The Express leads with the fact that 15 million day-trippers are expected to hit the road this weekend, taking advantage of the easing of restrictions. Unfortunately, they may not be greeted with open arms when they reach their destinations. Council executives, tourism boards and national park bodies have warned off members of the public who might want to take advantage of the good weather and fresh air. Despite overwhelming evidence that the risk of transmission in the open air is practically zero and that sunlight is vital in helping the body resist infection, quangocrats and town hall Sir Humphries are pulling up the drawbridge.
The leader of Cornwall Council issued a proclamation: “People shouldn’t be coming to Cornwall on holiday and that it’s totally inappropriate. The minor changes in policy that happened this week don’t change that and we’re not open for tourism.” The Chief Executive of Welcome to Yorkshire has taken a similar line. He told the Times: “People also need to understand that not all services would be open as usual, including public conveniences, pubs, restaurants and accommodation so it won’t be the usual visitor experience. If you’re travelling more than 10-15 miles is it really necessary? We’d say, ‘Dream about it, explore later.'” Hard to believe his job is to persuade people to visit Yorkshire.
You might have better luck in the South Downs National Park. Its representative says visitors are welcome provided they follow social-distancing guidance – which shouldn’t be too hard, given that it covers almost 630 square miles of Sussex and Hampshire.
A reader tells me he took his family to the beach yesterday in Hunstanton, Norfolk, having been reassured by his council that beaches have reopened. But when they arrived, they were confronted with this sight:
Presumably, the boys in blue were there to make sure no one comes within two metres of each other. Baywatch, Covid-style.
The Times, Guardian and BBC this morning all led with the news that academies and independent schools will definitely reopen on June 1st – though only for the “priority” year groups of Reception, Years 1 and Year 6. Anne Longfield, the Children’s Commissioner for England, says the plan is “sensible” and pointed out the “overwhelming” evidence that prolonged periods out of education are damaging, particularly for vulnerable and disadvantaged children.
Teaching unions, however, have instructed their members not to “engage”– and, as Juliet Samuel says in the Telegraph, they should be ashamed of thsemselves. They were given some succour by Dr Chaand Nagpaul, Chairman of the BMA Council, who told the Telegraph: “Until we have got case numbers much lower, we should not consider reopening schools.” Why, given that children are not themselves vulnerable to COVID-19 and there’s little evidence that they can infect others? Liverpool City Council says its schools won’t reopen until June 15th, and then only for Year 6.
The Chief Executives of some of the country’s largest academy chains – Reach 2, Oasis, GEP and Harris – say they will reopen their schools on time. Roughly 25% of English primary school pupils attend academies, over which local authorities have no control. Christopher King, head of the Independent Association of Prep Schools, which comprises 670 schools, says he expects all of them to reopen for priority groups on June 1st, in line with the Government’s plan.
I’ve come across lots of anecdotal evidence that mental health has taken a battering since the lockdown began, most often due to job losses, isolation, bereavement and substance abuse. Now, the Royal College of Psychiatrists (RCP) has reinforced this with evidence from its latest survey of 1,369 practitioners, carried out between May 1st and 6th. Its conclusion is that those with no previous history of mental illnesses are becoming unwell in alarming numbers.
According to the Guardian, four out of 10 psychiatrists say they have seen an increase in the number of people urgently requiring emergency care for mental health. Particularly prevalent are 18-25 year-old men with no previous history of mental illness. Participants in the survey reported “patients having severe psychotic symptoms which incorporate Covid-related themes” and that “many of our patients have deteriorated or developed mental disorders as a direct result of the coronavirus disruption, for example social isolation, increased stress [or that they have] run out of meds”.
Dr Kate Lovett, the RCP’s Dean, told the Guardian: “Of the people I am seeing, many are extremely unwell with symptoms of severe mental illness: serious changes in their moods, belief system and hallucinations. Life events associated with COVID-19 have triggered this or led to a relapse for almost all of them. Relationships are now all feeling lockdown pressures. Routines have disappeared.”
A member of Simon Dolan’s legal team has sent me this chart, showing how the the death toll from coronavirus stacks up against other viruses. Helps to put things in perspective. And worth nothing that during none of these previous pandemics did governments react by locking down entire populations:
I linked to a 2007 story in the New Scientist yesterday about how the foot and mouth epidemic was caused by a leak from a rusty pipe at one of the Government’s scientific research labs in Pirbright, Surrey and said it made the theory that SARS-CoV-2 had escaped form the Wuhan Institute of Virology more plausible. Today, an architect has got in touch to say he thinks that’s a plausible hypothesis, too:
A few years back, as an architect, I became involved with the then Health Protection Agency (HPA) and Centre For Emergency Preparedness and Response (CEPR) operations on their Porton Down site, adjacent to the MOD’s DsTL operation.
The reason I became involved was a mooted £600 million refurbishment of their rotting accommodation. They had just spent £17 million on rebuilding their drainage to avoid a repeat of the MASSIVELY embarrassing Pirbright event.
There is some interesting footage on YouTube regarding the genesis of the Wuhan lab, where the Chinese typically stole a French Cat IV containment lab design and built it out themselves. I would not be at all surprised if the drainage design at Wuhan is not fit for purpose, as the drainage designs would not have been sufficiently developed at that point in the procurement process for the Chinese to steal them. Equally, the functioning of the physical lab is very dependent on good practice of its scientists, which is also reported as being lamentable at Wuhan.
In short, I strongly suspect the pandemic is due to very embarrassing cock up at the Wuhan lab. Dictators a la Chairman Xi do not like to be embarrassed, so don’t expect this to ever be disclosed. My suspicion is intelligence agencies had wind of COVID-19’s origin in a Wuhan lab, and were consequently more fearful of it than they might have been of a coronavirus without a relationship to a biowarfare research establishment, and this fear may have influenced the massive overreaction of global responses.
Yesterday, I mentioned that a financial journalist had 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 how severe their lockdowns are. Using this information, he created a spreadsheet that included the data for deaths per million in each country from Our World in Data and the IMF’s estimate of what the deficit in each country is likely to be and the fall in GDP per capita. He concluded, not surprisingly, that there was no statistical correlation between the severity of the lockdown and the number of infections and deaths – no signal in the noise – but quite a strong correlation between the severity of the lockdown and the economic trouble each country is in.
Today, a reader gets in touch to say that he’s also done a similar piece of work using the Blavatnik tool, looking at infections and deaths. Peter Forsythe, a Hong Kong resident, has blogged about his findings and linked to his spreadsheet. As he says, if lockdowns are effective you would expect to see a correlation between the stringency of the lockdown and the number of cases or deaths per million. But there isn’t one. His conclusion:
So, there is – at least accusing to the figures we have so far – no correlation between the strength of the lockdown and the number of cases and deaths. This could change, and I’ll keep an eye on it.
Incidentally, my financial journalist friend has been back in touch today to flag a piece of virtue-signalling nonsense in Bloomberg‘s ‘Evening Briefing’ yesterday. “The financial cost of coronavirus crisis could reach $8.8 trillion, but the higher cost – the one in lives – already stands at 306,000,” it says. As my friend points out, if you divide $8.8 trillion by 306,000 (the total number of Covid deaths so far) you get $24.4 million. So the author of Bloomberg’s ‘Evening Briefing’ believes each of those lives is worth $24.4 million? Quite generous, when you factor in that the median age of those who’ve died of the virus in most countries is about 80, with the vast majority having underlying health conditions. There’s another consideration too, which is the lives that are likely to be lost as a result of the global economic recession that’s heading towards us like a tsunami. As my friend points out:
The loss of $8.8 trillion in global output – of which a large amount must be due to the self-inflicted lockdowns – will inevitably lead to the loss of a great many lives in future, especially in poor countries like India and South Africa.
Do lives lost in the future not matter to Bloomberg’s virtue-signallers?
A reader has some scuttlebutt on why hospitals are half empty:
I had an interesting conversation with a friend of mine yesterday who is a nurse at a hospital in Suffolk. She said the Covid ward (once a surgical ward) is now empty. However, because of the rules on social distancing, only three bays out of six are allowed to be occupied on all other wards, effectively reducing the capacity of the hospital by half. I asked why do they not test all incoming patients. She said the results take five days to come back so they can only test patients who have a planned admission but cannot test those who are admitted as an emergency admissions. Just hope I don’t get ill or have an accident…
We’ve seen very few examples of bold political leadership in this crisis. But here’s one you may not be aware of: President John Magufuli of Tanzania. He’s a lockdown sceptic and when a government advisor instructed him to over-react to the crisis – because of “the science” – he did what Boris should have done to Professor Niel Ferguson and sacked him. Africa News has the story, but here are the highlights:
There has been a top and controversial sacking in Tanzania. Head of the country’s national health laboratory in charge of coronavirus testing was suspended, a day after President John Magufuli questioned the accuracy of the tests.
On Sunday President Magufuli, who has consistently downplayed the effect of the virus, shocked the world when he said animals, fruits and vehicle oil had been secretly tested at the laboratory. Now, take a look at some of the specific things he said had been tested. A papaya, a quail and a goat. All of them he says had been found to be positive for COVID-19.
Magufuli cast doubt on the credibility of laboratory equipment and technicians and questioned official data on the pandemic. He called for an investigation into what he suspected to be a “dirty game” in the laboratory. Where the kits had been imported from though, he would not say. So, the lab director here Nyambura Moremi has been fired. And a 10-person committee has been formed to investigate the laboratory’s operations, including its process of collecting and testing samples. Presently, that is, as of May 5th, Tanzania has about 480 Covid-19 cases including 16 deaths.
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:
- ‘The moral case for a blanket lockdown is fading fast‘ – Former Conservative MP Douglas Carswell argues that the “moral justification for keeping people locked up in their homes has started to fray”
- ‘Was lockdown the right way to go?‘ – Derry councillor and retired doctor Anne McCloskey with another great piece for Derry Now
- ‘As Europe emerges from lockdown, the question hangs: was Sweden right?‘ – Simon Jenkins asks a question in the Guardian to which we all know the answer
- ‘Top down lies‘ – Richard North on EUReferendum on the cause of the care home scandal, i.e. official guidance instructing hospitals to discharge elderly patients with COVID-19 back into care homes
- ‘Lockdown is showing us the misery that Net Zero 2050 will demand‘ – Charles Moore points out that climate change alarmists are rubbing their hands in anticipation of the privations the public appears willing to endure to fend off danger. All they need do is wildly exaggerate the risk of not doing exactly what they tell us
- ‘Is it finally dawning on the nation that lockdown will make them poorer?‘ – Matthew Lynn in the Telegraph thinks the penny may be dropping for the British public
- ‘The Lockdown Skeptic They Couldn’t Silence‘ – Good piece in the Wall St Journal about Aaron Ginn, a lockdown sceptic who’s been targeted for censorship by social media companies, but whose influence continues to grow
- ‘Could Jeff Bezos become the world’s first trillionaire?‘ – The Chief Executive of Amazon has seen his fortune increase by more than $20 billion since the beginning of the year
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. But we need your help to build it, so we’ve created a form you can fill out to tell us about those businesses that have reopened near you. 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.
Thanks as always to those of you who made a donation in the last 24 hours to pay for the upkeep of this site. A journalist called David Oldroyd-Bolt helped me with today’s update and will be lending a hand in future. I’d like to pay him something, so 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.
Bit shorter than usual today – my wife Caroline is getting a bit cross that I’m spending so much time doing this so we’re off to Richmond this afternoon for a walk by the river. The Covid hit parade will be back tomorrow.
I’ll leave you with this picture of an innovative social distancing measure instroduced by the owner of a German cafe: hats with pool noodles on them.
To join in with the discussion please make a donation to The Daily Sceptic.
Profanity and abuse will be removed and may lead to a permanent ban.
‘ So the author of Bloomberg’s ‘Evening Briefing’ believes each of those lives is worth $24.4 million?’
The actuarial value of a life is I think $8m, although FDA uses $6m. Generally speaking if it costs more to do something than the value of doing it – don’t do it.
Also the value actually applied in day to day healthcare decison-making in the UK by NICE (National Institute for Health and Care Excellence) is around £30k (~$36k) per year of decent quality life saved (see for instance https://drmalcolmkendrick.org/2020/03/29/a-health-economic-perspective-on-covid-19/ ).
So those covid victims would have to have had a remaining life expectancy of 677 years each for the spending to pass UK healthcare spending criteria.
Local Nazi Councillors out in force I see. Hopefully when common sense prevails and we’re over the lie people won’t visit Devon, Cornwall and the other resorts halting visitors and they will realise that they will have no income.
Sadly I have to agree (even though I have a business in Cornwall and have been outraged at the response from tourist boards, RNLI, Coastguard etc etc). Many business owners think the same but the furloughed (unemployed) have yet to wake up to the lack of opportunity facing them and their children. I have made a note to never again support those businesses and organisations that have joined in the fear chorus.
It will be interesting to find out how many businesses have closed or are on the verge of closing down because I get the feeling that once the unemployment rate skyrockets these local authorities, tourist boards and even locals might be forced to change their tune.
And of course there’s also the likelihood that their young will have to move elsewhere to find work meaning that these areas will be depopulated.
They’ll be begging people to visit when it suits them.
Exactly. Especially as when they realise that their economies have crumbled and young people are leaving in droves because all the jobs and career and business prospects have dried up.
Let’s hope that people remember the attitude of these councils, tourist boards and national parks when they’re crying out for our money in the future.
Hello Cody. Started to compile a list of businesses where I live that demand masks as a requirement to go into them. There is currently no regulations or guidelines obliging them to do so. I won’t forget those businesses who treat their customers like livestock. It just boggles the mind that businesses that have been forcibly shut for 2 months are going out of their way to alienate potential customers.
On the other hand, if the majority of their potential customers are teriffied of venturing outside due to the official propaganda, you can hardly blame the businesses for setting up a pretense that it’s a safe zone. Don’t forget, we lockdown sceptics are, unfortunately, still in the minority.
Hello Cheezilla. I take your point and it did occur to me that they are trying to créate a safe space for the covid walking dead. My problem with it is that they are contributing to this continuing state of fear. I’ve lost all patience with these people and those who pander to them.
I’m afraid you’re right. They can’t win!
Unfortunately they cannot see past the fear instilled into them by mass media and the “experts” who’s views they’re allowed to read in such publications
Regardless of their Royston Vaseyism and keep things local, these idiots don’t have any legal or ethical remit to force visitors away. Intend to go to Weymouth very soon, and ko one can, by decree of the government, stop me. I’m going to get some fish and chips if possible and eat them on the harbour wall. I’m going to go up by Nothe fort at my leisure, then I’m going to sit on the beach, and weather permitting, go for a paddle. Anyone who says otherwise, can do one.
Who the hell do these people think they are? No doubt there’ll be attempted intimidation, a police presence, maybe they’ll chuck rocks at me or shout murderer. Either way, I intend to make a day of it, and blissfully smile and give them the finger.
If you’re going for the day, the public loos are closed, so remember to take a bottle with you ……
How can we recognise each other, us lockdown sceptics, when out and about?
Is there a special app to locate a nearby sceptic, perhaps?
I think we need a secret handshake or discreetly draw a symbol on the ground like those early Christians.
Maybe just wear a Free Hugs t-shirt?
The same goes for the supermarkets. Tesco have been the worst around where I live, with scowling staff barking orders at customers to ‘step away from the basket’ in the manner of airport security with the menacing tone and ‘one look and you’re out of here’ glint in their eye to match.
I think it was Biker a few posts back (gosh you folks write lots, mostly good but when it takes more than a day to read a day’s worth of posts . . .) who pointed out there had been no cases in his supermarket.
I asked the question during my weekly shop and was told there had been one (probable) case out of a couple of dozen customer facing staff, so it is obviously really contagious, right?
No cases in the other local shops and farm shops either
I’ve boycotted Tesco for many years. Obviously nothing to tempt me back there now!
I’be boycotted Tescos since I was a trucker back in the seventies. We would be held up for hours waiting to tip because they had so few staff on the back door. My transport manager reckoned they used people’s trucks as mobile warehouses – and of course while we were queueing we weren’t delivering to their rivals.
Nothing like the same problems with other supermarkets.
so police monitoring possibility of mass demonstrations in parks-little to report apart from Corbyn gets arrested. Meanwhile in the Peak district….
Shhh. Don’t tell them!
Piers Corbyn for anyone who doesn’t yet know!
The Sun “newspaper” is running a story online with the headline “Scuffles as dozens of protestors including Jeremy Corbyn’s brother whinge about coronavirus lockdown in Hyde Park” To this the erudite and thoughtful readership has appended its commentary, a sample of which I reproduce here. **** Look at them, typical, grown older tree huggers **** They are brain dead, thoughtless dweebs. Theres got to be an uninhabited island around the coast of this country that these idiots can be put on and left. They could be self sufficient and live in their own little bubble. Crack on. **** Really?? You know I always wished that no person in the world would get covid-19!! But now……..! I lost to close family members, it is a horrible horrible death. Those who don’t get oxygen help will grasping for their last breath. So you lefty morons…..🤬 **** Total brainwashed nobodies. Go back to where you came from, the world doesn’t give a damn about your thoughts. **** Only needed to see the surname Corbyn to know that it was going to be a load of the unwashed…. Probably the same lot that Greta gets flocking round her. These lot are more worried about… Read more »
The term for all this nonsense is projection. Attributing to others your own faults. It’s interesting that the Sun claims that we’re all lonny lefties and the Guardian that we’re all racist right wing brexiteers.
Two wrongs don’t make a right seemingly
EXACTLY.
Sounds like the 77th brigade’s working overtime there.
I’ve noticed 3 types of “commentators and I think they are:
– pro-narrative, rabid, threatening with bad grammar, spelling, syntax etc -scared to death non-thinking oxygen thief or an useful idiot and paid troll
– lots of down votes, occasional “sensible” comment added but sometimes in a strange place and out of context, written a little bit better than above – probably the 77th
– anti-narrative, normal well reasoned even if spelling etc not perfect – real person
I am in Australia and the protests here last weekend attracted comments almost identical to these. I am not entirely sure they weren’t all written by our friends from Sage.
I inadvertently wandered into the Sun’s comment section before Christmas. I had to go and have a shower. My mental health has been a bit fragile ever since.
Interesting that the Daily Mail labels the protesters ‘hard left’:
“The lockdown rebels: Nineteen protesters are arrested – including Jeremy Corbyn’s brother – in clashes with police at Hyde Park rally against the government’s coronavirus restrictions with more hard left demos held across the country”
Makes a change.
As someone said in these comments – the The Mail, we’re loony Marxists. To The Guardian, we’re Neo-Nazis.
((Which means we’re probably talking sense!!))
“Stop their benefits”
What like your furlough, you mean?
My husband has continued to graph the data from the United States. His latest is a graph of daily deaths per 100,000 people by degree of lockdown, divided into three categories: high, medium, and low levels of lockdown. Each category contains 17 states (50 plus DC).
Conclusion: the states with the highest levels of lockdown have the highest daily death rates. By FAR. The middle level and lowest levels had almost the same (much lower) daily death rates, but even there, the lowest level of lockdown produced the lowest daily death rates.
Which goes along with his other conclusion that COVID-19 is deadlier in Blue states.
Our suspicion is that lockdown and associated responses are what is causing COVID death rates to be as high as they are. If we had simply run society as usual, with extra handwashing and staying home when sick, and let the medical establishment operate as it knows how to do, death rates might well have been much lower. Interfering with normal movements and hospital/nursing home operations has confounded the normal course of a virus.
To be fair, it could be that states which had the highest death rates locked down the hardest. I’m sure a competent statistician could work out how to analyse that though.
Not saying your husband isn’t, but I can’t do it!
Of course. There are all sorts of factors we don’t know. This is just the pure numbers, based on state reporting. And of course we don’t know how comparable all those numbers are either.
There’s also the matter that death rates in almost all states are quite low relative to total populations. New York really is a significant outlier. In many states, deaths are in the low three-digits.
New York is bankrupt, They fudged the numbers to get that sweet Medicare cash.
I think what we’re seeing is higher death rates in places that got their asses kicked more. They locked down more severely out of panic but then let the infection rage through the hospitals care-home style. So you end up with a high ratio of death to people infected outside the hospital.
I think there are two main reasons why lockdowns don’t have much effect. They’re usually too late, and much less aggressive voluntary measures are enough to drop R below 1 which kills the epidemic.
If we look at Iceland who have done masses of testing and had few enough critical cases that they have been able to deal with them we get a very reliable CFR of 0.55%. The IFR will be somewhere between 0.08% (what you get if you assume their tests were a random sample) and 0.55%, towards the lower end of that range. That 0.55% is actual deaths over actual cases and involves no extrapolation or projecting the epidemic across time. I think this is the best measure we have of the actual characteristics of the disease. The average age and obesity in Iceland is similar to New York.
Could be a few factors but some general observations I’ve made from the stats I’ve looked at:
1. Stricter and longer lockdowns cause more excess deaths
2. People look at countries like NZ and attribute their success to locking down. This is false. NZ isolating the virus was the reason for their success, it was not due to the lockdown. Japan and South Korea did the same thing with no lockdown
3. People infected with the virus take it home, lock down and are more likely to infect their household. The fact they’re spending hours together in enclosed spaces is likely to lead to them getting a higher concentration of virus and more severe symptoms as a result
I like the Germans’ colourful head spaghetti. Necessity is the mother of invention
Would you really wear a pool noodle on your head though? I think if I cafe proprietor offered me one I’d be a bit insulted he thought I didn’t know how far 100cm is.
Yes, I was being sarcastic BecJT
I shall walk into my local garden centre with one of those hats on next time and see what reaction I get! 🙂 Everyone was being really nice to each other in there today, very polite, avoiding each others queuing nicely behind the floor markers. I was glad to see the staff were wearing face shields instead of masks, as somehow they aren’t as intimidating to me, as I’m slightly deaf and have to lip read. I did a lot of winking and raising eyebrows at people on the way round, and surprisingly got quite a few acknowledgments of understanding. Then we all go outside with our trollies of plants, everyone was parked up close to each other, and groups formed to chat! It’s nice to know I’m not the only rebel around here . . .
I’m a bit mutton, too. Tinnitus in both ears. I dislike ANY face coverings for that exact reason. You come to lip read without even knowing you’re doing it, and it’s only when you get into Monty Python conversations with somebody who pronounces their th as ff, or s as th that you realise how you’ve adapted.
No matter how politely or jovially people step out of the way and ‘distance’ themselves from me; I still want to scream at them to get a grip. I’m becoming increasingly intolerant of all this and found myself shaking my head at people for just doing what they think is right. It’s made monsters of us all.
Me too, someone literally cowered away from me earlier…..a good 6′ away
Just returned from the gathering at Glasgow Green. Not too many people there but it was refreshing to be able
to talk to like-minded, liberty loving human beings of all ages and political affiliations and no right wing rhetoric.
Many people said they were wary of coming as they didn’t know if there would be people just like them and they were delighted to find that there were. We all had hugs and exchanged contact details.
Two of the people I talked to were self employed and were refusing to take the government’s money as they saw it as a bribe to stay silent.
There were a lot of journalists there so I don’t know what they will show/print.
The police to their credit did not interfere.
We are meeting again next week.
A HUG IS HEALTH.
Your called Right wing extremists by The Herald covering the Glasgow green protest. Lol
Awesome!
Great stuff! Well done.m
Hi everyone, Keeping the theme of hope alive (which we all really need right now for the sake of our mental health), there are FOUR reasons why I believe life will be back to normal for that NYE party and that 11.59pm “Thank God that’s behind us!” moment. 1. A vast proportion of lockdown zealots are being furloughed. We know people are seeing this as an extended summer holiday. Sadly Sunak decided to extend this to October. However, once the money runs out (which it will) suddenly there will be a sea change in opinion, and they will stop using this “it’s not safe” nonsense, and be forced to go back to work. 2. The same will apply with education. All schools will be returning in September. There might be a bit of social distancing nonsense for a short while, but that will settle and schools/teachers will realise social distancing will be impossible to sustain. I work in schools, kids are naturally drawn to each other. They will not tolerate it. 3. Like all respiratory viruses, they burn themselves out. We can see this by looking at the infection and death curves from all countries, regardless of intervention. By the… Read more »
Hello R Dawg. The most stressful aspect for me of this whole sorry affair was the internal debate as to whether it was a huge cock up or something more sinister. I believe there is indeed something other than mass histeria and over reaction behind this, but having come to terms with it I feel much more optimistic. and that whatever the reasons for the insanity it’s up to us to stop it and,d as you say, we will be free.
The federal reserve is behind it all. Economic deconstruction.
It’s been collapsing since September.
Follow the money.
90℅ of the world with no job as a result
Who’s to blame…
Yes we will. Every time I have been in some of the darkest times throughout my life, at the time it always seemed like it would never end. But it always does. All things in life are transient. Even the good times.
Have faith this will pass, we will move on.
I’m somewhere in between. I think it’s a cockup of massive proportions – one which has spread around around the world through some weird collective domino delusion. Governments are made of people after all and apparently the vast majority of people think the same on this – with their amygdalae (or the lizard brain), sadly not with their rational faculties. However I also fail to see how people *aren’t* trying to make money out of this. As we have seen the majority of those influencing the UK gvt. have some financial ties to Big Pharma or vaccines. It’s kinda natural that they would, when you think about it. And they very probably are letting their own personal (and purse-string) biases influence the advice they’re giving, consciously or not. Do I think it’s some sort of one-world plot for a mass surveillance society or replication of the Chinese model all around the Western world? – No. But I do think certain very insidious facets of this type of society are now being mainstreamed and fast-forwarded due to fear of The Covid. As they were following 9/11. We have to watch these movements – so as to stop them in their tracks,… Read more »
You raise some interesting points. Sadly humanity does have common elements of selfishness, greed, power and control. These are playing out significantly but also so is the panic response. Mix them all together and voila.
But I think what’s important now is to focus on the positives, and have hope that things will eventually be ok.
The strongest card we have to play in this regard is that there are plenty of people who want to make money who want to do so the normal way – through commerce, but can’t becvause of the current situation. Commerce has been plunged into the toilet because of lockdown. The likes of Simon Dolan (he may be a particularly benevolent and well-meaning example but we’ll use him anyway) and Elon Musk will use their entrepreneurial impulses for good, on our behalf, hopefully.
So yeah, Bill Gates might attempt to make a few trillion out of this, but the vast majority of his partners in capitalism will want to carry on making *their millions as they did before the ‘crisis’. In the same way that all of us just want to carry with our lives as before. The scales should drop down on our side through sheer weight of numbers.
I work for big pharma and can honestly say that a strong lockdown approach to COVID19 is not financially advantageous. Look at impact on thousands of clinical trials throughout the world that have been delayed or put on hold due to the COVID19 response, and the significant delays this has in getting new medicines developed and commercialised. Not good for business!
(Beyond this financial consequences to pharma, the global health impact of drug development delays, including new life-saving medicines, is another negative consequence of the COVID19 response and one that I haven’t seen reported).
That’s a very good point! Thankyou for making it
Is that the 77th brigade?
Finally, a sane assessment of the conspiracy lens through which this situation is being viewed in some quarters
Yes, many of us will survive this and come out fine.
But there will also be many for whom this is the beginning of the end as their jobs, education, motivation, businesses, houses, mental health, savings, futures are crushed.
I want to stay looking for the positives (and yes, I am retired and pretty well set), but to see the current level of government-led vandalism makes me close to despair.
Oh yes, and what about the many millions who will starve or perish from other diseases that are not being properly controlled due to the Covid monomania?!
p.s. In the last sentence I left out ‘in the third world’. Clearly not so much of a problem in the 1st world.
The flagrant disregard for the third world in this is indeed absolutely staggering and nauseating. I mean – not even the third world, but the developing world and even just countries whose primary economic engines are export markets with the west and/or tourism from the west. – Bob from the Caribbean is an example here. Has he commented today? But yeah. Nobody really seems to care as long as they get their furlough $$$$
Yet!
Great post! By then, who knows, I might be working in Singapore, lol.
Can you share a link to information about successful legal challenges in Czech Republic? I can’t find anything about it myself…thanks!
My position is that the lock-downs have nothing to do with COVID-19(84) and so it doesn’t really matter if it really exists or not. I greatly appreciate RDawg’s comments but I don’t agree that this will be over by Christmas. Not that we’ll then still be in lock-down due to this particular virus, but that’s not the point. This plandemic fits into a decades-long pattern of aborted attempts to achieve exactly this result, and having now cracked on the effective recipe that actually produces the desired result, those who would rule over us are not going to forget it. They’re not going to stop panicking the “herd” in order to make us do stupidly self-destructive things to ourselves, or more pertinently, demand they do them to us. We’ve already seen that the climate change fanatics refuse to let go of their personal obsession and since they’ve been trying for several decades to terrify the population into giving up civilisation in return for a fantasy of carbon-free living, they will not instantly forget the lessons of this plandemic. Far from being over by Christmas, we have collectively all just given every single lunatic demagogue and stalinesque wannabe with a pet obsession… Read more »
Hi Scuzzaman,
I don’t agree in the so-called “plandemic” or some sort of sinister, malevolent plot to inject us all with a vaccine that makes us infertile and tattoos that allow our every move to be tracked and traced by Big Pharma.
This is simply a result of a panicked overreaction from multiple governments around the globe, who have been so overcome by their moral duty to “do something” they have forgotten to apply any common sense or proportion, and have now backed themselves into a corner. Governments never like to lose face or admit their mistakes, so it will be a gradual exit, but life WILL eventually return to the old normal.
Also, if I may say, I don’t think comments like yours are what we need to hear right now. People need positivity, not conspiracy theories. I think you would be better following David Icke’s twitter page, with the beliefs you have.
RDawg that’s exactly how I feel but was struggling to put it into words thanks 👍
Its the federal reserve.
Nothing else.
RDawg,
Time will tell, eh?
“I think you would be better following David Icke’s twitter page” I think that’s uncalled for and inaccurate. It’s not conspiracy to observe the unprecedented assault on freedom and personal liberty that has taken place, not only here but in many other countries. It’s not conspiracy to notice that the track and trace and immunity passport technology *are* the surveillance state. It’s not conspiracy to notice that there are massive vested interests benefiting from a government policy which is clearly not being directed by any kind of scientific, economic, moral or medical consideration. It’s not conspiracy to be aware that democracy and civil liberties have been undergoing a process of gradual erosion for at least two decades. Probably more only I wasn’t really paying attention before that.
Every aspect of this government’s response to the pandemic needs to be laid bare and subjected to scrutiny by totally independent experts and scientists. All the internal communications need to be made transparent and vested interests within SAGE and within the Cabinet need to be investigated. The government is acting with bad faith, that’s completely clear.
Ok fair play. Maybe the David Icke comment was a little mean. Apologies Scuzzaman. I just don’t like this “plandemic” idea. Seems too far fetched to me.
But lockdowns aside, surveillance and tracking is nothing new. Anyone who has a smartphone and uses social media,
Google, Amazon etc, is giving up a lot of their data. We’re papped on CCTV around 50 times a day when we go out in public. It’s very hard to have total privacy these days.
Difference being we aren’t stopped from doing things because of this surveillance.
Yet.
RDawg I didn’t take it personally. Freedom means we all get to have our own opinions, right? Yours is as valid as mine, considering neither of us have direct insight into the contents of various decision-makers’ heads (ugh – imagine!). Anyway, just consider that the word plandemic doesn’t necessarily connote or imply a singular vast conspiracy. I haven’t seen a lot of evidence that our political masters are THAT clever. Or trusting of each other. But one thing they certainly are is opportunists of the first order. The political class generally doesn’t need to coordinate in advance because they all share certain interests in common and they all know where their interests lie (as do all of us). But too, THAT insight doesn’t mean that there’s no pattern to the history of (what I call) the plandemics. Every few years we’ve been treated to these apocalyptic tales of global catastrophe, precisely because a variety of ruthless players in positions of power know that such scenarios serve to broaden their powers and enrich their sponsors. Even when they consistently turn out to be fizzers (i.e. lies or mistakes), they still serve in this fashion because (A) legal precedents are set, (B)… Read more »
Back in the day my friends and I would read Stand On Zanzibar and 1984 and think “this must never happen”.
Meanwhile our contemporaries were reading the same books and thinking “that’s a really good idea!”
IMO the crisis was largely invented and is being exploited for all it is worth, no way is it going to waste. I strongly expect compulsory vaccination, government tracking and media censorship is here to stay, long after the “reason” is forgotten.
Well put, Willow. Thanks.
Well said / written Willow. As I read the comments above I did wonder if it could be a case of this AND that rather an either or scenario. As it seems to gain traction that Wuhan lab was effectively working on a vaccine, I wondered for/against… what exactly? A naturally occurring virus? Why then alter the virus protein structures so significantly? Or… for or against a bio weapon…? Remember: problem – reaction – solution, handed down by cooperations and governments. That’s the recipe. May I again refer to the investigation done by Norman Baker about the 45min dodgy dossier moment and The Strange Death of Dr David Kelly in 2006. There are some really interesting pages in there about bio weapons – who and how many governments possess them or are actively involved in researching / producing / concealing / perfecting them via third parties (ie South Africans, Chinese etc.) Includes the UK, mind you. There’s no need to be gentle with the government at this point. Of course accidents happen, there is possible evidence that the virus escaped before it was completed as a bio weapon (or vaccine…?) and was thus less lethal than originally thought and thus… Read more »
Note: book published in 2006, he died of course 2003.
Well said Willow. I really want to believe it has all been a dreadful mistake. But over 100 countries- their governments and their advisers and experts- all making the same mistake?
Life has never returned to the old normal post 9/11, and will never return to normal post whatever this is. They’ll give us back something but keep as much as they can get away with.
Well said. What most people forget is that all decision makers politicians, medics and scientists are human beings. They cock up, panic, do the right thing at the wrong time and the wrong thing much of the time. Often for a sincerely held belief. They possess no more intelligence or skill than the average punter. They all suffer from groupthink, bias, irrationality, greed and all the other human traits good and bad. We all do.
They are vulnerable to overreaction fuelled by social and main stream media. They hate to self correct in public. This episode will be written and argued over for decades. The statistics are in such a mess that no amount of scrutiny will bring the wrong to book.
Things will pass and normality will return, this will become a footnote in history (a very expensive one granted).
Loquacious Orator, ‘Covid Killer’, Dallies Over Wealth of Nation.
Confused old cow with knife beginning to destroy the world as we know it.
LOCKDOWN
You win a cookie! A cryptic crossword lover?
Yes!
The Wuhan Institute of Virology theory becomes a lot more interesting when you realise it received
a $3.7million research grant from Dr Fauci’s National Institute of Health in 2017.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8211291/U-S-government-gave-3-7million-grant-Wuhan-lab-experimented-coronavirus-source-bats.html
It all goes back to Gates in the end.
For further context, here are the UK percentage deaths from the pandemic that year (leaving out the trivial swine flu), rounded to 2 dp in 2020: 0.06% 1989/90: 0.05% 1968/69: 0.15% 1957/58 0.06% 1918/19 0.46% And to accompany these figures and the reference to the 1918 experience, I hope Toby won’t mind if I post the following again, contrasting the response of our political and media elites in 1918 with today’s. The British response to disease – then (1918) and now. I believe excessive fear has been one of the main roots of our problems with the current covid virus, and in particular the active encouragement of grossly disproportionate fear of this disease, more or less intentionally, by the deeds and words of our government and medical authorities and of our opinion forming media. In many cases, it’s likely they were motivated to do so by an idea that they were doing something responsible, because fear would encourage support for and cooperation with the measures those authorities believed necessary (and that in itself doubtless came back to their own inordinate fear, or in some cases fear of being blamed). It’s interesting then to consider the following description, from Influenza: The… Read more »
From The Telegraph online (updated lead story). A withering criticism of Ferguson. “The model, credited with forcing the Government to make a U-turn and introduce a nationwide lockdown, is a “buggy mess that looks more like a bowl of angel hair pasta than a finely tuned piece of programming”, says David Richards, co-founder of British data technology company WANdisco.
“In our commercial reality, we would fire anyone for developing code like this and any business that relied on it to produce software for sale would likely go bust.”
Wow!
I still can’t understand why Ferguson was afforded so much influence; almost like a one man band-never a good idea in matters of public health policy surely.
His extremely poor record in predicting the likely fatality rates of previous epidemics are on public record-especially the massive losses incurred by livestock farmers affected by the BSE farrago.
Why on earth did the government appoint him? Will we ever know? I doubt it.
Am sure it was deliberate. Plus I don’t think it’s any coincidence that both the USA and UK are amongst the last(?) Of the Western nations to come out of lockdown… Enough to build up huge evidence of what a disaster lockdown has been throughout the world…
What is worrying though, is that if he hadn’t been caught having a humpty dumpty with Ms Avaaz, he might well still be in place.
We can only be thankful that he strayed off piste, as it were.
They used that as an excuse to get rid of him. He was becoming too much of a public meme, and the links between him, the government and the Gates foundation were getting far too much press. They needed a reason to take him out of the public eye, one day of embarrassing stories was worth it for them.
Trouble is if I share anything like that all I get is ‘hahahah the Torygraph’ and that’s the end. It’s bloody maddening.
“Trust the experts”
Unless they’re conservative, or have said anything vaguely ‘insensitive’ in the past. Then their PhDs and years of experience are worth nothing.
Stay out of the Guardian – stay sane!
I tried to get involved on the guardian btl this morning. Pointless. The usual replies and then before I could respond comments were closed. Sigh
It’s significant that these stories are appearing in the Telegraph though.
Fergie himself published scaremongering stories in the Telegraph in the early days of stoking fear. Then they were the first to hear about his lockdown-flouting peccadilloes. And now we see quite a lot of skeptical stories appearing there.
These days they actually appear to be the Torygraph in the sense of being the channel that the Tory party uses to talk to its core voters.
I agree, but what I find so annoying about the woke wars, is how people can dismiss any opinion because they don’t like the ‘source’, I don’t mean really fringe sources like Breitbart, but if something is ‘right wing’ it can be dismissed, cancelled, ignored, without even reading it. The Telegraph might have an editorial position, but this idea that anything in the same publication can be dismissed as junk, really annoys me, when the question people need to ask is ‘is it true?’.
To an extent it’s human nature and a recognised common fallacy to dismiss info from sources that you don’t like, but the problem is multiplied hugely on the modern political left by the fact that this is the essence of the whole leftist idea of “canceling”, “no platforming”, “hate speech” etc etc.
I’m reminded of the quote in Wednesday’s Lockdownsceptic about hyper-rational;ism and passive avoidance of supposed threat.
You obviously do not see the irony of falling into the same mindset as the people you validly criticise by calling Breitbart ‘a fringe source’.
And yet, Boris Johnson is still citing the uttely debunked 500,000 death toll. if the government really wants out of this, could they not, at least as one strand of an exit strategy, set Ferguson up as the fall guy. Sadly, all they do is repeat like automatons that they’re following the science, although that science has shown to be complete and utter nonsense.
I find it strange that the telegraph has now two similar articles that criticise Ferguson’s modelling on their page; one referencing Wandisco and David Richards, and another one that is co-written by David Richards where he couldn’t resist a little bit of self-promotion.
They could have done a better job and find some other scientists to confirm the story.
Google search for Wandisco will reveal links to older telegraph stories, not so much written about the company in other papers.
It doesn’t help the cause, in my opinion.
The Torygraph is the top sceptical ‘respectable’ paper at the minute. The comments below the line are, furious, to say the least. The Mail and the Sun are still hedging their bets a bit but the ‘tone’ is turning a bit more critical.
Just wanted to make it clear that the uk governments, the public health bodies and the sainted NHS are responsible for the genocide of thousands of people in our care homes. It is nothing short of a national disgrace.
A HUG IS HEALTH
Totally agree, and those people died without their loved ones, without a doctor (GPs instructed not to attend), with no pallation, no IV fluids, no syringe drivers, no morphine, and nobody holding their hand. Most of them had advanced dementia and would have been very distressed, probably for weeks, and given most of them had been locked in their rooms alone to keep them ‘safe’, so probably had the shittiest death imaginable.
And this is why I’ve not once stood in the street and clapped. B@stards.
This is appalling. To be treated this way, and then to have the indignity of a socially distanced funeral, with strict restrictions on who is allowed to attend due to space limitations.
Yes no clapping for me. I only did it on the first week.
Great slogan!
The Word genocide has appeared a few time in comments in the Spanish El Mundo paper. That’s exactly what it is.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8S8Js-tEmlg&list=WL&index=9 David Starkey fighting the good fight. “The decisions that were taken were as follows- and they were taken to PROTECT THE FACE OF THE NHS AT ALL COSTS. 1) You stop all forms of surgery and diagnostic testing completely. Cancer, heart disease – the lot. The National Health Service becomes the National Covid Service. 2) You clear every bed that you can. This is when the patients, so-called ‘bed blockers’, get sent back to care homes. 3) You shut down all private medicine – and you do a deal to use their resources for Covid only. The result of this is that Britain is spared that humiliation – we did not have the scenes they had in Italy or Spain. But- there is a terrible price to pay, because there’s the deaths of the people that should have been treated. Or are terrified to go to hospital for other things and are therefore dying in droves. As the deaths go down in hospitals, they go up in care homes. Why were we so cavalier about care homes? BECAUSE THEY’RE NOT PART OF THE NHS. They’re not covered by that magic label. That joke about the NHS being the nearest… Read more »
He’s absolutely right though. I remember listening to Toby Young and James Delingpole’s ‘London Calling’ podcast a short while back where they discussed why Dominic Cummings, puppet master of the government, made such a u-turn in March when he went from herd immunity to lockdown. They reckoned that Cummings’ main talent is being very in tune with the public mood, and he foresaw that the NHS is so umbilically linked with British pride and what it means to be British, that when (or if) NHS hospitals became overwhelmed, pictures of it would be splashed all over the papers and the government would be completely eviscerated. Because the NHS is basically a national religion, it would be tantamount to blasphemy. And therein lies the explanation for the so poorly conceived care home policy.
“They reckoned that Cummings’ main talent is being very in tune with the public mood, and he foresaw that the NHS is so umbilically linked with British pride and what it means to be British, that when (or if) NHS hospitals became overwhelmed, pictures of it would be splashed all over the papers and the government would be completely eviscerated. ”
I think that’s a pretty plausible theory.
It’s also rank cowardice and dereliction of duty on the part of the government and of Johnson in particular. Following pubic opinion is fine on minor, day to day stuff, but on an issue like this when there are really significant costs to the nation, the PM is required to show leadership, not spineless populism.
“Pubic” opinion indeed 🙂
Doh!
You know, the more I think about that scenario the angrier I get about the sheer moral failure of a government up to its neck in “opinion management”, “nudging”, and “A substantial number of people still do not feel sufficiently personally threatened…..Use media to increase sense of personal threat” as the Sage advice put it, refusing to stand up to pubic opinion when its negligence is costing us so much.
Freud obviously getting at you today (see last sentence), again!
Damn! Wasn’t even aware that kind of thing was on my mind….
(I do struggle with “light finger typing”, and rely on the spellchecker rather too much. No use when the mistake makes an actual word,)
Don’t forget that in the run-up to the election, the media was full of pictures of NHS corridors overflowing with patients on trolleys waiting for beds. And that was before the child with pneumonia who spent the night on the floor in A&E. Boris took the reporter’s phone rather than comment on the situation. No wonder he was scared of a repeat!
And the sheeple are still saying that Boris is becoming Churchill!
What a show that would be! The BBC nabobs would be apoplectic if that one somehow slipped by…..
The dream team, although i would want Douglas Murray and Lionel Shriver as well
I’d add Brendan O’Neill too.
From the EU Ref link:
“By any measure, therefore, Hancock told an egregious, unconscionable and deliberate lie yesterday, when he addressed the press conference – a lie of staggering proportions.”
Unfortunately, the glimmer of hope for mainstream journalism was instantly dashed:
“And yet, what did our brilliant legacy media do? Well, the Telegraph, which originally published the links to the “damning” official documents – behaving for a short while like an actual newspaper, has chosen not to notice the lie.”
What was the lie?
Ok read it. Yeah. Absolutely bald-faced that one.
The sooner an independent national enquiry in Britain is held into Covid 19 deaths the better. England, unusually in Europe (at least), has a major spike in excess deaths over the last few weeks for age group 15-64. That seems unlikely to have been caused by Covid 19. https://www.euromomo.eu/graphs-and-maps/ An article in the British Medical Journal indicates what may be the cause, government hospital clearances of the long term infirm to make way for Covid 19 patients that never turned up. https://www.bmj.com/content/369/bmj.m1931 Why did the Covid 19 patients never turn up? The latest pre print pre review science seems to indicate that, through cross immunity from other common cold coronaviruses, much of the population may be immune to Covid 19. ”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 Non Covid 19 excess deaths in recent weeks are unlikely to have been confined to Britain. ‘An Italian study appeared to show that, in some regions of the country,the total death count was up as much as sixfold from previous years. Those deaths officially attributed to the coronavirus accounted for barely a quarter of the… Read more »
It’s literally gonna kill millions of people.
The lockdown. NOT COVID.
Worth noting that in those areas of France and Italy that were locked down but did not see serious Covid-19 outbreaks, there was no spike in excess deaths (eg Rome has actually seen negative excess deaths).
Most likely therefore that where there were excess deaths not attributed to Covid-19, the predominant part of this may be due to under-attribution, rather than non-Covid effects of lockdown.
Much more likely it is the other way around. Covid 19 deaths are being overestimated.
England is the only country in Europe to have a spike of excess deaths aged 15-64, atypical for Covid 19
https://www.euromomo.eu/graphs-and-maps/
For Italy, Dr. Walter Ricciardi, the scientific adviser to Italy’s health minister, said that only 12 percent of death certificates have shown a direct causality from coronavirus.
In Britain, for March/April 2020 ONS says 95% direct causality.
‘There were 33,841 deaths involving the coronavirus (COVID-19) that occurred between 1 March and 30 April 2020 registered up to 5 May 2020 in England and Wales; of these, 32,143 (95.0%) had COVID-19 assigned as the underlying cause of death.’
‘Of the 33,841 deaths that occurred in March and April 2020 involving COVID-19 in England and Wales, 30,577 (90.4%) had at least one pre-existing condition, while 3,264 (9.6%) had none. The mean number of pre-existing conditions for deaths involving COVID-19 in March and April 2020 was 2.3.’
‘The most common main pre-existing condition in England and Wales was Dementia and Alzheimer disease, with 6,887 deaths (20.4% of all deaths involving COVID-19).’
Hmmmm………
That 95% given is of deaths involving Covid, not of all deaths that occurred. So your numbers are not comparing like for like.
Yes, there will have been a degree of ‘harvesting’ of people that were very ill already. But most people with pre-existing conditions are /not/ at death’s door. Case in point: near the start of the outbreak an acquaintance died who had MS. But he’d had it for 30 years. Walked around on crutches, but otherwise incredibly vigorous. Had founded his own business, then a charity to promote and coordinate volunteering. Still had a huge amount left to give.
But surely the people like your friend are far outnumbered by very old people who are…. to put it bluntly…. living in care homes and on their last legs?
No: most people with pre-existing conditions are /not/ at death’s door. And that is also true of people dying of the virus.
cf:
Daily Telegraph, 23 April 2020, “Coronavirus cutting more than a decade off victims’ lives, scientists say” https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/04/23/coronavirus-cutting-decade-victims-lives-scientists-say/
Economist, 2 May 2020, “Would most covid-19 victims have died soon, without the virus? A new study suggests not” https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2020/05/02/would-most-covid-19-victims-have-died-soon-without-the-virus
Care home death figures say otherwise.
Slightly misses the point.
England, unusually in Europe (at least), has a major spike in excess deaths over the last few weeks for age group 15-64. That seems unlikely to have been caused by Covid 19.
https://www.euromomo.eu/graphs-and-maps/
An article in the British Medical Journal indicates what may be the cause, government hospital clearances of the long term infirm to make way for Covid 19 patients that never turned up.
https://www.bmj.com/content/369/bmj.m1931
So thousands of people already in hospital were discharged and may very well have died as a consequence of that; nothing to do with Covid 19.
Meanwhile, the beds emptied to make space for Covid 19 patients remained empty.
And Covid 19 mortality has been overstated.
https://www.buzzsprout.com/1013854/3675205-episode-4-dr-john-lee-part-1?client_source=twitter_card&player_type=full_screen
Nope:
‘Prof Ricciardi added that Italy’s death rate may appear higher because of how doctors record fatalities.
“The way in which we code deaths in our country is very generous in the sense that all the people who die in hospitals with the coronavirus are deemed to be dying of the coronavirus.
“On re-evaluation by the National Institute of Health, only 12% of death certificates have shown a direct causality from coronavirus, while 88 per cent of patients who have died have at least one pre-morbidity – many had two or three,” he says.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/health/coronavirus/120443722/coronavirus-is-covid19-really-the-cause-of-all-the-fatalities-in-italy
Here is a podcast from a very experienced NHS pathologist explaining just how imprecise the recording of Covid 19 deaths is in England:
https://www.buzzsprout.com/1013854/3675205-episode-4-dr-john-lee-part-1?client_source=twitter_card&player_type=full_screen
Regarding your other point, it has been well known for some time that the common cold is a great deal more dangerous to the elderly and infirm than influenza.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5343795/
If you want to suggest that we have not done enough in Britain to protect the most vulnerable, that is also one of the points that I am making and one that the legendary Anders Tegnell in Sweden has made about their own response:
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/05/12/sweden-boosts-elderly-care-spending-as-coronavirus-death-toll-rises.html
Thanks for this and all the links.
Funny comic spoofing the religious fanaticism of lockdown: https://friedavizel.com/2020/05/16/presenting-ultra-unorthodox-an-illustrated-story/
It’s really good!
Brilliant!
– „What’s in the sandwich?”
– „Germs”
This one is cracking me up!
If i worked in a cafe i’d be saying that to all customers wearing face masks and gloves!
My husband and I spent about two hours at the Hyde Park gathering today. We reckon that there were about a thousand people there – though people came and went over the two hours, and there were a lot of journalists and passers by. There was no evidence of the far right, but a number of anti-vaxxers and anti Bill Gatesers. The majority of people wanted to protest the loss of their freedoms and the ridiculousness of the lockdown rules. There was no organisation to it: there was a man who was ranting loudly who was the first to be arrested and who may have been the prime mover, The police presence was way over the top. They had no masks or gloves, and did no social distancing whatsoever: not only did they huddle together, but they constantly got unnecessarily close to protesters. Clearly they have zero fear of catching or spreading covid-19. At about 12.20, they started telling people they were going to issue fines and arrest people: and that’s what they did. For most people, it was a chance to talk to like minded people and exchange information. I’m glad I went. And it was great to be… Read more »
Thanks for the vid I’ve been looking for footage! I’ve just left Leeds, absolute crickets there lol
Thanks for posting. Uplifting viewing.
Telling exchange from protester to out-of-depth policewomen:
“We pay your wages. We haven’t been paid for two months!”
The police didn’t seem too concerned about social distancing – presumably till commanded otherwise from above.
The comment feed below the video is truly worrying though with a plethora of comments including the obligatory Darwin Awards. They have been utterly brainwashed and not questioned this for one second, living in internal fear that there is a world ending virus rampaging the world. Truly makes me sad.
The correct use of the Darwin award example would actually be someone who has a heart attack yet refuses to phone an ambulance because of covid
And even that is kinda understandable given the psychological assault we’ve all been under
Spring is my favourite season and today I realised just how much I have missed this year. Drove my mother (92) four miles from home to a local wildlife reserve (woodland, a loch, grassland and moorland, with interesting flora and fauna: “Scotland in Miniature”, as the blurb states) run by the Scottish Wildlife Trust (a charity). It was her first trip out since March 23rd, apart from local walks from home. We (or rather I, as Mum fortunately didn’t notice them) ignored (smallish) signs on wooden posts at the entrance to the extensive path network counselling us to please not visit the reserve “to avoid transmitting Covid 19”. There were at least another 6 cars parked at the entrance, so I knew that other visitors had ignored the signs and had entered the reserve. We walked for about an hour and a half, enjoying the sunshine, pleasant breeze, the gentle air, birdsong and wildlife activity on the loch. In that time, we passed two couples (with dogs) and a family group including three children, exchanging pleasantries and giving each other plenty of space to pass. No risk of infection transmission! On the drive home, I noticed how the lambs in… Read more »
Sounds like a lovely day out. Lucky mum!
Your mum might like this (you too) – live stream of the peregrine falcons nesting on top of the tower of Cromer Church.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8iVLvzO5Cso
It’s nature red in tooth and claw, mind, at feeding time.
Ah bless!
I’ve mostly been limiting myself to local places, but we have a river with water voles and numerous birds and flowers where I’ve been walking a lot and distantly meeting many other folks. I need to drag myself to somewhere that has nightingales while they are still singing.
My mother loved that kind of thing, I’m glad she died and didn’t have to go through this.
Very interesting the comment of the architect in today’s news from Toby. He was involved in Porton Down refurbishment and leaking pipes was the scandal. The Wuhan lab was copied from France but obviously they did not have time to copy the pipes correctly. China is not often associated with quality products and defect drainage would not be a surprise. I have always been intrigued how quickly Trump shut down the country and followed the lockdown zealots and Dr Fauci. It seems reasonable that an early stage, the CIA found out about a mishap this autumn in Wuhan. Initially they could have suspected a biological attack but found out finally only a mishap, the usual incompetence and then the frenetic cover up by China. Now US has a problem how to use this information. They can use it in the usual China bashing way but not really fully reveal the secret. Because the US would have been one part in the mayhem at the Wuhan lab. The corona virus research was outsourced by the US to Wuhan in China. Indeed, Dr Fauci himself sent illegal money for their research and had high expectations of vaccine development which was the intended… Read more »
This. It’s scientific negligence on a massive scale, in a myriad of different ways- plus governmental negligence. That lab HAS to have something to do with it, it just has to.
Evidence has been pointing that way for a few weeks now.
Not according to MSM :/ Although, the Mail has been plugging away at this I think (because they hate China)
Same claim about Fort Derrick Maryland last year and was the reason that the military gave the BioLab there a “cease and desist” order last August (I think) and shut that part of the lab down permanent ly as there were “security problems” earlier on in the year. Some claim it was a problem with the waste system after a refit, others that China had stolen or been given the 5 strains of coronavirus they were working on which also tallies up to the arrests last year or so of Chinese scientists being found trying to take 41 vials of genetic material out of the USa nd Canada, a plane tracked taking some genetic material from the US to Wuhan on a Turkish whistleblower site and a Harvard professor being taken away in handcuffs and charged (documented on department of justice website in Dec) as he was heavily funded by Wuhan lab and lied about it. 1st cases of coronavirus linked to the vaping deaths in the US, symptoms identical check them, then in Seattle where the soldiers who were going to the Wuhan Games transitted through then onto Hawaii, the first case in Japan linked to someone who had… Read more »
Interesting connection:
Gilled was an investor/partner in China with a company Wuxi. they have labs in various places in China including one last year next door to the wet market in Wuhan.
Guess the 2 names who were heavy investors in both Gilead and Wuxi?
Gates and Soros.
The ‘mishap’ may have in summer 2019 in the US (Fort Detrick lab):
https://ahtribune.com/world/covid-19/4152-american-genie.html
Fauci’s involvement with ‘Gain of Function’ research is well-documented elsewhere.
Hurray, good for you.
All the best and I’ll be rooting for you!
Hear hear! Yes “normality” – that’s what I want. Not the “new normal”.
Hears hoping
That’s a LS slogan contender!
NORMALITY
– NOT THE NEW NORMAL
I met a friend today for the first time in 2 months and we both spontaneously started singing a song which I suggest here as yet another possible theme tune for this site. Cole Porter’s “Where Is The Life That Late I Led.”
Many thanks again to Toby for this blog and today’s entry. I have to say that my mood has considerably improved since I found this site. I have boycotted the MSM for years now and nowadays I simply read this site, The Spectator and follow Professor Sikora on Twitter.
Well done for further highlighting the mental health effects of this lockdown and it despairs me that no-one I know has never acknowledged this but are happy to share the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge’s mental health campaign and has not joined the dots of how this prolonged lockdown is taking a toll on people mentally and psychologically. I won’t be surprised if we go in the way of Japan in terms of suicides if we haven’t already.
On a lighter note, I have been listening to a lot of Gilbert and Sullivan lately and I was wondering if we sceptics can write our own version of “I’ve Got a Little List” from The Mikado. Definitely there will be many on that list!
https://twitter.com/DanielJHannan/status/1261419167854424066?s=20
LOL! Good one Hannan!
It occurred to me that 50 years ago, people would have been afraid to use the pool noodle hats for fear of catching headlice.
I’ve worked like normal all the time while these leeches sit on their arse expecting me to work keeping the supermarket open. Will i get a big bonus, will i get three months off to sit in my garden and get pissed on almost full pay when this is over? Will i hell. The company i work for will have made more money than normal and me i’ll be just as poor as i was before this began. No one cares about me so i don’t care about them. I’m out riding my motorcycle when and where i like and if you don’t like that mr government paid enforcer you can suck my exhaust. Get yourselves to all the places you want tomorrow and if you encounter any state bother, smile, tell them you’re not interested in what they say, take their fine don’t pay it and make a bloody stand. If one thing this whole debacle has shown is we need to vastly reduce government very very quickly and i hope someone like Farage starts a libertarian Party and he sweeps to power promising to dismantle the government.
Good for you!
I care about you and people like you, and agree (apart from the Farage bit 🙂 )
Me too. Would you agree to Claire Fox instead of Farage – I would?
I don’t disagree with you. I also think he is the most impressive politician of our era. This is because he really believes and means what he says about Brexit, and has spent his entire life dedicating himself to it. He cuts across the class divide in provincial cities like the one I hail from. I am not convinced how many of the current crop of politicians (in any party) believe in anything – they are shallow and lacking in backbone. That said, I know several women who would class themselves as Thatcherite and Brexiters who have a certain reservation about Farage – in much the same way as they do of Trump.
I agree. I consider myself a Libertarian – always agree with Claire Fox, Brendan O’Neill here, and Ron Paul in the US. The Conservative party at the moment, with some notable exceptions, looks and sounds like an extension of the Fabians. Listening to Mr Williamson at the press conference earlier was one of the most scary encounters on TV since – well Mr Sharma a few days ago. Is this really what this country has come to in terms of the quality of those running the show?
As a fellow biker I fully endorse your view. It’s time this debacle was put to bed for good.
‘Particularly prevalent are 18-25 year-old men with no previous history of mental illness.’
Precisely the ones who’d have spent every Saturday at the football.
Hahahahahaha!
Well, I was making a serious point about how people’s mood can get low if what they love is taken away from them, but each to his own, I suppose.
I know you were, but the blunt way you put it was also kinda amusing.
Terse, not blunt.
True. Either way, you have a way with words.
My first reaction was to laugh too, because football matches are such a hotbed of testosterone-driven tribalism. However, it’s important for testosterone-driven tribalism to have a safe outlet, so it’s definitely a serious point.
It’s really sad, what we’re doing to people. Domestic violence murder is also a disgrace (so, not feeling too sorry for men). Isolation is really, really, really bad for humans (as is forced proximity in some cases).
Seem a bit harsh to group all men together with the domestic violence murderer types. Some of us are quite pleasant.
Yes and there are some vicious women out there too. My ex d-i-l for one!
My X-wife for two
Most of us in fact.
I didn’t, just not playing a violin for poor men either.
Blimey. I’ve generally enjoyed your contributions but that sounded a sour note.
I’ve seen you write a few times about rebuilding your views from the ground up. It struck a chord with me because as my leftie friends have gone off into lala land I find myself questioning more and more left wing shibboleths I once held dear. One of those was the idea that women were generally more disadvantaged and were the sole victims of domestic violence. How the scales fell from my eyes when I encountered the views of Erin Pizzey (the woman who started the original refuge in Chiswick). She shows convincingly how viewing the problem of DV through the feminist lens has skewed our responses to it and led to ignoring around 40% of the victims who happen to men. I’ll stop here. When a particular view of something is deeply entrenched and you genuinely want to look at the evidence or attain a more nuanced view, I think it’s something you have to root out for yourself.
Written with the best intentions and best wishes.
I’ve worked in domestic violence, and Im not going to waste my time replying to that, I’m afraid. Google ‘the reporting cap’ and then google Pat Craven’s living with the dominator, when you’ve read that, comment again. Most male victims, the perp is also male (either gay, or a jealous ex).
Er, not necessarily (and of course no-one knows the real numbers because of non-reporting and disbelief.
My ex was a very sweet wife three weeks out of every month, then it was like a switch being flipped. Imagine PMS with a turbocharger – she had a LOT of symptoms of Borderline Personality Disorder – then the switch flipped back again and she was back to normal.
A friend had a similar girlfriend. He smashed up his leg in a freak accident and had it pinned in a frame. She lost her rag and JUMPED on his broken leg, causing permanent damage.
Sorry but it does happen.
It opened my eyes to psychobabble vs. chemistry. Think about the cline from male behaviour – macho behaviour – narcissism – psychopathy in one direction, and female behaviour – PMS – Borderline in the other, something causes an overreaction to “normal” hormones. Blame the mother doesn’t cut it, sorry.
‘genuinely want to look at the evidence’ – I HAVE genuinely looked at the evidence, which is why I have the views I do. The left are disgrace on misogyny, hence me reviewing my views.
*political views.
Now now, footie knows no age barriers !