The Mirror leads with the preprint I flagged up yesterday estimating that by the end of April 29% of the UK population may have already had the virus (29% of 66 million is ~19 million). If we assume that roughly 50,000 people in the UK will have died from COVID-19 by May 21st – allowing for the three-week lag time between infection and death – that gives an infection fatality rate (IFR) of ~0.076%, less than half the IFR of seasonal flu.
Is a seroprevalence of 29% high enough for herd immunity? Yes, according to a summary of the evidence by Nicholas Lewis about the threshold that needs to be reached that I flagged up a few days ago. According to Lewis, the variation in COVID-19 susceptibility and infectivity between individuals, arising mainly from differences in their social connectivity, lowers the herd immunity threshold to 7% – 24% of the population, much lower than the 50% – 60% previously thought. His analysis draws on a recent preprint by Gomes et al entitled ‘Individual variation in susceptibility or exposure to SARS-CoV-2 lowers the herd immunity threshold‘.
New data from London suggests the city has already obtained herd immunity. According to the latest estimates by Public Health England (PHE) and Cambridge University, as reported in the Telegraph, only 24 people a day are being infected in the capital and the R has fallen to 0.4. That means the number of new infections is halving every 3.5 days and London will have virtually eliminated the virus by the end of the month. It is Yorkshire and the North East that have the highest infection rate, according to the PHE/Cambridge analysis – double that of the capital. It’s ironic, then, that the local authorities in those areas are so paranoid about day-trippers from London infecting their populations that they’ve banned parking at local beauty spots. Turns out, it’s Londoners who should be worried about visitors from Yorkshire and the North East, not the other way round.
But it’s not all good news. According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), the second wave of the pandemic will be deadlier than the first. The Telegraph has interviewed Dr Hans Kluge, Director for the WHO European region, who delivered a stark warning to countries beginning to ease their lockdowns, saying that now is the “time for preparation, not celebration”. File this under the same heading as the WHO’s January 14th announcement that there’s “no clear evidence of human to human transmission”.
My Lockdown Sceptic of the week is Luke Johnson, former chairman of Pizza Express and Channel 4, who was on Question Time last night. He dared to suggest the lockdown will cause a greater loss of life that it will prevent and duly reaped the whirlwind. One of the points he made is that if you’re under 60 with no underlying health conditions you’re more likely to drown than die of COVID-19. You can watch Johnson firing off truth bullets here.
I was sent a terrific piece this morning by an occupational health doctor about the catastrophic consequences for the British economy of treating COVID-19 as a workplace health hazard, similar to asbestos. He rightly points out that there’s no scientific evidence that workplaces are more hazardous environments than any other environments when it comes to susceptibility to the virus. But over time, the risk of catching the virus has morphed from a hazard that exists in the general community to a hazard that’s specific to the workplace. This is a consequence, in part, of the Government telling people to stay in their homes to avoid infection. But it may also be related to the widespread belief that “key workers” are at greater risk of infection than others because they’re still at work – actual “fake news” and “misinformation” that’s pumped out by the mainstream media daily. And, of course, the Government’s unscientific gobbledegook about the need to maintain a distance of two metres apart in offices has undoubtedly played a part. The author points out that this will create a mountain of obstacles that businesses wanting to reopen will have to overcome if they’re to persuade people to return to work.
“You must put in place universal distancing and cleaning measures throughout every part of your operation,” he says. “You must issue PPE, with all of the regulations surrounding the provision of PPE. You must screen every employee with an underlying medical condition to determine if they are safe to even enter the workplace.”
That last task, in particularly, will saddle businesses with enormous extra costs:
Every single employee, returning to almost any workplace in the country, now needs to be risk assessed to characterise the risk to their safety. For many, this will be a quick process. But for many others with common, chronic health conditions (who will number several millions nationally), it will require significant resource to undertake assessments. As there is little guidance available and given the fear of a backlash from the media, unions, lawyers or the authorities, many employers will feel forced into excluding workers, even where there is little evidence that this is necessary. Employees may feel forced back in fear of their lives, whilst others will not be allowed back despite being desperate for a return to normality.
I have to confess, I hadn’t thought through to the consequences of branding the workplace a hazardous environment. But this occupational health doctor has and it’s clearly going to be a massive problem. Do read the whole piece.
The Government wrote to Simon Dolan’s layers yesterday, responding to his Letter Before Action. This is the update on his Crowdfunding page:
Just a few hours ago we received a detailed response form the Govt to our letter before action. Our legal team are currently considering the various points raised. The letter runs to some 13 pages and as you can imagine contains some highly technical points. We can confirm for now that they are however refusing to release the minutes of the SAGE meetings.
Will update further just as soon as the legal team have formulated their plan of action. rest assured, the fight very much continues. Expect another update in the next couple of days.
If you want to find out more about Dolan and what’s motivating him, I recommend this interview by my friend James Delingpole for the Delingpod. And I’ve published a piece today by John Waters, one of the two anti-lockdown litigants trying to take take the Irish Government to court. You can read that here.
More depressing polling news: A recent five-country survey by Kekst CNC found that British voters top the table in wanting their government’s top priority to be limiting the spread of the virus (73%) rather than avoiding recession (14%) That net 59-point “lead” for tackling the virus compares with net figures of 44 points (Japan), 30 points (US), 16 points (Germany) and 15 points (Sweden). Prospect has more.
A reader tells me about the difficulties he’s had trying to see a dentist:
Like many of a certain generation I have had the pleasure of getting to visit my dentist regularly and we are on first name terms. Once I experience toothache I usually phone up for an appointment and hope to get away with a filling but have on occasion had to suffer the expense and pain of a deep root canal filling. Since the middle of March the doors of every dental surgery have been firmly closed in the UK and the only treatment available is from emergency dental hubs. These dental hubs can offer you a choice of either antibiotics and pain killers and if that doesn’t work an extraction of the painful tooth.
I did write to my dentist at the beginning of April, initially by email, which wasn’t replied to, then by a hand-written letter explaining I had a lot of pain from a tooth. I had already taken a weeks worth of antibiotics and paracetamol My dentisit kindly did phone me, had a look at some x-rays from last year and said he could refer me to a hub for it to be removed, as that was the only option.
When the dentists open possibly in July they think that they will only be doing teeth extractions anyway. All the dental work involving ” aerosols”, i.e. drilling and filling, is not allowed and will not be available for months because of the need for PPE for all staff and a total refit of dental surgeries.
We have returned to the world of dentistry in the 18th Century.
This is quite shocking. Dr Jeannette Young, the Chief Health Officer of Queensland in Australia, has told the Brisbane Times that she urged the state’s premier, Annastacia Palaszczuk, to shut down schools in order to send a “message”, not because she thought it was scientifically advisable. Here are the key paragraphs:
Dr Young told Ms Palaszczuk to shut down schools on March 26th.
She says while evidence showed schools were not a high-risk environment for the spread of the virus, closing them down would help people understand the gravity of the situation.
“If you go out to the community and say, ‘this is so bad, we can’t even have schools, all schools have got to be closed’, you are really getting to people,” Dr Young says.
“So sometimes it’s more than just the science and the health, it’s about the messaging.”
I’ve long suspected that senior civil servants think they know better than democratically-elected politicians and have no qualms about misrepresenting scientific or legal advice in order to manipulate them. But they don’t often brag about it in national newspapers, particularly not when still in post. One telling detail from the profile: Dr Young has a “no-smoking” sign displayed on her “trophy” wall, given to her by Health Minister Steven Miles after she helped to get cigarettes banned in national parks in 2017.
On the subject of schools, a reader has passed on a Facebook post complaining about the arrangements that have been made at Holywell Village First School in Whitley Bay to facilitate its reopening on June 1st. These apply to children in Reception and Year 1, i.e. aged four to six:
- Children to be isolated in bubbles of small groups
- To remain with one teacher in one classroom all day
- All toys, books and soft furnishings removed
- Children to work at desks 1m apart, all to face the same direction, and not mix, INCLUDING NURSERY!
- Desks etc to be continually cleaned throughout the day
- To be seated at desks all day. No sitting on the floor
- Children only to attend in clean clothes and a clean coat every day
- No hot lunch for Reception and Year 1, packed lunches to be provided by the school
- No outdoor equipment to be touched
- They will have to spend much of the day working independently (the teacher cannot help them)
- Set toilet times
- Toileting accidents – children to clean themselves up; if they can’t then the parent has to come and collect the child to clean them at home
As my correspondent says, “The psychological scars this will leave beggar belief.” The headteacher of Holywell Village First School would do well to read this piece by Rachel de Souza, chief executive of Inspiration Trust, or indeed this article that I’ve been sent by Christine Brett, a health economist, and which I’ve published today. Christine has crunched the numbers and concluded that the chances of your child dying from the virus, or infecting others, are extremely slight. To date, one child has died from coronavirus per 1.1 million children in the UK (12 in total). But even though the risk is negligible, Christine is far from cavalier about it. As she says in her piece, her own son Michael died at the age of 19 months:
In the interests of full disclosure, I fully understand the anxiety parents feel about their children. My first son was born with a congenital heart condition and spent the first ten days of his life on the cardiac intensive care unit at Great Ormond Street Hospital. He underwent eight hours of open-heart surgery at three days old. He had his oxygen levels, and weight monitored weekly. He was rushed back into the hospital after having his first set of vaccines. Ultimately, my husband and I decided that since he had survived, we wanted him to live. Yes, I was nervous being around people with a cold, but I wheeled him down the street choked with traffic fumes to take him to baby groups – yoga, massage, singing. We travelled on trains, buses and even planes to visit friends and family.
He died at 19 weeks – the post-mortem showed evidence of cytomegalovirus (CMV) is his lungs. CMV is a common virus that is usually harmless. Most people don’t know they have CMV because it rarely causes problems in healthy people. However, for people with weakened immune systems, it is a cause for concern. For Matthew’s delicately balanced circulation, it was fatal. I always knew he didn’t have a long life ahead with his condition, but he lived a short, fun-filled life
Christine’s article, which is very sober and sensible, is well worth a read.
Someone has sent me an interesting piece published in the New Scientist in 2007 saying the cause of the foot and mouth epidemic was a virus escaping from leaky pipe at a Government research lab in Pirbright, Surrey. Perhaps the theory that SARS-CoV-2 escaped from the Wuhan Institute of Virology isn’t that far-fetched after all.
The New York Times has an article attempting to smear all lockdown sceptics as far-right loons and conspiracy theorists, focusing on the dissemination of the Stanford Santa Clara serological study by right-wing commentators on Twitter. That study, led by John Ioannidis, Professor of Medicine at Stanford, seemed to show that public health organisations, such as the WHO, had under-estimated the seroprevalence of the virus and, as a consequence, over-estimated the infection fatality rate (IFR). According to the Times, the signal boost the study received from wing-nuts on Twitter led to “a surge of misinformation”. “By the end of the weekend, right-wing social media had passed around the study, often with hashtags like #ReopenAmerica, #FactsNotFear, #endthelockdown and #BackToWork slapped on,” writes the Times.
Trouble is, the estimate of the IFR in that preprint – 0.17% – has turned out to be more accurate than official estimates. If you look at this Excel spreadsheet collating the data from some of the major PCR and serological studies that have been done so far, the median IFR is 0.36. Admittedly, more than double 0.17, but bear in mind that was an estimate of the IFR in Santa Clara county. And an IFR of 0.36 is just over a third of the estimate used in the Imperial College computer model, which was 0.9%.
So which figure should be classed as “misinformation”? The one produced by Professor Ioannidis and his team at Stanford or the one produced by Professor Ferguson and his team at Imperial? I’m willing to bet my house that when the IFR of SARS-CoV-2 is a settled figure, it will be closer to 0.17% than 0.9%.
The Times concludes it’s analysis by saying that there are two internets, one interested in scientific evidence and governed by reason, the other a Wild West dominated by right-wing conspiracy theorists:
What this cascade of sharing behaviour reveals, based on our analysis of nearly 900 COVID-19 preprints, is a tale of two internets: one largely ideological, in which science is leveraged as propaganda, and one that consists of the kind of discussion and debate vital for academia — and democracy.
That’s kind of true, but the authors of the article – Aleszu Bajak and Jeff Howe – have got it backwards: it’s mainstream media organisations like the New York Times and the BBC that are disseminating propaganda, with the truth about coronavirus more likely to be found in little tributaries of the internet like this one. At the foot of the piece Bajak and Howe are described as teachers of journalism at Northeastern University. Make of that what you will.
A regular contributor to this site – anonymous, but one of the best financial journalist in the country – has done a bit of analysis based on the “response tracker” that Oxford’s Blavatnik School of Government has created. This is a tool that enables you to compare and contrast different countries according to what non-pharmaceutical interventions they’ve put in place in an attempt to mitigate the impact of the virus:
The Blavatnik School of Government provides an estimate of Lockdown “stringency” (100 being complete lockdown). I put the numbers for a few countries into a spreadsheet. What you find is that there is no statistical relationship between the stringency of lockdown (at the end of March) and a country’s rate of COVID-19 infections and deaths (per million of population – numbers from Our World in Data). There is, as you would expect, a stronger statistical relationship between the degree of stringency and projected fiscal deficits (estimated by the IMF, and already massively understating the problem).
Never have some many sacrificed so much for so little…
In Austria, a new organisation called “Initiative for evidence-based information on the coronavirus” (ICI) has been created by a controversial doctor called Dr. Christian Fiala. (He has written papers in the past disputing that AIDS is a killer virus.) It’s an anti-lockdown organisation that describes itself as an “independent initiative” but, unlike Widerstand 2020 Deutschland, ICI has no ambition to become a political party. It says on the site that it isn’t affiliated to any existing party and rejects any form of political extremism. It helps to organise anti-lockdown demonstrations and offers pro-bono legal support to people who’ve been prosecuted for participating in protests or fined for breaking the quarantine. The website publishes an endless stream of academic papers contradicting what the site refers to as “prevailing corona-alarmist orthodoxies” – a bit like this one! The site claims ICI has three objectives:
- Facts instead of panic
- Back to basic rights
- Back to pluralistic discussion
One of ICI’s campaigns urges Austrians to wear face masks with the words “mund-tot” on them, which translates as “mouth-dead” or “silenced”:
ICI organised a protest in Vienna outside the Austrian Chancellory yesterday. It was forbidden by the police, but people gathered anyway. If you click here, you’ll see pictures from it. The text at the top of that page translates as: “We’re not left-wing, we’re not right-wing – we’re angry.”
I asked my always-helpful German-speaking reader to see what had been written about the group in the Austrian press and this is his summary:
The group doesn’t seem to getting much pick up in main Austrian papers. Couldn’t find anything in the Kurier or the Kronenzeitung. The one article I found in a major paper, Der Standard, is extremely hostile. It makes no attempt to understand the ICI’s purpose or arguments, but smears it by linking it to the right-wing nationalist organisation, the Identitarian Movement Austria led by Martin Sellner. Sellner has endorsed the ICI, clearly seeking to exploit it for his own purposes. ICI organisers were none too pleased that Sellner’s followers showed up at the demo – and said as much – but felt they couldn’t do much about it. Despite this, the article portrays ICI moderates as naive, ill-informed misfits and anti-vaxxers who won’t wear masks and feel no sense of responsibility towards the old and vulnerable. It points to the apparent irony of the group’s name, given that the ICI attracts people who clearly have no understanding of or respect for evidence-based health policy.
One thing I’ve noticed about ICI and Widerstand 2020 Deutschland is that both organisations are militantly pro-free speech. I am too, of course, and helped set up an organisation called the Free Speech Union earlier this year. I imagine a belief in the importance of free speech is something nearly all lockdown sceptics have in common.
Meanwhile, in Germany, the scandal caused by the leak of an 80-page impact assessment of the lockdown by an auditor in the Ministry of the Interior continues to rumble on. I’ve found this summary by German-to-English translator Paul Charles Gregory on an anti-deep state website. I’ve asked him to translate the whole thing for me so I can publish it on this site, but haven’t heard back yet. It’s quite an undertaking.
Slovenia declared an official end to its coronavirus epidemic yesterday, becoming the first country in Europe to do so. It was among the first to ease its lockdown – on April 20th – and saw no increase in infections. Public transport resumed earlier this week while next week some pupils will return to schools. All bars and restaurants, as well as small hotels with up to 30 rooms, will also be allowed to open next week. European visitors to the country will no longer be quarantined on arrival, although visitors from other parts of the world will be. To date it has had 1,464 cases and 103 deaths.
I get a lot of emails from readers like this one:
My neighbour’s father died three weeks ago. Elderly, unwell. Tested three times for Covid, all tests came back negative.
Death Certificate, Dr. put as cause of death “Covid”.
One thing that makes me slightly sceptical about these anecdotal reports is that I don’t get what the motive is. Why would a GP misdiagnose the cause of death? In the US, hospitals doctors have a financial incentive to put “COVID0-19” on death certificates because they get tens of thousands of dollars from the federal Government for each patient who dies of COVID-19. But there’s no equivalent incentive in the UK as far as I’m aware.
I also get a lot of emails like this:
I’m a huge fan of Lockdown Sceptics. Thank you for helping to save my sanity. At times this has felt like I’ve been standing in front of a lorry which is going to run me over. I want to move out of the way, but I can’t unless unless everyone else moves out of the way. They can’t see the lorry or hear me. It’s felt nightmarish and more isolating than lockdown itself.
I’m sure many of you know exactly how this woman feels.
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:
- ”Mayor bungee jumps to celebrate easing of lockdown in New Zealand‘ – Queenstown Lakes Mayor Jim Boult has done a bungee jump to celebrate the easing of he country’s lockdown restrictions. The Telegraph has video
- ‘Cats can infect each other with coronavirus, study finds‘ – According to a study in the New England Journal of Medicine, domestic cats infected with COVID-19 can transmit the virus to other felines. The good news is they’re asymptomatic
- ‘There Is No Evidence Lockdowns Saved Lives. It Is Indisputable They Caused Great Harm‘ – William Briggs, who describes himself as “statistician to the stars”, crunches the numbers
- ‘How extreme isolation warps minds‘ – Michael Bond on the psychological harm caused by extreme isolation for the BBC
- ‘Disease Mitigation Measures in the Control of Pandemic Influenza‘ – 2006 paper recommending against quarantining whole populations during a pandemic. The author writes: “The negative consequences of large-scale quarantine are so extreme (forced confinement of sick people with the well; complete restriction of movement of large populations; difficulty in getting critical supplies, medicines, and food to people inside the quarantine zone) that this mitigation measure should be eliminated from serious consideration.”
- ‘Calling the Government to Account For Its Woeful Handling of This Crisis‘ – Rob Slane lets rip for the Blogmire
- ‘Boris Johnson launches a new battle of the bulge‘ – James Forsyth reports in the Times that Boris has decided to go to war on fatties
- ‘Germany’s New Coronavirus Thinking‘ – The Wall St Journal editorial board praises the Germans for not over-reacting to the R number creeping above 1 for three days earlier this week. “A strange thing happened in Germany this week: COVID-19 started spreading a bit faster and officials and the public managed to cope,” they write. “It’s an important benchmark for other governments as they allow their own economies to emerge from viral hibernation.”
- ‘Remembering Huxley’s Warning: Propaganda and Totalitarianism‘ – James Black in Bournbrook Magazine reminding us that sowing fear and panic is the age-old political strategy of would-be dictators
- ‘“Covid-fighting” drug is imperilled by politics‘ – James Berry writes for the Conservative Woman about the political obstacles to the widespread use of hydroxycholoquine
- ‘Fear Kills‘ – Brendan O’Niell, Editor of Spiked, with more evidence that the cure is worse than the disease
- ‘Oldest working tailor in UK Elwyn, 96, beats coronavirus‘ – Heart-warming story about Britain’s oldest-working tailer, Elwyn Hughes, who has recovered from COVID-19
- ‘The risks facing Premier League players are negligible – it is time to stop appeasing and play‘ – Oliver Brown, Chief Sports Feature Writer for the Telegraph, let’s namby pamby footballers know what he thinks of their behaviour
- ‘Police urge people not to walk in the road and say crossing paths with others will not transmit coronavirus‘ – Police are worried that some people are so terrified of catching the virus they’re walking into fast-moving oncoming traffic to avoid breaching the two-metre rule
- ‘No, I Won’t Clap “Our NHS“‘ – James Delingpole at his curmudgeonly best in Breitbart
On Monday, 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 help people find out what has opened in their area – all the more urgent in light of the latest forecast of the Federation of Small Businesses, which says that up to a third of small businesses in Britain may close as a result of the lockdown. But we need your help to build it, so we’ve created a form you can fill out to tell us about those small 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 brave folk who are doing their bit to get our country back on its feet.
Some more suggestions for theme songs from readers, with a heavy metal theme today: “What’s Another Year?” by Johnny Logan, “Wake Me Up When September Ends” by Green Day and “Don’t Box Me In” by Stan Ridgway and Stewart Copeland.
Thanks as always to those of you who made a donation in the last 24 hours to pay for the upkeep of this site. It’s a daunting task, as I say in my latest Spectator column. If you feel like donating, you can do so by clicking here. And if you want to flag up any stories or links I should include in tomorrow’s update, email me here.
If you want a laugh, this Kevin James video is very funny. Stay with it – you’ll get the point.
And finally, I participated in quite a high-level discussion on Tuesday courtesy of How the Light Gets In, a philosophy festival that takes place in Hay-on-Wye each spring, but which has gone virtual for this year. One of the other panelists was fellow sceptic Michael Levitt, Professor of Structural Biology at Stanford and winner of the 2013 Nobel Prize for Chemistry. These things are often quite adversarial but this one wasn’t. Worth a watch.
To join in with the discussion please make a donation to The Daily Sceptic.
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Thanks as ever Toby. A sane voice in an ocean of insanity. My tweet of the day appeared in a cricketing thread discussing England cricketer’s restarting training and ECB chief Ashley Giles stating the player’ training environments would be safervthan being in the supermarket. I’ve yet to decide whether this was a spoof!
“I certainly hope so. Going to Sainsbury’s is a bleeding death run. Everyone under 25 thinks Covid-19 does not apply to them and totally ignore the 2-metre rule. Then there are the old farts, who simply don’t care coz it. I literally have to shout at folk for invading my space.”
Common moan is how the old people don’t adhere to any of the new rules. Could it be that they have been around long enough to know when they’re being conned. The under 25s, skew from complete indifference to being utterly petrified. I haven’t encountered any that are actively engaged in the topic one way or the other though.
This is amazing.
“Go back inside, you’re killing old people!!”
“But…. I am an old person.”
“Well then you’re KILLING ME!!”
Funny how they suddenly care about all the old people they wished dead after referendum result.
I don’t engage in social distancing. Most people (nearly all actually) move away from me like frightened little sheep.
Yes! I find it quite worrying.
I used to step into the road out of consideration but, as I think the social distancing is an unnecessary farce, I now choose not to and if it bothers them, they can jump in front of passing traffic.
Hello Cheezilla. Exactly. If they think that jumping in front of a speeding car is safer than a fellow human being there’s no help for them.
God how I miss getting my space invaded.
The answer is to get a dog. I have a Beagle and he clearly doesn’t give a toss whether I’m carrying Covid or not.
Surprised no one has said dogs have got covid. Guess that just a rung down too far for the media, as if they haven’t stoop low enough
Greetings from Sunny Southern California,
The mayor of Los Angeles has extended the shut down through July.
Here’s a skeptical item about the unsustainability of lockdowns in a recent Foreign Affairs that endorses the Swedish model:
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/sweden/2020-05-12/swedens-coronavirus-strategy-will-soon-be-worlds?utm_medium=newsletters&utm_source=twofa&utm_campaign=Only%20Saving%20Lives%20Will%20Save%20Livelihoods&utm_content=20200515&utm_term=FA%20This%20Week%20-%20112017
No chance you guys can do a Wisconsin, Bob ?
Administrative memo Lessons from the 2020 Covid19 panic Implementing neo-nudging to preserve constructive and rational discussion of policy proposals Circulation: Dept heads, team leaders Date: 15th May 2030 [Usage note; reference to “nudging” was widely viewed as in very poor taste in the immediate aftermath of the chaos create by the panic policies implemented during 2020 and the economic collapse, famines and unrest that followed. The term was associated with government opinion manipulation policies widely blamed for encouraging the mass delusion. However, we consider enough time has now passed since the Coventry mass trials of the perpetrators and the subsequent exemplary (and, some have argued, excessively harsh) punishments handed down, for the term to be rehabilitated in this modified form.] Continuing the process of disseminating the results of analysis of the causative factors In the 2020 Panic and implementing procedures designed to protect against any recurrence, these guidelines set out policy discussion meeting management protocols for staff and advisory meetings, for immediate implementation. A major factor in the 2020 failure of governments and societies to protect rational discussion from disruption by immature sentimentality was identified as the failure to robustly shut down particularly damaging, irrational but emotionally manipulative assertions and… Read more »
A bit of light-hearted, politically incorrect science fiction….
Very good, Mark.
But I was waiting (hoping) for the SCHWACK ! at the end.
Actually there were s all through when I dashed it off, but I forgot the software would treat the as HTML and didn’t leave spaces, so they all disappeared. Duh!
Looks like > and < disappear even if you leave spaces. Huh! I'll try that again with square brackets:
Actually there were [slap]s all through when I dashed it off, but I forgot the software would treat the brackets as HTML and didn’t leave spaces, so they all disappeared. Duh!
i don’t care about the virus, i don’t care if i’ve had it, i don’t care if i haven’t, i don’t care if you’ve died from it, i don’t care if i die from it, i don’t care if you’re scared, i’m don’t care about the NHS, i don’t care about the community, i don’t care about the Beatles, i don’t care about dead presidents, i don’t care about Boris Johnston, i don’t care about my neighbours, i don’t care what the law says, i don’t care about masks, i don’t care about vaccinations, i don’t care about pollution, i don’t care about other countries, i don’t care about the council, i don’t care about the internet, i don’t care about Africa, i don’t care about polar bears, i don’t care about islam, i don’t care about christians, i don’t care about jews, i don’t care about far out religions practiced by Hollywood Superstars, i don’t care David Bowie is dead, i don’t care about global warming, i care about me, Yoko and me, and Great Britain.
Don’t your neighbours live in GB, Biker ?
yeah but i don’t care about them because they’re here with their three kids and their mother from Poland all of them on benefits using our schools and the piss poor NHS, they’re not British and their not welcome and i don’t care for paying for them when you consider my wife, my daughter and my self have a combined working life of 75 years and yet they come and sponge of me so No i don’t care about them.
Sorry, can’t agree with you there. You’re as furious as the rest of us here but are misdirecting your anger.
My parents were both from Poland, they arrived after WW2, now passed away. I was born here in England. Both my parents worked hard to give me a future, and I myself have worked my entire life as well, contributing to the government and economy. People just want freedom and opportunity.
Better directed at those who want to divide us and injected the population with fear i say
And no, I am no tree hugging hippy… I work in a more corporate world.
I care about pollution, and is polar bears went extinct it would be a shame.
Me too, I care about most things, and currently I really care that the strategy we are following is hurting all the people it purported to care about.
You should probably start caring about the internet, it has proven ratehr vital for us sceptics to share our views and kp each other sane. A censor free unsurveilled internet which is not buried under layers of advertising crap (so we’ve got quite a few things to fix) is vital to a civilised future. Wikipedia is a good project. Technical forums are very useful. Blogs are good fun to read. And where else are you going to find a wide enough range of products on sale to be able to buy some rare little special component necessary to fix your car/fridge/computer? Faecesbook on the other hand is not worth caring about.
Wow Toby! Where do you find the hours in the day? Amazing stuff, I dare say award-winning journalism. You and Simon Dolan are the reasons I still have hope the truth will come out eventually, and the lockdown will be ruled as both unlawful and critically, as causing far more deaths than the virus itself.
I have really had enough of this lockdown. I even designed my own t-shirt to wear in protest. It doesn’t hold back. Check it out here…
https://twitter.com/wewillbefree82/status/1261302261042622471?s=21
I’m also mulling ‘Human, Social, Not Distant’
Or
Humans are social
Not distant
The 19 million claim is almost certainly wrong. The Cambridge model used by the government that is being reported on today predicts 20% of Londoners infected https://www.standard.co.uk/news/health/londons-r-rate-now-lowest-in-country-as-city-records-24-new-coronavirus-cases-a-day-a4441216.html, which sounds about right and is the same as New York. It also chimes with the 10% infections in London back in mid-April that Patrick Vallance says preliminary antibody survey results show. It would be very surprising if more than 20% of London has had the virus, and that is the UK’s worst affected area. You are right to say that herd immunity has been reached though – the Liverpool model shows why that would be true.
Are you adjusting for how long it takes antibodies to appear (4 to 5 weeks) and for how rapidly the percentage immune grows after about 5%?
Current research suggests antibodies appear around 7 days after symptoms and given the now widely accepted 5-6 day incubation it means antibodies appear on average 12 days after infection. See the Swedish antibody survey https://www.scilifelab.se/news/new-study-confirms-that-10-percent-of-the-stockholm-population-has-antibodies-against-sars-cov-2/ and this study
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7184973/
Thanks. I was basing my figures off a professional-looking graph someone sent me but I don’t have a better reference than that. The picture that seems to be emerging is that this disease tops out at around 0.1% PFR in the worse affected places with an immunity level of perhaps only 30%, which will have been affected by the changes in behaviour. Based on what I said above about how halving your infectious time with something as simple as staying at home for a couple of days when you’re ill, and how this reduces the herd immunity threshold from 60% to 20%, I think we can explain the apparently mysterious result that the lockdowns don’t have much observable effect. As soon as R is below 1 it doesn’t make much difference how much it is below 1, because at that point you kill the growth. The lockdowns were “too” late in most places by which I mean by the time they started R was already reduced by partial population immunity. It then takes only very mild behaviour changes to get below 1. This is why Sweden has the same results as Italy. Maybe R was 0.8 in one place and… Read more »
The Sweden antibody survey I link to suggests 10% infection in Stockholm county at the end of March. That works out to be the peak of infection there suggesting the final antibody rate will be a bit more than double that as the curve is slower on the way down. If so that makes Stockholm higher than London or New York despite being less dense, suggesting you may be right about HIT being higher without lockdown. I’ll be really interested in what Belarus’s antibody rate looks like, where social distancing has been even less observed.
We’ll find out more about London when things are properly published, and also when testing has been done after the epidemic has settled down, where it’s less sensitive to estimates of how long it takes for antibodies to appear and you’re not having to predict final outcomes. But yes whatever it is at the peak it should be about double that at the end. I think the ONS are going to be doing regular testing, and other governments around the world will be as well, with big sample sizes. They’re also doing regular random PCR testing to get an idea of numbers currently infected and how it’s changing. The government’s policy of “Alert Level = R + Num Infected”, or more precisely, “Alert Level = Some vague unknown function of R and Num Infected” is actually encouragingly rational. If the ONS keep doing those surveys, they will have good data to estimate both of those variables (using the same simple method as the Manchester guys used to estimate “average daily infection rate”, but their data will be better). This will be the first time the policy is based on actual evidence not spooky speculation or modelling. The challenge for them… Read more »
Nicola Sturgeon said a classic – “we don’t know what the R number is but it is too high”. Not one journalist (haha) in the briefing even questioned her comment.
I’ve found more accurate Stockholm death data https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7184973/ and that puts peak deaths on 6 April so peak infections (on 21 March) come well before the 10% antibody survey relating to 31 March. This means Stockholm may come in below 20% antibodies. They’re doing another survey at the moment so we’ll see what that shows.
“The 19 million claim is almost certainly wrong.” Are you saying it’s too high?
Maybe too high for the antibodies test, but I don’t think too high for people who have been ‘exposed’ to the virus, or who have even ‘resisted’ the virus.
Yes too high for antibodies. Agree, too low for exposed probably.
Wow, Luke Johnson was great on QT, to judge from that Mirror summary and clip. Almost makes me think about reconsidering my longstanding decision to stop watching the BBC state indoctrination channel. Then I see the performance of Bruce and the straightforwardly mendacious references to Sweden by Devi Sridhar, and I think: nah, I’ll just rely on people like Toby to let me know if I miss anything.
I started watching and the same old tired nonsense of “tell that to the families” etc. That is such faux sincere bollocks. Millions of people die everyday, it’s human nature to effectively ignore it. Otherwise we’d be in a state of perpetual terror and grief. Which is basically where we are now I suppose.
Yes, it’s the dishonest sentimentality – fake emotion – that really burns.
I steeled myself to watch Question Time last night. Luke Johnson managed to get the important questions in, though they were unfortunately quickly eclipsed by the nauseating Tory self-congratulation of Stephen Barclay, the pointlessness of Bridget Phillipson’s comments and the semi-articulate ramblings of the seriously uninformed Mick Cash. I have to watch Devi Sridhar through gritted teeth. She (and her confederates) has a LOT to answer for.
Luke Johnson currently ranks as one of my heroes!
Well Done Holywell Village First School in Whitley Bay. Your proposed treating of small kids amount to child abuse. As you are well aware there is no evidence of children infecting others, but you prefer to believe that they are germ ridden and should be treated as such. Shame on you.
Tell you what, this shit is really brining home how much most teachers actually hate children.
See my post of a few minutes ago, which is a link to a site highlighting what a Quebec school is mandating for their pupils. It’s scary, dystopian stuff.
You have to understand that teachers believe that the perfect school should be modelled on the Nightingale hospitals – i.e. without any users!
I honestly think they’re so busy being scared for their lives that they’ve forgotten about the children.
Those rules can’t possibly have been devised by someone who works with reception kids.
Plus, it is NOT children’s job to make adults feel safe, it is adults’ job to keep children safe. Anything else is child abuse.
Hello BecJT. This typifies the utter hypocrisy of those people who support the lockdown because “you can’t put a price on human life”. when they are only concerned about their own. These people are prepared to traumatise defenceless kids to protect themselves. They make me vomit.
‘
Having them sit in chalk squares is also abuse. Reminds me of some very weird, distressing Play(s) for Today from the sixties and seventies. (Showing my age. )
These people should be barred from the teaching profession for life. Utter monsters.
Had to be a spoof surely? As much as the primitive sheep were manipulated into Fear, be equally watchful of the righteously pissed off (us) being manipulated down the slope.
Don’t put anything past these MSM creatures once they know which side their bread should be buttered.
Wow!!! Is that post from Holywell Village First School in Whitley Bay for real or a spoof?
Reading this is depressing – its tantamount to child abuse and a return to the bad old days of orphanages and schools that Charles Dickens described so vividly in novels like Oliver Twist. In addition this regime of excessive cleanliness and OCD disinfecting will ensure that children will have even weaker immune systems and catch every cold and bug going.
Just let them be kids for God’s sake. As that washing powder advert said it best – “dirt is good”
Just to remind people that here in Sweden schools have stayed open, and there have not been mass epidemics or deaths in schools. To the best of my knowledge (from newspaper reports & TV) only ONE schoolchild has died – a child who already had leukaemia…
It appears to be for real. The exact wording of the toilet section is:
‘If they fall over or have a toileting accident they will be encouraged to change themselves and clean their scrape or cut. We have sourced PPE … which is for use only for staff protection should a child vomit, not for trips, falls or scrapes . If it is not possible for the child to clean themselves in the event of an accident the parent will be called to collect them so they can do that at home’ The document is signed by the current headteacher of the school. Worth remembering these provisions all apply to Reception and Year 1 children – that’ll leave them with some enduring memories of their first experiences of school.
However, on the plus side it would seem that thanks to a fusillade of negative comments from parents the original post has now been removed.
Have the Government nothing to say about these inhuman proposals. The facts taht children don’t get infected nor infect adults should be rammed down those people’s miserable throats. They should be told in no uncertain terms that if they impose this monstrous plan, they’ll be out of a job and baaned from teaching. And if they still don’t get the message, a prosecution for child abuse will be brought. If anybody refuses to do the job they’re paid for to avoid a nonexistent threat they should be immediately removed.
Of course children infect adults – or do you imagine the virus has some magic way of interrogating its new host about their age before it activates itself?
Hope the parents took screenshots. The Headteacher who signed this odious document should already be seeking alternative employment.
It certainly passes the sniff test of truth in this paranoid society overrun with hysterical tabbard-wearing Karens.
I listened to this week’s Sounding Board podcast, one of the guys on there was talking about what his kid’s school is proposing, and it’s very very similar.
James Delingpole’s article (link above) ‘why I won’t clap for the NHS’ is brilliant
Sorry, where is the link – would really like to read that piece.
In Toby’s main newsletter (today’s update). Not in the comments.
https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2020/05/14/delingpole-no-i-wont-clap-our-nhs/
It is. James is having a good war, to the extent that he’s almost made up for being so bad on Boris over the last year. Some of us always knew BoJo would be a useless invertebrate liberal. We just liked that he’s funny. Now he isn’t even that.
I foolishly voted for Johnson and the Conservatives at the election because I was worried about Corbyn.
I thought Corbyn would drive the country off the cliff, crash the economy, escalate the national debt, create an overbearing state, crush civil liberties and care for nothing except the sacred NHS. Johnson did all those things to a far greater degree than I ever thought possible under Corbyn.
Ok, I know it’s crap but this is and always was a world political game, not just UK on its own. What would cuddly corbyn or starmer have done? We would be in an even stricter lockdown, for even longer.. Labour don’t have a leg to stand on here
Exhibit for expected behaviour before backing down , one N Sturgeon
This lockdown was going to happen regardless, even if no one died. Countries where there have been zero deaths have had lockdowns in fact. Something else has driven all this.
The crisis of the nation state legitimacy in the face of debt.
Very funny “Clap for the NHS” spoof by comedian Will Hislop
https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/comedy/news/will-hislop-clap-for-carers-nhs-parody-video-lockdown-a9506541.html
I apologise if it has been posted already.
Here in France they passed a law a few years ago prohibiting women from wearing the niqab (the face covering with only the eyes showing) in the street. You could be fined for covering up your face like that. On the way back from my walk today I passed an Algerian woman in head scarf and covid face mask. As far as I can see, headscarf plus face mask equals niqab. All you could see were her eyes. Yet soon they might start fining us for not covering up our faces. I was rather pleased with myself for spotting the irony – there aren’t many bright spots in my day at the moment.
contradiction. Imagine how crime in certain areas will increase, nobody would blink when they see masked people
This is why I think wearing a balaclava would be a good leveller. Are they gonna fine me for NOT looking like a criminal?
Don’t forget to accessorize with a chainsaw
Hello Farinances. I read your comment about wearing balcalvas this afternoon and I still laugh when I think about it. I’m seriously thinking about doing it.
What You Need to Know Before & After Vaccination – Ask 8 questions. Under the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act of 1986 [USA], nearly $3.6 billion has been awarded to children and adults for whom the risks of vaccine injury were 100%. Vaccines are pharmaceutical products that carry risks, which can be greater for some than others. NVIC encourages you to become fully informed about the risks and complications of diseases and vaccines and speak with one or more trusted health care professionals before making a vaccination decision. 1. Am I or my child sick right now? 2. Have I or my child had a bad reaction to a vaccination before? 3. Do I or my child have a personal or family history of vaccine reactions, neurological disorders, severe allergies or immune system problems? 4. Do I know the disease and vaccine risks for myself or my child? 5. Do I have full information about the vaccine’s side effects? 6. Do I know how to identify and report a vaccine reaction? 7. Do I know I need to keep a written record, including the vaccine manufacturer’s name and lot number, for all vaccinations? 8. Do I know I have the… Read more »
From the German summary: “The collateral damage is meanwhile greater than any detectable benefits of the measures. The collateral damage is now gigantic. Much will become evident only later or in the more distant future.
The resilience of critical infrastructure, the veins and arteries of modern societies, is no longer a given. Our society is now vulnerable, for example, if there were a real pandemic.”
Sobering stuff and I’m sure it applies to the UK too.
I did wonder whether our painfully politically correct progressive education establishment would follow Quebec down the rabbit hole, and sure enough, it seems that they have, going by the report from Toby. Here’s a link to an article that just five years ago would have been thought to be something out of a dystopian science fiction novel: https://www.theorganicprepper.com/schools-after-covid-prison-camps/ What Will Schools Look Like After COVID? Prison Camps. They’ll Look Like Prison Camps. “Schools in Quebec, Canada are reopening on May 19th and one school released its guidelines. This list was submitted by a parent to the Facebook page, Kate for Education. The school was not named for the privacy of the parent. (All emphasis is mine.) Now if you’re saying to yourself, “This is in Canada. There’s no way this nonsense will happen here in America,” I urge you to remember that the lockdown restrictions in Canada are far less stringent than those in the United States. Look around at the ridiculous rules we already have like stores choosing what items are essential for us to buy. Then tell me “It can’t happen here.” Here are those reopening guidelines. To minimize movement, we forecast assigning students to classes nearest the… Read more »
..and yet schools in Sweden have remained open, but there have been no reports of hoards of dead children or their relatives.. And do remember that Sweden has quite a lot of children of foreign-born parents, living in multi-generational households..
What a depressing list of regulations. The authors of these dictats have a responsibility to provide evidence to justify them.
Yet only evidence I’ve seen so far regarding children and COVID-19 is that risks are negligible. Children are far more at risk of serious illness due to a road accident travelling to the school.
To frighten children, withdraw their education and then produce these pedantic regulations they must obey is a shameful, incompetent and damaging.
This is a huge failure. It must never be forgotten.
“When weather permits, recess breaks will be held outdoors and will entail of walking outside safely distanced from one another in a prearranged pattern;”
Ar “recess breaks” what used to be called PLAYTIME?
Scary stuff!!!
Insanity still escalating exponentially in states like California. The rulers there say a cure needs to be found before the serfs can expect to be ‘allowed’ to get back to normal.
The state of Georgia re-opened 3 weeks ago though. Guess what? No impact!
More here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QIf2audbX0Q
Thank heavens for Tucker Carlson.
AN other lockdown sceptic: Indeed. Tucker Carlson Tonight is the only show I watch.
I thinks it was someone on Tucker’s show that said ‘the virus goes when Trump goes’…definitely a political pandemic over there…
I picked up a twitter link on yesterday’s thread which led me to this early pre-print draft of a report (‘accepted’ 07 May 2020): ‘Importantly, we detected SARS-CoV-2−reactive CD4+ T cells in ~40-60% of unexposed individuals, suggesting cross-reactive T cell recognition between circulating ‘common cold’ coronaviruses and SARS-CoV-2.’ https://www.cell.com/cell/pdf/S0092-8674(20)30610-3.pdf Why is this important? ‘Cross-reactive immunity to influenza strains has been modeled to be a critical influencer of susceptibility to newly emerging, potentially pandemic, influenza strains (Gostic et al., 2016). Given the severity of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, it has been modeled that any degree of crossprotective coronavirus immunity in the population could have a very substantial impact on the overall course of the pandemic, and the dynamics of the epidemiology for years to come (Kissler et al., 2020).’ (Ref. above) So rough order of magnitude 50% of Britain already has immunity to Covid 19 from other common cold coronaviruses. How completely counterintuitive that circulating common cold coronaviruses could potentially have cross reactive immunity with another circulating coronavirus with mortality closely corresponding to common cold mortality by age group……..or not really, if Covid 19 is another common cold coronavirus…. Oh! Didn’t somebody already say that is what Covid 19 is…..on 06… Read more »
An observation about R0 and immunity thresholds that I think is worth making: Most data about the virus (and what models assume) indicate that you are infectious for about 4 days. This means that if you “self-isolate” for only 2 of them (or take a couple of days off work because you’re feeling ill as we used to call it) you halve R0. If R0 was 2.5 under normal circumstances, just those two days off would take it to 1.25 and reduce the population immunity threshold from 60% to only 20%. This would more than halve the total number of deaths in the population, and be more than enough to suppress the virus even under some of the more pessimistic estimates of current immunity levels going around. Never mind two weeks of “self-quarantining”, if you only manage to stay at home for a couple of days, the effect is profound. This is literally all we need in the “new” normal. I always take a day or two off work when I have a virus anyway. I find I feel a bit ill and don’t much want to work anyway. It’s not a great cost to the economy or to liberty… Read more »
EXACTLY!!
Peoole just er…. need to stay at home if they’re ill until they feel better!
LOL. Why does common sense feel so revolutionary now
“in the empire of lies, truth is treason“
Would it be correct to place pro-lockdowners into 2 broad groups: a) those furloughed and think they have a job to eventually return to, enjoying being paid 80% for nothing, privately punching the air when death numbers and the R rate rises but publicly make out they are deeply compassionate and abuse anyone who dares question the context or validity of SAGE and Government statistics, and b) uncritical, gullible, panic-consumed “I’m terrrrrified!” cowerers, those of whom, when they do venture outdoors, look like they are going to an astronomy themed fancy dress party as Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin off on an Apollo mission.
Yes, I think that analysis is spot on.
Spot on
You’re giving a lot of people too much credit. Unfortunately they really are thick enough to believe we are on the brink of the apocalypse and this lockdown strategy is the only way to avoid it,
People I know on furlough would far rather be working
To be fair a lot of how people respond depends on the information they’ve received and also on their underlying inclinations.
Those naturally given to a bit of hypochondria worry about the virus which has a low chance of hurting them. But some of us (including myself at times), more predisposed to anxiety about society and government overreach, worry about things like compulsory tracking and vaccination. Rationally these things have an equally low chance of happening. So we aren’t that different, we just get vexed about different things, and it’s important to see both sides.
There’s also nothing wrong with a bit of ranting. I’m just saying don’t take it too seriously.
But anyone, whatever they think about this virus, should be able to see that lockdowns are a catastrophically bad reaction to the problem.
I wouldn’t be so sure about the tracking being low chance y’know…, Forget the vaccine crap, even if there was one, that feels like a stalling tactic at moment. Check your phone location settings and there’s a rather interesting option on there to do with Bluetooth (Android). Already.
We are in the world of big data and surveillance. Don’t put it past any of them
Agree smartphones are already a bit worrying. But nobody’s forcing us to carry them. If they cross that line I’ll join you out in the street burning things!
Well, I don’t think you can, realistically. After all I am replying to this on my smartphone… Otherwise, I would be indoors which is where you don’t want to be. Catch 22
There’s a single goal being played out here for sure, but I reckon there are 2 paths to it at least
Stay alert and follow the money I say.
And… Another coincidence? During lockdown, I see all the local lampposts have been replaced with energy efficient ones else I am dreaming and they weren’t there before or didn’t notice how quickly it happened.
Easy to get paranoid these days…;)
Yes but if you voluntary self-isolate or self-quarantine you will not qualify for the compensation from your local authority as stated in the Public Health (Control of Disease) Act 1984. Under this act there are quite a few hoops the doctors, the local authority and a Justice of the Peace have to go through to isolate or quarantine you as an individual including you have the exact illness specified in the Statutory Instrument the Coronavirus Act 2020 but the test does not exist – this legislation is misnamed, it is not an act of parliament). Premises also have to be closed individually after similar hoops have gone through and compensation is also payable. In the legislation: In the Public Health (Control of Disease) Act 1984 it states in Section 20: Stopping of work to prevent spread of disease (1)With a view to preventing the spread of— (a)a notifiable disease, or (b)a disease to which subsection (1) of section 23 of the [1955 c. 16 (4 & 5 Eliz. 2).] Food and Drugs Act 1955 applies,the proper officer of the local authority for any district may by notice in writing request any person to discontinue Ms work. (2)The local authority shall… Read more »
But R is an empirical figure calculated after it was understood by many that the virus is infectious.
People were washing hands, avoiding hand-shakes and staying home when ill long before the lockdown began. Yet R was above 2 right up until the start of the lockdown.
“People should stop walking in the road to avoid fellow pedestrians, police have said, adding that “momentarily crossing paths with someone” will not give you coronavirus.”
Hooray! We need this trumpeting from the rooftops. Let’s hope the MSM start to point this out regularly till it eventually sinks in.
Yes – I got a very dirty (and completely terrified) look from a lady who was weeding at the end of her drive as I walked past yesterday without stepping into the road.
TFL congestion charge rises to £15 from £11.50 next month,a 30% increase.Also now active from 7am until 10pm 7 days a week.A sign of things to come methinks.
Someone needs to tell those in power about the goose that laid golden eggs!
Oh yes….
I had a response from my MP today. It seems I must “bear in mind” that most of his constituents want more lockdowns, because they worry they may die of a terrible plague.
“Yes we know we’ve been governing in a state of blind panic, but the essence of leadership is to terrify the people, work how the people feel, and then to follow them”
Mine still hasn’t replied in two weeks.
Total silence from mine and I’ve been emailing every day.
So this is why people don’t vote.
There was also a copy-paste of a summary of the government’s 5 criteria for easing the lockdown with links to government webpages, to reassure me that yes indeed, they do know what they’re doing, and I ought not to worry about it.
That’s a very crafty response… It is telling you to do what you think is right
Bajak and Howe are clearly going through Denial Phase of 5 Stages of Grief model. Just as MSM went through it right after Brexit or Trump’s victory. The joke ultimately will be on them because science is on our side – or rather we’ve been on science’s side from the beginning. In a year they’ll all have to eat their words.
Note also that more and more powerful entrepreneurs and millionaires are stepping up as skeptics too. They’d lost gargantuan amounts of money and they know it was for nothing.
I admire your optimism but they’ll just double down like they are now and we’ll forever be known as mad conspiracy theories by people living in a world inexorably changed for the worse.
Still, mustn’t grumble ! 🙂
That’s the spirit!
DIARY OF A COVIDIOT Friday May 16th My trip to B&Q was significantly enhanced by the new one way traffic system and inevitable 2 meter floor tape as well as the unenthusiastic and fat store guards intimidatingly masked and grunting where and when I can move. Whilst there a woman almost careened into a stack of paint cans while scowling at me for daring to go the wrong direction down a 4 meter wide isle for an item I had to restock. Of course I ignored the instruction on the wall “Please do not touch or pick up items unless you are going to purchase them.” I suppose it’s a bit like the ‘you broke it’s you buy it rule, only during the New Normal. Inevitably I saw a police car put his lights on to pull over a van driver INSIDE the B&Q parking lot. Doubtless checking to see if he had a real reason to be there. Thankfully I was pleasantly surprised to meet a stranger who had brought her adorable twin 1.5 year olds to play in the park and didn’t seem in the least concerned about getting close to me, my wife or our dog, happily… Read more »
Yeah, B&Q is really something isn’t it? The Karens working in ours are like the trolley-dollies just after 9/11 – they imagine they’re the thin blue line between you and certain death, and they want everyone to know it.
I went to click and collect a bag of coach bolts. They forced me to use a trolley, so they could do contact-free fulfilment, because they’d run out of baskets. Naturally I dumped the thing as soon as I was out of sight of Karen3072-B.
Is it SAGE advising on these rules?
Perhaps they have decided that houseviewings are more dangerous than tradesmen visiting a property. I had someone round today to quote for repairing windows. He said his trade association advised he respect all social distancing rules(/laws) but he was otherwise free to visit properties.
By the way, if I wrote a dystopian novel, I would think “SAGE” would be the perfect name for an organisation who represent “The Science”, The single truth, the light of the world, by which all things are illuminated and whose advise is final and automatically law.
I keep trying to think of a joke about SAGE and stuffing, but it won’t quite come …
Ferguson know all about the latter, that’s why he had to resign…
Ferguson was pushed because he was undermining the credibility of this whole operation. A computer modeller should never be as famous as he had become.
We’ve certainly been stuffed.
My friend had an appointment for BT engineers to fix her line. She was warned not to be alarmed because they would come wearing the near equivalent of hazmat suits. Unfortunately they fixed it outside, so she missed all the drama.
Now I know I’ve gone mad. Johnny Logan – heavy metal! 🙂
“Viewing protocol”. It’s comical.
So you get chucked out for standing too close to a wall or using a door handle?
I’m really unclear what the distinction between government advice and the law is.
It seems to be very blurry. If the government advises something, all organisations and people seem to follow as a legal text.
That’s easy. The law is considered for a time, then written down. The government make up the guidelines on the hoof, to answer journalists quesitons.
Sadly with an 80 seat majority that’s pretty much how lawmaking works as well. Somebody was talking or petitioning about whether we needed a constitution the other day.
All this is going to be torture for the millions of people who will be trying to get new jobs in this environment. Having to pay lip service through gritted teeth to all the BS that got them sacked in the first place is going to cause its own epidemic of apoplectic rage.
In a police state law enforcers take their orders directly from government ministers. There is no debate there is no discussion.
In other words government advice becomes law and all organisations follow it without question.
Anything that doesn’t kill us, makes us stronger. 🙂
It only makes us stronger AFTER we’ve had the experience of throwing it off and telling the hi-vis Hitlers where to put the more ludicrous of their “guidelines”.
You were very good on the IAI debate, Toby. I found Anne Johnson a bit infuriating (they all were to some extent) because she could only keep saying “It’s complicated” and seemed incapable of engaging with higher *ideas*. The mention of tens of millions of people starving versus the number of thousands that might die from the virus didn’t seem to register. No hint of any worry about what is going to happen to the global economy. No recognition that life for the entire world has been transformed into the real dystopian deal over a problem that she didn’t even deny was pretty much on the same scale as flu – and something she is complicit in, even if just through her passivity over the whole issue. But the guy asking the questions was good. The comparison between a flu-like illness (even if it was ten times worse than actual flu) and shutting down the entire economy is such a huge disparity, and such a huge idea, that it should animate anyone who considers it. It should not be dismissed as the result of “uncertainty” or “panic” – the validity of such excuses has long since past – but should… Read more »
Agree Toby made an excellent argument regarding the Lockdown cause. Interesting that Anne Johnson should finish by saying we will look back and decide the virus just ran its course and that some of the measures ‘may’ have been useful here and there. Looks as if she agrees with LS!
Agreed… I’m very glad Toby is doing all that he is.
Agreed! It was a great watch and Toby did the sceptics proud.
… nce to see if he has seen it there
Sorry – comment got distorted. I was saying – loved the trousers/Tube photo, which would normally be a natural for mainstream media to pick up – wonder if any are brave enough. Ditto the spooky North Korean image of the French primary schoolchildren in their chalk squares the other day, which I’ve sent to my brother in France.
This is quite handy when discussing, five minutes of Chris Whitty telling you what not to do in a pandemic (from 2018) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBiGk4ORjhQ&t=182s