflate that with this, it’s a rod for our own backs in our current straightened circumstances I think, why alienate people who’d otherwise agree with you?
I am a climate activist and, while the lockdown may reduce emissions in the short term, there is much about it that worries me. It stops any form of political activity to hold governments to account. Trump and Bolsanaro have both taken advantage of it to weaken environmental protection legislation while there’s no functioning opposition. Greta and her school strikes have been forgotten about now that no child can go to school. It is killing public transport, so when life does get back to “normal” more people will travel by car, increasing congestion, fuel consumption and emissions. Money that was earmarked for Northern Powerhouse Rail, reversing Beeching cuts will be needed for salvaging something of existing networks. So please let some of us come on board.
Even worse, this deluded lockdown has held up production of the nuclear and renewable nergy facilities which we desperately need so we can move away from oil. And it is going to give a massive boost to car ownership and cause public transport to become a second-class citizen and hence kept at woefully inadequate levels and not receiving any funding in the near future to expand and improve service. The lockdown, overall, is harming the environment much more than any shrot term reduction in pollution can ever help.
Renewable energy is not the answer. There were days in December that I noted where wind power supplied less than 8% of the total electricity generation in the UK. Solar provided nothing. Both require huge amounts of energy, mining, and toxic rare materials to manufacture, and both are unreliable. There are major issues in the decommissioning in both. Plus, they are trying to generate energy from diffuse, weak energy forms, i.e. wind and solar. Both take huge amounts of land that should be used for food production or left for wildlife, or housing. Nuclear is a concentrated energy form but there are obvious issues with waste storage for centuries. Oil and natural gas are also more energy concentrated and reliable sources. There isn’t a climate emergency that we need to worry about. There is environmental damage that we need to worry about and the renewable energy scam is part of that. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=N-yALPEpV4w Why renewables can’t save the planet | Michael Shellenberger | TEDxDanubia Michael Shellenberg is an environmentalist who realised that renewables cause more problems than they solve. Read up on Professor Michael Kelly as well: https://www.desmog.co.uk/michael-kelly https://www.thegwpf.org/prof-michael-kelly-energy-policy-needs-herds-of-unicorns/ Prof. Michael Kelly: Energy Policy Needs ‘Herds Of Unicorns’ Date: 11/11/19Press Release,… Read more »
Welcome! On a micro scale my machiavellian local authority have backed off our greenbelt (been fighting them for 18 months, insane development, very environmentally damaging, and more to the point economically crackpot) but whilst in lockdown have announced plans to dump it somewhere else – also pristine countryside, just a different planning designation – all local democracy is suspended, our MP is awol with all this, parish councils hiding at home. No residents paying attention, and they’ll steam roller it through, there is so much money involved, barrister told us they are the most corrupt authority in the country, it’s been an education, they do all their Strategic Environmental Assessments, it’s all bobbins, it’s money, and he who has the most expensive lawyer wins. I am not anti the environmental argument, nor do I lack sympathy or worry about it, I am a bit leery of some of the more fringe activists, but I don’t see why we need to conflate it with lockdown, if you’re down with this argument, you are on our team as far as I’m concerned.
What has Trump done exactly in the past two months to weaken environmental protection?
There is a functioning opposition in the Democrat-majority House, if they were the slightest bit interested in being a real opposition instead of trying to impeach him on made-up charges, or in getting the U.S. $trillions into debt with policies that have nothing to do with the current WuFlu infection and everything to do with encouraging illegal immigration and taking permanent power in the US.
‘Trump and Bolsanaro have both taken advantage of it to weaken environmental protection legislation while there’s no functioning opposition.’
Nice to see that some good has come of this, at least.
The climate activists do not pass the sniff test. The founders have said that they want to end capitalism, and this is the way they mean to do it.
https://policyexchange.org.uk/publication/extremism-rebellion/
Policy Exchange: Extremism Rebellion
Jul 16, 2019
Extinction Rebellion has mainstreamed the politics of a radical fringe
“The people behind Extinction Rebellion advocate a political agenda with ambitions that reach far beyond environmentalism. It is a campaign that seeks to use mass civil disobedience over climate change, to impose full system change to the democratic order. Yet, the underlying extremism of the campaign has been largely obscured from public view by what many see as the fundamental legitimacy of their stated cause.”
You can download the pdf document from this site, which goes into detail about them.
Stuart Badsen, XR founder:
https://medium.com/extinction-rebellion/extinction-rebellion-isnt-about-the-climate-42a0a73d9d49
Extinction Rebellion isn’t about the Climate
While they’re all freaking out about negligible man-made global warming, they ignore the real and present damage to the environment from the manufacture of so-called green energy solar panels and wind turbines; poaching and the endangerment of wildlife, not least of which is to supply the Chinese and Far East markets for “medicines”; the list is endless.
Yeah I concur. Honestly, out of all the ‘issues’ I have opinions on – which is most of them lol – climate change is the one I’m most ambivalent about. One minute I’m totally on board and thinking the world is going up in flames, the next I’m thinking it’s all a big nothingburger. Someone needs to really convince me to a side – it just hasn’t happened yet.
One difference is that right now there aren’t many epidemiologists coming out to support Ferguson, except one or two in the pages of the Guardian not in actual academic publications. If this goes on for as long the climate saga (heaven forbid) a whole new generation of scientists will no doubt spring up wherever the money hose is pointed and any experts currently in the field without very good tenure arrangements will become ex-experts. Let’s hope it doesn’t go on that long. There are plenty of comparisons with climate science here but some are misleading. Epidemics are actually very predictable, not in every detail of the timing but they reach a stable equilibrium and follow the models in the end, unlike the climate. The death forecasts of Ferguson are not model outputs anyway: they’re just assumptions that go straight into the model and come back out of it. The climate is fundamentally much harder to model because it’s hugely more complicated, in many areas chaotic, and the signals people are looking for and predicting are tiny compared to the natural variability. There is some warming of course, and some of it is because of CO2. The debate is all about… Read more »
Excess deaths at the moment, yes. And of course that is not good. But Professor Giesecke points out that over the course of a year we will see that even out. Basically he said many people are dying a few weeks or months earlier than they would otherwise have done. So after a year or so, the mortalities will be exactly the same as they would have been anyway. And that is regardless of whether you lockdown or not. What a nightmare this all is.
What Giesecke said there is clearly correct as far as it goes, but in this country we have incurred a lot of excess deaths as a result of the lockdown itself. These deaths will show up as an increase in the overall mortality for the year.
I think he did go down fighting this, and they pushed him aside and carried their pre-planned agenda through. BJ is libertarian, like Trump it was clear they didn’t want these lockdowns. You can almost see the hands up their backsides operating them at this point.
Not convinced. He had the support of the so-called Hawks but did not use it. He could have thrown Ferguson on the bus and said that the numbers were wrong (read all evidence of his lame modelling software and previous major mes ups) and lifted the lockdown, getting children back to school and businesses going.
The fact Ferguson was even in the position he was in should tell all you need to know about who’s deciding lockdown policy. They were going to lockdown no matter what. Everything since then has been about justifying it through fear.
Schools need to be fully operational before any semblance of normality can resume. Not everyone has family who can look after children whilst they go out to work.
I have seen one education union has been campaigning for the lockdown to remain in place until it is safe to reopen schools. Sounds like this union would like to keep schools closed for the foreseeable future, blow the economy of Lesser Britain.
Funny how all these committed and caring teachers, these paeons of educational virtue, these passionate advicates of learning….. don’t want kids back at school.
He’s the British PM. If he opposed this lockdown, where were the ringing speeches calling for an alternative policy? Where was the division of the house on a confidence motion laying his job on the line over the issue?
It’s simply impossible to have implemented any lockdown policy without the PM’s nod. He clearly gave that approval without having to be pushed hard, because the alternative would have required an open test of support in the House, which never occurred. At the least there would have to have been fraught confrontations and evidence provided that he would lose a vote on the issue. None of that happened, because he never gave the slightest indication of wanting to call such a vote.
Clearly, if he really was opposed to it (evidence?), he allowed himself to be meekly persuaded. Which is enough, more than enough, to condemn him.
Your logic makes sense only if the PM is more than a figurehead position. Do you think the course of events would be any different whatsoever if it were a different PM or different party. His actions haven’t exactly been consistent with the principles of his party or his personal ideals.
Doesn’t help Johnson I don’t think. If he’s just a puppet then he could still have gone down fighting publicly. What would he have to lose but an empty mercenary position? If he’s only there for the salary and the perks, s*d him anyway.
I’m not sure that it is just coincidental that the PM got the virus and badly too. Although he made the decision to lock down before getting the bad symptoms, it has clearly changed his perspective and also took him out of action for a while. There is definitely something strange going here, but I am still very disappointed and angry at what he has done.
An interesting theory – but it seems rather like the ‘it’s turtles all the way down’ theory. Who then is in charge – and is (s)he really in charge or just standing in for the real leader?
We have had Prime Ministers who were capable of changing the course of events. I doubt whether Margaret Thatcher would have looked across the world at a totalitarian communist state suppressing the virus and said “we must do the same”. Not even if the rest of Europe did the same.
*Especially* if all of Europe did the same….
I’m really, really, really, not a fan of Maggie (or Tony BLiar her bastard son in disguise) but even I have to concede you are correct.
I definitely believe that Mrs. Thatcher, as a trained scientist, would not have been fobbed off with dodgy modelling predictions and would have asked for a lot more hard evidence before committing to a policy of national house arrest. But I can’t think of any other recent prime minister who would have held out against the mob.
Most of the PMs since Thatcher would have joined in with the mob, if not leading them.
That’s the key point: she’s the only scientist Prime Minister we’ve ever had – and boy does that show.
I agree it all sounded like coded messages saying forget about all this but I don’t want Matron to notice. But he’s the Prime Minister FFS, he should stand up and say it straight.
You may be right. Certainly from being optimistic and full of energy, he suddenly began to look like a stressed, beaten man. Then inevitably he became ill – stress always affects the immune system – and that was it. What we have at the helm now is not the Boris Johnson people voted for. On the other hand, maybe there is yet hope. These new rules of lockdown seem to be deliberately blurry. I usually spend many months of the year in Greece. There, everything is done through legislation now, and people have had to send a text for permission to leave the house. There were six numbers you could send, each one relating to what you needed to do whilst out. I’ve spent the last 6 weeks listening to formerly intelligent friends asking each other which “number” they should send if they want to walk their dog, or go to the vet! At least we never had that sort of nonsense.
‘What we have at the helm now is not the Boris Johnson people voted for. ‘
Yes. Somehow he’s been nobbled. This is the problem.
The only things standing between Boris and retiring to enjoy his young new family are his colossal ego and his hunger for posterity.
A shame then that when the test came he chose the path of meek surrender rather than the one of glorious defiance.
I doubt he’ll get another chance.
I rather suspect he still hopes to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat, and that he always will.
Sweden?
So BoJo is not going to be remembered as the Churchill of the 21st Century.
Heads held high, keep the faith all, forget politics, we are fighting for our freedoms now. Whatever colour we followed in the past they have all mingled together into a sh*tty brown colour.
Absolutely, they’re all acting the same. Apparently dissent is silent.
Just saying I think it’s a huge mistake to lump in lockdown skeptic with climate change skeptic. Climate change actually contributed hugely to the pandemic starting and spreading. And these statements are what make lockdown skeptics seem fringe-y.
“Prince Charles, future king. He predicted we had eight years to save the plant 11 years ago”
LOL! Is this some kind of meme joke about Prince Charles talking to plants, or is it a fortuitous typo? Either way, I enjoyed it…..
Well, maybe – but 30 years ago he said we had ten to save the planet. It is a great insult to our Royal Family that we are still here!
They keep banging on about about the point of no return. Infuriating when they move the goalposts, latest being 2030. I want to reach the point of no return because then it’s pointless worrying about it, and we can crack on with some long haul flights,
To be fair, the great Bowie suggested we had just “Five Years” in 1972…😉
My wife is a church bell-ringer, and has just received advice on Covid-19, which has been circulated to the 40,000 ringers in the UK from their central organisation.
The advice (from two doctors) seems generally sensible and explains why bell-ringing can’t resume yet (eg social distancing is not feasible in a closely confined bell-tower), but the following paragraph caught her eye:
“Sadly, the mortality rates are significant (the worldwide case fatality rate was 7% on May 6th) with most being in men over 55-59 and in women over 65-69 years old.”
These stats run counter to everything I have read about mortality rates and at-risk age groups; if they are wrong or capable of misinterpretation, I need help to provide her with a factual rebuttal to send to her local bell-ringers’ group. Can anyone help?
The age group data seems plainly wrong (unless they mean “men over 55 and women over 65”, in which case the wording is disgracefully misleading, akin to ‘all Covid deaths occur in the over 20-25 year old age group’).
We have both tried to search for info on CFR’s, or even a current definition of CFR, without any success.
Any help or links appreciated.
I think they have used the misleading wording to mean people over that age.
Whether intentional or not that’s nonsense.
Surely the easiest way to get a quick and dirty idea of overall case fatality worldwide would be to check the latest WHO update and divide the number of deaths by the number of cases? As of yesterday’s update they have (worldwide): 4,006,257 cases and 278 892 deaths Giving by my calculator a current preliminary cfr of 0.07, which seems pretty plausible, albeit a few of those cases probably will die and increase the CFR a bit. By now most of the epidemics have been in decline for a while though. https://www.who.int/docs/default-source/coronaviruse/situation-reports/20200511-covid-19-sitrep-112.pdf?sfvrsn=813f2669_2 So their 7% looks about right, but case fatality is of little use when (as with covid19), most infected individuals are not identified as cases because they are asymptomatic or very mild and not reported. So it’s the infection fatality rate that really matters – how many of those who get the disease actually die of it. And that’s tricky to find because it’s hard to know how many people actually have caught a disease as generally mild as this one. There’s no authoritative figure you could point to. Someone could always cherry-pick a study of their own showing a worse or better ifr estimate to suit their… Read more »
geez , all you need to do is go to the Oxford university site . Don’t use WHO !
https://www.cebm.net/covid-19/global-covid-19-case-fatality-rates/
IFR Taking account of historical experience, trends in the data, increased number of infections in the population at largest, and potential impact of misclassification of deaths gives a presumed estimate for the COVID-19 IFR somewhere between 0.1% and 0.41%.*
I suggested WHO because presumably they want maximum credibility for putting a case forward to a church organisation. When it comes to a global current cfr estimate I can’t imagine it makes all that much difference where you go, does it?
Oxford study of 17.4m people – biggest study in the world – https://opensafely.org/press-releases/2020/05/covid-risk-factors/
See page 11 https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.05.06.20092999v1
If you are under 60 and healthy your risk is ZERO.
Statistically it is literally zero. I tried to explain this to a fanatic in my family but they said it wasn’t true as the government wouldn’t be doing this if it was.
Oh dear, it’s the whole models vs data thing. Oxford Uni and a cohort of 17.4m is pretty convincing, it’s baffling isn’t it? People seem obsessed with anecdotes, which isn’t surprising as we have no ‘news’ anymore, just rolling anecdotes. I had that today, people talking about kids going back to school. I said, there are 15m under 15s, of which TWO have died, both of underlying conditions. 10 children die every day of other diseases, accidents, cancer etc. And all I get is ‘yeah but it might be dangerous, I’m not taking any chances’.
Every time I walk past a TV with ‘news’ on it I scream GROW SOME BALLS at it
Yes I’ve found a lot of people won’t believe this otherwise we’ve gone mad. Actually the world has gone mad.
Now there’s a circular argument if ever I saw one.
The weekly ONS update has the breakdown of all Covid deaths by age group.
https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthandsocialcare/conditionsanddiseases/articles/coronaviruscovid19roundup/2020-03-26
40% of all UK deaths are in the 85+ age group. Another 35% for 75-84 year olds. Less than 1% for under 45s. The case fatality is would be under 1% for all age groups other over 75 I would think.
Try this
“Today’s“ Media death rate includes People who died back on March 17th
https://www.england.nhs.uk/statistics/statistical-work-areas/covid-19-daily-deaths/
She probably saw a figure like 0.05% and thought it meant 5% ?
Yes I thought that, because 0.07 is not 7%
How old are your bell-ringers?
” Over 81% of Covid-19 deaths occur in cohorts >= 70 years old. The comparative figures in respect of males and females are respectively 79.1% and 84.8%.”
https://hectordrummond.com/2020/05/11/robert-watson-week-17-to-april-24th-update-on-age-and-sex-cohort-deaths-per-1000/
Thanks to you all for the helpful responses to this.
I’m sure we can now reassure local ringers (who tend to be over-50 but fit enough to climb a bell-tower and pull bell-ropes for 30 minutes – not an at-risk group, I would say!).
I particularly like this table from the CEBM site:
Mortality by Age per 100,000 population
• >85s: 155/100,000
• 75-84: 43 per 100,000
• 65-74: 2.3 per 100,000
• 45-64: 0.15 per 100,000
• 15-44: 0.02 per 100,000
I’d don’t think I’d have the nerve currently to wear an overt anti lockdown t shirt so how about one with something cryptic only recognisable by other sceptics?
Other than that thanks, a little sanity is well received.
How about an elephant… as in: the elephant in the room. Let’s talk about the elephant in the room = a broken economy, mental health issues due to lockdown etc etc Print one out and hang it in your window or a sticker in your car or just be creative with this…
How about a rhinoceros, as in the play by Ionesco, in which humans beings turn one by one into horned monsters, as a metaphor for facsism?
Haha brilliant. Why don’t we email Toby with some suggestions and make a pick, and we can start secretly identifying ourselves to one another in public etc.
Is asheep too obvious?
Elephant is good, they have long memories, when sheeples have returned to new normal, we elephants will remember.
I have thought about that . What about a tee shirt with the famous quote of theologian Martin Luther ” Here I stand, I can do no other ” . We know that the truth and evidence is on our side . Grey with black test , medium please !
I thought about a Spitfire design. Instead of the Battle of Britain we face a battle FOR Britain. (The only problem is you might bump into an aviation enthusiast wearing something similar who turns out to be a rabid lockdown zealot.)
We should start small and attack this nonsense 2m rule somehow. Fed up of awkward encounters out and about due to it.
I’ve become quite strident toward pavement etiquette, I assume that the person coming the other way is a fellow sceptic. Occasionally I do get a knowing nod as we pass each other with just mere inches between us! I’ve also had outright abuse.
When I see someone approaching on the pavement I start thinking are they one of us or one of them ? !,is this a bit weird ?.The other day as I was going into a shop I met an older lady coming out,she very kindly stopped and reached back to hold the door for me even though it meant she was only inches away,this small but normal human act raised my spirits enormously,I thanked her and she gave me a lovely smile,god bless her.
A very frail old friend of mine went shopping last week – she’s not one to be told what she can and can’t do. A woman asked if she could help carry her shopping to the car. There’s a glimmer of hope …..
I’ve recently stopped jumping into the road when passing someone. I now let the others do that if they want – most do. I’m thinking of starting to point out that you can’t catch anything from passing someone outside on a pavement.
Last week I had a lovely chat with a wonderful 86 year-old who trundles her dog and zimmer frame up and down the hill a few times every day. She’s a star!
This happens all the time,
Passed in the opposite direction today, by an apparently fit looking couple )well fitter than me) , I stood my ground, they swerved into the road traffic.
I am waiting for someone to be clobbered by a road vehicle & the death be reported by the BBC as a CV19 death.
Its what they would have wanted…
D
Abuse ’em back. They can’t give you a slap, for obvious reasons. 🙂
2 metre “rule” is actually farly sensible, as long as you don’t try to stick to it at every second and don’t panic when someone sle momentarily violates it. An anti-lockdown t-shrit might actually encourage zealots to keep more distance from us.
No, it really isn’t remotely sensible, as evidenced by the admitted fact that there is no scientific basis for it.
The only possible justification for it is the one the government effectively applied: “better safe than sorry”. That obviously assumes you take their inherently irrational ideas about the supposed dangerousness of this virus seriously.
But the simple fact is that this rule has huge costs. If enforced (and the government and unions between them seem determined to impose it (because they are insane, stupid or evil, evidently), it means dramatically reduced productivity and therefore ultimately lost jobs.
And outdoors there should be no distancing rule whatsoever. It just makes no sense. No touching combined with leaving people to use common sense is the only sensible “rule” for outdoors, and in reality common sense alone is far better.
The green shoots of recovery coming into view…?
Do you remember how after 9/11 the trolley-dollies on airplanes transformed from smiling angels into Sky-Nazi’s overnight? All the Karens working in B&Q are like that now. As if they think they’re the thin blue line between you and certain death.
Lemmings jumping of the cliff edge
What about a broken key or an open barred door to symbolise a broken lockdown? And instead of just a t-shirt, how about a lapel badge, or even just a badge?
A padlock in a circle with a diagonal line through it, like the Ghostbusters Logo or an anti-smoking sign.
T-shirt and badge. And all the rest.
Personally I’d be up for one of these with the antilockdownist symbol (whatever it turns out to be) on the pommel:
http://www.armourclass.co.uk/Data/Pages/Medieval_4.htm
OH yeyeh. Now that is right up my street.
I’m kidding, but ‘How to Lose Friends and Alienate People’ is apposite as a slogan.
I’ve been wearing my ‘Creeping Death’ Metallica t-shirt. Thought that was quite funny, if in poor taste. Not that anybody has taken notice or said anything.
Can we have a sort of secret salute or signal as well?
Be seeing you.
A handshake of any kind would be apposite.
Funny isn’t it, how capitalism has basically lead us to “hold an opinion, better buy into it by purchasing something”. Still capitalism just about works, unlike lockdownism. Will see if overt anti-lockdown t-shirts are available anywhere, so long as the overtness is done politely, no point being rude about it when we shold be aiming to convince others not merely offend them.
Yesterday I saw a great pic of a herd of sheep all wearing blue surgical masks. Wish I could find it now, it would be perfect. Maybe it was on here?
A discreet logo would work. How about “Fold” – the “L” and “D” referring to “Lockdown”?
I have t shirt “NORMAL NOT NEW NORMAL”
and there’s this one
This with a mask:
(but probably copyright, I guess)
I posted this yesterday. How about ‘I do not suffer from CDS’. Meaning Corona or Covid Derangement Syndrome (someone else coined this) and if anyone threatening asked you could explain it as ‘Cognitive Dissonance Syndrome’ in an ironical way and leave them to work it out.
Just CDS with a line through it (perhaps in a red circle prohibition sign-style) would be enough.
Deniable, but enough to give a signal to those in the know.
The leader of the German Widerstand party ( resistance ) wears an aluminium sphere on his lapel with a ribbon as a sign to others . Here he is in at a demo in Stuttgart . He is an ENT specialist.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yk2lFBLX7cY
I honestly love the fact that the Germans – given their track record – are leading the charge for freedom
Lol look what happened to France. Liberte, Egalite…….. Papers please!
Is that actually just a bit of crushed up tinfoil?
After Matt Hancock’s latest lunatic pronouncement I have ordered this
I have a similar hoodie, nobody’s actually commented on it yet.
My suggestion:
Or maybe even this:
Just riffing now:
How about this:
LOL
With: Professor Ferguson ate my Future!
Some lions led by a donkey?
the lions in masks
Last time, I promise. Then I’ll shut up.
Fluorescent yellow vests, although first thought of by the French, are surely the way to go.
Most people have one or two already; they’re non-confrontational; highly visible; and once sufficient numbers are reached, would be a large scale statement.
I just don’t think the lockdown zealots have quite figured into their extended holiday that society is collapsing. It’s like they can’t see it. They seem to think it’s like they’ve paused live tv and when they press play again we will continue where we left off. Under the so called removal of lockdown the requirements will make it impossible to make a living from any kind of business. I don’t think they realise that. If this doesn’t end soon they will kill us elevating the need for the virus to do it. Nothing less than a return to what we considered normal will do, anything else is a global fascist super government that wants to confine you to house arrest, forced work programmes and hunger. If business can’t provide what we need the state will need to and we all know how that will turn out. Look to any communist country to see how poor you will be. I’m sure then the lockdown zealots might just see what they’re done then. Loads of them will still claim it was worth it though because they all seem to be utterly hypnotised and incapable of thinking straight.
First inklings are appearing – Sunak on news tonight accepting that jobs will be lost.
Have I missed the latest govt borrowing figures? They will be interesting.
I love how they keep saying “We can’t save every job” like only 1000 people will be out of work.
No, Rishi. You can’t save the MAJORITY of jobs. SAY. THOSE. WORDS. OUT. LOUD.
Hi Biker,
Last week you mentioned the possibility of food shortages in supermarkets – how’s this situation developing?
in my store the totes that i am used to seeing stuffed full of all the normal amount of products are down by about a third. We have no brown sugar, we’ve not had any tea or coffee delivered this week, same goes for cleaning products, ready meals. It’s not like we’ve run out but there’s less stuff being delivered. We’ve even been told that we’re only gonna get one brand of toilet paper. If one of the worlds largest retailers are rationing too it’s stores it can only be a matter of time before you start to notice it yourself. This booklet with all the products on it they were telling us were gonna be scarce is still at the desk in the store and is still what the company are preparing for.
Can really see it on the fresh stuff, lettuce and salad in particular, and lots of gaps for things like corn flour (tried two stores) and did you say tea?
PS, this monopoly thing, how are suppliers faring? Are they being hammered on prices? I’m rural, we’re hearing dairy herds being culled due to lack of demand for milk due to offices, cafes, restaurants closed?
Been trying to get some dried bakers yeast since middle of March, nothing. Possibly due to the brewing industry reducing production? Flour is just a rare. Powdered egg & bully beef anyone?
Some bread-baking friends were in the same boat re yeast, Dave. They eventually found some in a small rural general shop.
JohnB I will go for a drive tomorrow, anything is worth a try.
Is trying to local yeast a valid reason for being in the car, if so how far can I travel from home?
So many questions, plenty of time to find a solution.
Morrison’s are doing fine
Mostly back to normal in West London, apart from flour, which seems to have disappeared entirely.
I think the trouble is many of the lockdown zealots are cushioned by their wealth and lifestyles that the current situation doesn’t really impact them. To them this is a long holiday where they can do zumba, take pictures of their lovely neighbourhood to put on Instagram, post their latest baking creations and to show off how they celebrated VE Day. Try telling them that many people are losing their jobs or businesses; rise in mental health issues, DV, child abuse and they accuse us of being unfeeling and only concerned about profit. It’s like trying to get blood out of a stone.
It was announced yesterday that taxes will go up to pay for the money the government is currently spending. Maybe the Treasury should propose taxes that would hit these lockdown zealots hard. Then don’t be surprised if they start screeching that everything should go back to how it was before 23 March.
On Spanish TV they have a slot during thr comercial break called Balcony Stories that shows people in lockdown from all over the world doing zany things in their homes. At first I thought it was harmless, just people trying to relieve the boredom and keep their spirits up. Now I find it intensely creepy and clearly a part of the propaganda effort.
Many people who do zumba, take pictures of their lovely neighbourhood , post their latest baking creations, and celebrated VE Day, are strongly opposed to this rabid lockup nonsense.
No point causing even more division, there’s plenty of that already.
Probably some of the lockdown zealots were also the ones complaining about the economic impact of Brexit, but now think it’s okay to create a much bigger impact on the economy and lives in general. When the dust settles they’ll be moaning if we have another ten years of “austerity” because of all the extra debt we’re racking up.
It’ll be a lot more than ten years. It could be decades.
We paid back the loans from the U.S. for WW2 in 2006.
We finished paying off the money to end slavery in 2016, I believe.
Indeed. I have a small patch of land as a smallholding in what looks to be a very wealthy area – barn conversions, beautiful homes, countryside. This situation is still affecting them badly financially. Just as an example, one lady who lives there was furloughed from her job but now the extension has been announced, the firm has made her redundant. Her mortgage is high, she has no money, and because of the drop in property prices it is likely she will have to sell for less than the mortgage owed. She is terrified. Her husband died 2 years ago and she has 2 children. This is what lockdown is doing. It’s disgusting.
I don’t think in many cases that they haven’t figured it out. It’s that they actively want it to happen. Remember that McDonnell said a year or so ago that an economic shock like Brexit was the best basis for a revolution to take place. Well, he’s got something much more potent now, and the Tories are helpfully making it worse for him.
Tuesday is the day when the ONS publishes its statistics in the UK . We once again see a large number of deaths especially in care homes which are non covid related and my main thought on this is as I have mentioned before the large number of elderly who are revolving door patients with the local hospital They are now not going with acute infections for a few days of treatment at the hospital which might keep them going for another year but are left to pass away in their care home. It would be interesting to see how many are dying with ” old age ” in part 1 of the death certificate now . Usually a doctor writes this when they are over 85 and for some reason they have collapsed at home and you have no idea why they died.. You can usually find that they had a myocardial infarct a few years ago to back it up and it spares the family the need for the deceased to have a post mortem . . I suspect a few GPs are using ” Covid19 ” on the death certificate in the same way now . Incidentally… Read more »
Hmmm, human sex drive versus Hancock. Difficult one.
Given that a Covid vaccine, should one be developed, may only be partially effective like the flu vaccine, it just goes to that people like Matt Hancock should be nowhere near any kind of power and responsibility. I despair at the state of the country in normal times, but now we seem to be surrounded by a collective madness.
Has there been any analysis of the distribution of mortality by sex in the UK? The difference in total deaths, covid19 or otherwise in England and Wales became available this morning. The publish the breakdown by sex and age group, but don’t sum those groups, making some comparisons difficult. Manipulate the spreadsheet a bit, though and the following comes to light. w/e Male deaths minus female deaths (all causes, all ages) 6th Mar 24 13th Mar 123 20th March 150 27th March 320 3rd Apr 1201 10th Apr 1380 17th Apr 539 24th Apr 459 1st May -239 That is to say, from 25th Apr to 1st May, when there was an overall excess death total of about 8000, and 6035 death certificates registered mentioned covid19, a disease which has consistently been observed around the world to kill roughly twice as many men as women, 239 more deaths of women were registered than of men. If the 2:1 ratio of male:female mortality was reliable, the discrepancy should have been in the region of 2000 the other way. Indeed, the observed discrepancy could serve as a crude estimator of the actual direct death toll, being theoretically 3x the difference. The aggregate… Read more »
Isn’t it because there are far more women than men in the age groups that are most impacted by covid? I think they’re about twice as many women as men aged 85+. So, women are half as likely to die of covid but there’s twice the number of them ergo the actual number of deaths is broadly equal?
But wouldn’t adding up over all age groups would circumvent that issue? The women who die of covid19 would indeed be older on average than men dying of the same cause, but their deaths would still carry the same weighting. Otherwise what does the widely reported 2:1 ratio mean? The death of a woman from covid19 is counted equally as a man’s, regardless of their respective ages.
The only circumstance in which male vs female age-weighting would be relevant would be where the likelihood of men contracting the disease the disease was greater than that of women. I’ve not heard that that is the case – men and women get infected with equal chance as far as I am aware but suffer the symptoms differently. To infect more women than men, and therefore even up the in-built tendency of corona virus to kill men disproportionately, you’d have to protect women from exposure to the virus less well than men.
In addition, the clear imbalance between male and female deaths in the first few weeks after lockdown suggests something, presumably covid19, was indeed killing men preferentially until some other effect kicked in.
Thinking about it a bit more, you’re right. My model works on the (incorrect) assumption that men are twice as likely to die as women. The evidence suggests that twice as many men die as women. So the ratio of men to women is irrelevant and there should surely be significantly more male deaths than female deaths.
“you’d have to protect women from exposure to the virus less well than men.”. Simple. A majority of elderly care home residents are women. So when hospitals were told to clear their decks and dump their “non urgent” patients into care homes, women were disproportionately likely to catch covid19 from incoming residents who had contracted it in hospital.
That’s certainly a possibility. The only other explanation I could think of is if women on average linger longer by several weeks between infection and succumbing than men. Do you know what the relative proportions of men/women in care homes typically is? Not sure why there’d be a huge imbalance, it’s less how long had than how long you’ve got to go I’d have thought.
Theres an ons report from 2011, puts the ratio at over 3 women to each man in a nursing home, dropping to 2.8:1 by 2011.
There’s not much conclusive recent data. I found a report relating to Scotland showing 2:1, but that included a minority proportion other other types of care. Looks like the ratio has been narrowing slowly, but is still 2.6-2.7:1 most likely.
Ye gods. If we’d put half the effort into keeping covid out of care homes as we put into stopping people sunbathing.
Have you read the Oxford Study, that breaks down risk factors by age and sex (see page 11). Massive cohort, 17.4m. https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.05.06.20092999v1
I hadn’t. I will now. Thanks.
I’ve been looking at the COVID alert system/Nando’s chilli scale and thinking about it in the context of influenza. So apparently with COVID we’re currently moving from level 4 (‘a COVID-19 epidemic is in general circulation; transmission is high or rising exponentially’) to level 3 (‘a COVID-19 epidemic is in general circulation’). Because the government are being so opaque, we can’t ever be sure of the data or ‘The Science’ which informs what level the UK is at any one time, but we know that every winter we have to deal with a flu epidemic. Surely flu would fit into the definition of level 3, 4 in a bad winter, maybe even edging into bottom of level 5 (‘as level 4 and there is a material risk of healthcare services being overwhelmed’) because we have had instances in the past where the health service has been overwhelmed due to flu cases and cold weather in winter https://www.bma.org.uk/news-and-opinion/nhs-on-the-cusp-of-collapse. The 2017 – 2018 season was particularly bad for flu I seem to remember, especially in conjunction with the inclement Beast from the East. And yet we have tolerated flu epidemics for years without locking down. I know we have a vaccine for… Read more »
“So apparently with COVID we’re currently moving from level 4 (‘a COVID-19 epidemic is in general circulation; transmission is high or rising exponentially’) to level 3 (‘a COVID-19 epidemic is in general circulation’). ”
This is of course a flat out lie by the government, because as we’ve just been informed, there is no epidemic at the moment:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/05/11/coronavirus-no-longer-epidemic-uk-oxford-study-finds-cases-falling/
Indeed, so we may even be reaching level 2 on their trite scale. This really goes to show that this ‘plan’ is all a smokescreen to give the impression they’re in control
I said to a friend today, “Britain has not faced a more serious threat since the summer of 1940, on the eve of a possible Nazi invasion.”
This time though, we do not face tyranny from a foreign government. We face tyranny from our OWN government.
In 1940 we were saved by the Battle of Britain. Now we citizens face a battle FOR Britain.
We face tyranny from our own government in collusion with other WHO compliant governments. The others have gone their own way and mostly had better results.
Also interesting how many citizens easily rolled over to become very Nazi in approach (believing the nonsense and snitching on neighbours). Very sad.
Ive never taken a vaccine for flu. Im basically never sick either. I know plenty of people who take the flu shot every year and often is sick nevertheless more or less a month or two. I wonder how they estimate the effectiveness of the vaccine.
I actually got the flu vaccine back in November because it was offered at work so I thought I may as well, because flu sounds pretty nasty and I wanted to avoid it. I’ve never had it in my life before (aged 21) and I didn’t get it this flu season either, but I did get a rather ‘persistent cough’ for around two weeks after having the vaccine. Not sure if it was a side effect or if I caught some other virus.
I came across with an article a couple weeks ago that compared nations with higher flu vaccination rates to nations with lower ones. High vaccinationrate nations like UK, Italy, Spain, Netherlands are among the highest deaths per million of covid. Lowest vaccinations rates are in countries like Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia, Slovenia and Slovakia. These countries have very low deathcount so far.
Might be nothing do with vaccination rates but found it interesting stats anyway.
A study was done a couple of years back using the military as subjects and they found that those that had a flu shot were 34% more likely to contact a coronavirus.
Yeah, ive heard of that. Was it 36% actually…? =)
There was a similar study among children in Hongkong.
“a randomized placebo-controlled trial in Hong Kong children found that flu shots increased the risk of noninfluenza viral ARIs fivefold.”
Direct link. Those that had the flue vaccination became more affected by COVID
https://unlockthelockdown.com/vaccine-mediated-viral-interference-this-is-truly-shocking/
Christ, I hope they don’t make the Gates vaccine mandatory, I know he’s a ‘health expert’ (his words) but I believe he may have just a tiny conflict of interest.
Why this isn’t disclaimed every time he’s on the news basically selling his product is beyond me. The media have a lot to answer for.
Paul Weston is definitely not a fan of the media..
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xcUNeKe6PtA&list=PLOuYoiKDSMgCa12cyXIIxPl4niXOXIcrX&index=2&t=0s
Not to mention his disgusting fake meat products.
What’s scary is that in Australia they are mandating the flu shot now for anyone who visits anyone in hospital and for all the older people going back to day centres. It’s just criminal.
Wow. So. Maybe the 2/3 times I’ve had the flu jab and then er…. got flu, it was probably actually a cold that the flu jab made me more susceptible to? Wow. Those were some bad colds if this is true. The more this goes on the more I feel vindicated in not having it this year.
Actually I think the flu jab is quite good at protecting against a couple of the flu strains but it can’t protect against one of them and that’s the one that has been floating around the past couple of years.
However a peer-reviewed study published in Clinical Infectious Diseases in March 2016 found that people who were vaccinated against the flu three years in a row were actually at higher risk of being infected with the flu. https://academic.oup.com/cid/article/63/1/21/1745238
Also the respected Cochrane Review that analyses all the studies said in 2018 that it “shows no appreciable effect on working days lost or hospitalization.” https://www.cochrane.org/CD001269/ARI_vaccines-prevent-influenza-healthy-adults.
I’m wary because my sister was vaccine injured and it ruined her life. Apparently there are certain families that need to be careful. However they seem to be trying to rule out any exemptions.
Always advisable to familiarise yourself with the ingredients and side effects of any drug/vaccination before having that.
That’s interesting because I’d wondered if there was a link between the covid stats and the flu jab.
I have noticed in recent years that employers are pushing the flu jab, first it started off with we can offer you a discount if you get the jab at an High Street chemist, last couple of years it is becoming a free offer.
I hate needles, so even as a tight Yorkshireman, I don’t take up the free offer, had flu years ago and it was nasty, but I came through it.
D
I wonder if you could sue these ‘well-meaning’ employers if you are the unfortunate one suffering from a debilitating side effect as a result of the vaccination.
Always ensure that you check the ingredients and side effects of every vaccination/pharmaceutical drug and then make an informed decision whether to take it or not.
It was Corona! 🙂
Last year the flue vaccine was 17% effective (not sure how they calculate this number). As we heard it seems as if people who had the flue vaccine are more compromised when getting COVID.
If you haven’t already, you might want to add Stanford professor Dr. Scott Atlas’s remarks on the lock down in the US. This was on Fox news last night:
https://www.foxnews.com/shows/the-story
And greetings from sunny Pasadena–I’m enjoying this blog. Loved the link to Lionel Shriver’s interview. And especially Toby’s columns. Thanks for the community. Bob
Bob, I tune into Fox because I think it’s a lot more honest than other news outlets (hope I’m right!) I also listen to Dr Steve Turley on YT and am interested in his view that the left is losing in the US. Is this a fair assessment in your view?
Best wishes from the UK!!
Well, Fox is fairly biased to the right and that needs to be taken into account. But it’s pretty much the only TV option to all the other stations, like CNN, MSNBC, etc–that are just as biased but to the left. And they are all supremely anti-Trump. So Fox is a good antidote and it also covers stories the other networks ignore if it doesn’t suit their agenda. Though FOX does the same sort of omission. I don’t know Steve Turley–did you mean the left is losing on the lockdown issue or in general? And best from the Pacific West Coast!
Hi all, just a reminder I’m planning to drop a big Twitter-bomb this Thursday evening (basically it’s a mass spamming of Boris Johnson, Dominic Raab and Matt Hancock’s Twitter accounts). Here’s how it works:
On Thursday, 14th May at precisely 8.02pm (the second the clap ends):
Step One: Tag @BorisJohnson, @DominicRaab and @MattHancock on Twitter.
Step Two: Type, “This lockdown is destroying our lives and our economy. There is no scientific justification or legal authority to allow it to continue. We demand our freedom be returned now.”
Step Three: Add the hashtags #EndLockDown #WeWillBeFree
It only works if thousands of people do it at the same time. If you want further details, visit my Twitter page here: https://twitter.com/WeWillBeFree82
If it proves successful, I am going to make it a daily event. I am contacting lots of various groups on Twitter who have agreed to share and support this campaign. I have no idea if it will work, but I think it’s worth a try.
More info on how Tweet Bomb’s work can be found here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twitter_bomb
Thanks all
R Dawg 🙂
PS Keep fighting the good fight, and remember that famous old adage: “This too shall pass.”
Well done for coming up with this idea. Hopefully it’ll be a shitstorm for them.
If it works, I will make it a daily event. The main thing is it gets the hashtags trending on Twitter. But it only works if thousands of people all do it. I guess we shall see. Only 48 hours to go…
If this site promotes it, it will definitely be able to recruit thousands, It will at the very least get some M5M traction. Although they’ll likely call us right wing Nazis nut jobs,,
They can call us what they like. I just want us to live in a free nation where people can use their common sense to make their own decisions. Basically, pretty much what Sweden did/does. We will get there.
I will ask Toby if he can include in Thursday’s blog…
I’ll have a go, though I’m not a Twitter tw*t myself. I have a virtually unused account somewhere….
Hi Mark
Make sure your Twitter account is still active before Thursday, if you have not used the account for some time, it may ask you to verify who you are.
D
I’ve only used it a few times in total but I did use it a few days ago to ask someone a coronapanic-related question. So it should be active.
Must reactivate my Twitter account, want to be ready for the big day.
omg I love your Boris Jong Un
😉👍🏼
I definitely think we should have merch and identifying symbols, for those bold enough to wear them.
Here’s my long term plan. We set up a religion of antilockdownists and organise as an oppressed religious and cultural minority. Then we can campaign for equality and rights. Like Sikhs being allowed to wear their ceremonial dagger, we require exemption from lockdown restrictions, though obviously only amongst our own people. So anyone who is an antilockdownist can run a business (bar, restaurant, hairdresser etc) freely, provided it only caters to other antilockdownists while lockdown is in force.
Another advantage is that anyone who criticises us can be freely abused as a bigot, de-platformed and cancelled, and probably threatened with prosecution, and anyone who gets annoyed enough to attack us physically gets slapped with a hate crime charge on top of the usual punishment.
Can we have blue hair and a flag?
I guess we’ll have to have a Prophet to decide that sort of thing.
I’m available, but most folk might prefer Toby, since we’re on his turf here, after all..
As long as neither is mandatory 😉
As long as it’s HL Mencken’s black flag, eh?
https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/31549-every-normal-man-must-be-tempted-at-times-to-spit
I’ve noticed that one of the only ways to gain traction these days is to become a victim. There’s power in fragility. What we need, though, is a bunch of leftie do-gooders with a twitter following to take up our cause, but sadly I think they’re all firmly ensconsed at home.
Liking this, please start it so I can sign up?
This could frankly do rather better than hoping for a political solution, politics would require us to somehow get a majority (impossible under the first ast the post vote ignoring system in this country), but a religion could let us get right on with living our lives and futureproof us against further crises of authoritarianism whether they are triggerd by responses to a petered-out pandemic, crackpot counter-terrorist legislation or half-witted health and safety policies. May I suggest “The Moon is a Harsh Mistress” by Heinlein as a holy book for us, it goes into great details about how RH thought a libertarian state could be run.
Hmmm… so is this really a cultural page. The core argument is in today’s post finally! What are the costs versus the benefits of the lock down? Many here argue that the benefits are nil which I don’t believe. I think the costs are high. They aren’t discussed by the politicians or our journalists or many here. So we have Toby laying in to all and sundry about “being wrong” – surprise, surprise people do get forecasts wrong. I don’t remember Prince Charles saying the world would end. Even if he had, so what? Toby looks like he wants to group together “the left” and “experts” as unreliable and wrong. This is not then about lockdown. I doubt SAGE support the move by Johnson – lift the lockdown without giving clear rules or guidelines. Now we don’t know the SAGE remit. Is it to advice to minimise Covid deaths. If it is then we cannot point fingers at them. Who is looking at the whole welfare of the UK? It is very unclear to me. The figures quoted in today’s post are pathetic. Take the ONS stats and divide by the population. Come on. Read the FT today which has… Read more »
There is obviously a sliding scale of scepticism, moderate questioners like yourself, and full blown deniers like me. Buy you’ve still ended up here, and over time many more will start to realise that something isn’t quite right, And the point of this site is to drive the conversation forward. It’s also an invaluable resource for information the mainstream is completely ignoring, which should raise serious questions in itself,
Yes it’s a diverse group. We even have a sprinkling of those that like a nice conspiracy.
Oh lord, you’re back.
Hey, I never left.
Heh :O)
Sorry, can you just clarify what you mean by the “figures quoted in today’s post are pathetic”. Which particular stats. are you talking about? The FT is behind a paywall so I don’t know what the 2% is that you are referring to. Thanks.
This is the segment from the FT. It is an article based around what a CEO of a testing company has said. Testing is not easy, high cost and low capacity.
“Estimates of infection rates vary widely but, according to research by the Italian Institute for International Political Studies (ISPI) based on figures from European governments, Belgium has the highest percentage of citizens with some degree of potential immunity in Europe: 6.4 per cent of the population has contracted Covid-19. In Italy, the figure is 4.4 per cent, in the UK it is 3.8 per cent and only 0.7 per cent of the population has had the disease in Germany.
In Sweden, where the state epidemiologist estimated 40 per cent of the population would be immune by the end of May, only 2.5 per cent of the population has come into contact with the virus, according to ISPI.”
There is a great deal of uncertainty around these estimates because wide scale random testing is not being done yet.
I don’t share Toby’s politics, I do share his abject horror at lockdown. In terms of the people who are here, we are a diverse crew, a ‘broach church’ and seeing as no one else is collating this information, and I’ve got virtually no one around me willing to talk about it, I’m here. In fact I’m sure if I went with a pint with most folks here and we got onto politics, we’d disagree about most things but this one. I’m also not a climate change sceptic in the true sense, I am deeply sceptical of the climate change agenda, as most activists seem to hate humans, particularly poor ones (which has its parallels to what’s going on right now, all well and good to talk about saving lives, just depends which lives you are talking about!).
Well said!
I don’t think you can avoid politicising this, even though I don’t think Toby has, at least today. The Prince Charles quote – it’s witty, pure and simple. This forum is serious, but if Toby can’t try and add some humour I wouldn’t come here. I also can’t see a, single benefit from lockdown, as is illustrated by the daily suffering of my elderly parents and young daughter.
I don’t think you can avoid grouping left or anti tory politics and lockdown advocates, their opinions and hysterical revulsion at Boris Johnson’s beyond minimal lockdown lift is glaringly political. There is also a significant % of experts with left wing political ideals, or non Conservative ideals, e.g Ferguson, David King, David Hunter and I guess a few more.
The outcry at Johnson’s so called vague 50 page plan on a political level was hysterical point scoring from all his political opponents, however non vague (to me at) least it was. America is following suit and the lockdown there is severely politicised.
I’m with you and I’m not particularly left at all. Never voted Labour. I too find the Punch & Judy aspects awful. It makes me think that the agenda here is to trash “the left” rather than debate the issues.
Hmm, sorry poppet but most of us sceptics are naturally right wing. State control of the populace, economy and adoration of the state tend to be found on the left rather than the right.
I thought we’d beaten communism and now we have a tory chancellor paying people to be unproductive, the sheep are out clapping the NHS and we can see who the state mandates we can.
Socialiam is shit.
OK love, I’m not a socialist very, very far from it. I am pro-evidence based decision making and like many here wanting a far wider perspective on what needs to be done around Covid.
But hey, why not imply I am a “snowflake” and some how wrong for not being naturally right wing. I would describe myself as naturally right wing in fact.
Speak for yourself. Social *democrat* here (socialism goes a little too far for me lol).
I did the biggest U-turn of all and voted Lib Dem in the last election and was delighted when we got rid of Anne Main, an appalling human being who should have been sacked after the expense scandal.
This isn’t the time or place for in-fighting.
Totally agree that this isn’t the time or place for partisanship. I’m someone ‘of the left’ because I believe in freedom for everyone, not just those that can afford it and I also believe we should support those fallen on hard times. (My reasoning may be challenged, that’s not the point.) Up until recently I’ve found this forum to be very tolerant of many points of view so getting a bit disappointed now that people are being defined according to their political affiliations. Always a bloody mistake. I’m a sceptic and am not ‘naturally right wing’, so please ditch the generalisations. If 80% support the lockdown and we elected a Tory government then the sheep (as some have put it) are not going to be all left wing are they?
Good point. And not all Leavers were the metropolitan elite. Many people have views on a topic that are driven by that issue – not how they voted. So many voters are in fact swingers or abstain.
Interesting to read in today’s blog about the differences in ‘social distancing’ rules in various countries. I Don’t know if anyone has mentioned this before but in case not, here is the definition of ‘contact tracing’ from public health england before it was redacted by the ministry of truth:
“When we talk about “close contact” it’s important to point out that we’re not looking for people the person may have passed on the street or in a shop, as the risk in these situations is very low. A close contact involves either face to face contact or spending more than 15 minutes within 2 metres of an infected person.”
It has now been altered to conform to the new reality of course, but you can still find it on the ‘way back machine’ here:
https://web.archive.org/web/20200308110424/https://publichealthmatters.blog.gov.uk/2020/02/13/expert-interview-what-is-contact-tracing/
I wouldn’t bank on it staying there for ever though – it is clearly too subversive to remain.
We are still waiting for Public Health England to tell us that Vitamin D levels are critical in protecting us when getting COVID-19 (and lots of other health benefits). Lots of research confirming this but they would rather let people die and the lockdown continue. Shocking!
When last did your GP tested your Vitamin D levels?
No idea, gave up trying to see one since Blair privatised them they seem to do nothing but employ several receptionists who are there principally to prevent you from seeing one.
Vitamin D is important, but don’t overestimate it. It won’t make you immune to viruses. There is a lot of things that contribute to the functioning of a healthy immune system. We don’t need PHE to start an aggressive campaign promoting vitamin D. We need PHE to tell people to eat real food (unprocessed, fruit and veg), drink less, exercise and loose weight. People need to understand that there is no magic pill that will make them healthy.
There is, Bill Gates will sell it to you.
Well, Boris could certainly do with shedding a few (actually, a lot of) pounds. Surely his ordeal would have been much less had he not been putting the pounds on since the general election! Somehow noone seems to be prepared to say so in the MSM!
There’s no money in vitamin D, that’s why. In case anyone doesn’t know, the maximum safe dose is 4000 IU a day. Some people recommend the pills which also contain K2 – I take these myself. It’s a good idea (for your immune system) to make sure you get enough vitamin C, zinc and magnesium as well. If you eat lots of leafy greens, citrus fruits, and similar goodies you should be OK for these, otherwise a supplement may be in order. In theory most of our vitamin D comes from the action of sunlight on the skin. UV-B is the active bit; it is blocked by glass and most brands of sunscreen. Older people (say 65+) have trouble manufacturing D and should supplement as above, as indeed should everyone in winter in northern and far-southern climes. At such latitudes black and Asian people should supplement all year round. There is widespread vitamin D insufficiency/deficiency, because we spend most of our time indoors or in cars, and wear clothes; this is not how we evolved. Moreover, our obsession with hygiene doesn’t help our immune system either. When I were a nipper we used to go out to play, got filthy,… Read more »
Hello Simon. I take a combo pill containing D, K2 (MK7 from natto) and magnesium. The three work together to boost the immune system and regulate calcium.
Interesting that they have linked the risk of getting Covid to blood types. Most at risk type A, least at risk type O.
https://www.newsweek.com/blood-type-coronavirus-covid-19-1492890
Here is the breakdown of blood typs per country can’t see major correlations yet
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blood_type_distribution_by_country
By this logic I could be indestructible. I have O negative CMV negative blood (and therefore get to donate to little premature babies aaaahh)
They tested thousands so you probably are!
Wait a minute – couldn’t this also feed into the BAME people being at higher risk? Isn’t there a higher proportion of BAME people with A/B blood ?
Not sure but I would have thought they would be looking at this. The complete lack of proper analysis is breathtaking.
Great and reliable Vitamin D resource https://vitamindwiki.com
[Not linked to Wikipedia that is notoriously unreliable as the content can be changed by anyone]
If you were to take away laughing at lefties they’d be absolutely no point to them whatsoever.
And that to me seems to be all it is most of the time, it’s not like any of you wished death on anyone, the full blown red hot labour activists I know, shared post after post wishing Boris dead, it truly shocked the hell out of me. We can all take a p*ss take, but that was something else. I know these people too, they meant it. The more middle class they are, the more militant about lockdown / PPE / the teaching unions / fill in the blank they seem to be. You can’t even have a conversation, like we at least can here. If I say anything I’m told to ‘vote Tory’ or I’m ‘right wing’. They’ve truly gone properly mad (or maybe were always totally mad, but I’ve only just noticed).
That said, I supported Simon Dolan’s legal case, I’ve been reading his twitter, I support his legal arguments, I do not support his political views, that man and I would not get on! And that’s OK, I just want his extremely erudite QC to win the case, and it’s the law not him I’m interested in.
Strange days make strange bedfellows I think.
Toby, you say
“It’s quite helpful that these lockdown zealots are nailing their colours to the mast, predicting armageddon if we emerge from under our beds and venture outside. It means that when they’re proved wrong, as I suspect they will be, any future advice they might have for the Government can be safely ignored.”
In this informative and heartening interview:
https://www.bitchute.com/video/Avc6_ftzk3w/
Professor Dolores Cahill makes the point that the “second spike” our leaders and betters hope for will indeed materialise. Those dying will comprise the people (cancer sufferers, etc.) whose health has been so badly neglected during the present lockdown that they become critical in a few months’ time. Their deaths will no doubt be attributed to Covid-19.
Biggest problem of all of course is how do you get MSM to TELL THE DAMN TRUTH??
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xcUNeKe6PtA&list=PLOuYoiKDSMgCa12cyXIIxPl4niXOXIcrX&index=2&t=0s
They can’t. Have you seen who owns them?
Lockdown helps a 2nd peak/wave/spike – whatever – isolation keeps the less virulent strains from circulating more freely
Reading about the “independent” SAGE committee, set up by David King, does anyone know who these self appointed gits are? Am I mistaken and were they appointed by anyone? If not, who the hell do they think they are? How exactly can they question the real SAGE, they have no access to the scientific data/formal debate of government advisors so how the hell can they say how shit the real SAGE is?
If they’re self appointed, and by the looks of it they’re a bunch of lockdown loving twats, can I set up my own committee to review their review? I have a sneaking suspicion their recommendations, to whoever gives a shit (MSM, devolved governments, Labour) will be even shitter than Sage’s, which is hard to imagine
From what I can see, Professor King has assembled a group of largely ‘also rans’ who were not good enough to have been invited onto the SAGE committee as external advisers. Several are quite bitter – there is nothing like an academic scorned! Given the quality of the work of the external advisers to SAGE, and the inability of the government members to interrogate the Imperial model that has driven the lockdown strategy, you can draw your own conclusions.
I think Guido’s place at order-order has covered the credentials of the alternate-SAGE, many of which are, shall we say interesting…
Agree, they all seem terribly pro lockdown. A complete waste of time.
Don’t be put off by it. I’m left leaning, and I didn’t come here for political views, but for facts about covid. I’m absolutely embarrassed that most lefties seem to be suffering from corona derangement syndrome (I just love that term, been using it in conversations all day). Put your political views aside – this is bigger than that.
I’m left leaning as well, or at least I was before this debacle. Our jailers know no national or ideological boundaries and neither should we who resist them. When all this is over we can go back to being the racists the Guardian say we all are.
But….. are these people even lefties? I’m convinced they’re not, actually. Think of all the positions they seem to naturally adopt. They’re all repressive and er…. pretty right-wing. Hate speech laws. Safe spaces. Etc. Etc.
Spot on. I don’t recognise the vapid, sloganeering virtue signalling these hypocrites spout as in any way left wing.
You could resort to a two-axis system and class them as left authoritarians.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Political_Compass
True. But then that wouldn’t correlate with their love of large corporations and private assets….. (unless maybe they were Chinese ;p)
Although having said that they don’t *admit to loving corporations and assets (yet they all still have Amazon Prime and rental properties) so your point still stands.
Agreed, I’m usually quite left wing but appalled at all of this, enacted by a right wing government and supported by Labour. Left and right are never absolutes, best to make up your own mind on what you think is right. Remember Sweden is leftwing and hasn’t locked down. I’m glad to be here, whoever anyone votes for.
I think we’d all be a lot happier if Boris’s was a right-wing government. Unfortunately, it’s turned out to be as centrist as the rest.
The results are in from Dr. Jay Bhattacharaya of Stanford Medicine’s COVID-19 antibody survey of Major League Baseball employees. The survey tested more than 5,600 employees across all 26 Major League Baseball clubs throughout the US to see if they’d had the virus. The study found that only 0.7% of those tested showed evidence that they’d had the virus. They’d expected it to be a lot higher. He states that this probably means that the epidemic has along way to go yet and they’re a long way off achieving herd immunity in the US. The other thing he suggests from his results and other studies is that the poorer you are then the more likely it is that you’ve had the virus, The Dr is still anti wholesale lockdown though. One standout stat he mentions is that another study has suggested that there could be 75,000 suicides US as a result of the Lockdown. A number of US health care providers are apparently going out of business through lack of normal demand caused by Covid fear. Healthcare for the poor throughout the world will also go significantly backwards he says. He admits that Lockdowns must have had some impact but… Read more »
The survey is interesting. I think his comment on the downsides of the lock down is the real and pressing issue. We are all need to work out the lessor evil. It’s not obvious but so far I see no attempt to do so by the press or our politicians or clinicians for that matter.
One other possible explanation in the case of sports players, they would tend to be at the peak of their general health and on the young side. There seems to be some evidence that the ‘Rona doesn’t induce a heavy immune response in the healthy young.
song suggestions
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cBojbjoMttI
Sex Pistols – Anarchy In The UK
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iS33yAqMeCc
The Jesus and Mary Chain – In a Hole
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VXNnxoWOa1E
The Smiths – Stretch out and Wait
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v6N24PyyUIQ
Butthole Surfers – Graveyard
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HuO3wwLuF0w
Big Black – Kerosene
Kirsty MacColl made some now appropriate songs, how about: “can’t stop killing you”, ” a new England”, or even the one about the guy working down the chipsshop…
I’m sort of in the same boat, I’m a middle class sort of left of centre softie, but have been disillusioned with the left for a while, I voted remain (but now don’t care, because of how working class people ended up getting treated both with that, and particularly after the election, there sure is a naked contempt for ‘poor’ people when they don’t do as they’re told by the left which really turns my stomach), and because I’ve tangled with proper lefty activists on a women’s campaign I’ve been involved in, which brought me up short in shock and horror, and now this. Erstwhile sensible Labour activists I know, wished death on the prime minister with glee. I mean, I think he’s a mendacious narcissist, but really? He’s got kids, and a mum, and a girlfriend. I’ve never seen a Tory do that, take the p*ss yes, be politically ruthless yes, wish death on their political opponent. Never. So whilst I share your unease, where would we have been with no ‘right wing’ voices asking questions about this, as Labour certainly didn’t? I’m learning a new appreciation for how necessary the yin yang of left right is, we kinda… Read more »
“I’ve never seen a Tory do that, take the p*ss yes, be politically ruthless yes, wish death on their political opponent.”
My dad (an old fashioned Liberal) used to say that (as generalisations obviously) the right tend to be motivated by greed, the left by hatred.
They are frothing it with it now, it’s really shocked me (when I say I’m left, I’m Blair left, I’m not a signed up member or anything, take an interest, and after this, even that’s under rapid review!) but I’ve honestly had more earnest conversations with Tory voters (and one chairman) sick with worry about the impact on the poor and vulnerable. Literally not a peep out of them. When I said something about job losses, I was told those people could get a job at Tesco or Amazon (or go and work in a dark satanic mill???? That pays no tax???), it’s baffling.
I like one nation tories, the old school gentleman and a scholar types, who understand the messy compromises necessary and are pragmatic, and I think it’s the dearth of them at the helm that have got us into this mess. And I for sure don’t hate anyone, and don’t want to be associated with anyone that does.
I respect all you have posted here BecJT but you are kidding me that you’ve never seen a Tory wish death or something vile on a political opponent? So where did all that vitriol for Jeremy Corbyn come from for five years? It wasn’t just from the PLP. The PLP doesn’t own The Mail, Sun and Times (to name but three). The readership of the same organs aren’t the PLP. The most reviled man ever in British politics, and that hatred didn’t come from some Tories? Sorry, have to take you to task here. I have spoken to many Tories who wanted him dead, as I spoke to many Tories who wanted Nelson Mandela executed.
Please show me evidence that anyone on the right wanted Corbyn dead (as opposed to calling him out or laughing at him).
Not going to deny that you come across the odd overwrought type on the right that might call for Corbyn’s death, but I honestly can’t say it’s been very common. Certainly my experience has been that wishing people dead for their politics is much more common on the left than the right. Thatcher, Tebbit, Reagan, Bush, Farage, Trump, all the left’s favourite demons seem to be fairly routinely targeted for death fantasies, usually justified by explaining that they are a legitimate target because they are “fascist” or “racist” or whatever.
As for Corbyn himself, I’ve seen more really vicious vitriol generally aimed at him from Blairites than from Tories (though there is plenty of the latter around, especially in the pro-Conservative media, mostly for straightforward political competition reasons).
Mandela is in an entirely different category, and there can be and is legitimate disagreement about him, ranging from saint to Gerry Adams-like terrorist or terrorist accomplice.
I came across this article today… LOL:
https://www.naturalblaze.com/2020/05/suspicions-raised-over-covid-19-tests-after-a-fruit-reportedly-tests-positive-for-virus.html
I shouldn’t laugh but cry. A goat and a paw paw test positive for Coronavirus in Tanzania… President had ordered secret experiment giving plant and animal samples human names and ages to test accuracy of the test kits. (Clearly the test kits aren’t working then, are they?) Meanwhile a man in Georgia tested both negative and positive for Coronavirus within the course of four hours…
Reuters also had the news by the way…. so it isn’t just a hoax: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-tanzania-idUSKBN22G295
It was also on ZeroHedge yesterday:
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/we-sent-them-samples-goat-papaya-pheasant-tanzanian-president-catches-who-epic-lie
Maybe it’s still on the tests?
How ingenious evil plan it would be to rig the tests. This pandemic would last as long as we keep testing, And that is obviously exactly what WHO has been telling us to do, test and test even more. Let’s even test the people with no symptons at all…
Has anyone looked at the YouTube feed for David Martin World? He implies just that in one of his videos. Very detailed journalism connecting the dots. Stick with him. Explains what’s going on very clearly.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C2CsNqHFx68
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FDHAF4HLZYw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZUNVXROwzPY
First of all let me reassure readers not all academics are lockdown lovers – in my science group and institute we are primed to return to work. In fact I’m a bit worried that some people who should really shield are keen as mustard to get back in. That said, we had a back to work planning meeting today and the ‘new normal’ sounds atrocious. One way systems around our building, allocated bogs (if we are even allowed to use them at all!), restricted in which labs and buildings you can use, no socialising in work… Give me strength. This will kill off innovation in a lot of work places, promote silo mentality and an atomised workforce. To be fair, our senior management share these concerns. And the idea of public transport at 10% capacity, on the buses round here, good god… Who are they paying for this?? BTW, any academics getting excited about lockdown and promoting the end our social and economic system, will be laughing the other side of their faces soon. I’m aware of large scale redundancies in the offing at all the major local universities, and I’m led to believe Oxford have laid off a lot… Read more »
“This will kill off innovation in a lot of work places, promote silo mentality and an atomised workforce. To be fair, our senior management share these concerns. And the idea of public transport at 10% capacity, on the buses round here, good god… Who are they paying for this??”
We really are talking about significant drops in productivity and in competitiveness for those nations stupid enough to take this kind of stuff seriously.
This is something that our private sector clients are concerned with, the feedback I’ve had suggests a move towards outsourcing to more sane countries or taking more of an ‘actuarial’ risk based approach with their insurers.
I’m surprised someone of Dominic Cummings’ alledged intellect is condoning this farce.
Yes, agree with your post. I have links into academia – anyone not going into REF 2021 at 3*/4* is toast (assuming REF going ahead – last communication was mid-April). Lots of noise from VCs and special interest pleading to protect their ‘property empire with a bit of light teaching on the side’. Perfect time to rationalise and sell of brownfield sites for much-needed housing.
I think the last I heard was that REF was cancelled for now – we don’t have to participate in this being a bit more core government than a university is. I’d agree a lot of early career people are toast, especially as there may be less ‘teaching fellow’ positions available for those whose research is not deemed good enough. We live in interesting times..
REF hasn’t been cancelled. The submission date has been postponed until April 2021 but the census date for publications remains the same. It’s a tough time for universities. I’m head of a big research lab that is currently closed. My German colleagues have been operating normally through their lockdown. Each day this continues we are losing competitiveness and opportunities. The plans for re-opening are not practical in any sense and I suspect we’ll just assess the risks ourselves, as we always do, and carry on as we have always done. That is once the doors are unlocked!
As far as teaching goes the worry is fewer foreign students, students intercalating for a year and a lower take up of university places by this years A level cohort.
Thanks for the info re: REF!
If I am wrong please correct me, but as far as I can see now Westminster is allowing house buying to recommence. People that were about to move before lockdown can now start planning to move and people can go view houses that were already on the market before lockdown started. So hang on was it not Matt Hancock this morning saying you can’t go visit your parents in their own garden as it may involve you waking through their house to gain access to the garden but now its OK for complete strangers to wander about your house, nosy in your bathroom and measure up your bedroom.
Don’t get me wrong, I am so glad the light is appearing at the end of the tunnel regarding lockdown but I just can’t get over how bonkers some of the rules regarding the relaxing of it is.
Basically they don’t want any social contact whilst allowing er…. social contact in workplace or economic settings. Batshit crazy.
The cynical conspiratorial side of me is whispering that they just want to repress any possible social unrest by not allowing any mass gatherings indefinitely…….
We are living through a pantomime. When this is looked back on in a couple of years, the utter clusterfuck will be glossed over by a quick ‘we saved x lives’. There is no voice for reason in this argument.
I hope tomorrow is the start of getting back to normal. I will visit my park with interest. I’m glad that one of my usual lunch places, and a local coffee shop both reopened on Monday
How thick is Matt Hancock really?
Thicker than his name would wish.
I think lockdown scepticism swings both left and right, and extremists on both sides have a dark agenda with it and the dreaded ‘new normal’. I think the current problem stems from the champaign socialist wing of the left…. I think the lockdown fight needs a towering figure of the left to come down on our side to shut down the ‘evil tories want you back to work’ mentality..
“Towering figure of the left”
*looks around* *squints* :o(
That made me LOL. We do need someone sensible that the lefties will listen to or at least respect. I’ve seen the twitter latest, big campaign to get people to refused to work. I’d imagine behind closed door Kier must be surely feeling a tiny bit of dread?
I once interviewed Kier once you know (back in 2015 when he was…. actually I have no idea what he was, but desperate to talk to student journalists apparently). He’s the slipperiest m’fr I’ve ever had the displeasure of trying to extract a straight answer from. He’s the most Blairlike thing I’ve ever been in a room with.
So….. dread? I dunno. Not sure he feels anything really except a desperate need for power.
To be used in future definitions of ‘contradiction in terms’.
I think this whole left or right wing identification is meaningless and causes division. I was a ‘leftie’ guardian reader for years until the Guardian was bought by a Saudi and turned into MSM. I always voted Lib Dem or Green and like Tony Blair until we went to Iraq. But since I believe that individual countries can be more dynamic without centralised control I voted for the Conservatives and Brexit. Now I’m kind of nowhere and the Lord Buckethead party is starting to look attractive…
Yes, this. Increasingly I find ‘left’ and ‘right’ means nothing these days. Mostly because the terms have been corrupted and somewhat flipped (as I said above there are an awful lot of ‘lefties’ who hate working class people and want to throw you in jail for saying things they don’t like). There seem to be a lot of very sensible and moderate ‘right-wingers’, I find myself drawn towards them more these days because they don’t have that sneering, judgemental tone about everything. However we still disagree radically on how best to run the economy – but likewise I disagree radically with ‘lefties’ on that one too because they seem to think the economy doesn’t matter, because they’re goons. It’s all very confusing and dementing if you let it be. Alternatively, you can see it as a blessing that these traditional ‘labels’ are being eroded and people of sense, whatever their supposed affiliation, are coming together in the middle.
I’m hoping we do come together but polarisation seems to be de rigueur – along with very strong feelings that lead to unpleasantness and division. It’s time to wave the white flag.
Ah yes The Guardian. Did anyone spot their recent headline which read How to get great service in restaurants, or some such bollocks. This was the point I decided I’d never look at the vile, ridiculous propagandist rag ever again. I’m sure what the article didn’t say was the few restaurants that survive the immediate aftermath of the insanity that they so enthuiastically whipped up will have virtually no customers. By the way this gem of a story was in the most shared most viewed section.
It’s a great tragedy what happened to the Guardian. I think it coincided with PM Cameron reading the former editor the riot act after they published the Wikileaks stuff. Then it was sold to Saudis and other interests. I used to really love the independence of that paper but now it’s just a mouthpiece like other MSM.
“a senior panjandrum at the WHO gave a press conference two weeks ago in which he praised Sweden as a “model” that the rest of the world should follow. ”
More attention is due Sweden, now that the epidemic there is coming to an end we can get a fuller picture of what a No Lockdown Reality looks like:
Stay-Open Sweden set to lose 0.02% of total population to Coronavirus, in line with usual peak flu years; 2020 may equal 2018 in total mortality; why did we destroy the economy over this?
I will send a donation when you add a Bitcoin option. 🙂
Interesting analysis using excess deaths as a metric:
https://www.health.org.uk/news-and-comment/charts-and-infographics/understanding-excess-mortality-the-fairest-way-to-make-international-comparisons
(My thoughts are that there will be a rebound in the other direction at some point)